All Forum Posts by: Greg Helbeck

@Michael Ritrovato take the money and run

@Ryan Blake Thanks, man. He sure is a good dude. 

Today I want to talk about a great lesson that I learned as I had more experience under my belt.

It is the power of not having a wholesale every property that comes through my funnel.

When I got started in this business, I only had one exit strategy...Assigning.

I love this assignment strategy and I still do this a ton today.

However, after accumulating some experience and capital, I can now say that having more than one tool in the toolbox is extremely beneficial especially in competitive situations.

Here are three tips on why it makes sense to not wholesale every property.

Tip #1 YOU CAN MAKE MORE MONEY

Most of the time, you are going to make more money if you close on the property. When you wholesale the property. Unless you need to pay your bills immediately, taking down a few properties a month instead of assigning them can dramatically increase the profitability of your company. I'm not saying to close on everything but I'm just saying that cherry picking the best deals to take down is a great way to squeeze the most juice out of your leads.

Tip #2 YOU CAN BE IN A BETTER POSITION TO NEGOTIATE WITH YOUR BUYERS

When I got started, I had no money so I was desperate to sell my property to cash buyers because if I could not get them to buy the house, I could not close on the property myself. Because of this, I had no leverage when it came to negotiating so I never wanted to buyers to know that I really needed them. If you can close on the property, you can try to put out the wholesale deal at a higher margin and if you don't like what the cash buyers can pay you you can just close on it yourself to make more profits. Also, this is very beneficial if a buyer falls out at the last minute. If something goes south before the closing, you can save the deal by closing on it yourself.

Tip #3 YOU CAN BEAT YOUR COMPETITION BY BEING ABLE TO CLOSE

Let's face it, sometimes this business gets extremely competitive and you can be up against five or six different buyers on the same property. Something that I have used that has given me a competitive advantage in the markets that I buy in has been removing assignment clauses and guaranteeing that I was going to close on the property in order to win over a competitor. I actually had a deal that I closed on yesterday that was strictly because of the assignment part of the contract that got removed. The seller was actually the representative of a church and he wanted to make sure that the property did not get assigned. If I was going to only be able to wholesale this property, I would not have gotten this deal.

I still love wholesaling and I do it all the time but these are three lessons that I definitely have learned that have added some water tools to my tool belt in order to be more effective in my business.

We are looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental and flip deals in New York from a passive perspective. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

I want to share a story of a deal that Jason McDougall and I did back over the summer and point out a few lessons that hopefully can help others out.

I ran into a hairy property in the DFW area and we realized that the heir of the estate was the stepdaughter of the previous seller. We got her on the phone and she agreed to sell us the house and once we had the deal inked up, we ran into some title issues (as always ;). The title company did not feel comfortable issuing title insurance because they did not have a clear picture of the family tree. It turns out that the deceased owner had no siblings alive or kids alive so the stepdaughter was the next one in line to inherit the house.

We had to hire a genealogist to determine all of this and if we did not take the action to hire the genealogist, we would have left a $20,000 wholesale fee on the table. Most people would have given up on this file and quit so they could go try and find the low hanging fruit.

That is not the model that I operate, I look for reasons to call the genealogist. The harder.... the better.

The key lesson I learned on this file...when you hit a wall on the tough files, make an action step plan of what controllable actions can get taken in order to try and overcome the objection. A genealogist happened to be high on the list and it worked.

Hope this could help a few others and get them to close out some of the harder properties.

and as always...

We are looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental and flip deals in New York from a passive perspective. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

*MISTAKE ALERT*

Here are some lessons from a pretty painful mistake that I made over the summer.

I had a property that I was following up with for over 2 years and I had a verbally accepted offer at $170,000. The property in the as-is condition was worth $350,000 and that is what it ended up selling for on the market after this deal fell apart ( would have been a $180,000 profit).

The major reason this thing fell apart is that the county court system vetoed the sale because of the low sales price and the fact that the owner was a minor who is a beneficiary of a trust. The minors father was the “seller” that I was dealing with and he had to legally act as a fiduciary for his son and the court did not allow the sale price of the house because it was too low.

I could have found this out a while ago before I continue to follow up and persist on this property if I would have just done my homework on the legal system and consulted my attorney about this. I did not do that and I ended up getting my hopes up for absolutely nothing (not the first time LOL)

Here are my main two lessons.

Lesson #1

Know exactly what you are getting into when it comes to buying properties that can have some hair on them!

The hair on this property was the fact that it was in a trust that had a confusing set up because there was a minor involved.

Lesson #2

An accepted offer does not mean anything until a contract is signed and a deal is officially closed! I had this accepted offer pending the court system approval for two years and I was counting my money in my head but after the court system did not allow the sale nothing actually materialized and I ended up wasting my time. Now I am much more aware of these types of situations and I don't get excited when I get an offer accepted.... I only get excited when the deal closes!!!

This was a painful lesson and hopefully whoever is reading this can avoid the mistakes that I have made.

Also, We are looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental and flip deals in New York from a passive perspective. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

Today concludes my virtual investing mini-series. Today I'm going to talk about one of the drawbacks in my opinion on investing in other markets.

Missed opportunities

Some people might disagree with me here but from my experience, I have definitely missed some opportunities being remote and doing deals virtual that I probably would have gotten if I lived in that market. Sometimes I just want to drive to the property myself to take care of whatever issue might be going on and when you are virtual, that can be challenging. I've definitely left some money on the table not living in the markets that I invest in.

I would not say that this is a major issue but it definitely is something that I started to realize as I started doing my deals virtual over the last year or so.

However, I do believe that there is a healthy trade-off. I am fine with leaving a little bit of money on the table by not living in my market so I can live in Southern California and not have to worry about shoveling snow ;).

Do not let this scare you away from investing out of state. When I say missed opportunities, they are very minimal but I had to find one thing that could be potentially negative about doing deals remotely because there's always positives and negatives with everything.

And as always ….

We are looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental and flip deals in New York from a passive perspective. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

Welcome to week #3 of the virtual investing Mini-Series.

Today I want to speak about a MAJOR benefit to doing your investing in other areas outside of your own backyard.

Unlimited markets.

Theoretically, because you are physically not going to be properties your market is essentially Unlimited. Personally, I only invest in two different markets, however, I know some people who invest in 5+ markets and have tremendous success because they understand that the virtual investing game theoretically has no boundaries.

The only real boundary is your systems and your marketing. Because you are never physically at the properties, you just need to make sure that you have good boots on the ground whether that's an employee or a partner.

Here's an example. If you have a very good system in one market, you can take exactly what's working in that market and Test it in another market to see if you can duplicate your success or if there's a slight change in the market that has an impact on that one marketing strategy. The cool thing is that once you have your team on the ground, it's probably just going to require a little bit more of your time on the computer and phone but not physically requiring you to be at that property or that market.

That's something that is super powerful when it comes to virtual investing and truly allows for Geographic freedom and scalability. Now, that is not what I want but I know others who are successfully doing this and absolutely crushing it.

Hope this helps!

We are looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental deals in New York from a passive perspective. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

This week I want to continue my mini series on some of the benefits and critical things you need to know if you are deciding to implement the virtual investing model.

The key to having consistent success in a visual market is having the right boots on the ground in that specific market.

There are two different ways that that you can have successful boots on the ground.

Employees and/or JV partners.

I am a big fan of having JV partners. They key when doing this is putting the JV partner FIRST and providing them value so they want to work with you. When I do deals in remote markets, I private my JV partner with value by bringing them deals that they would have not gotten and every time that get a call from me and we do business, its additional revenue to their bottom line for them.

I get value from them because they sell the deals on the backend and go to the property to take care of any of the rehab or tasks that requires physical presence.

If you can have successful boots on the ground in your virtual investing business, it is ALOT easier to have success. If I did not have good boots on the ground, it would be a lot tougher to make deals happen consistently on a monthly basis.

We are looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental deals in New York from a passive prospective. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

I'm going to do a mini-series over the next few weeks about the benefits and drawbacks of doing your investing virtually.

This week we will discuss the main reason on why a lot of people choose to do deals virtually

GEOGRAPHIC FREEDOM!

The ability to buy and sell or buy and hold without having to physically see the house.

This is pretty cool and I remember my first deal when I did a deal without ever seeing the house or meeting the seller in person.

If you are looking to have more of a lifestyle business were you never to have to worry about going to houses in person, this could be a great fit for you.

Also, If you like to travel and want your business to run from your phone and laptop, this could be the business model for you.

Over the next few weeks, I will continue to write about some of the benefits, drawbacks and lessons I have learned from doing 90% of my business virtual.

We are also looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental deals in New York. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.

Message me!

I'm going to do a mini-series over the next few weeks about the benefits and drawbacks of doing your investing virtually.

This week we will discuss the main reason why a lot of people choose to do deals virtually

GEOGRAPHIC FREEDOM!

The ability to buy and sell or buy and hold without having to physically see the house.

This is pretty cool and I remember my first deal when I did a deal without ever seeing the house or meeting the seller in person.

If you are looking to have more of a lifestyle business were you never to have to worry about going to houses in person, this could be a great fit for you.

Also, If you like to travel and want your business to run from your phone and laptop, this could be the business model for you.

Over the next few weeks, I will continue to write about some of the benefits, drawbacks, and lessons I have learned from doing 90% of my business virtual.

We are also looking for some passive partners who would be interested in getting involved in some of our rental deals in New York. If you were ever interested in finding out how you could get involved, feel free to reach out and we can talk about some potential options on working together.