Real Estate Is A Roller Coaster

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Hey guys, before the show, I wanted to take a second to talk to you about our instant investor program. The instant investor program is our group coaching program. And it is an eight week program with the goal being to have you talking to motivated sellers within the first two weeks. Believe it or not, you don't have to be the person that's out there overpaying for investment properties and competing with everybody else on the MLS. You also don't have to be one of those investors that flushes 1000s of dollars down the toilet on ineffective marketing methods. To talk to motivated sellers on regular basis, all you need is an effective marketing system. And we will give you the system that we have been using for the last two years, as well as a weekly call, where you can sit in with us and other investors and just be a part of a group discussion while everyone works to optimize and grow their businesses. At the end of the day, our goal is to create a like minded community of people who not only are trying to grow as real estate investors, but as people and as business owners, so they can go and take the knowledge they learned from us and use that to change their lives just like Dan and I have been able to do. So the question I have for you is, do you really want to keep sort of standing by and waiting for these opportunities to land in your lap? Or do you want to get started right now?

Mike DeHaan: [1:15] And if you're ready to jump in and start changing your life for the better, go to instantinvestorprogram.com and book a call with me, and we can hop on a call and see if the program's right

Dan Austin: [1:24] for you.

Speaker 3: [1:26] Welcome to the collecting keys real estate investing podcast with your host, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin. From wins, losses, horror stories, and tactics for optimizing your business, Mike and Dan take a real uncensored deep dive into the ins and outs of running a full time real estate investment and wholesaling business.

Mike DeHaan: [1:49] Alright. Welcome to episode 22 of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast.

Dan Austin: [1:56] Deuce deuce.

Mike DeHaan: [1:57] Yeah. Deuce deuce. Little midnight show over here. Been a it's been a long sort of week weekend for sort of squeezing this one at the last minute. So if we're tired, apologies. But, you know, dude, life gets in the way sometimes, man. We got stuff to do.

Dan Austin: [2:15] Yeah. You gotta balance. You gotta juggle. Gotta find time to do things. You know?

Mike DeHaan: [2:18] Yeah. Entrepreneurship is always such a weird thing because I think about this a lot where you, like, you hire employees that actually do the business, and then you spend so much time doing theoretical stuff, you know, to, like, improve the business. But it's amazing to me. You think of, like if work you at, a large company, everyone's like, what does the CEO do? It's like they spend an incredible amount of time just thinking. Mhmm. Right? And, like, researching and trying to organize thoughts and just, like, putting stuff that in emotion that isn't even necessarily tangible in the immediate. You know? And I think that's one thing that, like, a lot of employees or people that are sort of that sort of employee mindset don't necessarily understand is how challenging that is to be, like, committing time with no immediate reward.

Dan Austin: [3:07] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [3:08] You know? Yeah.

Dan Austin: [3:09] No guarantee of reward.

Mike DeHaan: [3:10] For sure. Right? And it can be time. It can be resources. It can be all that sort of stuff that you're putting into something with no guarantee it's gonna turn into anything. And in fact, 95% of the time, it doesn't. Yeah. You know? You're just kind of, like, experimenting with stuff. It's a weird deal.

Dan Austin: [3:25] Feels like there's unlimited things, you know, I could be doing or are doing. Right? There's no, like, end in sight to it. I don't know what that's an indication of, but like, there's just so much and so many opportunities too. And you and I are both opportunistic. So we like to look at things and see what the value would that would bring to our business. Right? But sometimes 95% of the time you waste your time, or you learn something new.

Mike DeHaan: [3:45] That's what was gonna say. It's never really wasting time. It's always a learning opportunity. Right? Even if it's learning that something isn't going to work and isn't going to do what you think it does, it's just a constant learning up learning situation.

Dan Austin: [3:56] Don't wanna go back, work in corporate America? Mean, that was

Mike DeHaan: [3:59] a good thing.

Dan Austin: [4:00] It's an opportunity. Oh god. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [4:03] Yeah. Exactly. No. I definitely don't. That was Yeah. Like, looking back, I wasn't fit out like, made out for working in a corporate environment from day one. I mean, even looking back when we were in college and just, like, all the shit that I would do that was just so kinda, like, anti establishment. Like, remember when we tried to get the head of the engineering department fired?

Dan Austin: [4:26] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [4:27] Because he was just such a dirtbag and, like, a whole system.

Dan Austin: [4:31] Bag, though. He was a dirtbag.

Mike DeHaan: [4:32] Oh my god. Like and the stuff that he would do in his classes, like, that was just so pointless and just, like, so flagrantly pointless, and he knew it. And just, like, the absolute belligerent, like, favoritism he had. Mhmm. Like, I remember when we had to do that one project where we had to come up with an idea and, like, build a business plan. Oh, yeah. And he hated you, and you built out this, like, really awesome thing with, like, these RFID tags to Yeah. Track stuff. And then that other dude in the class that got him really with a professor literally just had a something from Google Images and all what was it? It was like a robot to build

Dan Austin: [5:13] or like the A robot to clean his room. To clean to clean his dorm dorm room, which is not even theoretically possible.

Mike DeHaan: [5:19] Exactly. It's just stupid. Like, he watched an episode of Futurama and decided I wanna have that. But he got an a and you got a c. Yeah. And you

Dan Austin: [5:28] that is another example of why, you know, formal education, the institution of it is trash. I know. Besides the wave of debt that they've created by basically providing subsidies to universities, which trickles down to people and creates massive debt for The US public to

Mike DeHaan: [5:45] learn. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [5:46] Not that college is a total waste of time, but it's like, meh.

Mike DeHaan: [5:49] Yeah. Well, I mean, like, is it though? It's all far school. Not not that you have to go for your own, like, create your own business or anything like that, but it's relatively easy if if you get good at a skill to be able to work for a company, especially a small company, and make a good living without having to have a college degree. Like, you get good at, like, really good at sales, you get really good at a trade, you get really good at something that's, like, high value, you can make an incredible amount of money without having to, you know, necessarily go through that whole educational process. Or even if you go through that initial educational process, people will go and pursue these higher end degrees and all that sort of stuff. It's like, well, how about instead of spending three to four years to do that, you take the knowledge that you gained from your undergraduate degree, and you go and you figure out how to actually add value to people, and you'll be able to make a stupid amount of money.

Dan Austin: [6:37] It reminds me of the people with, like, master's degrees and PhDs in computer science, and there's some 16 year old kid that's never even read a book in computer science that kicks their ass.

Mike DeHaan: [6:46] Exactly. I mean, that's the perfect example. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Computer science and programming is kinda like one of the biggest disruptors, think, with education because Right. That's exactly the case. My wife works at a place that does a lot of web and content development, and a lot of the people that they hire have no sort of formal education in computer science or coding.

Dan Austin: [7:06] That's very technician type role. Right? Like, even a computer science, like a program. Right? That's like, I don't know, the millennials version of being a plumber. Right? Because it's like, you kind of teach yourself on the job, and it is very technician. Like, not necessarily always having to create the ideas or run the business, but you're typing into a screen. I don't know. I'm not a computer scientist. Is that what you do? You type into the screen?

Mike DeHaan: [7:29] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's obviously more complicated than that. But one of the things that does make it very interesting is because of the flexibility of that job in terms of location. And, you know, there's a whole sect around making development and coding that much easier. It's not nearly as valuable as it used to be because, I mean, we have a guy on our team now that can do this. He lives in Eastern Europe. He has tech skills, and he costs us a quarter of what it would cost to hire him in Right. The United States.

Dan Austin: [7:59] He's not in Ukraine, is he? For some reason, I thought he was in Ukraine. No.

Mike DeHaan: [8:01] He's in So That's

Dan Austin: [8:03] right next door.

Mike DeHaan: [8:04] But yeah.

Dan Austin: [8:04] He's probably like, this is getting crazy. See a little a little

Mike DeHaan: [8:09] walk over here. I I asked about that. He's not too worried. But when I first interviewed him behind him, was like, oh, how do you like living in Romania? And he's like, the country is beautiful, but everything else is horrible. Oh, wow. I'm like, I'm sorry. I don't know what the how to respond to that.

Dan Austin: [8:25] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [8:28] Yeah. No. Yeah. It's it's interesting. Yeah. So, anyway, I don't even know how we got down that tangent.

Dan Austin: [8:34] Sorry, guys. Sorry, listeners.

Mike DeHaan: [8:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll peek into

Dan Austin: [8:38] the conversations Mike and I have.

Mike DeHaan: [8:40] This is what your bosses do when you're wondering what the hell they're doing. They're sitting in their office reporting a a podcast, talking theoretical nonsense that isn't really important at all to anybody. Real talk. I had kind of a weird weekend because, you know, we had an extremely hot past few weeks. I I know we've had, like, a slow week. And even though we just are coming off the best month we've ever had, and we still got two deals signed around this week, I always get into this zone when it's not just, like, hot of, like, how can I actively be pushing theme forward right now when even though realistically it's kind of out of my control? Because we're waiting for the marketing to hit. Like, it's like the first week that went out was kinda slow. It didn't get the response we wanted. So then it's like, okay. How do we improve that for the next one? How do we get other stuff going? But then when you're trying to balance budgets and, you know, staff sort of, like, expectations, all sorts of stuff, it becomes a really weird deal because it's not like I can just flip a switch and start making more things pop tomorrow.

Dan Austin: [9:44] Yeah. You're right. There's always a lag, of course, with marketing, first of all. But then also, yeah, you could have the exact same marketing hit a week before and it and it just kills. And then the next week, it doesn't.

Mike DeHaan: [9:56] Yeah. And it's so so weird to sort of plan that out. And then it's almost like you need to start creating these fail safes in the back to, like, sort of keep that flow going. But even then, figuring out those processes, we've had them in the past and basically just ends up to be, wasting money. Right? Like, we're doing things to generate leads for the sake of generating leads, sure, it gives the appearance of health, but it's not actually health because it's not revenue generating. It's just work generating. Right. I spent a lot of the weekends sort of contemplating how to make the best of those slower periods, not from, like, a our perspective, but from a staff perspective. Because that's where it really starts to come in as you staff get bored. Right? It's natural. And Yep. I think one of the challenges is, you know, sort of commission based business for all of our staff. And then also too, because it's like a boom and bust sort of thing, it's like you're going down in the roller coaster and super exciting, and then five seconds later, you're on the carousel. And then, you know, you're going on the roller coaster again, and then you're on the carousel. And after a while, the extremes

Dan Austin: [10:59] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [10:59] Like, people get so accustomed to the roller coaster that the carousel seems even more boring than never was.

Dan Austin: [11:05] Right. And if you love the roller coaster, that's all you wanna do. Yeah. The endorphin rush of the roller coaster is much better than the carousel.

Mike DeHaan: [11:12] Yeah. And the company, everyone that come becomes like, basically an adrenaline junkie for opportunity.

Dan Austin: [11:18] And it's your job in a sense, right, as the owners, you know, marketeer to bring in the leads and the motivated sellers, and it is challenging. And so then you have to think about like, how do you capture more leads? Well, you can market more, go to other markets, or you could grow your market, right? By adding to that, But you want to do the most efficient way possible to where you're not just spending more money because you and I know as well as anybody, the more marketing money you spend does not correlate to more leads necessarily or more quality.

Mike DeHaan: [11:50] Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [11:50] It tapers off at some point. Right? You could double your marketing budget, doesn't mean you're gonna double your leads.

Mike DeHaan: [11:55] Yeah. That's always the challenge. As it goes, I think that's why it's so important for people to be measuring things because we've gone through this rabbit hole before in the past where it just sort of spends more money. And then if you're not tracking it and you see basically the plus coming in of, like, a lead being generated or whatever, but it's not actually turning to any conversions, If you're not tracking that, it would be very easy to mistake that as success when it's not actually anything you're not tracking your actual KPIs.

Dan Austin: [12:25] Right. You're just looking at leads. Just the number of leads, not the actual quality of the lead or what happens after they call and tell you to piss off.

Mike DeHaan: [12:32] Yeah. Right. You know? And and how many how many people that call in are are that versus, you know, like, a wishy washy lead or one that's actually hot and how to calculate all that. But it's challenging. And and the data side of that, it takes a lot more creative thought than you'd necessarily think when you dive into it.

Dan Austin: [12:50] There's not a lot, at least from our purview in our industry. There's like not a lot of great history or science behind tracking KPIs. So you feel like you're creating the wheel to some extent. Some people will say tracking conversions at this level or tracking appointments or whatever it is. Like, there's all these different indicators, but you still feel like you're trying to create the wheel to find that one golden ticket. That's like, if we can get these, that means this. It's just, you know, that if then statement is really hard because it feels like I said, like we're creating it. Because it is unique enough that it's not like you can go to, you know, pick up a book on how to do direct mail marketing from somebody that's been doing it for Coca Cola for a hundred years or whatever company. I don't know. Does Coca Cola do direct mail?

Mike DeHaan: [13:34] Probably not. I don't think so.

Dan Austin: [13:36] They do bandit signs. They get their signs But everywhere. You know what I mean? Like whoever does direct mail, I don't, I don't know the freaking furniture stores. Right? That you get the mail all the time to buy their crappy furniture, but like, you can't pick out that manual because it's unique enough that you can't just say, yep, that fits this box.

Mike DeHaan: [13:53] Mhmm. Yeah. It's gonna be unique by market, right, by physical market, by the type of leads that you're pursuing, by how you're pursuing them. All that sort of stuff is gonna vary. And if you don't track them, you won't really know. And I think that's why so many people tend to think that this kind of direct seller marketing doesn't work. It's because they don't actually measure it. Right? That and because they don't have a follow-up process or a system for anything else.

Dan Austin: [14:16] Or consistency for that matter. Right? No.

Mike DeHaan: [14:19] No. Yeah. But that that's a whole other ballgame. But interesting that too, because looking at our stuff from way back when we started getting consistent deals to now, our cost per acquisition has barely changed, which I find to be fascinating. Right? Because we've scaled so much in so many different ways through staff, through marketing costs, through different kinds of warehouse and stuff, but still our cost per acquisition sort of floats between 3,000 to $3,300. And that's just in market. That's not including staff cost or anything like that. But, I mean, I think at the highest when we are first sort of figuring it out, we're at, like, 38, 3,900. And then when we first started to sort of get our systems dialed in, we got down to about $32.33. And since then, it sort of just fluctuated between 3,000 and 3,300.

Dan Austin: [15:08] Do you think the makeup of that 6,200 changes though? Like, hey, before it was x, but now it's more heavy on y? Or is it just like, it's still this cost? I'm just curious of like, what is it built into that 3,200, right? That might have shifted, if anything. Like the marketing type? Well, yeah, that and just the cost in general, right? Like, okay, so before we used to send this type of marketing, this is what our funnel looked like. And now our funnel looks differently. Right? Because our funnel has shifted slightly, right? Different venues where we're actually spending money because different cold calling services costs, different things to bring in certain leads and certain acquisitions and SMS, all that stuff has changed our business model quite a bit. So I would just be curious to know what that 3,200, although it's the same, what that makeup is versus twenty four months ago.

Mike DeHaan: [15:55] Yeah. That's a question. Good That's something I might have to dive into for sure because I'm not entirely sure. But, I mean, I'm guessing that would be what they're very why there's variation. Right?

Dan Austin: [16:02] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [16:03] The weird thing is too is even when there's sort of, like, slow months, like looking at, like, January, we were quite slow, then February was crazy hot, That averages out to be the exact same cost per deal between the two. So that's why the consistency is so important because it'd be so easy to have a dud month and be like, I'm done. But then you just have to basically go with the fact that marketing is gonna keep hitting and keep generating opportunities for the next several months. So you have to be pursuing those to, make the most of them. But either way, yeah, we got some good stuff, though. We got slightly controversial. We got her a Ukrainian conflict deal from

Dan Austin: [16:39] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. Yes.

Mike DeHaan: [16:41] I was debating if I wanted to talk about this, but I mean, it I do think it is pretty interesting. It's a seller that we have been talking to for a long time that had a really weird kind of, like, land property with, like, a garage, and he wanted way too much money for it. And we've gone back and forth with him a few times because he keeps getting mail from us. He shows up on a couple of lists. But then he just texts us out of the blue, and he's like, hey. Is your offshoot on the table? I'll take it. And we're like, yeah. Sure. So I went and locked it up, and then James came back and and told us that, I guess, he's a local Ukrainian guy. You know? And there's the Russia Ukraine conflict going on right now, and he, like, desperately needs money to get his family out of Ukraine. And I'm like, well, like Yikes. It's like, that's kind of a weird deal. Like, you know, we're giving him a service. Like, sure, we're getting a screaming deal on his property. But, I mean, it's not like we did anything shady of like, oh, really? You're that desperate. Where did I knock $20 off it now?

Dan Austin: [17:37] No. Oh, yeah. Your family's war your war torn family. Yeah. Yeah. I know you need the money now.

Mike DeHaan: [17:43] We maintained it. It's a interesting sort of situation of, like, I guess it's good that we have the ability to give him that opportunity because this is also a property that just with what it is. I mean, it has, like, a like, this, like, Lowe's, like, manufactured home. Or was it Sears? It's like a Sears home on it. Yeah. We were talking about this. You know? Like, I forget what it's called.

Dan Austin: [18:06] A Sears kit home, I think. So one of the guys one of the guys said, like, a kit home, like, k I t. Yeah. A kit home. Like, you buy a kit and build it.

Mike DeHaan: [18:15] Yeah. Like, guess in the back in the day, you could buy a home at Sears, and they would, like, give it bring it to you on a truck, like a manufactured home, but it looks like a storage unit. And so it's that with, like, a garage. And I tell you what, even with the current housing market, it would be a hell of a time trying to sell that.

Dan Austin: [18:33] No. It's all about how you're disposing. Because have you seen what Elon Musk lives in?

Mike DeHaan: [18:37] That's true.

Dan Austin: [18:38] He lives in that fold out house. Right? That that's exactly what this is. Like, live like Elon Musk. Be a billionaire.

Mike DeHaan: [18:44] Yeah. Right. That's how you're gonna spin it. Be like a billionaire in the hood of Spokane because it's a terrible location. Oh, that doesn't help. Ouch. It doesn't help at all. Yeah. So Okay.

Dan Austin: [18:56] Well, we'll figure something out, I'm sure. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [18:57] We already got it figured out. We already know what we're doing with it. Oh, okay. That one's already moved. Yeah. But Okay. You know, but for if you were to list on the MLS, though, I think it would have been a tough deal. So we gave him the option to have that money. That's what I'm trying to say.

Dan Austin: [19:10] Okay. That's the one. Yeah. I see. That's the one Judd was working on this Friday or whatever.

Mike DeHaan: [19:14] Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [19:15] Yeah. Exactly. I'm thinking and I'm just glad for the seller's sake that we were able to do something with it because, like you said, the average person's not gonna do anything with that. Yeah. He's not gonna get his money free from it. You

Mike DeHaan: [19:25] know? Mhmm. And it's gonna be not much interest for a retail buyer from that either. So yeah. Because it was a pretty specialized lineup too. You know? We figured out who's gonna sort of have an interest in it, and it is a unique individual that takes on deals like that, you know, which are kind of few and far between.

Dan Austin: [19:42] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [19:43] Good deal. Got that one locked up, and then we had our official kickoff for the instant investor program. We ended up what do you have? What? Is it nine people, eight individual sign ups? Because there's a couple that joined in as a group of one. Mhmm. Good little start so far. I mean, it's been good to see a wide range of experience levels jumping in and starting to get after it. Mhmm. Had our first official call on Thursday, and we got a good group overall. I'm pretty excited to sort of see how this next little bit pans out for everybody going into the hottest period of real estate, sort of being like the March, April time frame.

Dan Austin: [20:17] Yeah, I hope they kick ass. And and the cool thing too is, like you said, there's a varying experience levels, which that right there is just huge for people coming in, especially, know, with people with good experience, we have people with contractor experience, we just have that very experience, which is the biggest benefit of being part of a group, is you can leverage the experience of those other people who have taken action to be a part of that group. I mean, that's where you and I have gained a lot of our benefit from other groups. Right? It's the friendships you make and there's the contacts you make.

Mike DeHaan: [20:45] For sure. And and that's something that I think is regularly discounted when people look at stuff like that is I mean, obviously, what you originally look at is the people that found it, right, in the course material. And there's definitely a lot of value. But if you come in, you go through the course material, you take action. I mean, the big part that we are still involved in so many of the communities that we've joined, exactly like you said, is because of the people that we have met there, not only as friends, but also as fellow entrepreneurs who are doing creative things in their own right that you can learn from, you know, and you can sort of mimic that, and you can do deals together sometimes. We had a situation with one of our friends down in Texas. We got to know him really well through one of our groups. He needed, like, a a two day loan to flip this mobile home. So I lent him, you know, some money for two days, and I made some profit. He made his profit. I'm like, sweet. I just made money by being friends with somebody.

Dan Austin: [21:40] Yes. Some guy you met in a chat room.

Mike DeHaan: [21:43] Pretty much, honestly, though. You know, I've met him met him face to face a few times, but, you know, a lot of those friendships are built virtually. Yep. There's so much value in that. I mean, I think especially if you're if you're new, obviously, being around people that have some experience, you can learn from that way. But even if you're experienced, I find it beneficial connecting with sort of newer people because they view things a different way. Yep. And then also when they try things that you've been doing and it doesn't work, it kinda makes you analyze what exactly you're doing and, like, how is it different or, like, you know, what is different about their situation for it not to be working to sort of create, like think about creating a hedge for that situation. Right? Yep. Yep. Like, I regularly do that when people try our methods or similar methods to ours, and it doesn't get the results that they expect. I'm like, okay. Well, is that, like, the sign of something that's upcoming, or is that just that they did it wrong? Right. You sort of start to try to solve these problems and predict what's gonna happen going up here in the future.

Dan Austin: [22:43] I think too, like, one of the awesome things too is if you're a competitive person and you see somebody in the same group as you, like, kicking ass, you're like, oh, man. I I know I could do that. And so you have to, like, up your game. Right? That competitiveness is also it's there. I don't know. Maybe it's just me and you. I don't know.

Mike DeHaan: [22:58] No, dude. I think that's everybody. Tell you what, some of our good friends, fuck Billy, and you're never gonna listen to this probably. When you post some of your wins, bro, I get so pissed off. This is our good friend. One of our friends down in Texas, I don't wanna talk about before, but different one. Him and his wife, and they just jam. And they have such a Yeah. Incredibly successful business for being such a small operation. And they're getting these huge deals. I'm just like, how do you even have those opportunities? They get deals on a regular basis that are larger than any opportunity we've ever even, like, had a sniff at before.

Dan Austin: [23:32] Very regularly. Very regularly.

Mike DeHaan: [23:34] Yeah. Like, all the time. I've come to the conclusion that in his market, which is in Dallas, Texas, if you wanna go steal Billy's deals, all of his sellers are just idiots or something.

Dan Austin: [23:45] Can we start a website called steal Billy's deals?

Mike DeHaan: [23:49] We definitely should. Go get go get that link. Yeah. Exactly. We could just sort of try to poach his exact ZIP codes, figure out where he's going.

Dan Austin: [24:00] We'll do, a Reddit string. You know? Like, how they found, like, Shia LaBeou or whatever from his, like I don't know what they did. But, like, we'll do that for finding Billy's leads, and we'll just go steal them.

Mike DeHaan: [24:09] I'm all on board with that. Absolutely. Someone has to stop him. He's just printing money over there to the point that he's gonna get flagged here pretty soon. He's obviously doing something illegal. Right.

Dan Austin: [24:21] Oh, man. Well, anyhow But,

Mike DeHaan: [24:24] yeah, there is a huge amount of eye to that, though. And, yeah, the community, like, it'll be super cool to sort of see how it how it gets going here. You know, we spent a good portion of the weekend building out a bunch more content for it. We're getting really into the weeds with it. I know people are starting to order their batches here this weekend, so it should start getting pretty real here pretty quick.

Dan Austin: [24:44] Yeah. I'm excited to see that kind of hit too. When we send our first batches out, it's like, my god, people do call us. This works. I know. Right? And it's like, we're not lying. We're not lying. It's truthful. It works.

Mike DeHaan: [24:55] I'll always remember that first batch of mail that we sent out. And when our phone started ringing, I literally could not believe it.

Dan Austin: [25:01] I know. I know.

Mike DeHaan: [25:02] I I was still at my job at the trampoline place doing web development stuff. My phone was just going, like, all day. And I was like, this is crazy. You know? I kept, like, going outside to, like, talk to people. You know? I had no idea, like, how to prescreen leads or, like, how to do all this. I didn't even know how to, like, run comps on people. Right? They were like, oh, well, I want $200,000 for my property. I was like, Okay, like, what do you think your property's worth? I know, right?

Dan Austin: [25:30] Yeah. Some of the leads too, I love to laugh at some of the dickbags we had to deal with through the first part, because we just like thought every lead was the one you can't. Like we paid for these. We got to like, they're going to sell to us. You know, we just got to beat them down. And then just so like the dude that always, I just always remember is the guy that just graduated from law school when he was like 40 and he moved up to like Callville or something like that afterwards when he was selling it. Remember that? And then he sold it to somebody in his church.

Mike DeHaan: [25:55] Oh, yeah. I forgot about that pisses

Dan Austin: [25:58] me off more than any of the people we wasted our

Mike DeHaan: [26:00] time with. That guy. Because because he because he was such an idiot. Yeah. I know. Yeah. We wasted so much time with him. Well, the thing that sucked about him was he told us, like, like, sounded good, and then he just ghosted us. Mhmm. And then we knew that he wasn't gonna be able to sell it because there was so much water damage in that property. Yeah. You remember?

Dan Austin: [26:18] Yeah. The roof was leaking into the house. It was just

Mike DeHaan: [26:21] it was bad. And then we ultimately found that he sold it to somebody in his church. Yeah. That's right. And remember, because we we Facebook stalked them after we saw the transfer. They were, like, a super young couple, and it was and he sold them for, like, complete retail price. And it was 100% apparent he took advantage of those people.

Dan Austin: [26:39] He did. He's a dirtbag. That's what pisses me off that whole situation. He was not an honest person, which makes sense as

Mike DeHaan: [26:44] a lawyer. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that one. Yeah. That I that I wanted that house too. That was

Dan Austin: [26:51] so annoying. That was a great property.

Mike DeHaan: [26:53] Yeah. Yeah. Got it. That fucking guy. I remember that one. And then, I mean, like, I don't know. I always remember the first walkthrough that we went to where we sat. I don't if we ever talked about this one here where we both went to this house together. And we were both, like, so embarrassed to say the offer because it was so much less than they wanted. So we sat in their living room with this couple For two hours. For two hours. They're getting visually more and more angry the entire time. No. Just the wife was. Well, he was getting Angie too, though, because

Dan Austin: [27:24] he was talking about

Mike DeHaan: [27:25] the house down the street that just sold for x y z. And we're like, yeah. But that's a new house. Your house smells like cat piss. You know, we were doing the whole thing. And then you were finally just like, our offer's like $1.80 or whatever the hell you said.

Dan Austin: [27:37] Like, one it was like $1.40, and they wanted $2.25. I think. So it wasn't like that bad, but I mean, yeah, they were then they started fighting with each other. Oh, it was bad. I know. And then

Mike DeHaan: [27:47] the wife's like, you guys need to get out.

Dan Austin: [27:50] Needless to say, they didn't sell to us.

Mike DeHaan: [27:52] Yeah. They didn't sell to us. Then they actually cleaned it up, and they listed it, and they did pretty well, I think.

Dan Austin: [27:56] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [27:56] But that was right before COVID too, because I remember that lady was hacking. Oh, out to the car, we were, like, spritzing up everywhere. She

Dan Austin: [28:03] was so gross. Oh, god. You're right. Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. The life of a wholesaler.

Mike DeHaan: [28:11] I know. Especially getting started. It's just nonstop, dude. Yeah. You can't Good times. So many dumb Yeah. Ones. That would be

Dan Austin: [28:18] a good cartoon. That would be

Mike DeHaan: [28:19] a good cartoon skit for you, man, right there. I know. Right? Man, god. Yeah. I Trying think it was it was any other early ones that were, like, that bad. I can't remember. So lots of regrets on, like, our early deals.

Dan Austin: [28:29] If you wanna end on a Yeah. Back note, we could talk about the landlording, how bad it sucks sometimes when you have an oil furnace that leaks as everybody knows and the insurance company screws you. And then when that happens, then the basement floods with groundwater. That was cool.

Mike DeHaan: [28:46] Oh, yeah. Yeah. That house is turning into a demon, man. There's some there's some, like it's on an Indian burial ground or something. It has to be

Dan Austin: [28:53] Something's wrong with it.

Mike DeHaan: [28:54] We're cursed. Like, honestly. Yeah. Did we get that figured out? What are we gonna do about the water? I don't know.

Dan Austin: [29:00] Judd's gonna figure it out, though. I'm sure of it.

Mike DeHaan: [29:04] Hope so. I guess we'll figure it out.

Dan Austin: [29:06] Yeah. I wrote the insurance agent a letter or an email saying, you know, Hey, we got this issue, blah, blah, blah. And then she basically said, Yeah, I mean, we'll cover the damage, but there's no damage because it's already damaged. So sorry. It's like, but the issue is an issue. So if I cover it all up, it's gonna be an issue. You have to cover the damage again. And yeah, she's she's tough. She's a tough lady

Mike DeHaan: [29:28] to work with. Yeah. I reported her to our our agent and said that we were pissed off. So no one knows. Maybe she'll be able to do something for us. I guess we'll find out. But we got a lot of weird property stuff to figure out right now because our tenant in the house with the ADU didn't pay rent this month either. So we gotta deal with that whole situation. Oh, boy. So that's that's gonna be fun because she's a freaking nightmare. So, yeah, I don't I don't know what the deal's gonna be there. So I sent I I posted all of the applicable information about exactly what we need to do in Slack. And when that stuff gets delivered tomorrow, she's gonna be thrilled. So we're gonna see what happens. Yeah. Whatever.

Dan Austin: [30:10] That that could be one of those deals. It's like a sweet deal too, but it just might be one of those ones that we don't get to until August. I know. That's typical though. That's the one that bites you in the ass. We've never had problems with getting tenants out. We've had some rough tenants, like when we buy properties, we've had some tough tenants. But she was the property owner, and she's gonna be the pain in the ass.

Mike DeHaan: [30:30] Yeah. Well, not only that, but, like, looking at the rest of the tenants that we've had, she's, like, the most, like, put together one too, which just makes it so frustrating. Like, she has, an actual job. Like, so does her husband. Like, you know, there's, like, family members that live there that are also employed in this giant ass house. So there's, like, no reason for them to be difficult except for the fact that they've determined to be difficult. The whole thing is too with this situation is they were getting foreclosed on. And by buying it, we basically bailed them out. Mhmm. We kinda had an arrangement, a verbal arrangement of what it needed to be, how it was gonna go, and they've just basically made the decision. Like, from the second that we closed on it,

Dan Austin: [31:05] they started getting real bitchy. Real weird. And then asked us to repair the freaking faucet. It's like, dude, you're moving out in two weeks, aren't you? I think the intention was not to move out.

Mike DeHaan: [31:15] Yeah. And you're gonna honestly tell me it wasn't like that before. It's in the ADU they don't even live in.

Dan Austin: [31:19] Oh, man. Alright.

Mike DeHaan: [31:21] So Well,

Dan Austin: [31:22] that's too bad to end on, you know, just to motivate people.

Mike DeHaan: [31:25] Yeah. I know. This is what I always say to our guys is we have all this stuff come up. I'm like, are you sure you wanna be a landlord? Like, this is the b s that just happens constantly. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [31:35] Well, you have to scale big enough to where those little things don't wreck your day. I mean, that's really what it comes down to.

Mike DeHaan: [31:42] Well, and that's the thing with the water issue too. Was talking to our insurance agent about is I was like, we're fortunate that we're in a good situation that, like, we can kinda deal with that. But this company should understand that, like, if we were brand new or, like, this is the first thing, but this could be, like, financially ruining to somebody.

Dan Austin: [31:59] Right. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [32:00] You know, if they had, like, bought this property to be a rental and, like, all this stuff happened and the insurance company's like, oh, sorry. Screw you. You have to deal with this all on your own. Like, that could literally, like, bankrupt somebody who was cutting it closed.

Dan Austin: [32:11] Well, yeah. Because I I gotta imagine, like, between lost revenue and money we're going to spend, not like we have to spend, but that we will end up spending. We're probably gonna be in, like, the range of, like, 25,000 unless the insurance check comes back really fat and it covers that, to doubt it will.

Mike DeHaan: [32:26] Which is known to happen. They generally over reimburse you for things. Insurance does. Everyone knows that.

Dan Austin: [32:31] We'll see. We'll see. This this gal is tough, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [32:35] And the thing that pisses me off about that too, one last thing on this, is that we're in this situation, but you can go and you can find, like, a roofer to come, like, pull a shingle off of your roof. And they'll be like, yeah, you gotta replace your whole roof, and the insurance will just write you an $18,000 check. You know? And then the roofer just fixes the freaking shingle and just makes off like a bandit.

Dan Austin: [32:57] The thing yeah. The thing that doesn't I don't get is they will not fix what caused the problem, but they'll fix the results. It's like, well, so if I don't fix that problem myself, you

Mike DeHaan: [33:06] guys are gonna be back out here. Yeah. Exact right. Yeah. My god. Fascinating. Yeah. Lots of stuff going on. It's the challenges of of scale in any sort of business, I think. But anyway alright, guys. Well, if you wanna hear more miserable fucking stories about real estate, you should like

Dan Austin: [33:25] and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Mike DeHaan: [33:27] We're gonna tell you negative. I promise.

Dan Austin: [33:29] The horror stories and the the wins and the losses. That's what we promise.

Mike DeHaan: [33:32] Yeah. That's true. That is in our little intro. It is the horror stories, and we just got a bunch from going on right now, which I mean, it it balances out from our killer February that we just had with all of our contracts. So the negative has to come from somewhere. It's just the reality of of balance. Anyway, if you're interested in our group coaching program, go to instantinvestorprogram.com. Get some more information, you can book a call with me, sort of hear more about what that would look like. Like I said, we got a little group going in there right now, all sorts of experience levels. It's gonna start taking off here pretty quick. I'm super excited about it. You can follow us on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invest. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can also check out our website at collectingkeyspodcast.com. And, yeah, go and subscribe you guys. We're our podcast is growing very rapidly, and there's a lot of big things to come. We're super excited about it. Anything you wanna add, Dan? You said you're gonna have a good send off. Think was that last time? Was that two times ago? I don't remember.

Dan Austin: [34:29] It was every time. I forgot, but I'll sign this off. How about, Mike and Dan signing off from sunny Spokane? That was on the spot right there.

Mike DeHaan: [34:38] You gotta give us There you go. That the thing is gonna be I think we're just gonna have a terrible send off. That's gonna be what our our send off thing is every single time. That's the pattern that we have going. Yeah. But alright. Thanks, everybody.

Speaker 3: [34:49] Bye. Thanks for listening. Please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and check us out at collectingkeyspodcast.com for tips and guides on starting your own real estate investment and wholesaling business.