Treasure Hunt in a Hoarder House

Speaker 1: [0:02] 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: [0:27] What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode nine of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast. Dan and I had a quite a day today. What do what are going to? Five properties today?

Dan Austin: [0:39] Yeah. Yeah. Froze our froze our asses off to make some money today.

Mike DeHaan: [0:43] Like Oh, you did. I I wore a coat like an adult. You know, because it's now December, it's winter.

Dan Austin: [0:49] Yeah. Winter in the Northwest is a little bitey.

Mike DeHaan: [0:52] Yeah. Yeah. Right? I know you give me a hard time. I mean, I did make you wait while I was looking for my coat because we unpacked some winter stuff yesterday. So it's kinda spread throughout our house. Uh-huh. And I had no idea where any of my winter stuff was. But, of course, you know, I had to drag my wife out of bed because she knew exactly where everything is. But how'd that go? I mean, it went great. She she found my coat even though you only you only have to wait, what, ten minutes? Yeah. Yeah. Worthwhile because I didn't look like you out there shaking outside of the houses and shivering.

Dan Austin: [1:21] But I was so excited and overjoyed with what we got to see that it warmed it warmed my heart.

Mike DeHaan: [1:28] You know, it's it's kinda I I was thinking about this today. It's funny after so so we walked through four properties today. One of them is a well, I guess, three and a half. One of them we plan to walk through, which is a flip that we basically we basically bought it with the tenants in place. We listed it so that we could get the tenants out because in Washington State, it's impossible to remove people and they were not willing to be cooperative with us. We listed it with no intention of actually selling it and then end up getting an offer for what, like 20 or $30 over our asking price or something stupid.

Dan Austin: [2:06] 30,000 over asking as is. I mean, we had to do a couple FHA repairs because there's an FHA buyer, which most people are always like, oh, don't FHA and VA suck. It's like, this one went great. Honestly. You know? Just had to know how to work the system.

Mike DeHaan: [2:21] Yeah. It was making the people get to get Right.

Dan Austin: [2:24] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I told them tomorrow if they got anything there, the, junk out guys are gonna be taking it. So I think they're motivated.

Mike DeHaan: [2:32] I hope so. I mean, I guess we'll find out. But you we're there today, you know, and we were kind of playing the basically, check it out, get the cleaners and stuff in there, and it turns out they're still fully camped in the property. How can even have Well, I mean, that's that's what I'm kinda wondering though because they said that a lot of stuff there was from the previous owner. So I'm kinda wondering if they just, like, have, like, a suitcase and they're just gonna, like, walk away and go somewhere else.

Dan Austin: [2:55] If that's the case, it's taken them six months to pack that suitcase. So, it's terrible. But, yeah, we I'm I actually haven't gotten the the time, but I'm supposed to sign for that one tomorrow. Alright. So, yeah, it's supposed to fund tomorrow. But, yeah, unfortunate. Yeah. It'll close. I'm confident it will close.

Mike DeHaan: [3:14] If it closes. I mean, that'll be pretty sick because I if it closes, I think I did our our sort of base numbers on it. We're gonna make, what, 60 something after buying a car in that. That'll be our net after all of our costs for Yeah. Buying a property, doing nothing, and putting it on the market.

Dan Austin: [3:32] On an unintentional an unintentional whole tail on a major fixer upper. Yeah. You gotta you gotta take your wins on in a market like this. Right? I mean, it's just like Right. You you don't know and, hey, we we won.

Mike DeHaan: [3:44] Yeah. Exactly. Right? You gotta shoot your shot. Yeah. So we went and walked that one. That was kind of a half walk through because they were there. So we didn't actually get to do what we plan to do. And we went over to our Airbnb. First Airbnb Airbnb, which went live last Friday. It is now Sunday. Within the first, what, twelve hours, we had first couple bookings. Yep. We got another one today. So starting to be good proof of concept, you know, hopefully. I feel like coming on that quick, especially because we'll have some quirks and stuff to figure out.

Dan Austin: [4:14] Yeah. I was like a little I was like excited, but kind of bummed too because I was like, oh, crap. You know? I should probably walk it since, you know, the cleaners cleaned it last week. I mean, we're just finishing everything up, getting it all stocked, and the cleaners finished up. It's like, oh, man. There could be something. I don't know. Let's go walk it. And then I got to watch you build a shelf upside down because we need a small shelf, and that is why Mike is not allowed on properties to do any construction work.

Mike DeHaan: [4:37] I mean, why would it be the way the way that it was, like, the way that it was supposed to be made no sense. No. No. Like, why why would it ever like, even if you looked at the shelf the way that it was supposed to be built, it looked like I don't know. I think it was stupid. It's just There is a

Dan Austin: [4:54] there is a picture on the box of what it's supposed to look like.

Mike DeHaan: [4:58] Yeah. I mean, you're not wrong, but, I don't mean I don't know, man. Amazon, China shelves Yeah. With the the bottle detergent detergent on that thing is gonna knock, like, it over anyway.

Dan Austin: [5:08] Oh, yeah. It's still a shitty shelf, but whatever. It's good.

Mike DeHaan: [5:12] But yeah. When walked through that, you know, final touches there. First guests are moving in tomorrow. Are they there for the week or just a few days?

Dan Austin: [5:21] Yeah. Monday through Friday. And so yeah. Hopefully, it all goes well.

Mike DeHaan: [5:26] You know, honestly, we should do even though it kinda hurts the ego a little bit. If you, like, let them know that they're gonna be our first ever guests and then just, like, say, hey. If there's weird stuff, please be kind to us and just let us know so we can fix them for the next people.

Dan Austin: [5:41] Yeah. I should I should do that. I did that because we had, like, that last minute booking this week and that ended up canceling. Yeah. But and I told them that. And so I should do that with this group. That's actually a good idea.

Mike DeHaan: [5:53] Yeah. You know, I don't I don't like to admit being fresh or new on something, but Yeah. Like, I mean, that is really valuable feedback if you're willing to give it to us. Even just like little stuff. There's things you don't even notice until you live there. Yep. Exactly. Think every rental property that we've renovated, you know, we'll walk through it and we'll test like all the stuff we think of and we're like, yeah, this is great. And then, you know, the tenant, whoever moves in there is in there for like three days and they're like, so, you know, did you know that this random thing that you would would never even have looked at doesn't work? I mean, Right. No? Okay. Actually, better get somebody out there to fix Exactly. Yep. But Yes. That's all dialed in. If you guys wanna, stay in Spokane, what's it called? Like, the cute modern Manitow.

Dan Austin: [6:36] No. No. Something like that.

Mike DeHaan: [6:37] What did I name it? Great name for it.

Dan Austin: [6:39] What did I name it? No. I did that on my own. It was, shit. It was, something meets chic.

Mike DeHaan: [6:47] Oh, you're right.

Dan Austin: [6:47] It was like yeah. Was it? Where did that come I don't know how I came

Mike DeHaan: [6:50] up with that. Modern meets chic or something like that.

Dan Austin: [6:52] Yeah. There you go. Modern meets chic Manitow home. It's it's, near a park called Manitow Park. So in here in Spokane. So, yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [7:01] So should be a good little experience for us. I mean, I I have no doubt we'll do well with it just because you mean, is a nice house to sleeps a good number of people in a very desirable part of town.

Dan Austin: [7:13] Yep. And if not, if not, this is why, you know, I think speaks to how we buy things as multiple exits on anything. Right? So this was originally like, we were thinking it could be a flip, it could be a short term, it could be a long term rental. Ended up going obviously a little higher end because of we're doing it as a short term and then the cost of furnishing all that. So then you start thinking, well, you know, our x on the flip wouldn't be as profitable or as good because we you know, you spend thousands and thousands of dollars furnishing it and get it dialed in. We paid a designer. But the great thing with this one is, again, we bought it in a great location with another lot. So we're doing the short plat process and gonna subdivide into two lots So we could sell that other lot, and that would basically take all of our cash out of the deal plus a profit. And we'd still now have a great cash flowing property, or we can what we're talking about now is developing that second lot ourselves, which would be fun. It'd be a first Yeah. Like, ground up development, if it if it makes sense.

Mike DeHaan: [8:09] Yeah. For sure. Well, I mean, I think our position of that is gonna change when we initially bought it just because our financial position is different

Dan Austin: [8:16] Sure.

Mike DeHaan: [8:16] When we bought it. Like, for us to be able to build something seems more tangible than it did even three months ago, which is pretty crazy. Yep. But yeah. I mean, because we could sell that lot probably for what do figure about? Buck 50? Just for that in there a lot. Yeah. And I

Dan Austin: [8:29] and I and I think a build, we have one of our one of our strong, great lenders that we use for private money. He's already said, I'll just fund the build. And so we have we're basically would be $0 into the build out of pocket. Right? And it's just what can we build there and does it pencil out in the market and what we're trying to do, I think is what matters there.

Mike DeHaan: [8:48] Yeah. So That'd be sweet. I mean, if we could build that and then have, like, some new construction rentals, I would not be sad. No. I mean That'd be great. Everything everything that we work with is always a whole detail. It'd be nice to have something fresh.

Dan Austin: [9:02] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [9:04] So yeah. So we got that one all figured out. And then after that, we went to one that we're we might accidentally be purchasing. See, accidentally. So this deal, it's a pretty major fixer in, like, a nice neighborhood. We have it assigned to somebody right now to wholesale it, but they've gotten real slippery. And then after doing some digging on this person, they associate with some really questionable people in town. So I'm kind of expecting the guy to screw us over and just, like, walk at the last minute like people in this group are known to do. They are an investment group out of Coeur D'Alene. They are named after a particular individual. That's kind of the name of their company. I'm not gonna put on public last year. Yeah. You know, you never know who's listed. Keep it keep it professional. Yeah. All the other all the other investors will know about this team that's over there that does all these shady ass things. But so after discovering that, I know our our dispo manager has been having trouble getting specific details from him. So I'm expecting that one to go sideways. So again, multiple exits, kind of our strategy here is to basically close in ourselves, we don't necessarily have the general contractor slash labor slash time capacity to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [10:24] So essentially, what our split is, is we have found some young, you know, like newbie flippers, who, you know, are smart, they have some cash they're put together. But they are trying to sort of figure how to get their foot in the door. So we are going to partner with them on it, We are going to bring the money for the down payment. They are bringing the money and the hustle for the rehab. And we're basically just going to help them secure the loan on the terms that we get, which are going to be better than what they get because we have experience and lenders like us better because of that, and are going to provide some consultation on things that come

Dan Austin: [11:01] up. So

Mike DeHaan: [11:03] yeah, it'd be a little bit of like a different partnership. And then our goal is hopefully we can park some, you know, our down payment money, which would be probably about $25.30 grand probably. And, you know, we'll we'll collect a wholesale fee on the front of that. And it's mainly just to pay our guys and, you know, we got to buy stuff from the business like everybody else. So we'll be able to collect some revenue there. And then at the end of it, we'll split deal with them, you know, they'll get their first flip experience, I guess, under our guidance and with us sort of helping them secure it. And then they will bring all the money for the rehab and the hustle, and we'll sort of see how that goes. So Yeah. It's a great deal.

Dan Austin: [11:40] Like, I mean, it's it's a big project. No doubt. It's a good neighborhood, though. It's a solid flip, which is a good deal. Like, it's definitely something that right now, capacity wise, like, our our crew is, like, fully dedicated that we've got what, like, four or five active projects, little projects to big projects, and we're trying to balance all of that. So we we have the money, not the time. And these guys have the time and want the experience. So it's like a it's just a it's a match made in heaven when the timing works out. It doesn't always work out for everybody, but on for us, I think this is great because we get to, you know, teach and mentor a new Mhmm. Person, and they get to reduce their risk by having somebody that can teach and mentor them while they go through it. And if it goes well, everybody wins.

Mike DeHaan: [12:24] Exactly. Right? And totally. And I mean, for us, we're we're kinda from the standpoint where we have more opportunities and time. I mean, I honestly think we kinda with our current position, we kinda have more cash than we, like, I guess, necessarily kind of sort of apply with, like, our limited crew. So, you know, I guess we could either take some of that out, which would be awesome, I guess. But at the same time, if we can put that towards other projects to reduce to reduce more revenue, we might as well do it. I mean, I'm not exactly needing to take a big distribution right now, Paying much taxes for no reason.

Dan Austin: [12:56] Yeah. It's interesting too, to think about, because like though I was thinking about working on kind of putting up basically the personal financial statement and working on my one sheet that we do with GoBundance. It's fascinating. If you look at

Mike DeHaan: [13:08] it and you think about

Dan Austin: [13:09] it, it's like, so every dollar I earn, I pretty much so invest. So it's like a one to one earnings to investing, which kind of sucks because like you have all this income that you don't necessarily see all the time. But then really for every dollar we invest, it's like 3 or 4 or $5 that we're investing because we're leveraging. Right? So we're taking maybe a, you know, between the two of us, you know, a chunk of money, investing it and leveraging that against something. And then once you pull the equity once you pull your money out and you have that equity, granted it's a infinite return. But if you just look at it that way, why you use leverage, you're actually investing more dollars than you earn. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [13:43] I mean, yeah, you're completely right. I mean, well, that's been kind of the power of real estate being able to use that leverage too. Yep. Yep. You know, because it's also secured by that asset. So it's a lot safer than if it was just like I don't know. Because people use, like, margin and stuff to trade stocks. There's not necessarily, like, as hard of an asset there and those things can go sideways very quick. But with a house, I mean, you know, even if the market takes a dip and you have to lose the house or sell it, like, there's still downside on it. You know, you can still usually recover. You can you can limit your risk for the asset that you are working

Dan Austin: [14:18] with. Well, the interesting is between, like, a stock and a and a and a house, and this goes back to your comment, like, a house is still a house, is you're gonna sell or trade that house for that value, that structure. Now it's not always one to one with what rebuild costs are, and that's a whole another conversation. But when you buy a stock, you buy equity into a company, like, say Amazon. Like, their assets are are pretty large, but if they had to sell those off, they would not even come close to paying back the investors of what have purchased because what they're doing, you're buying that stock or that equity based on a proposed valuation for future earnings. And it's gonna change at a or trade at a multiple of fourteen, twenty, 30 multiple of the revenues. And so that's what you're buying, future earnings. With a house, when you're trading it, you're generally buying what the cost of that asset is. Yeah. And look at

Mike DeHaan: [15:09] you flexing your UW MBA right now. I love that you've used that thing since you've been on That

Dan Austin: [15:15] is all actually, most of that was earned in the bar at the hotel. Yeah. Oh, man. It's funny.

Mike DeHaan: [15:23] But yeah. And then, I guess, a good note for this deal as well for any wanna be new investors out there, You know, if you come and find somebody like us, you know, there's there's people like us that are doing active flips in every market. You can come forward to them, prove that you're smart, prove that you have some hustle, show that you have some cash and you're willing to put on the line. You'd be surprised how often people are willing to partner up with you. You know, I mean, we will happily make, you know, significantly less money than we could if they're willing to do the majority of the work. We don't have to worry about it. You know, even if, you know, even though we have to, like, secure the loan and things like that, I'm like, some people will say, that's risky. I'm like, it's really not because at the end of the day, the downside is it's a good deal and the downside is kind of the loan amount. So worst case scenario, we gotta sell the house, you know, and we kinda take breakeven or we take a small loss even whatever because we can still get out of it because we're buying at a discount. Right. So, you know, if you're somebody who you feel like you're put together, you have some money, you wanna work, but you don't know how to get started and you're kinda worried to pull the trigger, just go find some flippers, like, that are doing volume in your area. And, obviously, vet them too because we talked about this a lot today. How many people talk a big game? Especially, I feel like recently, we've come across this a lot where we're we're meeting all these people and there's just so much talk going on and no one's actually doing what they're saying. So you gotta be you gotta be kinda careful.

Mike DeHaan: [16:48] And it's funny. I I chat about this with our dispositions manager, Jud. Last week, we went to lunch just to basically do, like, a monthly review. And he was kinda telling me so we found him because he posted on Facebook saying that he was looking to get involved in the real estate investment company. And a real estate investment company is a younger guy fresh out of college. And he said he got hit up by like a bunch of people. And he looked at most people that messaged him and was like, I'm not even gonna bother messaging you back. And then he ended up talking to us because we looked like we were legit.

Dan Austin: [17:18] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [17:19] And he basically said the most people that hit him up were obvious that they weren't actually doing any deals and were, like, kinda just looking for somebody to, like, pay to do grunt work because they didn't wanna do anything, you know. It's just it's frighteningly common for how many people claim to be in the investment world. So, yeah, anyway, good way to get started for them. And hopefully, you know, we have a good win there and they can use that to get some momentum to monitor the next one. And then after that, we walk to our new purchase. We walked through our new purchase out in Spokane Valley that we bought on Friday. We close on it. It's a little condo unit. It was one of those. It's funny, like, the place is like a a wreck, you know, like like, it looks really bad, especially when you pull up. Yep. And the the garage is a, you know, a blue tarp and there's trash all throughout the yard. Bad. Then for the past several weeks, both our acquisitions manager and dispositions manager have been talking of how awful this place is. Maybe this is, you know, the what is it? Your reality reality minus expectations. That's your happiness level, right? So my my expectations on this where it was really bad. And then you walk in, the reality was like, it's really not bad. So my happiness level was extremely high.

Dan Austin: [18:40] It's just a lot of crap in there. It's actually a well built, well constructed, great spaces, newer build, you know, of what nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, somewhere in there.

Mike DeHaan: [18:48] I mean, it's, like, late seventies, early

Dan Austin: [18:50] eighties, maybe. So a a decent construction period as far as where the house sits. Like, it doesn't have massive capital issues, foundation issues, or anything like that. And I'm gonna call it the dog shit house mostly because it was full of dog shit.

Mike DeHaan: [19:03] They had eight dogs living in this house. So it's it's a it's a fully finished, two bed, one bath right now. And then downstairs, there's a fully I guess, like an unfinished basement that's kind of already has two rooms built out, but not just it's not finished all the way. Mhmm. And then basically an unfinished area. It's a laundry area. So we're going to finish the two rooms downstairs, add a bathroom down there, make the laundry area a little bit nicer. We bought it for 150. Our rehab into it should probably 60 to 65 to get a full turn on it done. So we can do it like $2.10. After it's done, it should be worth I mean, valuations without was that right now? I was at was at at a three two. I think I had it at 03:10. Mhmm. So as a four two, probably a little bit more, maybe like three thirty, three forty potentially. So we're sitting in a really sick position. And our our plan was to flip it. But I mean, honestly, if we go through it and the numbers make sense on it and we realize we can get a good rental rate and we can borrow our money out, think that'd be a pretty dope rental.

Dan Austin: [20:08] Yeah. It would be a good rental because it is kinda weird. It is a condo, but it's more of like a duplex. And we just bought half of the duplex, which we've never done. So it's kind of a strange thing, but it's in a great neighborhood. It's a cul de sac with a bunch of these little duplexes, what, 10 maybe? Eight eight ten in that area.

Mike DeHaan: [20:23] Yeah. Well, it's technically a condominium unit. Right? So Yeah. In theory, all the external stuff should be maintained by the condominium HOA. But, obviously, since this house was a shithole from the outside, very visually Yeah. The HOA is just stealing people's money and not actually doing anything.

Dan Austin: [20:40] Yeah. It's kind of a weird setup for sure. We'll we'll have to investigate that when we make the decision on on the exit with it because, yeah, that could be a a worrisome problem because, you know, their roof could be need to be replaced in ten years.

Mike DeHaan: [20:51] Now here's what we do, Dan. We fix up that house. We go and we establish ourselves in that neighborhood and we become the HOA. We should. We should. I mean, though.

Dan Austin: [21:00] By at least by the unit next door that looks very nice. Yeah. Which is even worse about this. It's funny because that unit next door is, like, nice. It is. Does need fixed up, has green grass, nice, you know, flower beds and all that. Then there's just garbage. There's like a line in the yard. It's just trash.

Mike DeHaan: [21:17] Yeah. But yeah. So I got some I got some pretty sweet footage. I got a new, DJI camera that has, like, a gimbal on it. So it's, like, some nice smooth footage. So I filmed a little walk through. I'm gonna put put it together, throw it on YouTube so you can keep an eye out for that. Probably take me about a week or so. I'm put that together. And then I will I'll add it to the show notes here kinda after the fact if you're listening to this later than early December twenty twenty one and wanna check it out. And then I will, we'll we'll do some updates as we go through it as well and definitely like a after completion video so we can sort of see the before and after. I think that'll be pretty dope.

Dan Austin: [21:52] Yeah. That will be cool. On this one especially because it's bad. Like, it looks bad just because there's so much crap. There is a pool, though. There is a pool.

Mike DeHaan: [21:59] There is an above ground pool. And, also, you know, there's a bunch of like, there's two sets of wash and dryers in there. Speaking of which, with that, I guess you didn't go to the fifth house. I went to our second Airbnb off of Kendall Yards here, which is kinda like the hip trendy neighborhood by near near downtown. So have another one we bought there a couple months ago. It's gonna be our second Airbnb. We don't have a washer and dryer, man. We just found a washer and dryer for

Dan Austin: [22:26] I know. Right? Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [22:27] Perfect. Seriously. You throw those in there? That'd be awesome.

Dan Austin: [22:30] We are in a bit of a a compliant of compliance appliance. What would you call that? The supply and demand curves are a little out of whack. It's hard to get appliances right now. And we've got, like, we need to find, like, two or three sets of appliances right now. Just from all the stuff we've got going on and, units, you know, appliance, you know, dryer broken the one unit. It's like, so I gotta scramble to get that.

Mike DeHaan: [22:52] Oh, yeah.

Dan Austin: [22:52] Yeah. Stuff like that where you're like, oh, man.

Mike DeHaan: [22:54] Steal the other dryer from this one and put it at Montgomery.

Dan Austin: [22:58] Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [22:59] I I've got a plan. Yeah. Figure it out. I like it. Gotta make sure that if you send the junk guys over there tomorrow, they don't, like, take the good stuff like that.

Dan Austin: [23:07] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're gonna show up Tuesday. I'd I've talked to him already.

Mike DeHaan: [23:10] So you're on top of it. Look at you. Alright. Yeah. So that'll be cool. And there yeah. That that one was kind of a cool one too because there's, like, actually some pretty good stuff buried in there amongst all their crap. And so yesterday, our our acquisitions managers there was tenants in there. We had to pay them cash for keys, which basically means you give them money to pay them to just go somewhere else. Because typically, like, you know, someone's getting rehomed, they're not gonna be super cordial if you just say, get out and leave. Right? And also, that's not really our business model. You know, we're not trying to make people homeless. We try to set people up. So, you know, in a lot of situations, we work with people to help them find other units and places to move and stuff like that. But, you know, some of the people like, first one we talked about, we kinda went that route, but then they were kinda dicks to us. So then we're like, alright. Cool. We you got the offer for us to be nice, now we're gonna kick you out. Yep. And then on this one, we basically went and approached them, and they were surprisingly cordial. And it's funny because there's a lot of junk there, but I was paying them $1,700 to leave. Our arrangement was you'd pay them $800 to leave and leave everything or $2,000 if they left and took everything. We ended up getting a $1,700 because our disposition manager kinda negotiated with them. And what's crazy is there's a lot of stuff still there.

Mike DeHaan: [24:34] But they moved into an an RV, and our our guy that who was out there this weekend, sort of helping them get going and collecting the keys and giving them their cash, said that they have this full size RV that was literally full to the brim.

Dan Austin: [24:50] Oh my gosh.

Mike DeHaan: [24:51] From like so, like, basically, there was the seats in the front and the rest of it was a 100% full stuff. Wow. So that's how much more stuff was there. And they just took it all with them. And, you know, sure, like, still got stuff to clean up, and we paid them the amount as if they were gonna clean up the whole thing. But I guess so they also they did that. And they also got rid of three junk cars. And they had had a full dumpster of stuff they got rid of, like a full sized master.

Dan Austin: [25:16] That's cool. That's cool they made the effort because, yeah, there's no there's no way an an individual normal person in that timeline can actually get rid that amount of stuff. No. I mean, the garage is still, like, front to back full of stuff and beer tons of beer cans. We should tell tell our guys to go over there if they wanna make a little extra money and go scrap out the beer cans.

Mike DeHaan: [25:35] Just, like, open the cabinets and they're pouring out. I know. That's what I was leading to is so yeah. Our guy was over there on Saturday and, you know, he called me. He's like, hey. So I got the keys. Like, do you mind if I there's, a lawnmower here. Do mind if I take it? I'm like, I don't care. Take whatever you want. Please. So he went he went and dug through the garage and found, like, a couple lawn mowers and, like, a snow blower and, like, a air compressor or something. And then yesterday, he listed them on Facebook and sold them by yesterday night, made himself a couple extra $100.

Dan Austin: [26:03] That's cool. You know? That's cool.

Mike DeHaan: [26:04] These old beater things, you know? Yeah. I love the hustle. Opportunity everywhere. People find good stuff. Somebody in our in Ryan's mastermind group, the Create Cash Flow group that we're in, they found like a classic car. So yeah. That's Dylan from out in Pennsylvania.

Dan Austin: [26:21] Really?

Mike DeHaan: [26:22] Yeah. He found he found like a classic car that's like actually pretty legit. And I guess it doesn't run, but I think last time I chat, asked asked him about it. He said he was gonna try and fix it up and sell it or just, like, sell it as it is. But, I mean, I guess it's based off of what other people are saying in the Slack group. It's worth, like, legitimate money. Wow. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [26:41] That's awesome. That's that's the sugar on top, man. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [26:44] Yeah. But he said it was literally it was it was, covered and in a garage that was completely just full of stuff. So you would never even know the car was there, and they were clearing it out. And they're like, oh, shit. There's a car in here. It just happened to be like a dope car.

Dan Austin: [27:00] Dude's got, like, a Corvette in there.

Mike DeHaan: [27:03] It's a Lambo?

Dan Austin: [27:04] Sellers just forgot about it.

Mike DeHaan: [27:05] Yeah. Right. Jeez. But yeah. So, it went through that one. Super happy with that project. That'll be that'll be a great one. I think we'll we'll we'll do very I know we'll do very well with it and just the exit whether we flip it or set to keep it as a rental. We'll kinda figure out as we go along. And the last one I said was our our other Airbnb that Dan didn't go there. I went down to town with my wife, and Jeff was there working, by the way. Was he still there?

Dan Austin: [27:30] He was still there. I I knew he was gonna be there today. I just didn't know if he he said he was about to finish up today.

Mike DeHaan: [27:35] Yeah. So it looks good. But, yeah, I had the you know, probably threw a a wrench in our plans potentially when I was there and I so it's like a three two, but, like, one of the bedrooms is really small and weird. Like, it's almost like a closet. So it's not really

Dan Austin: [27:49] like a three It's not really a three two. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [27:51] So I was walking into it and along with this house is this tiny little garage that you could really only feel like a Fiat in or maybe like a mini, you know? Yep. And I was like, why don't we just turn this into a freaking pet room? Yeah. Honestly, it'd be the easiest way to add some solid square footage, you know, and then it would make it a true three two. I mean, better yet, you you said, what if we finish that tiny bedroom into a bathroom? Yeah. And you have a three three.

Dan Austin: [28:17] Mean No. You're miscounting bathrooms. There's only one bathroom. So it'd be a it would be a true three two.

Mike DeHaan: [28:22] Is there? Yeah. Is there oh, is there not a is there not a master bathroom?

Dan Austin: [28:27] No. There's just the one.

Mike DeHaan: [28:29] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's I didn't realize that. I thought there was an en suite. Yeah. So that would be perfect then. It'd be a three two, which would be a great size. I mean, I haven't had a chance to calculate the price per square footage over there, but I bet that would add really significant value to that neighborhood.

Dan Austin: [28:43] Yeah. I'd be interested to see what the numbers look like to see if it's worth it. Because the garage is actually in good condition. Yeah. So we can easily convert that pretty quickly.

Mike DeHaan: [28:52] Mhmm. I mean, I think that'd be easier than our other garage conversion that we did.

Dan Austin: [28:57] Yeah. Honestly, it probably would because this is it's just got a this house has been rehabbed before. Right? So it's got updated electrical, updated plumbing, and stuff like that, where the other one was a nineteen fifties, exactly how it sat. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [29:13] So Yeah. And had, like, the awkward step down, which is still kinda has, but it's not I don't know. It it's it I think, like, the bones of the garage is gonna be better. Yeah. But yeah. So went to that one, and that one I'm excited about. So I guess we can talk about what the plan is for that, whether we wanna furnish it out and then put it on Airbnb for a little bit and then maybe do that conversion, like, the springtime or if we wanna do that now, whatever that looks like. Yeah. But either way, some good options there. Always, like, have multiple x's. So overall, though, it's productive Sunday. Yeah. We got a lot of stuff going on, you know, after after following, I think, one of our busiest well, our busiest closing weeks that we've had. We had five closings this past week. What? Four wholesale ones and then that one. So the Glen one that we bought, that we walked through today with all the dog shit in it. And then we got two or three next week. I thought it was two, but my my wife said, are you sure you don't have three? And I literally still can't remember how many days. And then we got two the week after that, and then we got one December 30. So our month is freaking slammed right now.

Dan Austin: [30:25] So cool. We're gonna have a banger of a Christmas party this year. Oh, yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [30:31] Christmas party gonna take you know, our our staff can consists of us and then our local staff is two young guys. I guess, Judson Judson engaged, but he likes to socialize and go out. And then James is a single dude who likes to just go hard, I think. So we're gonna Young

Dan Austin: [30:49] single heathen in his twenties. Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [30:52] Yeah. So we're gonna go up to the casino, go to the steakhouse up there. You know, we're gonna give them their bonuses in cash, and let's have a good time playing table games or doing whatever. See if they wanna make good financial decisions. Yeah. You're not. Oh,

Dan Austin: [31:07] man. So All on black, baby. All on black.

Mike DeHaan: [31:11] Yeah. No. It'll it'll be a good time. I think it'll be fun. It'll be a a very different tone from our party last year, which was, like, more family oriented because our staff at that time was just our one acquisitions manager, and everyone was more what's the right word? Refined. Refined. Low key. Yeah. Low key. Exactly.

Dan Austin: [31:30] Less fun. The culture is good now.

Mike DeHaan: [31:32] Yeah. It is for sure. I know it is definitely a very different culture, but, no. It'll be good. And then, right now, we're still in the zone. We're trying to t step up for January, which is always kinda where things end up in December when it gets starts to get quiet. Especially if here it gets dark, it gets cold, all the sellers, everyone else starts to hunker down a little bit. Yep. Hoping it'll end up because right now, new leads are kinda slow. So I'm hoping that when we get into January, it just starts banging again. That's what that's what we did last year anyway. I think our January was pretty hot after a pretty slow December. So Mhmm. Yeah. I think it will. I think it'll be

Dan Austin: [32:07] good be good 2022.

Mike DeHaan: [32:10] Yeah. I know. We gotta we gotta have a goal setting meeting. I went to lunch with James on Friday, and he was like he he was like, what are our goals for 2022? And I was like, oh, man. You're you're on it. Let's figure it out.

Dan Austin: [32:21] Yeah. Was this time last year this time last year, think we set goals, so we gotta definitely carve out time to do it.

Mike DeHaan: [32:27] Yeah. We're getting there. I know we gotta do it as, like, a definitely a full group. And he kinda shared me what he wants to do. So that's something else that we're providing him. I am personally partnering with him to flip his his first house. We're closing on next Friday. So he didn't quite have the cash or the financial ability to get it done solo. We want him to have the opportunity to do it. So he is buying a deal from the business as part of a perk for working from us. And I'm basically fronting the down payment, you know, charging a little bit interest on it, but nothing crazy. And he's gonna do all the work on it, front the money for the rehab. And just like I mentioned to them before, difference being is that I'm not gonna split the deal with him once it's all done. So if he makes off like a bandit in that deal, he's gonna be getting a fat paycheck for himself.

Dan Austin: [33:14] Yeah. Good for him. I hope he does well on that. I think he will. That'll be a

Mike DeHaan: [33:17] good deal. I think he will. That was gonna that's gonna be a pretty easy deal, think. It's pretty, bread and butter flip carpet paint, hot neighborhood with a little bit a little bit of land. It's kind of a funny layout house, but I don't think it'll matter since with the way that sort of position, in fact, being a little bit little bit newer.

Dan Austin: [33:33] Yep. Yeah. That's the type of flip everybody looks for.

Mike DeHaan: [33:36] It is. I want the carpet and

Dan Austin: [33:38] paint with flat with fat margins.

Mike DeHaan: [33:40] Yeah. Exactly. Right? Yeah. You know? And I mean, and you're clear, that's when everyone looks for new investors all the time. They come to us and say, want a house like this. And we say, well, we buy those houses.

Dan Austin: [33:50] If

Mike DeHaan: [33:50] you wanna buy one of those houses, define them yourself or create some value and incredible amount of revenue for some other people. And then they will be happily happy to give you those deals.

Dan Austin: [34:01] Right. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:01] Exactly. Hurry up bone, give you the opportunity. Yep. But cool. Alright. So that's kind of our time. Man, I don't know. Any good lessons learned, Dan?

Dan Austin: [34:12] No. Nothing. Lesson learned. I'd I I'm I have the horror story. It's not my horror story. It's James' horror story. When we were walking through the dog shit house and our acquisitions manager's name is James, and they had a baseball bat in the garage with his name burned into the baseball bat. I love that, dude.

Mike DeHaan: [34:30] And and it was carved several times into the side of the garage too, which was funny, which we didn't even notice when we were there. Oh, yeah. I just kinda does it. Yeah. James took that photo because I sent it over to him, and he sent me back the photo of it.

Dan Austin: [34:43] Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. That's where that came from.

Mike DeHaan: [34:46] Yeah. But it's funny because now, like, I was watching the video I recorded this afternoon, and it's so obvious. But when you're there, it's so overwhelming because there's just, like, shit everywhere.

Dan Austin: [34:55] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [34:55] And I see I can't I couldn't stop seeing it. Was hilarious. So

Dan Austin: [34:58] Yeah. So my yeah. That might be a a true horror story here in the future.

Mike DeHaan: [35:02] Yeah. I mean, apparently, could have ended very differently for him if they had a change of heart or they decided to use the the baseball bat that was, you know, designated for him.

Dan Austin: [35:13] It was. Seriously. So bad.

Mike DeHaan: [35:18] Like that seriously, super weird. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good horror story. Then I guess, good horror story slash lesson learned go slightly cynical note here. We had a good realization of how people in the investment community, even though the most professional grade can be complete dirtbags. Mhmm. When we had our our an update on our situation with the where the tenant got kidnapped, not the tenant. The seller got kidnapped from closing a few weeks ago. Mhmm. And, you know, the tenant the seller ended up being found and all that sort of stuff. But we found out from the kidnapper where that because the kidnapper had a contract with the seller was supposed to be purchasing it couldn't fall fall through. So the deal fell out last August. And he told me where they were closing it. So I called the closing attorney, who's a very, very prominent figure in the investment community here in Spokane. And, basically, I believe in a lot of deals with him, we actually deal with him closing right now. And laid out situation of like, hey, we are trying we tried to close this deal. And this person came in abducted our seller and saying he's coming to your office. Just so you know, if he tries to close this deal, it's fraudulent. We have the active contract. Here it is.

Mike DeHaan: [36:34] Sent it to him. And I'm like, so if you if you choose to move this thing forward, just so you know you're supporting fraud, you're committing a crime. Mhmm. And then sure enough, what do you fucking do? Close it. Deal. Right? Like, one of the top real estate lawyers in Spokane and any from buddy from Spokane knows who this person is, chose to push through this fraudulent deal that was directly interfered on by this scrub investor.

Dan Austin: [37:05] That's crazy.

Mike DeHaan: [37:06] Is not doing active stuff at all. And he's honestly too, if you looked at how he went through, he's completely screwing over the seller.

Dan Austin: [37:14] Oh, really?

Mike DeHaan: [37:15] Yeah. Oh, yeah. So basically what it is, he's doing like this weird carryback thing. So he only gave him like a certain amount of money and then basically required the seller to give him back some of the money for an RV. This is this is what the seller told our dispo guy. Basically, the seller the seller is walking away with nothing. Wow. With us, he was gonna be making $30. So, you know, so, yeah, mister lawyer, very prominent lawyer in Spokane, you're a crook, you're a scumbag, and you'll never hear this. But just in case you do or anybody that I know does and wants to tell him. Who you are. Yeah. I'm prob I'm gonna I'm gonna have a couple words then we will close with them this week because

Dan Austin: [37:55] Yeah. Good. That's that is that's bullshit. That sucks.

Mike DeHaan: [37:58] Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so I guess guess the good lesson learned there was trust no one, you know, and especially if you're if you're dealing with people that don't have a lot going on, like this other investor who interfered there. You know, I mean, we've had seven or eight deals go sideways this year just with weird situations with sellers or people. But we're we're if we're fortunate enough that we get several 100 leads a month, So it doesn't really matter. Right?

Dan Austin: [38:24] We we can we can maintain our ethics. Yeah. Some people can't because they're so hungry. Yeah. And they just make decisions that are not ethical.

Mike DeHaan: [38:34] Yeah. Exactly. So either way, it was a good lesson to learn to trust trust nobody and definitely make sure that you do your do your part to, like, keep yourself safe and keep your deals, you know, under your own control as much as you can. So Yep. Anyway, cool. Alright, guys. That's the end of this week's show. You can follow me at mike underscore invests and follow Dan at investor man Dan, both on Instagram and follow our podcast, which is slowly coming together podcast Instagram at collecting his podcast. Website still coming up. I'll get to it eventually when we have I honestly might be my Christmas project. Oh, there

Dan Austin: [39:13] you go.

Mike DeHaan: [39:14] Slow down. I was just like, I'm gonna be home in Montana. I might just spend that through on altogether. We will be putting some stuff up there kind of on a regular basis. And then, yeah, keep an eye out for the YouTube video as well. I'll I'll share that on our Instagram as it as it comes together. So Cool. Thanks, everybody. Talk to you next week.

Dan Austin: [39:35] See you all next week.

Speaker 1: [39:39] 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.