All Forum Posts by: Davis Sessums

Thanks everyone for the advice.  @James Green my wife & I have done Dave Ramsay (can't speak highly enough about the man and his program).  We were on the right track then 2 things hit at once I got hurt and assigned to a desk job so no overtime for me right now.  Then my wife lost her job.  The good news is I've got about a month left of physcial therapy and then OT comes back and my wife got a job (less pay) but it's something and she gets to stay home with the kids.  

Not a sob story but sometimes life knocks you off your tracks and you gotta struggle to get back on.  Anyway like I said just feeling frustrated that real estate has to go on the back burner.  I've attended local investor meetings and I'll continue to do so and learn as much as I can. Thanks again everyone. 

So I'm definitely a newbie to RE Investment.  My goal is to make money flipping that I can then put into long term buy and holds.  Seems simple right?  Well I have no money to invest on my own.  I'm cutting every single cost I can to save some up, but on a local government salary supporting a family it's hard.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I'm actually doing pretty good, but it will take me a long time to save up even a modest down payment to combine with OPM or a hard money loan.  

I've tried wholesaling and sent out dozens of letters with no results.  I have started going to my local investor meetings and I've met a lot of awesome people and one of the lessons that gets repeated is they tell us "If the deal is good, the money will find you."  Well I've found some awesome deals through local wholesalers.  I know these are good deals simply because the numbers work.  I've read J. Scott's books, I've studied the formulas, I've practiced them on every "deal" I can find, I lean toward the conservative side of estimating, so I know the numbers work.  Back to the money issue though, I don't have any of my own to throw at the deal and from reading posts on here, investors want you to put some of your money in the deal so you have some skin in the game too.  

My thought process is to approach some investors with these deals, with all the numbers laid out and say hey I'm eager, I want to learn, I want to help you make money.  In return for finding and bringing you the deal (even though I found it through a wholesaler) is a small fee (6 to 10%) of your profits and the opportunity to shadow you on the deal so I can learn from it.  I'm a big believer in respecting the "money" so to speak so I'm not asking for insanely high profit shares like 50%, especially when the only thing I'm really bringing to the table is proof that the deal I've laid out is a good one.  Hell I'm even willing to offer up this deal for free the first time just get some street cred so to speak and prove to them that I can do future deals with the above nominal profit sharing.  

So my question is, am I on the right train of thought with how to approach investors to partner up with, or I'm I going to get laughed right out of door?

TLDR: Can I act as a middleman between a wholesaler with an awesome deal and a seasoned investor in return for a small share of the profits and the opportunity to learn from the investor?

@Jay Hinrichs thank you.  Here in Northern Virginia new housing is definitely back in the swing of things.  

Thanks everyone for the input.  As for what I want out of this is to simply contact the owner and say hey I'd like to make an offer on the lot.  If he's interested great if not that's fine too.  If he accepted I would whole sale it a few investors I know who do property development.  I would think he would listen to any reasonable offers as to avoid the headaches of rebuilding, then again maybe not.  I guess there's only one way to find out.  

So I am definitely a newbie to investing and my plan is to do fix and flips, property development, and whole sale.  I'm reaching out to distressed properties wherever they pop up in my area.  My full time job is being a firefighter, which leads to my question.  There was a house fire last night not far from me.  My department responded but I was off duty and didn't respond to it.  The house burned completely down.  I looked up the property information and it's owned by a local guy as a rental property.  Would it be ethical for me to make him an offer?  If so, how much time should I allow to pass, if any, before making an offer?  I'm sure he's up to his eyeballs in paperwork and managing this loss so I want to strike while the iron is hot but not offend him at the same time.  

An alternative to door knocking that I've seen others have success with is to leave a post it on the door with a simple message like "I want to buy your house.  Call me!"

I did my first DM marketing a few days ago and I've gotten 2 phone calls!  They both turned down my offers but I'm still super excited I've already gotten phone calls.  This was a limited test run to owners with delinquent taxes and and one property that was willed to next of kin.  I came across that one by driving by and seeing they had an estate sale going on.  I sent 17 hand written letters in all.  My plan is to put the properties I haven't heard back from yet on a drip plan and to start marketing to other delinquent owners in nearby counties.  Again just excited to already be getting responses even if they are denials.  

The bottom one looks like what people think of when they hear house flip.  The top one looks like a new or spec build.  I'd go with the bottom one.  

By the way what's the back story on these flips if you don't mind sharing. 

@Abel Curiel I've been looking for something to hold me more accountable.  I'm going to get one and try it out.  Thanks for the post!

Thanks for posting this.  I'm contacting my reps to have them support this bill.