They Call Themselves Turnkey, but.....

[Gary Harrell]

I’m a newbie, no experience, gaining theoretical knowledge by reading books and living on BiggerPockets, itching to pull the trigger on my first deal and really start learning, money burning a hole in my pocket, and I am trying to minimize my risk. Last thing I want to do is sink myself out of the gate, so I’m looking for help.

I picked a city on the map, and I started looking around for what I would consider a one-stop shop: either they can find the deal or I can, if it needs rehab they take over and run, then because I’m not local to this city, I would need them to manage the property, and I collect the cash. I’m not looking for crucifixion over that last sentence, I know I’m going to have to work at this as well. My point is won’t be doing the rehab work, because I don’t have that comfort level yet.

Anyway, I reach out to this firm, great website, lots of information, pictures, videos of transformations, referrals, etc. I get a very prompt response, lots of questions to me. I answer them and fire back with my own questions. Then this happens:

Me: I notice there are a really high number of foreclosure properties in your city. What is driving that?

Them: They happen in other cities too.

Me: But what is driving the number of foreclosures in your city?

Them: I think foreclosures happen in every city.

All this has been through email communication, because I am at my desk and I should be doing my real 9-5 job, but I’d rather be doing real estate deals (thanks for that, BP! :-P). I was impressed by the website, I mean really impressed. Did I just run into a recent hire of theirs, or would you guess I am trying too hard to make something work when I should keep looking? Do I have “shiny penny syndrome?”

I’m thinking to myself, if I were that person, and I didn’t know the answer, I certainly wouldn’t give answers like the above, and I would offer back to do what I could to find an answer. I asked another question to which she simply responded, “I don’t know anything about that,” and she said nothing else. Again, this was via email, she could have taken any amount of time to get back to me, but didn't. Would it be worth my time for a phone call to hopefully connect with someone besides this person?

Thanks in advance!

[James Wise]

Originally posted by @Gary Harrell:

I’m a newbie, no experience, gaining theoretical knowledge by reading books and living on BiggerPockets, itching to pull the trigger on my first deal and really start learning, money burning a hole in my pocket, and I am trying to minimize my risk. Last thing I want to do is sink myself out of the gate, so I’m looking for help.

I picked a city on the map, and I started looking around for what I would consider a one-stop shop: either they can find the deal or I can, if it needs rehab they take over and run, then because I’m not local to this city, I would need them to manage the property, and I collect the cash. I’m not looking for crucifixion over that last sentence, I know I’m going to have to work at this as well. My point is won’t be doing the rehab work, because I don’t have that comfort level yet.

Anyway, I reach out to this firm, great website, lots of information, pictures, videos of transformations, referrals, etc. I get a very prompt response, lots of questions to me. I answer them and fire back with my own questions. Then this happens:

Me: I notice there are a really high number of foreclosure properties in your city. What is driving that?

Them: They happen in other cities too.

Me: But what is driving the number of foreclosures in your city?

Them: I think foreclosures happen in every city.

All this has been through email communication, because I am at my desk and I should be doing my real 9-5 job, but I’d rather be doing real estate deals (thanks for that, BP! :-P). I was impressed by the website, I mean really impressed. Did I just run into a recent hire of theirs, or would you guess I am trying too hard to make something work when I should keep looking? Do I have “shiny penny syndrome?”

I’m thinking to myself, if I were that person, and I didn’t know the answer, I certainly wouldn’t give answers like the above, and I would offer back to do what I could to find an answer. I asked another question to which she simply responded, “I don’t know anything about that,” and she said nothing else. Again, this was via email, she could have taken any amount of time to get back to me, but didn't. Would it be worth my time for a phone call to hopefully connect with someone besides this person?

Thanks in advance!

 You are displaying behavior that is common from some customers in the sales industry, you are looking for reasons not to buy. You are looking for them to talk you out of buying. I have sold a ton of Real Estate. $100M+ so I am no newb to the game when it comes to sales. Whenever I am training employees to sell I teach them to move on from people like you. Ya see, when you've got a properly marketed business there are typically more leads than properties. It makes no sense for a company or an employee to go on a wild goose chase tracking down obscure answers to questions that have nothing to do with things that the company can control when they could simply focus their human capital on investors who have already decided that the city they operate in is the city they want to invest in. Maybe the city this company is located in turns out to be a dud in your opinion. Maybe it's awesome, you haven't done enough of your own research to determine that yet. Many customers have & the company needs to focus on them.

What I recommend you do now is take care of all of your macro research on your own. All of the things that can be found via google searches should be handled by you on your own. You can't go to a car dealership & get them to give you statistics as to why driving your own car is better than taking the bus, same thing here. Once you've narrowed down to an area you want to buy in then you should reach out to companies in that market & speak to them about the products & services they offer.