All Forum Posts by: Chris Speights

Kevin, I completely get what you're saying. But again, it takes a lot of time, money and effort to do those things. But, I have never approached real estate as a means to quit working. I did it primarily for extra income. I mean, I enjoy my job and what I do. Not that I am against what you're saying, or fault anyone else for doing exactly that. I am just not at a point where I have the desire to quit work and do real estate full time.

All very good input. I do believe that wholesaling is 95% sweat equity. So, as many stated, the value of what I am selling are the tangible things (site, domain name, etc).

He is pretty much after the history of the site, which apparently makes Google "happier" than starting a brand new one.

He is not "depending" on anything from me, in the sense for him to increase his business. As I said, he is very good at what he does. He has a full time staff, office location, etc...I mean, he's a large volume wholesaler already.

When we got to talking about all of this, the original idea was that he would basically lease the site from me. But, after he had his consultant check out the site, they told him he needed to spend like $4K to "fix" a bunch of stuff. From that information, he decided it made more sense for him to acquire the site outright.

I think the best solution for me at this point is to hang on to it and continue to try to make things work. There isn't a lot of overhead, it's mostly time that's the issue for me at this point. I liked the suggestions of maybe hiring some part time help or something. I don't the exact path forward, yet, just think I want to make a go of keeping things together for now.

After some discussion with my wife, and after your input, I have decided to hang on to things and spend the time and money to "fix" everything. I truely appreciate all your help and time spent responding.

Thank you all so much again.

Chris

@Jerry Puckett - You're spot on with all of your questions and I will try to further explain.

Originally, it was a 50/50 venture. I paid for my own advertising, fielded my leads and/or turned the lead over to him if I couldn't field it at the time. We pretty much split the work, therefore split the profit.

Second, we basically went to a 30/70 split. I continued to pay my advertising and lead generation. I set my website up to automatically forward all my leads to my partner. He worked the deal from start to finish.

Somewhere in the past 2 or 3 months, Google changed something and my leads have slowed down. My partner experienced the same thing and this is why he went to a 3rd party marketer and adwords guru. He has them on retainer for some ridiculous monthly fee.

Currently, as it stands, we still have the 30/70 arrangment and I do still have some leads trickling in, but not like they were. I haven't had the time to spend researching myself on how to enhance the performance of my advertising. So, it comes down to rather I want to put the effort and money into getting it back up to snuff.

Hope this better clarifies things.

@Kevin Tunney - Just like Ryan is suggesting, owning and/or sustaining a business isn't for everyone. I wouldn't mind doing exactly what you're suggesting. I just know like Ryan is saying, it takes a whole lot more than just simply quitting and trying to survive. Especially in wholesaling. I have averaged around $40K per year in real income from wholesaling, and that was part time income. So, sure, I could probably make it if I did it full time. But, running a true business and relying on that business 100% for your income is hard work and takes money. Just not something I am ready for at this point. Plus, I make a lot of money in my 9-5 job. I may not have all the freedoms as a full time wholesaler (or any other self-employed person), but it does afford me a comfortable life. Just not something I am ready to roll the dice on just yet.

@Bill Gulley - This was originally how I was looking at it at first. The numbers I worked out were actually very close to your example. But, then, I got to thinking more along the lines as Ryan is suggesting...which is what brought me here to ask the question in the first place.

@Ryan Webber - Thanks for your input. This was more along the lines of what I was thinking now. The only thing about this is, for one, this partner was originally my "mentor". He charged me $10,000 just to teach me how to wholesale. With that said, I would likely do the same myself, now, knowing how much work it really is. But, my point is, if he went out to build himself a site, it would run him around $2,000. I mean, a decent site anyway with any kind of SEO built into it, plus optimised for adword advertising, etc. So, my number was a little higher than $2,500, but we're on the same page.

I guess on the whole, I am just stuck. The real issue is, if I kept my site and put a little more money and effort into it, it would perform. It already performs and like his marketing person told him, it's still underperforming. So, I guess my hiccup with letting it go for $2,500 or anything really small is, if I just kept it, I would make that much money with one transaction and that's without doing anything else additional, at all. I mean, that's just letting the site do the work and me field the lead, work the sell and close the deal. This is where my hang up is...it's basically giving him my site to do dozens of transactions and benefit from the site all for the price of one transaction if I just kept it, you know? Just so confusing...

I have been wholesaling for around 3 years, now. I have pretty much always worked with a partner. I work a full time job in Oil & Gas, but was doing wholesaling on the side. This partner of mine does wholesaling full time, among other real estate investment ventures. He is very good at what he does. About a year ago, I received a promotion at my job and it really limited what time I could spend with the real estate.

After this promotion, we adjusted our split as partners because he was doing the majority of the work. In fact, my only real responsibility was lead generation. This also became too overwhelming for me. Which brings me to my current problem.

This partner and I had talked about just leasing my business to him and giving him total control for a small split of every deal each month. I was okay to try this, but he has several marketing people working with him now and they decided that my sites have value, but need work because they are under performing. Because of this, he will have to spend quite a bit of money getting it up to par. So, he says because he has to do this, it makes more sense for him to acquire my business outright.

He is basically asking me for a "number", what I would consider selling it for. My business doesn't consist of a lot, but the value to him is that I have a few years of adword history on my sites, which apparently adds value when you advertise on Google. So, in short, he's really just after my site. But, because I could keep the site and basically do the same things he's going to do with it and make it more profitable, it adds value.

So, the question is, how do I decide how much to sell this "business" for? I am guessing standard rules of business valuation don't really apply here. Also, like I said, we're friends, so I don't want to offend him or anything. Just looking for a little guidance.

Thank you all so much

Chris

I have a sub-2 deal I am ready to close on. I have the wrap mortgage paperwork drawn up. Problem is, our lawyer is MIA. So, as quickly as possible, I am needing to find a lawyer that can/will review the documents and help us close quickly.

I wasn't sure which forum this type of a question belonged to, so took the "easy" route and plugged into the general area. Feel free to move if necessary.

Thanks,

Chris
[EMAIL REMOVED]

Okay, thanks again, Michael. So, in general, the info has to be entered just once?

I don't know why I am so stuck on this...I guess I have done only 5 contracts in the last 2 months...but I am not dedicating a significant amount of time to the deals. So, I just got to thinking how overwhelming this could get if I were doing more deals and spending more time generating business...a tool like this just seems it would simplify things so much.

Thanks again,

Chris

Thanks Dee, would love to hear what your partner is/was doing.

Okay Scott, that makes sense, I think...I will have to mess with it to see if I can get it to work.

Michael, that would be great, the format you have there. Is that created in Adobe? I mean, the forms and all that? If so, that may be the route to go...I do like the functionality of what Scott is talking about, however. I mean, enter your data once and it populates every other form you have with the correct information...but I do want it to ultimately be laid out like you posted Michael, in the end.

Thanks again, you guys are great!

Chris

I originally was asking about something like what Scott Nachatilo is talking about...that would be idea. I think Scott Hubbard has the right idea for me, for now since I don't have THAT much activity, yet.

Thanks for the offer Michael...I will keep that in mind in the future if there's something I can't figure out. I was just looking for a way to fill out an easy form that would autopopulate a contract or addendum, etc...

I think all of these ideas are great, though! Thank you all for the responses.

Scott Hubbard: When you mentioned the Excel and creating forms that pre-fills, what/how are you doing that? I am pretty Excel Savvy, but don't know how to create a form that autofills contracts...which, is sort of what I was looking for.