Wes Steimel
Wes Steimel has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch, 2 times.
Scaling Your Real Estate Business with Limited Capital w/ Wes Steimel
Wes Steimel returns to talk through what it actually looks like to run a one-person wholesale and flip business in Kansas City, doing one to two deals a month with a part-time VA. He explains why he dropped texting and cold calling for 100% direct mail, how he handles dispo, and why cash tied up in flips keeps him from increasing marketing spend. Mike and Dylan push back on his hesitation to pay himself, buy better dispo tools, and raise his mail budget.
Key takeaways
- Wes switched entirely to direct mail (about $5,500-$6,000/month, ~3,000+ pieces) after cold calling and texting filled his day with cold leads he didn't have time to work; he started in November and didn't close his first mail deal until April, but then had consistent, warmer leads.
- New investors over-underwrite: Wes spent 8-10 hours building a full comp and buyer analysis on a single lead because he had so few leads. The fix is more leads and faster analysis, not deeper analysis.
- Dispo confidence is his real bottleneck. He stays conservative, can't place deals, and ends up flipping them himself, tying up capital for 120-180 days instead of collecting a $10-15k assignment.
- Dylan's dispo tip: price is the first determinant, proximity is second. Pull cash buyers who bought within a mile of the subject property and call every one of them.
The Real Carol Baskin: A Deal Case Study w/ Wes Steimel
SCALE member Wes Steimel walks through a Kansas City single-family deal that started as a divorce-list direct mail lead and took roughly four months of follow-up — 32 connected calls, 16.5 hours of talk time and over 150 texts — to get under contract. He explains how he handled a seller who needed closing proceeds just to qualify for an apartment, using a post-close occupancy addendum with held-back funds and prepaid rent, and shares the numbers on the light rehab and resale.
Key takeaways
- Pulling divorce filings straight from the county/court website each week gives fresher data than a provider like PropStream, which can lag by weeks or months.
- Don't write off a lead because the caller sounds strange — Wes almost dismissed the first two-hour call as a prank, and it became a $31K deal.
- Long follow-up is normal: the lead came in March 2023, went under contract in August, and closed in mid-September.
- When a seller needs sale proceeds to move, a post-close addendum can set the move-out date, a penalty for staying, a funds holdback until they're out, and prepaid rent credited on the settlement statement.