How to Negotiate Wholesale Deals & Maximize Your Returns

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Real quick, guys. If you want to take your real estate investing business from 6 to 7 figures in the next twelve months, and you wanna do without being a slave to your business, then you have to check out our scale community. You can get the full details at collectingkeys.com/scale. But very basically, it is a community of like minded investors who are working to become the absolute top tier investors in their market. Along with three coaching calls per week led by Dan and myself, we also have a whole bunch of videos and materials that go into all the different SOPs that we use to run our business on a daily basis. This includes how we manage our sales team, how we hire, how we do our marketing systems, how we get the best assignment fees possible, how we do renovations, how we do all the different kinds of creative financing. And if you are serious about taking your real estate business to the next level, is absolutely something that you should check out. So go to collectingkeys.com/scale, see all the details, and see if you're a good fit. We have a seller, older guy. He's in Texas. He's classic Texas man.

Dan Austin: [1:04] Oh, boy.

Mike DeHaan: [1:05] Very rural. Does not like technology. And he's basically decided that because the esignature on the DocuSign that we sent does not look like his handwritten signature, that it's not a real signature. And he is now claiming that it is a forgery.

Dan Austin: [1:22] It is an esign.

Mike DeHaan: [1:23] Gone by the spaceman or something that use that their their Internet. Yeah. Even though it's traced back to, like, ham, and we have, like, the re the receipt. What is going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. This is the show we teach you make massive income, not just passive income, but your real estate investing business. This is your first time here, my name is Mike DeHaan, and I'm here with my co host, Dan Austin. Hey. On these Wednesday Mike and Dan shows, we kinda talk about whatever we feel like regarding real estate or business news what's going on in our business, whatever Dan has a chip on his shoulder about that week.

Dan Austin: [2:06] Super chippy today.

Mike DeHaan: [2:08] And if you don't know who we are, we own a nationwide real estate investing business. We're doing deals, kinda what, 15 different markets across the country.

Dan Austin: [2:17] Something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [2:17] Done what I want to say 450 deals now over the last four years, five years? A little bit. I don't know. Yeah. We do a lot of deals. We're active in the space and a lot of wholesale, a lot of flips, and we also do certain home properties as well. Yeah. So yeah. You know, it's a good time. And it's funny as I started this up, I have to we have a little intro song there. I realized I gotta download this because we need it for introductions at a a KeysCon that we have here.

Dan Austin: [2:43] KeysCon twenty twenty four, baby. Yeah. We gotta plan that out. I'm gonna freaking come out. Just rip my shirt off. It's gonna be great. No. Come out, dude. Just

Mike DeHaan: [2:51] We gotta you gotta keep in your wraps. We got a couple ladies coming out this time. It's not just gonna be a bunch of white dudes in their thirties with facial hair like it was the last

Dan Austin: [2:58] We decided to to bring in some diversity this time around, and it may kill us. We'll see.

Mike DeHaan: [3:04] Yeah. We'll see.

Dan Austin: [3:04] I think the ladies are down. I think they'll be okay with Mike and Dan. We can't get we're not that crazy. You don't do anything that do we do that?

Mike DeHaan: [3:10] I don't think we're anything

Dan Austin: [3:11] that crazy. I maybe we do get crazy. Don't think so. I mean, well, we don't have we don't have Sean there to come out in this leopard print studio, which was awesome. So I don't think we'll have to worry about that.

Mike DeHaan: [3:18] There's always one. Right? There's always gonna be one Yeah. Wild child of the bunch. Who's it gonna be this time, do think? My guess is Kyle.

Dan Austin: [3:27] I was actually and here's my advantage. I get to see all their discs, their disc assessment. I was actually talking to Robbie, one of our our teammates in our business, and I think I called Kyle. Was like, he's gonna be he's gonna be the guy. I said that same thing.

Mike DeHaan: [3:41] I can see it for sure. So Yeah. I'm saying that specifically as well, I know Kyle's gonna listen to this episode, because he said he listens to every single one. So yeah, we have high expectations for you. But our Keys Calling event is our private event for our scale community members, which scales for people that are looking to grow and expand their real estate businesses and really take things seriously. Right? Hence, name scale. They're trying to go from one or two deals a month to make massive income and not just like, you know, limp their way along to financial freedom through buying rental rate. And we do these this will be our second Keyes Con, and it is basically a two and a half day intensive mastermind where we have, like, two full days of, like, workshops, group work, presentations on stuff. We're actually bringing down a speaker this time to coach specifically around sales, both hard and soft skills on sales. I'm super excited about. Mhmm. And it's a great opportunity for a bunch of people to get together and network and kind of bond that see each other on Zoom Mhmm. Every single week on the different group calls that we do. Actually get to see each other in person and hang out at a really, really sick Airbnb.

Mike DeHaan: [4:46] Yep. And this one's down in Palm Springs. We did the last one in Scottsdale, and, you know, future one, who knows? Figure it out.

Dan Austin: [4:54] But Yeah. Send us some ideas. We're

Mike DeHaan: [4:56] open. Right?

Dan Austin: [4:57] Yeah. I would say what it is not an event on is we're not bringing down speakers because of their large Instagram followings. They're gonna talk about stupid stuff, and it's not one of those events where you just go to sit there and like consume information, get drunk, and go home. It's one of those where, it's kind of for us, it gives us a longer format to really dig in and show people what scale's all about, how to take them wherever they're at their business, because we have like, still a few varying degrees of like where you're at in your business, but everybody, the goal is is scale, like you said, beyond where they're at now. And so we get that time to really dive in and dig. And so when we talk about bringing speakers, yeah, we're not this isn't to take pictures with your favorite, you know, whoever you're fanboying over. This is, something that we know, that we would use, that is going to dive in and like really help take their business to the next level with a new skill. And then we also get to just show them everything we're doing in our business that they can now just steal and take and put into their business.

Mike DeHaan: [5:50] Exactly. And the whole outcome of it is basically not only just knowledge, but extreme accountability and actually, like, forcing people to take steps forward on the parts of their business that they're not doing. So, like, at the event last year, you know, we had people making doing sales and follow-up calls in, like, small groups to give each other coaching and feedback and actually be actively doing their sales and offer meetings. If we actually had one guy that got a little mobile home park under contract at the event, which was sick.

Dan Austin: [6:19] That was cool.

Mike DeHaan: [6:19] We had people writing and posting job listings for the parts of their org chart that need to be filled out in order to be able to grow their business like they need to do. Right? We had one guy who told us about all this money that he had in his account, and he had Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [6:34] Old Dylan.

Mike DeHaan: [6:35] Yeah. He was he was having trouble paying himself, And we made him pull $50,000 out of his business account because he wanted to buy his wife a car for Christmas. And we're like, dude, you have the money. Like, what are you just gonna leave it sitting in there? Pay yourself. Like, reward yourself for doing this business and doing well. Otherwise, what's the point?

Dan Austin: [6:50] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [6:51] And ultimately, we're just trying to be the antithesis of, like, what you said, so many of these different meetups, masterminds that people do where it's like, you leave with, like, a good warm fuzzy feeling and I guess a lot of theory, but not a lot of action afterwards. Yep. And, you know, because I don't I say, I don't know why people always have those more theory driven sort of events. You know, I know why it is. Because they don't actually have a lot of intrinsic value to be them to provide themselves. Mhmm. Right? They are relying on other people, those speakers that they're paying ridiculous amounts of money to come speak because they're a motivational speaker, things like that, to high people up. But we want to actually give people the tools to be successful and not just like more motivation. Because if you want that, I don't know, go watch that Shia LaBeouf video of him like yelling on YouTube saying, you know, just do it.

Dan Austin: [7:36] I love that video.

Mike DeHaan: [7:36] That'll get you where you need to be.

Dan Austin: [7:38] That's why I listen to every morning when I get out of bed. Do you ever heard the book Miracle Morning? I'm pretty sure it's in there. Like, they send you the link to that video.

Mike DeHaan: [7:44] Do they actually? No.

Dan Austin: [7:45] No. Kinda. You gotta meditate and pray in the miracle morning. They don't give you that kind of shit.

Mike DeHaan: [7:51] That sounds way too cool for that that freaking book. But I actually have that as my alarm when it goes off in the morning. Just just in

Dan Austin: [7:57] Just do it. I like it, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [8:01] So, yeah. So super excited for Keyes Con. The last one was honestly one of my highlights of 2023. And I'm excited for this one to do the same thing.

Dan Austin: [8:09] I'm very pumped.

Mike DeHaan: [8:10] Yeah. So if you're interested in joining future Keyes Con or hearing more about scale, go to collectingkeys.com/scale. And we'll see if we want to bring into the group or not. Because recently, I've been having people that I'm just like, no, I you're just not the right fit. And that's okay. Good luck to you. We'll see you later.

Dan Austin: [8:26] It happens.

Mike DeHaan: [8:26] It happens. Anyways, on top of that, we have had a handful of good lessons within our own business recently. We actually had a good one on the disposition side for a wholesale deal that I wanted to talk about loosely because I feel like it's such a common challenge that people face. And I don't know. Do you find that you get a ton of questions from, I would say, like, newer wholesalers, new investors around wholesaling where they have this innate fear that they're going to get a contract, so then they're not going to be able to find a buyer. Do you find you get that much?

Dan Austin: [9:00] Yes. That's like probably the number one thing after they learn that marketing's pretty simple. And then they're like, oh my god, this person decided to sell me their house. What do I do next? And they can't figure out what to do, and they end up building the buyers list, I think, too, because the last few years before now, like, lot of people put emphasis on, like, how to build a buyers list. Right? And, like, it was like a function. It was a thing. Well, it's really just it's like this, I don't know, like growing and living being like your buyers list. They're people, right? And what do you have to do for people? You have to talk to them, you have to get out there, you have to network, and so yeah, that piece right there is like one of the challenge, biggest challenges and fears people have is like, what do I do now?

Mike DeHaan: [9:42] Yeah. Well, and also too, I think that people recognize that the old adage that when you have a good deal, buyers will come No. Is not necessarily true anymore. Right? And it was maybe in

Dan Austin: [9:54] 2122.

Mike DeHaan: [9:56] Six or seven years ago. Definitely in '21 because everyone and their mom was buying properties. And then back in two thousand eighteen, nineteen when we first started Mhmm. There were way less people on the scene, and you could realistically find buyers because people have less opportunity for good deals. But now as deal finding, wholesaling has become, like, more of a mature industry and you have people doing it at a very high level, people have opportunities. Right? You're not just competing for deals with sellers. You're also competing for the buyer's decision to buy your deal and not wait for somebody else's. Else's.

Dan Austin: [10:27] Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [10:28] Right? Because the average person can only buy one or two deals at a time if they're even that serious that they're going that aggressively. And if you bring someone, the thought process they're having is, do I wanna put my resources into this deal, or should I wait for one from somebody else because I know that there will be more? Yep. Whereas, like, six years ago, they didn't know that, and that's why there would always be money. So it's a very common concern that we have. And so we got this deal locked up here in in Spokane, and everyone said that we were too high on it. So we have investor lift, which is this huge dispo platform. We have our own private disposition list. We are sending stuff out on that. We are going to Facebook groups. And the general feedback we're getting from a lot of people was that they essentially wanted it like the number that we contracted it at. I don't know. Spokane's a funny market. There was like a

Dan Austin: [11:11] There's some validity to that though. Like that price point.

Mike DeHaan: [11:13] Yeah. Depending on what you want to do with it because in order to get the true ARV, you're gonna have to finish the basement. You're have to do some of these renovations and other things. And people were wanting this certain level of upside on flipping a property, which in order to get it, you had to get our price. But through just hunting and going to the different Facebook groups and find things, we found a realtor that had a client that was looking for a buy and hold deal. And they said that these were the sort of errors they liked, connected with them. And sure enough, this deal was perfect for this buyer because they weren't saying, like, I need to buy this deal where I'm gonna make $50.60 grand on a flip because Mhmm. If I'm not gonna buy this one, I'm gonna wait for another one. I'm gonna $50.60 grand on flip. Right? And so instead, it was a buy and hold investor who wanted this exact ZIP code, this neighborhood, fully fits his box, got it assigned to him for a little $13,000 fee, and it'll be a great deal at the end of it. Because he's getting a deal that fits his buy box for long term buy and hold. We were able to make our money, and all those flippers that were wanting to make their Yep. Their margin on their larger deal, they can go and do that. Totally.

Mike DeHaan: [12:18] They're not feeling like they need to stretch the buyer deal that was too high for

Dan Austin: [12:21] Well, in this case, too, I think the note is, like, it's not a retail ready property by any stretch of the means, but it's rentable, right? You you could just rent it, like, doesn't need to be upgraded, could be cleaned, painted, all that stuff. You could upgrade the kitchen, but you don't have to. Again, the basement could be finished to add square feet, but it definitely is is a rental property for sure, as is, is that you, or many of the people we end up wholesaling to, who are end up being flippers, or distressed sellers for whatever reason, they might want it out 75% ARV minus repairs, where anybody that's like looking for like a retail investment, they'd be tickled to get a house at 80% of value. Mhmm. Honestly, they're like, holy crap, I'm getting a 20% discount to the value of this property, that's amazing. I'll pay cash, I'll get private money, I'll get traditional funding, whatever it'll do for lending. And there's quite a few people out there that are that kind of buyer. They're not trying to do anything tricky, they're not trying do any fancy, they're just trying to get a bunch of base hits and doubles out there with their rental portfolio, and this fits that box, and we found that buyer. The difference is, we found that buyer, and we know how to go through our Rolodex quicker.

Dan Austin: [13:22] We know how to get deeper into our buyers list, and we know when we need to really start scratching into these other areas, and also have many years of experience doing it, which helps.

Mike DeHaan: [13:31] Yeah. And when I think one of the big thing is when you're looking for these sort of, like, buy and hold buyers, typically, it needs to be for properties that are in, like, somewhat nicer neighborhoods. Right? Like, if you're doing wholesaling in the hood or, like, marketing is in these really bad areas, it's gonna be much harder to find these people. And also, you need to recognize that most of these individuals that are doing the slow route to wealth through real estate. Right? They're working with realtors who go on the MLS. They're not gonna be looking on, like, major dispo platforms. Right? They're probably not on your buyer's list. Or even if they are, they're not really giving it a good look because they rely on the expertise of this person they put their trust in, which is their realtor, to sort of, like, bring them these opportunities that they think are valid. Uh-huh. And so there's this whole other relationship based disposition that I think people tend to forfeit, especially now as people are trying to do everything with as much speed and automation as possible. And this totally would have been a deal that I would say even in the past, we might have, like, looked to price reduce or maybe even drop just because we couldn't find a buyer. But like you said, just through our experience, we recognize that we we knew this was a good number, and we just need to find the right person for it.

Mike DeHaan: [14:39] And there's always ups and downs with it. Like, if you're selling to these people, you just need to explain to them that they need to have a hard money loan. They can't go get like a DSCR loan or use their local bank, whoever they've used to buy stuff in the past. A handful of reasons for that, but usually the speed is a big one. The condition is a big one. Also too, if you have an assignment fee, in case you guys didn't know this, a conventional or a long term lender will typically not finance an assignment. It seems they would have to pay this out of pocket. And they just kinda need to understand that, but that can all be, you know, taught to them as needed if you have a decent buyer.

Dan Austin: [15:10] I would add, like, a question to this is the scenario didn't work out in that favor, and you have a buyer that's like gonna make you $3 on the assignment fee. What would you do?

Mike DeHaan: [15:22] So basically, I have a buyer that will only make $3?

Dan Austin: [15:25] That's willing to pay 3,000 above the PSA price. So your assignment fee basically is only $3. What would you do in that case? You didn't have this other buyer, you're given that situation, what would you do at that point? I think this is a good opportunity to talk about kinda like the other options as well that you would do in this scenario. It's not a big assignment fee. You just take it take it and walk or what what do you do?

Mike DeHaan: [15:45] So someone's willing to pay $3, they're probably willing to pay $5. That's the first thing I'll say. So yeah. So you can push them up that way. Yeah. And then depending on the situation with the seller, I would probably try to ask for a little bit more on the seller side too. Probably 3 to 5 on that side. Mhmm. If it's a situation where the seller's heavily distressed, they're in a bad financial position, they're already gonna be walking with very little, I wouldn't do that. But this is a situation where the sellers own the property outright. They've owned it for, like, twenty something years. They're already gonna be making, like, you know, $270. Mhmm. For me to go back and say, like, hey. Look. You know, this needs a little bit more work. Would you mind giving us an extra $5 on it? They will probably say yes. And also too, that will make literally double our profit margin. So I would try to push at the buyer a tiny bit Mhmm. And go and ask for more on the seller and make

Dan Austin: [16:31] it work. Yeah. That's what I was getting at. It's I guess, don't just lay down and accept that as your, hey, I'm gonna make $3. Although, that's awesome. High five yourself. If you can make $3, you can definitely make 5, and you might be able to make 10. And so pushing back on that buyer be like, absolutely, I'd love to do this. Let's do this deal, but give me you know, 2,000 more. And then yeah, try your hand with the seller, if it makes sense, and you're not doing it in a scummy way, didn't already promise the seller something. It's just sometimes it is what it is on the renegotiation, you just gotta do it. Now you can turn a what wasn't really much of a deal that maybe covered your cost to something that has a profit margin. And that's like the base hit you gotta be doing all the time in this business to stay steady and and be around so you can hit the home runs.

Mike DeHaan: [17:10] Yeah. It's always about how you approach it as well because I think a lot of people have fear around asking on either side because they're afraid the person's gonna walk. K? Worst case, they're gonna say no. And if you approach it from a position of humility, you know, try to be a dick about it. Like, you're not like, hey. You know, mister buyer, mister seller, like, these are the prices that we need to be at, and you're really kind of abrasive. Yeah. They are gonna probably walk. But if you're like, hey. Look. For this to make sense for my business, would you be willing to give me an extra $2,000 on the buy side? And they'll be like, yeah. Most people will say that's fine just because they want the deal. Right? If they say no, then that's fine. Then just take the three and move on. Same with on the seller side. You go, hey. Look. We really are interested. We noticed these couple of concerns. There's always concerns. You can come up with all these deals. Would you be willing to give us a $5,000 price reduction? You're still walking with huge amount of money. What it'll do is it'll allow us to be exactly where we need to be as a company, and we can keep operating. And this will be like this will go from being, like, something that we kinda scrape through to actually being a win, and we can move on. Like, guys can get paid appropriately, and we can be super stoked to move forward. And most sellers, like I said, if they're not in a bad financial position, you're not taking advantage of them, you're not being a scumbag.

Mike DeHaan: [18:20] Like, this one is a sophisticated seller. They know the property needs work. They're making a bunch of money anyways. They'll more than likely say, yes. It's fine. Totally. Never.

Dan Austin: [18:28] I don't care.

Mike DeHaan: [18:28] They just wanna get the deal done at that point. And if they say no, then fine. Then just take it and take some more fee. Like, don't be stupid about it.

Dan Austin: [18:36] I'll make another note here. This seller is like that, and we are making it an okay fee. We're not going back. Yeah. What you just said to me is missed opportunity, that you're not going back and negotiating what some other people, I should say, other people would call that as missed opportunity, but really, it's just like Exactly. If you don't need to, don't be a dirtbag, and don't kinda just unjustly take away money out of their pocket.

Mike DeHaan: [18:55] That is very good point. So like in this situation, absolutely not do that. I guarantee you 100% that we could go back and get some more money from this seller. But we're not gonna do that because their bags were making $13. Like, that's pretty pretty decent.

Dan Austin: [19:09] You're making a fair fee. It's not a home run. It's just a good fair fee for what we're doing and, you know, the house, it's a fixer upper. It's all that sort of stuff that we're providing a service, so it's fair what we're doing. And you don't wanna get into the unfair just because you can.

Mike DeHaan: [19:23] Hey. We really appreciate you being a listener of the collecting keys podcast. Did you know that we also are on social media and on YouTube? You should go and shoot us a follow on those as well. You can find both Dan and I on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invests. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can also find short clips from the show at collecting keys podcast on Instagram. And if you wanna see our faces talking while listening to the show or you wanna check out some of our crazy animated adventures, we've been putting together into some funny little web cartoons that sort of show the crazy stories that guests tell on the show, then you should go over to YouTube and check out the collecting keys channel. Shoot us a subscribe over there. It really helps continue to grow our audience. We really, really appreciate it. Well, anyways, enjoy the rest of the show, you guys. We appreciate you all. Wholesaling gets such a bad reputation, and it's just like everything else that is a services based business. I mean, because people said talk about how wholesalers can take advantage of people, picky because we'll know more about, like, the situation. We'll have an extra strategy built in. We'll know more about property values. It's really no different than, like, a roofer that fully knows that the cost to put the roof on is $8,000, but they go and they bill someone $30 because it's an old lady. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [20:36] It's no different than these fucking solar panel companies that keep knocking on my door every goddamn week and saying outrageous shit, like how the dams are shutting down, and we're not gonna have, like, power anymore. Like, that's literally what this little twerp said to me the other day. And I, went off to him. I should I should if I could find, like, the camera footage, actually, that'd funny because we have, security camera.

Dan Austin: [20:56] Dude, that'd be awesome. I should post that.

Mike DeHaan: [20:58] But, like, it's all about intent. Like, you you can do all of those industries ethically by just not being a piece of shit. Just like you can with wholesaling

Dan Austin: [21:06] too. By not lying to people and not taking advantage of situations. And it's like, that's the key is not taking advantage of a situation when you're more educated and more sophisticated in a scenario than the other people, because that's just unfair. It's unethical. And, you know, at the end of the day, karma will come back and bite you. I know it will. That's just how it works.

Mike DeHaan: [21:22] Absolutely. And it'll affect your longevity either through you getting a bad reputation, or by a bunch of people doing that, and now legislation is put into place that just screws up your whole industry. That's why the real estate industry in general is just constantly under fire. So we've had so many scumbags over decades that have gone and, like, you know, let people live in deplorable conditions, you know, that have like, have been ripping people off or doing things like making people bring money to closing while they're still making a very large fee. Know, doing all this Like, those are the things that damage the industry as a whole so that one person can go and make quick buck, and that doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [22:00] An interesting problem. Not to pull the thread too much on this, but like all levels of real estate, there's been scumbaggery that's happened from the broker side, all the way down to whatever the lowest is on the totem pole ends up being. Hope it's not wholesalers.

Mike DeHaan: [22:12] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [22:12] Whatever that is, like, there's somebody's fuckery has been going on. And I don't know if it's because there's a low barrier to entry date to get in. And it's a I think part of it too, is that there's been a system built around protecting people, which means the system is actually built in profiting other people, people that in between a and b of the transaction, everybody in between is the one making profits. So there's a system for others to make profit Yeah. In the name of protections.

Mike DeHaan: [22:36] Yeah. Well, I mean, I would say at like higher levels, it's even worse. Right? So look at like the Madonna Frio.

Dan Austin: [22:42] Dirtbag.

Mike DeHaan: [22:42] Sort of stuff. Right? So if you don't know who that is, go Google his name. It's n o f r I o, I think. He was a GoBundance guy along with us who got federally charged for, like, $75,000,000 in mortgage fraud or something. But he was, like, basically doing all this stuff with these commercial properties and these wraps and these things, and it was it was really dicey. But the problem is where it gets real sketchy when you get up into that echelon, because you also have, like, the sophisticated money that's also doing illegal and sketchy shit because there's enough money there for them to care

Dan Austin: [23:12] about it. Yep. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [23:13] And so, like, it's gonna get significantly worse, and they're gonna have, like, legal process about how they're screwing you over.

Dan Austin: [23:20] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [23:20] Right? An actual intellectual ability going through it, rather than just like the, you know, random wholesaler who watched a a Pace Morby video and now thinks he's legit and is out there just smooth talking people. Yeah. Anyways. But, yeah. It's a good lesson though about making sure that you're networking, you're expanding your list, and you're exploring all opportunities on these deals. Because like I said, it's one that easily could have been dropped. I think a lot of other people would have dropped it, but we're able to help some get it

Dan Austin: [23:45] done. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [23:46] And then, I guess to stay on the the closing deals part, we have another situation that's, I wanna say, entertaining that is interesting of one that we're trying to figure out the best way to move forward. Yeah. So we have a seller, older guy.

Dan Austin: [24:01] Oh, boy.

Mike DeHaan: [24:01] He's in Texas. He's classic Texas man. You know, very rural, does not like technology. And he's basically decided that because the esignature on the DocuSign that we sent, excuse it's PandaDoc. But either way, the esignature does not look like his handwritten signature, that it's not a real signature. And he is now claiming that it is a forgery

Dan Austin: [24:23] It was an esign.

Mike DeHaan: [24:25] Done by the spaceman or something that used that their their Internet. Yeah. Even though it's traced back to, like, ham, and we have, like, the read the receipt and all sorts of stuff. But he has said that he has not moved forward, and he has told the title and the show company this to the point that they're like, okay. We're not dealing with psycho here. And the funny thing is too is he's fully down to sell to us. Like, he's accepted the offer and everything else. Yeah. He just just refusing to let us open escrow until we see the property. But the challenge is is he refuses to paper sign it until we see the property, and we can't see the property because he currently has a family member that is squatting in the deal. And so he's, like, trying to deal with that while also not giving us any sort of, like, paper commitment, but still, like, wants us to help him with that process.

Dan Austin: [25:13] Yeah. That's a tough one.

Mike DeHaan: [25:15] So then it comes to the fine line of, like, technically, what we could do is we could help him go through this process of dealing with the squatter. And then he could just tell us to f off. Right? And listen on the market, told somebody else do whatever. He refuses to sign the deal until it's sort of taken care of. And so we're kind of like at position. We either risk it and waste some time and go by his word. As we've learned over the years, going by seller word is usually not worth much, honestly. So I don't know. What do you think is the is the best situation we should take here to move forward?

Dan Austin: [25:48] So this is Texas. So the the family where that's squatting, what is his relation with them? Like, does he like them?

Mike DeHaan: [25:57] It's unclear based off of the text and calls. I'm not sure if it's a brother

Dan Austin: [26:03] Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [26:04] Or, like, a son-in-law. It's a he, but he's pushing has some troubles. That's been made very, very clear. And we're trying to just figure out the full situation. It seems like there are aren't all details being shared on all sides.

Dan Austin: [26:15] Yeah. I think the way I would approach it is is, like, understanding what his ideal outcome is. Like, what is that ideal outcome? We are educated in real estate, generally speaking, more than the average person, especially when it comes to landlord tenant laws. And so it's like, okay, what is his ideal outcome? He wants to sell the property, that's his ideal outcome. Mhmm. There's a squatter in it. Our ideal outcome is we buy it without the squatter.

Mike DeHaan: [26:38] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [26:38] And so having that conversation with him, what the ideal outcome is, and then presenting him with the opportunity to support him, I would probably spend some effort in getting him educated and understanding what his options are. I probably would not spend a monetary amount that was very large anyways, maybe a $100 or something if you had to like, I don't know, pay somebody to post notice form, something like that. You know what I mean? Okay. To help him move along because you're right, in these scenarios, the risk here is you waste, which I see this with newer investors, they get really wrapped up because they see the deal, they're thirsty, they they wanna sink their teeth into it. So they just don't realize how much every day they're wasting time on this deal, talking to the seller, doing research, trying to do this for them, trying to do that for them, and they don't have like a binding document that shows that they're going to get paid. So the risk in that is is that you're wasting a ton of time and you're missing other opportunities. Mhmm. So I would say, I would do a little bit. I would give a little bit to keep it going, but I'm not going to continue to to just help this guy for nothing.

Dan Austin: [27:38] Yep. And what I mean by that is that might just mean that you throw him into a warm follow-up and you call him, like, hey, did get a squatter out? Call Cool. Every couple weeks.

Mike DeHaan: [27:49] Yeah. I mean, and just maintaining that relationship, and more often than not, they won't actually handle it themselves, and eventually, they'll come around to move forward your way, or they might sell somebody else's willing to deal with it.

Dan Austin: [28:00] Well, and to him, that problem might seem like a mountain. To us, it's a hill to get a squatter out. Yeah. I'm not gonna go cash Rikizu's squatter unless I have a signed contract. You know what mean? Like, there's things you can do, and part of that is the education of saying, okay, here's what we can do to help you. Because regardless, even if we have a signature that the guy that is enforceable, if the guy doesn't wanna show up to closing, he's gonna show up closing. And we also aren't gonna buy a house with a squatter with an unknown situation. You can't do that either. Yep. So you're we're kind of in this on the downhill side of this argument. We don't have a lot of leverage. You know, we had another guy in Texas. He was what was his situation? His was like divorce papers or something like that, and it was like it's been like a full year, and we got him back

Mike DeHaan: [28:42] We actually closed that deal last week.

Dan Austin: [28:43] Yeah. We got him back under contract. Right? And that was like a full year, and this is to the point of like, yeah, he did not move very fast. Right? As child support or like some pay or some paperwork, had

Mike DeHaan: [28:52] It was child support and took forever.

Dan Austin: [28:55] Forever. And guess what? It came back around. Our lead manager called, got him back on the phone a year later, and he's like, yeah, I'm good to go. And then we yeah, we wherever we get back under contract. So there are Yeah. Like, these long term follow ups that do work. It's just sometimes longer than you want it to be. In my opinion, that's a better solution than wasting, like, three hours a day for two weeks to find out that this dude's still not gonna do what you asked him to do.

Mike DeHaan: [29:16] Yeah. And I think the the big lesson here is understanding that this is ultimately a service based business. And when you provide service to people, it needs to be at a level that they want. Mhmm. Right? And and at a level that makes sense for you. Because you can't bend over backwards if it's going to, like I said, be being a huge opportunity cost on your time, or it's gonna be something that could potentially turn into nothing. Right? You also can't force them to comply to go through with these different situations. Although, some people will go and talk a big game on social media about how you can, like, cloud title and do all these things, which you absolutely can. Understand that most of the time, if you do that, you will lose. Right? And if you try to play like hardball with some of these sellers. Because at the end of the day, if you think about the situation, you are coming from a position of power as an investor with money. Right? And you're going to someone that you fully know you're buying their property at a discount, and you are saying you absolutely have to sell to me or I'm gonna sue you. Right? Doesn't matter if you're right or wrong or how capitalist your state is. Right? Because you're saying, well, Louisiana, we could do that, whatever.

Mike DeHaan: [30:27] You will lose that if it comes down to, like, a jury of the person's peers, which is exactly what it'll be. K. Or like a judge that will be, like, looking at the seller, looking at you. You own how much property, and you were gonna make how much money? This person makes that much money every single year. Yeah. No. Fuck you. You this person gets to keep their house.

Dan Austin: [30:48] I will highlight one fallacy in what you just said, and you started out with the whole Of course. You're an investor with money. Some of us sometimes don't feel like we got a lot of money. We're tapping the bank.

Mike DeHaan: [30:58] It doesn't matter what you feel like. That's true.

Dan Austin: [31:01] You know you know how it is every once in a while, man. You're in that trough, you're just trying to just trying to make a deal happen.

Mike DeHaan: [31:07] Yeah. Totally. Right? I mean, we've been there. I remember being literally in this situation when we were looking at empty coffers, man. That freaking mobile home

Dan Austin: [31:16] that went

Mike DeHaan: [31:16] out and we were digging through that heroin mobile home when the neighbor rolled up on us with his gun drawn.

Dan Austin: [31:21] Freaking drew down with his gun at us. Like, what are you doing? It's like, bro, like, do we look like meth heads? I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [31:26] you never know. Right? But like that situation, literally what happened was he went and signed with somebody else, like, three days before we were supposed to close. I'm like, we're gonna sue this guy. And our lawyer's like, why? Yep. It's like, you're gonna lose. Like, there's not even, like, enough there for you to pursue. It was like a 15 or $20,000 fee.

Dan Austin: [31:43] You guys are gonna look like assholes. It's not gonna work out. Oh, and by the way, you're suing over the transaction that happened to one of the biggest developers in town, which shame Everyone on that

Mike DeHaan: [31:51] knows that he's a dirtbag. That was the other thing too is when we're talking to Loris about how that's really played down, they were like, oh, yeah. Just say, well, don't worry about it.

Dan Austin: [31:58] They gotta have like an insider person at like one of the title companies or wherever title companies pull data, so that they have like a list of properties that they're like, we always look at when they when it, like, pings, like, some database, and they're like, cool. That's the one we're gonna go buy.

Mike DeHaan: [32:12] I'm sure they do, honestly. I mean, like every other financial industry, which is ultimately what real estate kind of is, there's all sorts of inside baseball going on. Mhmm. I mean, tell some of the richest people in the world are Yeah. Just through real estate. Absolutely. You know, that's why all the hedge funds are buying it more is they're just trying to accumulate more and more wealth that way. It's the one tried and true way to do it.

Dan Austin: [32:32] It's a fantastic store of value Yeah. That seemingly always goes up in value.

Mike DeHaan: [32:37] Because it's it's I mean, if you wanna get really into the weeds, like, the mortgage industry is one of the basis of the American economy.

Dan Austin: [32:44] It is. Yeah. That's why like, all

Mike DeHaan: [32:45] the Fannie Freddie stuff, that's why the big crash happened in 2008.

Dan Austin: [32:49] But And a lot of construction jobs rely on it as well.

Mike DeHaan: [32:52] Yeah. So anyways, but point being with that, if you get the tricky sellers, understand that you can only force them so much. Do a realistic analysis about what you need to do, and make sure that if you are trying to, like, manipulate things a certain way, that it is a way that they are actually going to work with you Yeah. And that it actually makes sense for you to do so. Because it can be very easy to get emotional when you're dealing with some of these irrational people. But if you'd, like, get too worked up about it, you're just gonna have a bad time. And that's a great way to get burned out of this business.

Dan Austin: [33:19] Don't get sucked into their shit show. Don't make their problem your problem.

Mike DeHaan: [33:23] Cool. Alright. Anything else, Dan?

Dan Austin: [33:24] That's it. Let's get out here.

Mike DeHaan: [33:26] Alright. Cool. Well, thanks guys for listening, and you shared this with all of your friends. It's a great way to continue helping us grow the show. Also too, if you guys didn't know this, but downloading the show helps our our rankings a ton. So homework for everybody, go and, like, download as many episodes as you can possibly fit on your phone. Just go download like

Dan Austin: [33:44] Download them all. They're all amazing.

Mike DeHaan: [33:45] Yeah. Just download them. You can delete them afterwards. I don't even care. Just, like, go and download, like, all 300 episodes that we have, and all of a sudden, we will be the number one real estate show in the country. Because spoiler alert this is not a spoiler. A lot of people that have these real estate shows that are, like, ranked super high, they're full of shit, and they go and they hire a bunch of Filipinos that should go and download all their shows.

Dan Austin: [34:07] They're liars. We've seen it firsthand.

Mike DeHaan: [34:09] We've seen it firsthand.

Dan Austin: [34:10] Seen it firsthand.

Mike DeHaan: [34:11] Many times. It's just like when you see someone on Instagram and they have, like, 20,000 followers and for some reason, all of their reels have, like, 300 views. Yeah. They're all fake. Most people that have high ranking podcasts are exactly the same as that as well, just so you know.

Dan Austin: [34:24] Liars.

Mike DeHaan: [34:25] Anyways, so go download all of them, then we can also be liars because you guys downloaded all of our shows, but at least I'll be able to have with Mandy Metron. Interesting. Right on. Well, thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you guys next week.

Dan Austin: [34:34] See y'all.