Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast

With a response rate of 0.5%, seller leads require a lot of energy to chase down. Rather than expending energy on finding seller leads, Justin Van Riper is laser-focused on finding buyers. This approach means he can keep his team lean, and hone in on an approach that consistently works for him. Not only is the response rate nearly ten times that of seller leads, but buyer leads will purchase more than one property from him. Instead of letting the buyer set the criteria, Justin flips that on its head and tells the buyer what he can provide. He looks for buyers who are purchasing in a like-market. And he prefers buyers who are already buying out of state because then he doesn’t have to sell them on the concept. The more value you provide for your buyers, the more repeat business you’ll do with them. Whether you choose to provide them with a list of local lenders, local contractors, or property management companies, the relationship you build with them will, in turn, bring you more businesses as they continue to

Gavin and I have been making deals virtually successfully for years now and we both believe that if you don’t need to physically walk into a property to close a deal, you can definitely be virtual. To date, Gavin and I are at about 60k in wholesaling profits. But before we were able to get to where we’re making this much profit, we both had to go through major shifts in our businesses. We were both working long hours just to keep our businesses going until we went through 4 major shifts that changed the way our business ran. So, we asked ourselves these 4 major questions: —Why can’t I wholesale lease option? —How can I control the volume of leads? —How can I do none of this? —If I can do this here, why can’t I do it anywhere else? These 4 questions shifted the entire way we run our business and we’re no longer working 12-15 hours a day. In fact, we make more deals by just working 2-3 hours a day while we’re traveling. Want to know more about how we’re doing and closing deals virtually? Join us on our FREE, LI

Here’s a little teaser of one of the things we’ll be covering in our FREE, LIVE 5-day workshop: the 5 simple steps we go through to do deals virtually. Gavin and I talk about the basics of getting and closing deals without even physically seeing the property. —Market research – pick a market, look into your own backyard and don’t ignore the small towns —Get a team – hire a virtual assistant, a local wholesaler and a realtor —Marketing – cold calling, finding tired landlords on Zillow, direct mailing —Evaluate deals and make offers – do not over-analyze the numbers then take too long to make an offer —Follow up – it’s rare to close a deal on the first call; be prepared to make lots of follow up calls —Sell the contract (BONUS!) We go into the nitty-gritty details of these steps, explain them in-depth, and teach you how to utilize these basics in our FREE, LIVE 5-day “Virtual Profits Workshop” which starts June 1st. No payment information required. This is ABSOLUTELY FREE so SIGN UP NOW! Go to: https://www.virt

Rumors are everywhere about how Covid-19 is affecting tenants and landlords. Laurence Jankelow sent out a survey to the tenants and landlords on his platform to get some hard data and numbers. Laurence runs Avail, a soup to nuts website that helps landlords and tenants pay rent, run background checks, report maintenance problems, and advertise vacancies. With over 10,000 responses to his survey, Laurence was able to get a good look at how tenants were dealing with the pandemic. One of the biggest surprises from Laurence’s survey was the disconnect between what tenants were saying and what landlords believed was happening. His results were surprising, so Laurence encourages landlords to open a dialogue with tenants now before they get surprised in June and July. Half of all rentals in the U.S. are owned by mom and pop landlords, who are making a small amount of profit on their properties. Rent forbearance, rent forgiveness, and canceling rent would all have hugely negative consequences for these smaller landlo

Some of my favorite coaching clients that I’ve ever had talked to Gavin and me about how their business is going through the pandemic. Steve, a self-described technophobe, talks about the learning curve for using REI Simple, and how he and Coco work together as a team. Guys, this business isn’t rocket science. You just get on the phone and talk to people. Steve’s version for breaking the ice is a little unusual. He calls someone up and when they ask about his offer he says, “I’ve got a free coupon for a Subway sandwich, twelve inches. Whatever you want. Are you interested?” Then when they laugh, he can slide right in and have a great conversation with them. Coco and Steve make a great team because they each focus on the area they’re good at. Steve talks to people and Coco makes sure everything is running smoothly on the back end. They work with a VA from the Philippines who keeps them on task. One of their favorite parts about our coaching programs is that we train their VA for them, so he’s really able to su

Ester Telles makes our coaching job very, very easy. She does exactly what Gavin tells her to do, and her business is blowing up. This month she grossed $32,000, even during the shutdown. The dedication and grit she puts into this business is reaping dividends daily. Before coaching, Ester had been in this business for three years, but she wasn’t even paying herself a profit. She talks about her pivotal conversation with Gavin, and some of the changes she’s made to her business model to make herself more profitable. Because Ester already had a system in place, we wanted her to work with what she had, and focus on what she’s good at. Ester’s marketing is all cold calling absentee owners, and although she has two VAs making calls for her, she also makes a lot of calls herself. She says that you just need to have a conversation with them. She never focuses on the hard sell, and she wins over a lot of tired landlords that way. I love talking to tired landlords because they’re easier than a homeowner. They underst

Over at Carrot, Trevor Mauch and his crew help high-level real estate investors control the conversation online and get more leads. He stops by today to talk about all of the different ways you can use content marketing to build your lead pipeline and increase your online authority. How relevant is SEO to your marketing? All of the marketing that you do right now creates online demand. The first thing people do when they get your marketing is fire up the search engines and check you out. Trevor says that it’s your job to use your website to build your credibility, and he gives tons and tons of examples of how his clients are doing this. Every time someone visits your website, you need to answer these questions for them: —Do they have a solution that can solve my problem? —How does this thing work? —Who are they and are they credible? —How do we take action? Your website traffic may have seen a dip in conversions or traffic since March. Trevor shares the analytics from his client’s websites to talk about the t

In 2018, we looked at all of the deals that we’d done, and out of 58 deals, 53 came from the follow-up. If you want to increase your conversion tactics, you need to be prepared to follow-up with old leads. Take some things off your plate by automating and delegating the work. I share all of my follow-up tactics, including how I use REI Simple and virtual assistants to help me with this work so that you can see how to make this work an essential part of your business. I’m in a lot of masterminds and I interview a lot of people on my podcast, and on average, you’re going to get a deal after 3-4 months and six to seven touches. So who’s going to be doing your follow-up? You’ve got to get someone to do it for you and in spite of you. It can be frustrating to come across an old lead and not know when the last time you contacted them was. I explain how a virtual assistant can help you solve this problem. Operate under the philosophy, No lead left behind! I make no secret about how much I love REI Simple, my white l

Qualified, active buyers are going to become your new best friend, so I want to talk about strategies for finding your new BFFs. In-person networking, buyers’ lists, websites, and Realtors are all going to help you in this transition. You need to dig your well before you’re thirsty. If you’re already thirsty and you need the cash, it’s a lot harder to make that fast money. Don’t wait too long to build your relationship with buyers. I share my current favorite way to find buyers right now, including the strategies I use to contact them in a kind, yet persistent, way. As you’re building your buyers’ list, don’t be afraid to use your own cell phone. Don’t be that hard-to-get guy that never returns phone calls. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had buyers tell us that we are the only people that answer our phones. Be a real person on the other line and edge out your competition. I’m going to hold nothing back in here. I provide you with all of the websites I used to find buyers, all of the places you can go t

There are three things to be focused on in this market, and your ability to succeed through this market shift will rely on how well you can do these three things. I describe the huge variety of creative financial deals you can offer when you would choose to offer them, and I give you examples in real-time on how to figure out the offer. You need to learn how to make multiple offers. No more one-trick cash-only offers because they’re not going to work anymore. When you find buyers, you’ll need to offer solutions and creative financing for them. If you become that go-to creative financing guy, you can make nearly any deal work, as long as the seller realizes they’ll have to choose between terms and price. Financing is going to be getting harder and harder as money dries up, so when I say creative financing, I mean: —Owner financing —Seller financing —Seller carry back —Rent-to-own —Lease purchase When you make an offer on a nicer property, I recommend a different strategy based on the MAO formula. MAO stands fo

Hey guys! If you’ve ever wanted to “watch Joe LIVE” doing marketing… then you’re in for a treat. This Friday, May 15th, I am doing a Live Marketing Masterclass. This will be live, and I am going to pick a city and, from scratch, do some seller & buyer marketing. We’ll be doing live calls, and showing you how you can do marketing, even during this pandemic. learn more at: livemarketingclass.com

Wealth doesn’t disappear; it transfers. As the market changes, I want you to be prepared for where the wealth moves to. I’ve got some encouraging words for you today, but more importantly, I’ve got tons of ideas of how you can position yourself to be a part of these new opportunities. There are two very important rules you need to understand as we move into the opportunity phase of this crisis. One, time is your friend. And two, emotion is your enemy. Your mind will only find whatever you focus on, so focusing on fear won’t help you see the opportunity. Emotional reactive decisions will kill your business, so you need to come up with a plan based on data and not drama. A lot of your competitors have pulled back on their marketing. I’m seeing a 30-40% reduction in ads on Facebook. People are scared and they’re reacting to their emotions. But not you. You’re going to: —Detach yourself from your own bias. —Invest and don’t save at this very moment. —Grow your income as you work on your personal development. Inst

If there’s one lesson former teachers Marlena and Josh Dates have learned about real estate investing, it’s “Never pause your marketing!”. From Florida, Marlena and Josh have an eye on how Airbnbs are impacting the market, the best marketing for your dollars, and where the market is going because of COVID-19. Even if they have to borrow money from their parents, Josh and Marlena say they will always use direct mail marketing because it always gives back way more money than they put into it. Marlena says that you know what to expect from direct mail because you know the numbers, and it’s a consistent, reliable form of marketing. The only drawback to direct mail marketing is when sellers get 15 different postcards. That’s the time when Marlena and Josh double down on building a relationship with the seller. Because they know, as I do, that relationships are an important part of real estate strategy. What are hard money lenders doing? And are there still buyers and sellers in this market? As active real estate i

I love opening up the conversation to include our listeners because they always have such great stories and questions. You guys really make my job easy, so thank you for showing up with your concerns and comments. We talk about how to have natural, easy conversations with sellers, what to do if your deals keep falling through, and how creative financing will help you as this market shifts. Do you want to know how to make even more money on every deal you’re making? The real secret is packaging deals together. This looks like putting together financing, contractors, property management companies, Realtors, and insurance companies all wrapped up in a tidy bow. Watch and see if you don’t go from making $5,000 a deal to $10-15,000 every time. If you find a seller, and you can’t come to terms on a price, that is the perfect time to offer an assignment lease option. Gavin’s role plays with a student for how that conversation might sound, and gives tips on the best way to phrase this offer. I love doing these role p

Yes, the market’s a little uncertain now, but there’s still death, divorce, and inheritance problems. There are still tired landlords and people still need a place to live. And all of these situations create opportunities for us. You’re just going to have to take this uncertainty and pause, plan, and pivot to take advantage of the changing landscape. As entrepreneurs, you should be used to changing your focus when you find that what you’re doing isn’t earning you enough money anymore. Mike shares about his shift into more quality work as things slow down in the DFW area. He reminds you to remember why you got into this in the first place. A slowdown is a great time to reflect what you should be doing differently. Take this time to improve your systems and processes. That’s how you do what you do. Some of us say we’re business owners, but what we really are is self-employed. Get out of your own way by creating systems and processes that help you operate your business. Mike uses Asana to track his team’s work.

One of the biggest reasons for having a website is to build trust with your audience. A nice website can communicate really quickly what your brand is and who you are. A janky website, on the other hand, sends the message that you don’t really know what you’re doing. If you don’t have a beautiful website right now, don’t worry. I talk with REI Conversion founder Jessey Kwong about how he builds solid websites for the REI world. If a seller or buyer lands on your site, how likely are they to convert? A huge, bright orange call to action button leaves no doubt what you want a visitor to do. Jessey warns that you should put your forms on your front page and stop hiding them on another page, or you can expect your conversions to plummet. A website doesn’t have to be flashy to be effective. Whether or not you’re optimized for SEO seems to be a hot topic, but what does that even mean? Jessey talks about the different parts about SEO. He builds his websites to be fast and secure, which is half of the SEO game. The o

One of the mistakes that people make is that they try to sell the lease option concept, but they lose every single time. Instead, you should start thinking about how it’s all about positioning. In this coaching call, Gavin walks some of our students through the wall they keep running into as they talk to sellers. Positioning yourself as an investor when you talk to sellers should be the basis of all of your conversations. You are investors, even if you plan on using a lease option. Explaining to a seller what a lease option is right away can be overwhelming, especially if they’ve never worked with an investor before. As Gavin walks our students through what they’re doing, you can see this really cool “Aha!” moment when they realize that they’re assuming what the seller wants. It’s easy to think you know what the seller wants, but when you approach a deal waiting to be sold on whether you should buy the house, you give the seller a chance to talk. While the seller is convincing you that you should buy their ho

I started in real estate right before the crash, so I have to be honest and say that I made a lot of mistakes when I entered the real estate market. I’m embarrassed to say that I lost homes to short sales and foreclosures before I finally figured out what I was doing. And I learned that lease options in a down market work really, really well. The 3 things you need to be focusing on right now are making more lease option offers, making buyer offers, and following up with your old leads. Increase the amount of offers you get accepted by being flexible in your financing when you use lease options. There’s a lot of power in being able to give the seller any price they want as long as they wait for it. I walk you through my philosophy and how I make my three main offers. In addition, in my Mind Map, I’m giving you a calculator for the three different kinds of offers: —Cash offer —Seller financing interest only —Seller financing principal only This free Mind Map will help you figure out how to handle this changing

The three keys to success are marketing, automation, and delegation. Using automation requires you to find the best tools to streamline your business, so I’m really excited today to talk about the automation that Howard Zonder has created with his Land Speed business. For new investors who are just getting into land investing, Howard and I talk about some different strategies for figuring out where to buy. Howard’s had great success in Colorado and Utah, but you might be more interested in infill land. Infill land is smaller lots in a town or around a town in the “doughnut” area. Howard gives his thoughts on this as a long term strategy. If property taxes are really high, that may not be the best place to start your land investing journey. If property values are really high, or bureaucracy is common in that area, those also might be signs that that’s not a great place to start. There are a lot of land investing courses out there that tend to focus on the same handful of counties. There are tens of thousand

We opened up our show today to you to answer the questions on your minds, and we had some really, really great questions that touched on where you’re at, and how this market is doing. Gavin covered the basics, we talked about partnering with local Realtors, and we shared our favorite real estate tools. One of the top questions on everyone’s mind is: Have prices started to drop? We’d love to give you a solid answer, but right now we have no idea what the market’s going to do. The numbers we’ve been given show a delay in closings, but that’s all so far. There are some things you can do to prepare, and Gavin talks about what they are. Don’t get carried away by new and flashy real estate ideas. The basics have been and will always be: —Marketing —Talking to Sellers —Making Offers —Following Up Right now one of the most important things that you can be doing is building your buyers’ list. Gavin shares a huge variety of ways to find buyers, starting with Realtors and going all the way through skip tracing