How I Acquired 3 Deals in 2 Weeks Virtually from Australia

So I just got home from Australia about a week ago and the Midwest weather has not been treating me well so far. I was there for a couple months for vacation and I got the opportunity to work with a real estate agency that sells beautiful million dollar beach houses. I got to learn the Australian property market during the week and relax beach-side on the weekends. It was the best of both worlds, but I’m glad I’m back now so I can continue to do more real estate deals with a little more ease. However, while I was over there, I was able to virtually acquire a few properties.

Having solid systems set up definitely helped my cause, but since I am only about a year and a half into my business, I wasn’t so sure how this would work or if I had the necessary skills to wholesale property virtually. Regardless, I still took action, made some phone calls, and sent some contracts back and forth. Hopefully, this gives you a basic overview of how I locked these deals up virtually.

How I Found the Deals

Being overseas and not having too much time outside of my work and beach days, I chose not to do any direct mail marketing while I was abroad (not to mention the 17-hour time difference being huge barrier to communication). About a year ago, I read about this website that automates a lot of processes called IFTTT. I believe it stand for IF That Then This, and it’s purpose is to make your life easier by automating many different processes. I set this up in 2 minutes. One of the things you can connect is a Craigslist scraper based on certain keywords, and the system will automatically send leads with those specific keywords you’re looking for, to your email. This completely eliminates you having to waste your time looking through pointless Craigslist leads, and it sends you only the deals you would be potentially interested in. Now, that being said, I’ve only gotten a select few of my deals from that application before, but for some reason I got a few solid deals while I was in Australia this February. I analyzed these deals and quickly emailed the sellers to get a contact number.

How I Contacted the Sellers

Trying to connect with even your family members overseas can be a huge pain. I had an Australian work phone, but it wouldn’t make calls to the US. I wasn’t about to use my personal phone to ring up big charges on my phone bill to try to contact these sellers. So, I downloaded a free app on my iPhone called Viber that let me connect to people in the US for free. I called every seller I got a hot lead from and made some offers based on the numbers they were giving me. Of course with the huge time difference I had to wait up until 2 or 3 in the morning to give these people a call. But, I was pretty hungry to do some more deals so I didn’t mind.

How I Made Offers and Got Contracts Signed

So, I spoke with each seller, analyzed their motivation and the overall deal, and was able to make good offers. I used very rough numbers to make my offers and left enough room for a considerable amount of error, just so I knew I was getting a good deal either way. The first deal I got under contract was a 7-unit apartment complex and the other two were small single families. In order to make an offer, I wrote the contract up on my iPad and emailed over a signed purchase agreement. There are plenty of apps out there that let you sign and send documents. Within the day, I got these contracts back from the sellers and I had these properties locked up. I immediately marketed them out to my buyers and the day I arrived home, I was walking through several buyers.

Conclusion

As you can see, it’s fairly easy to virtually acquire and dispose property once you understand your numbers and how to properly analyze a deal. Having the systems in place is key as well. You can learn everything on BiggerPockets for free and it’s something anyone can do. However, you have to actually want to do deals and you have to have ambition. Without taking action and being confident in myself and my abilities, I would have not been able to secure these deals. Many people aren’t willing to stay up until the early hours of the morning to make calls and try to communicate with someone 17 hours in a different time zone. There are many guys who have mastered virtual wholesaling the have put out great content that I would encourage you to follow. Thanks for reading and best of luck!