All Forum Posts by: Sam Craven

thanks @Chris Nowlin

yea i have been able to be on the podcast 3 times.  33, 127 and 271.

They are an insight into my mindset at the time and where our business was.  I tried to deliver high level business strategies as well as insight into our successes and failures as a company.

simply put do they charge money, then they are a coach or guru.  But are you really asking are they worth it?

My company invests 6 figures a year training its leaders and team.  If it wasn't worth it we wouldn't continue to do it.

I used to feel like paying a guru was a waste until i started paying good gurus.  Now my mindset is even the top athletes have coaches.  NOT ALL COACHES ARE CREATED EQUAL. Invest that money wisely and vet the hell out of whoever you pay.  But i get worn out by the narrative that all gurus are worthless.

uderstanding jobs market is important but as a wholesaler your job is to deliver value to the people that need it.  Buyers and sellers.

If there is an abundance of buying opportunity, thats a good thing!  Your job is to find the buyers that are buying in your market, figure out HOW they buy, then locate the deals at prices they want.  

If the market is moving up down or sideways there will always be buyers (sometimes more or less) but your job is always to understand what the market wants and deliver on that value.

on single family we do because like you we have a lot of experience and its an intangible that drives a lot of value (not having inspection period).  Once you have done this for a while there just isn't much that can surprise you.

I only have 1 Airbnb unit.  Our office is right on yale st, has a large victorian home we use as the house buying office and a 4 units adjacent to the house on the same property.  1 is the office for our construction company, 1 is a 800sf long term tenant paying $1600, 1 is a 150sf closet that i get $700mo for and the last unit is a 800sf airbnb.  I gross about $3kmo on that one and net around $2500.  Its been a great experiment and as the other units come available especially the tiny home i think ill switch them over to airbnb.

Some wholesalers focus 100% on extracting value from the deal instead of adding value to clients.  They have a nearsighted  approach to the business which means they don't care about the success of their clients (buyers or sellers) which earns them the reputation they have had for years that they prey on new investors.  If they just realized focusing on adding value to buyers and sellers increases margins their reputation would improve ten fold.

the $5k deposit sounds pretty rough outside looking in, but here is our reasoning to do it.  We use the $5k non refundable option fee because we have made promises to the sellers that we are going to secure a good buyer for them at the agreed price and time frame.  Having the $5k non refundable fee means you do all of your due diligence ahead of time and are 100% ready to close when we sign.  We also don't do double closes, its completely unnecessary and adds thousands in costs to our end buyer.  Everything is done on assignment, buyers even know what we are making.  Whats the point in hiding it and it costing our buyers more?

and james iirc if you look at the data the luxury market recovered some while the 800k  ish price point continued its decline.  In the neighborhood where i live in the heights the $1M+ market cooled way down this time last year but as of late that market has been accelerating.  Great thing about houston is we are so spread out we can play so many different sub markets as the general market shifts around.

The issue with wholesaling is there barrier to entry is ZERO which brings in all walks of life.  My house buying company wholesales hundreds a year in Houston and we work REALLY hard to differentiate ourselves.  I frankly don't like that we are thought of as used car salesmen.  But that also creates an enormous opportunity to add value and create some big fans. 

Here is what we are doing to bring credibility to our business and the industry:

All sellers know we are wholesaling their house

All buyers get a GUARANTEE for their ARV and rent comp or we write a check

We started a construction company to serve our investors and keeps us up to date with construction costs.

The hope is that we can grow large enough and force all wholesalers to conduct business this way.

last year we didn't get a slow down into the holiday season because of harvey, and this year even after all the harvey inventory is dried up we are still pumping out contracts.

My wholesale company wholesales around 15mo and we have trained the sales team to present all of the sellers options to them so THEY can make an informed decision.  We exist as a business to solve the sellers problems and empower our buyers to take control of their finances.  Options make it so we can do that.