Kyle Nelson
Kyle Nelson has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Balancing a High Demand W2 and Building A Business with Kyle Nelson
Kyle Nelson, a Southern Minnesota investor with a high-income W2 job and two young kids, breaks down his first eight months in real estate: five wholesale deals, a flip, and a nine-unit apartment building, all starting from his first batch of direct mail. He covers what it takes to wholesale in a cheap rural market, why a buyers list should come before the first mailer, and how he uses paid local walkers to run the business around his job.
Key takeaways
- Build the buyers list before or as soon as you send your first mail batch — Kyle's hardest part was dispo, not acquisitions, and his first spreads suffered for it.
- Underwrite to what buyers in your specific market actually pay, not rules of thumb. In Kyle's area buyers want houses at $40K or less, so he has to lock deals at $25-35K to get a $5,000-$7,500 fee.
- Rural, low-price markets can produce deals on the very first mail batch, and speed to lead is less critical there because sellers move slower (one Idaho seller only checks his landline Sundays and Thursdays).
- You don't have to walk every house. Kyle pays local people about $50 to walk a property, take photos, and give a rundown across a 90-mile radius, then underwrites from his desk.