My Very First Deal (4 Years Ago)

[Brandon Jackson]

This is the story of my very first deal which happened 4 years ago in September of 2011. I had become a member of the ************* Success Academy, and was talking with a coach weekly (Pretty much worthless in my opinion). At this same time, I had been reading books by *************. The particular one I was reading when things starting happening was "Your Town Your Real Estate". It's a great book, and I would recommend it to anyway looking to get educated about real estate.

While reading the book, there was a passage that gave you a script on what to say when making an offer to a bank and guidance on how to find good deals, and I used this pretty much verbatim when I was finally ready to make my offer. The information said to call around to smaller community banks and see if their REO department had any properties they wanted/needed to get rid of.

I called around to a few small local banks, and found one that had 2 properties they had in inventory and needed to get them off the books. One of the properties caught my interest! It was a 2 bed, 1 bath 1140 sq. ft. single family house. They initially told me $21,000. I immediately drove by the house and the neighborhood that same day just to get a feel for the neighborhood and see if it looked worthy of following up. I was pleased!

For the next month I called every 2 weeks about this property to see if it was still available, and it was. The first follow up call, they had dropped the price down to $19,000. The second follow up call, $15,000. After this, I decided to go to the bank and show them that I was a serious buyer so I filled out an application to see what i could qualify for. After filling out the paper work, I asked if they still had the property and they did. 

The VP of the bank and I went down to the property and built rapport to whole time on the way to the property (about a 25 minute drive). After looking at the property and walking through it with the VP, he told me if I offered $10K, he would be on my side and convince the president to go along. 

After going back a few times and modifying the offer, I ended up purchasing it for $7,000 cash. This was money that I had saved up from working at my job. I didn't even use my loan approval thru them to attempt I put an additional $10,000 into the property, and went back to the same bank to refinance it. It appraised for $45,000, i got 75% of that ($33,750). 

Since that first deal, that bank has loved me and i've loved them. I've done 4 loans with them since. AND....The VP that I built major rapport with has now moved up in rank and is now the President! Now I just need to find some good deals!!!

If you want to dig deeper into my background, check out the link below. It's my journal I was keeping when I first started my investing journey.

Happy Investing!!!

Critique me please. Too long? Too detailed? Not detailed enough? Run on sentences? etc...

[Michael Boyer]

A good relationship with a bank and buying property under 10K, I am voting for that post! Thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work... Sounds like you are really getting to know that particular market and the key people and property issues to help you succeed!

[Santos Collantes]

UNBELIEVABLE! That's what I call determination. Thanks for sharing, all you have to do is ask sometimes. But I think to me personally sometimes thats the hardest step. Great story and I appreciate you sharing how you learned!

[Michael Le]

Thanks for going back in time for that story. Great stuff. 

[Vincent Crane]

That is fantastic!