Hello!
So I have been a member for a minute and have been following some posts and even commented and met a few people. I realized one day as I was reading a new member Intro that I never posted my own. So hear we go...... HI!!!!!!!!
I am a wholesaler, I also directly source properties for a few people for a fee. I am a licensed and bonded Public Insurance Adjuster as well as an experienced skip tracer. Now, when I say skip tracer I mean it. I have been actively skip tracing since before they had all those fancy programs that made it so easy! I have been skip tracing since 2003 and worked for a very long time in collections. Skip tracing is how I made my entrance into Real Estate Investing.
I met an investor who wanted to use my skip tracing to find a few vacant owners as he ran across them. Even to me he acted like he was a cash buyer. I actually skip traced for him for several months before I found out that he was doing all is deals with NO money in and was assigning contracts of my traces for money. I was only doing 10-20 skips for him a month but was providing such good info that he asked me to do it at a higher volume. When he didn't like the price I quoted him he asked me to up the ante and call and garner their interest in selling and set appointments for him as well. For a commission. I won't tell you how much because now that I'm in the business myself it's honestly a bit embarrassing.......
He went from averaging (supposedly, I never saw documentation on this) about 30k a month to one month in making over 100+ k. Well, about two months in one of his field agents that did assessments for him asked for an increase in commission and was denied. So, he broke it down for me on what was really going on and that's how I first learned that this guy really had NO money. He was not a cash buyer and he was assigning these contracts for a profit. I had never heard of that before. Most of my skip tracing in the past had been for Private Investigators and Buy Here Pay Here Car Lots.
Needless to say I immediately immersed myself in research (really I geeked out for a minute on podcasts and blogs) about real estate and met a like-minded individual with experience to partner with and started doing it myself. Now, let me say that I did close multiple deals with said individual only to figure out a couple months in that our moral points of view were very differents. I walked away from the partnership, leaving all deals on the table that we had going and starting from scratch again!
I realized very quickly that though he shared a lot of knowledge with me, I basically sourced our deals. I never decided what to do with him and they all went to investors that he was familiar with, the title company that he used, the attorney that was his friend and I never even met a buyer. I had never even assessed a property. He did that. So I had jumped out with out the full scope of knowledge of what I needed to do to be successful. Let me say now that I was in a pinch for a minute because of that but I will never regret my decision. I still get phone calls three months later due to moves he made that I was not aware of from buyer's and seller's. Issues that I cleaned up myself long after he was gone.
Anyway's to make a long story even longer....lol that's when I found Bigger Pocket's met some amazing people. Found a new business partner (not on bigger pockets but because of what I learned here) who has the same moral values as me. We help fill in the gaps of knowledge that the other doesn't have and more importantly than that we share those gaps with each other.
I went through a bit of a dry spell in the changeover and it wasn't easy financially but when it comes down to it EVERYTHING is difficult at first.........if you keep at it suddenly it's not. Now, I am not on top yet but I see my path and I am excited for it. I wouldn't change anything because I know where I have been pointed me in the direction of where I am going, and the view is beautiful.
So, Hi everyone, I'm Kelly Martinez. I'm from the Seattle area. Been in San Antonio for a couple years now. Making it on my own without a 9-5. I'm a wholesaler. I WILL be an investor in my own right soon enough and plan on building my own personal Real Estate Empire. Watch out!
