All Forum Posts by: Justin Williams

Thanks @David Lee !

@Henry M. Big Henry, I don't know you personally but you seem like a great guy!  Really appreciate the kind words.  They really mean more than I can tell you.  

It is kind of interesting how my journey with little thread has been a little different than what I originally anticipating.  Honestly when you are being as transparent and vulnerable as I am here and sharing information with people and trying to do the best you can to be a ethical educator in an industry that is full of corruption and then someone accuses you of being a fraud, and compares you to someone who is in federal prison, that can how can I say this..."Take the wind out of your sails" lol so your heartfelt words are very appreciated!   

There has been more than once that I thought I would stop this thread (and even considered stopping my education business) but sticking with it and just putting myself out there, and staying true to myself has made me a much stronger person, so in a way this thread has/is helping me in ways I never thought possible, when starting out.  I guess it is often by going through the struggles we go through in life that make the successes/victories all that much sweeter.  

Would love to connect with you sometime.  Thanks again!   

@Alex Bejenaru Thanks for the kind words!  Yes Bruce is/was amazing.  It was an honor for me to be able to interview him on my show.  I was a little nervous at first but he is so down to earth that it made me feel very comfortable talking with him.  

Great question, and to be honest it really depends on the week, about the margins and buying opportunities in CA lol If you would have asked me before last week I probably would have felt a little like "Yeah it is REALLY tough to buy in CA right now" but then last week we got 4 houses, but yes to answer your question I am always looking for opportunity and trying testing and trying out new things and different areas. When I was doing trustee sales a couple of years ago I had a very small farm area, but when I started focusing more on MLS and especially working with wholesalers I started to buy wherever they were getting the deals from, so I guess you could say the same thing has happened with us going out of state. I didn't just decide hey let't go to Utah and New Mexico, but I know people who are selling houses in those states and had good deals they were selling so I went for it. Since we have pretty good systems to manage our properties without having to look at them all the time we figured we could do the same thing regardless of how far they are from us. Will I be cautious with buying too much too soon in any certain area? Yes, but it is nice to be able to try some different things out in some different areas, and see how things compare. Is there plenty of money to be made in CA? Absolutely! On the other hand would I be going out of state if there were way more big fat deals than I could handle right in my own back yard? Probably not :-)

Hope that helps!  Thanks again for the feedback!  

@Jason Farmer I know I said I was going to just ignore negative comments from now on.  Honestly I was hoping we were over that by now so we could just move on, and focus on the initial purpose of the thread.  In the past this comment would have effected me for several days but now it is much shorter and in a different way.  I am naturally a very sensitive person.  I have learned to develop pretty thick skin when it comes to running my RE business and working with people in that realm, but having my personal character attacked is still new to me.  Not sure if I will ever be able to get over that one, but I guess it is something I will continue to have to get use to if I am going to remain in the online and education business.  

At first there were some thoughts I had and things that came to my mind that I wanted to say about you but after doing some research on you, you really don't seem like that bad of a guy, so I will try not to cast the same judgement here as you have on me.  Actually you seem like a really nice guy, hard working and willing to give advice to others on this forum so it looks like you just don't know me all that well and have made some inaccurate assumptions about my character.  

Not sure if you have read all of this thread but if you do you will notice that the only ones who have anything negative to say are those who don't know me, or haven't actually taken the time to do any research, about me, what I share on my site and podcast, etc. Not sure if you attend any of the local So Cal REI clubs but if you do, you will find people there as well who know me. Not saying everyone likes me or noone has anything negative to say but you will be hard pressed to find anyone who can say anything negative about my character as you have alluded to in your comments.

I would like to make you a challenge if you are up for it.  I see you are from Corona.  Not far from where I grew up in Mira Loma.  In fact I pass your area anytime we go visit my parents.  Do a little more research if you like and of let's hop on the phone or a Skype call and or meet up for lunch.  Get to know me a little better, who I am, what my beliefs are, what I am trying to do with my platform etc etc.  Then make a judgement.  Let me know if you are up for that, and I would be happy to connect.  Sounds like you are good at marketing.  You never know we may even end up doing some business together.  

Other than that best of luck.  You really do seem like a nice guy so I with you the best.  

7/6-7/12 Update-Best Week Ever!!!

What a difference a week makes!  After a difficult previous 4 weeks we have had what I am pretty sure is a record breaking week last week by putting 6 deals under contract!!!  

This reminds me of Seth Godin's book "The Dip" and how we will all go through low's in our business in different ways, but if we hang in there, keep pushing, adjust and innovate as needed, there is usually something pretty good ahead.  

The best part is that 3 of those deals came from my new acquisitions coordinator!  Up until this point he has yet to get a deal.  It has been a tough couple months for him bc he wanted it so bad and he has worked really hard, and something finally popped!  I think it was a combination of him learning more, making some adjustments we talked about the week prior, and then having the lead funnel from which he had previous deals he was following up with and new ones coming in.  This is really exciting bc as much as I LOVE buying houses from my wholesalers this shows we can also start getting more deals "in house" which just gives us another outlet for deals and overall a little more control on our deal flow rather than just mainly rely on another party.  

The other 3 deals are all from wholesalers.  One from wholesaler # 1, and the other 2 were from out of state deals.  Another one from my brother Steven in UT.  I continue to be amazed at his progress as well and just like Kale is another example of working really hard and just sticking with it and adjusting as needed.  Then the other deal is actually a house in New Mexico that we put under contract which is actually a state that I have never even been to!  Another friend of mine who lives in UT called me earlier last week while I was at my son's surf camp, and I committed to buying this house within just a few minutes of talking to him.  I am not saying this is something you should do just on a whim with someone you don't know, but this is another great example of the value of relationships.  Don't get me wrong "trust but verify" right.  I did have my assistant Vanessa double check the numbers we were given just to confirm, but I know and trust this guy well enough to know he was telling me the truth and that allowed me to commit and pull the trigger rather than have someone else get the house.  This will be a good case study since it is a house in another state we are not familiar with, and hopefully another opportunity to open up in another market, with another wholesaler.  Once again if you are new please be VERY careful if you are buying in a location you are not familiar with, and keep in mind this was a lower price point house that I know I could rent out if needed etc.  Ok disclaimer over ;-)  

ok so if my #'s are correct that puts us at a total of 51 houses so far for the year with 99 more to go!  Hmmm...that's a lot lol  If it wasn't such a great week I would probably reevaluate my goal about now but let's go just a bit longer and see what we are able to do! Have a great week everyone!  

Update 6/8-7/5

Ok so it's been a few weeks since I have updated, and honestly there is a part of me who doesn't really want to update bc it really isn't all that great! lol but that is sometimes how this business goes, and I guess that is one of the good things about this thread.  Sometimes it is easy for us to talk about when we are having a lot of success and talk about the big wins or when we are buying a lot of houses but the truth is in the last 4 weeks we have only put 2 houses under contract!!!  Argghhh I can't even stand to say it! lol  To some that may not seem too bad but when you are trying to buy 3 a week it means you are short by like uh...10 houses! lol  But once again it is what it is and although I really don't love it, I am going to share the good, bad and the ugly, to paint a real picture.  

And honestly sometimes the biggest lessons in this business or any business, are learned from times like this.  BC no matter what your business is going to be HARD!!!  There are days or weeks or months when you might feel like "This just isn't working anymore" or "This is just too hard" and you may never get things going.  From my experience, it is less about being "lucky" or knowing the "secret" and much more about having the right mind set and being able to go through the tough and challenging times, and rolling up your sleeves and just doing whatever you need to do to get back on track. 

In fact at the end of last week we only had 1 house for the past 3 weeks (about to be 4) so I decided to do something about it.  I called my agents, wholesalers, acquisitions manager etc.  First off I was able to have a very productive conversation with my main agent on some ways we could potentially double the amount of marketing we were doing for the same amount of money to me and be mutually beneficial to both of us so that was great, we also discussed some new acquisitions strategies we are probably going to implement.  

Then I spoke to my acquisitions manager and was able to really dive in deeper with him on some leads he was working on, and realized he was estimating 20 k on a condo that I thought would actually only take about 8k.  We were only off by about 10k in price.  He doesn't have it officially under contract but we are very close.  This allowed me to realize some other things I could help him with and now he is pretty close on several.  In fact he just put one under contract, but I won't go into that yet since this post if for the past 4 weeks and we still need to inspect it, but I can see the fruits of that conversation is already starting to take place.  

Then I spoke to one of my wholesalers.  This conversation was great for 2 reasons!  We were able to talk about the market and what was going on with him and some other investors in the area.  Not sure if it was just a case of misery loves company but he let me know that June was very slow for him as well, and even slower for a couple other people he spoke with.  Not sure why it made me feel better and maybe it should have made me feel worse lol but for some reason just talking through it with someone was good.  and the 2nd reason why it was great was bc I bought a house from him!  This is a great lesson of timing is everything!  He was on the road to go on a vacation with he and his family for the 4th of July weekend.  Earlier that week he actually sent us the deal but Vanessa told him it was just a little too tight, however at this time he didn't have the offer he wanted on the table and he was looking forward to going on vacation with his family and didn't want to deal with it so he was willing to give it to use for the price we needed, so I was able to at least say we got 2 houses vs just 1 in 4 weeks! :-)  

Market Conditions and Why the Low #'s?

Well it is impossible to say exactly why June was such a low month, but there are a few things I imagine we can contribute it to, but the main thing I would say is it is somewhat related to the current market conditions.  Unlike last year this year has been a little flatter here in our market.  Even when I interviewed Bruce Norris, on my podcast a couple weeks ago he talked about how the market was pretty flat even against his previous predictions.  

This has caused us to have to be just a little more conservative on our offers.  We are still pretty aggressive overall, but there are  a couple I am pretty sure we would have purchased if we were back in 2013.  The thing is that even though the market has currently slowed the competition seems to be about the same.  I'm sure there are several factors here but I would attribute it to some people just still not knowing what is going on in the market and my guess is if it stays flat for a while longer margins may loosen just a tad.  The other factors I am not too sure of.  I would say maybe summer has something to do with is and people are traveling and just not too focused on selling or something, but then again this is totally just throwing it up there, since I really have no idea lol  Not to over simplify but I just didn't get as much from my "suppliers" and Kale is still getting a feel how to land them on his own so hopefully some of those things start coming together and the next few weeks are better than the past few.    

All I do know is that in the 9.5 years that I have owned a business (7.5 in RE) there has been 100's of ups and downs, and things ALWAYS get better, so my very highly assumption is that that will happen again this time...I guess we will find out lol  

Oh on a more positive note, I did want to say that I was able to go to Costa Rica for 8 days with my wife for our 10 year anniversary.  The fact that we were able to go there and have my business run without me while I was gone was pretty incredible.  This business has not only allowed us to have the resources to have such an amazing/memorable trip, but also the freedom to do so and have things be taken care of while I was gone.  

Also this reiterates why I am keeping track of properties we put under contract.  We have still been closing on properties that we put under contract from before, and if I wasn't tracking properties put under contract so closely I probably wouldn't even have really noticed or thought too much about the slow down, and then we would have easily had a lowell in our business without even being aware it was happening, so this has been good to help us adapt and adjust early on.  

Ok that was a long post, but hopefully beneficial to everyone reading!  Have a great week everyone!  Onward and upward! :-)    

@Warren Sterling

Hey Warren, I wish I had a solid answer for you, but I have never flipped a house using bank financing/someone else's credit so I probably would't be the best one to respond. I do know it can be done but I haven't done it myself.

Hopefully someone else will be able to chime in and let you know! Thanks for the private message and glad we were able to connect!

If we got the deal from the agent we will usually let them have the listing. If we got it in house of from a wholesaler, we usually list it ourselves.

Weekly Update 6/1-6/7

3 homes put under contract.

This was the week of the agents! And all from the MLS this week as well. Now only if I can get my agents and wholesalers on board to all consistently get/sell me houses each week I would be set!

2 houses from my main agent...

House # 1) 2.5 bath, 2,036 sqft, Built 1979 purchase $158,100.00 Repairs $19,000.00, ARV $230,000 This is one that we were in back up position on and the original seller fell out so we were next in line.

House # 2) Believe it or not I don't actually have the stats to this house yet. It is a short sale that we just got our offer accepted on and are waiting for the the bank approval. In his e-mail he said he will send the details once we have it. At first I was going to wait to post this one but I think it helps illustrate how hands off I am and I don't worry too much about the details (and my agent knows this as well) until I know it is a solid deal and I actually have to put some money up.

Then I got one from one of my other agents who isn't nearly as consistent but seems to be good for a handful of deals each year (Hey I'll take it!) I haven't heard from him in a while so hopefully this is a sign of more to come here in the near future.

House # 3) Purchase $57,000 Repairs $28,000 ARV $110,000-$115,000.

@Karyn Galindo All throughout So Cal and we just started buying in UT as well.