Otto Kinn
Otto Kinn has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch, 2 times.
Small Town, Big Moves: How Otto Kinn Started from Zero to Grow His Real Estate Business
Otto Kinn walks through building a wholesaling and wholetailing business in central North Dakota, a market where locals told him cash-offer investing wasn't possible. He covers outsourcing direct mail to REI PrintMail for consistency, promoting his lead manager into the acquisitions seat, his current numbers (roughly three deals a month at $15–18K average profit on ~$80K purchases), and the disposition bottleneck he's now trying to solve. He also explains why he's dropping buy-and-hold in his town and eyeing Bismarck as a second market.
Key takeaways
- Paying a mail house three months ahead forced marketing consistency Otto couldn't maintain on his own, and their data was better than the lists he was pulling and overcomplicating himself.
- North Dakota changed its rules to require a real estate license to assign, so Otto shifted to double closing and wholetailing; he's considering getting licensed to go back to assignments and cut friction.
- When his outside acquisitions hire let appointments slip, he let his lead manager (a U.S.-based VA paid $1,200/month plus 10% of net on deals she closes) make offers directly, and she locked up three deals for June and two for July almost immediately.
- Hard money at three points plus 1% a month works out to roughly 22% annualized when you only hold deals two months, making lender cost a real line item on a $15–18K average profit.
Deal Case Study - Maximizing Your Assignment Fee with Otto Kinn
Instant Investor member Otto Kinn walks host Mike DeHaan through a North Dakota wholesale deal on a vacant, four-bedroom house with a caving-in flat roof and black mold. He explains how a May direct mail batch to a high-equity absentee list produced the lead, how he negotiated an $85,000 purchase after honoring an in-person $80,000 offer, and how he assigned it to a contractor-buyer at $127,000 using transactional funding, netting about $40,000.
Key takeaways
- Direct mail to high-equity, absentee, out-of-state owners produced the lead; Otto found deals landing roughly three to four months after each batch went out (January mail led to March closings, May mail led to an August closing).
- Honoring the number he quoted in person, even after his budget came back worse, built enough trust that the seller countered at $85,000 instead of holding at $150,000.
- Just because you'd take a price doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for more — Otto steered a buyer high and got $127,000 on a deal where anything over $20,000 profit would have felt like a win.
- A contractor or first-time investor buyer can pay more than a full-time flipper because their rehab costs are lower and they want the experience, so their numbers differ from yours.