14 Deals in 16 Months: How Alex Camacho Found his Mastery in Deal Finding

Brandon: This is the BiggerPockets podcast show for 18,

Alex: because if you could find a great deal, it’s amazing to partner with someone. And that’s where you hear people say, Hey, you can do real estate without none of your own money, because if you are good at finding deals, then you don’t need the money. Just go out there and consistently find good deals.

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Brandon: What’s going on to vote. It’s Brendan Turner host of the bigger pockets podcast here in the sea shed on Maui Hawaii with our guests today. Uh, but we’ll bring him in, in just a second and also with my co-host mr. David Green, David greed. I missed you, buddy. I wish you were out here in Hawaii.

You got to come out and see,

David: we need to make it happen. I think the quarantine laws have relaxed a little bit, as long as you get tested before you fly to Hawaii. You’re good.

Brandon: Yeah, exactly. It got to test, but since 72 hours before coming here and then, uh, you can get here and you can, you can hang out and see all the fun of Maui.

So

David: I was actually just at the beach this weekend with my mom. We, I rented an Airbnb and we had the family come out for her 60th birthday. And I was thinking while I was there. Once you’ve been to a Hawaiian beach, no other beaches

Brandon: get your going anymore. That’s funny, man. Yeah. Okay. So honest question, honest question.

Who’s more fun at the beach, your mom or me donuts. Donuts. Today’s show. Uh, like I said, we actually have our guests in the studio today, out in the sea shed out here in, in Hawaii. Our guest is Alex Camacho. Who’s a good buddy of mine who I’ve known for a little while. Now, a couple of years now, enteritis has been crushing it the last year.

So today he goes into as a full story of how he went from kind of a rough point, or he like lost a lot during the last recession. He lost his career. You switched that over to real estate, how he used the apprentice model to be a really successful real estate investor today, you’re gonna learn how he did that, the skills he learned.

And then what you’re going to love about today’s show is the Alex goes in like, Detail about like how he’s finding deals, how is like doing everything he’s doing, what the skill sets he has and that he’s grown over the last few years, what skill sets he’s used to benefit today? This show like David said at the end, I’m going to repeat it now might be one of the most impactful shows for people trying to get into real estate, because they’re going to learn how it’s done from somebody who just went through the, you know, several year journey to get there.

You’re gonna love it. It’s an amazing show. But before we get there, Oh, by the way, make sure you listen to all the way through, to the, uh, to the deal. Deep dive, because he talks about this deal. Deep dive he did, where it was basically like an office slash. House hack office hack slash house hack slash vacation rental hack, all combined with the long-term flip gosh, amazing deal that made him a ton of money.

You’re going to love it. And it’s cool strategy that more people could be utilizing that. And they’re not so stay tuned for that later, but before we get to that, Let’s get to today’s quick tip, tip simple. I was actually talking with our guests. We were surfing a couple of days ago and I was talking to him actually, when we were out in the water, we ran into this other guy out there.

Who’s also his name’s Josh. So shout out to Josh, who’s actually a BiggerPockets listener. And he was like, dude, I listen to your podcast. And we were chatting with Josh for awhile, but then I mentioned, he said, Hey, you’re gonna be doing any local meetups here in Maui. And I said, probably just make sure you have your keyword alerts set.

And I realized like, I probably don’t say that enough. We haven’t said it in a while. So I’m going to remind everybody. Bigger pockets has key word alerts. You can go put a keyword, like a word like Maui in there. Don’t do that one. Unless you live here or Nashville or Denver, whatever city you live in. And then anytime that word is mentioned in the bigger pockets forums, including our event system, where people host events, you get notified, you get an email or even a text message of your pro member.

So why is that beneficial? Because when people are doing things in your area, you want to be in the knowledge about it. You want to be knowledgeable. You want to be, if it’s an event or you want to start connecting with those people. So your quick tip is go to biggerpockets.com/alerts, a L E R T S. And make sure you have a keyword alert set for the terms and the locations that you want to be notified about.

And guess what? It’s free if you have a bigger pockets membership. So it’s, and that’s a free membership, so go do it right. Go do it. And that’s today’s quick tip. Alrighty then I think it’s time for us to, uh, get today’s show anything you want to add, David,

David: this one, please. This is a really good episode. So if I had to pick one episode on BP, that someone who says, Hey, I want to become a full-time real estate investor.

What do I need to do to get there? It would be this one.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, totally agreed. And also make sure you listen for David’s new nickname.

David: Your nickname game is stepping up. Brandon.

Alex: It is.

Brandon: It is. All right. So stay tuned for that at the end of the show. And without further ado. Let’s bring in Alex Camacho, Alex, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast in the seashell.

How you doing man?

Alex: Amazing. Especially that I’m here in Maui having me out. I’m so honored

Brandon: can be fun today. So I’m pumped to talk with you today about your, I guess, your journey, where you’ve been, where you’re going to, and I’ve seen a little bit about it. The fact that you just landed here in Maui. Now you’re here for the winter and maybe who knows how long?

Uh, it’s exciting. So he grabbed you to be in the seashell today, but I actually don’t know a lot about your life. Early on stuff. I, I, I, I want to know, like, walk us through your journey. How did you even get into the real estate in the real estate game?

Alex: I actually got into banking first, so I was very fortunate to get into banking right out of high school.

My older brother was working at Washington mutual, the bank that was bought by chase. And so I started as a bank teller, uh, learning the financial field, so to speak. And really fell in love because nobody in my family had ever been in anything like that. Um, so I wasn’t banking. I thought I was going to be a banker for actually my whole life, but then I got the opportunity to go into the mortgage business.

So I was working for banking for five years, and then I went to the mortgage business, uh, before it crashed and did really well there. Um, but then I didn’t have any money, my management skills and then the market crashed. I lost it all. And it’s been a slow climb back up through real estate. Uh, become an agent, did some property management did some short-term rentals, Airbnb stuff.

And now I’ve been full-time real estate investing now on that side of things for about four years.

Brandon: Oh, very cool. So you, if I remember right, you started like early on, when you got into real estate, you ended up working for somebody else to begin with, is that right? Or you were like, uh, something cold collar or something like that.

Right.

Alex: So I worked for a real estate investor, very successful one, uh, in, uh, Southern California for a year. Um, and then I ended up working for another really successful real estate investment firm, a much bigger one for another year and a half before I went out on my own, because I really want to know what I was doing.

Brandon: Yeah. So this is what I wanna, I wanna spend a little time on this, because this is such a cool strategy that most people skip over. It’s almost like the apprentice stage, right? Like where you’re, you’re learning how and David and I talk a lot about this. This is like, This apprentice stage where you’re learning from somebody, hopefully making some money at the same time, but rather than just trying to figure all out on your own.

So first of all, let’s walk through, how did you even get that gig? Like what, like, did you answer a ad in a newspaper? Like where did that come from?

Alex: Question? Well, what happened was that when I was a real estate agent, uh, after the recession, I was doing a lot of short sales. So that’s kind of where I got the real estate investment bug.

I saw that the investors that I was getting these short sales approved for, we’re making like a hundred thousand dollars a deal. And that just sparked my interest, but I didn’t take action for about three years or so because, um, you know, life and I was just not taking action. And then what happened was once I had built up this Airbnb, uh, income.

It was somewhat passive, but I didn’t own the properties. Um, so I saw an opportunity for me to jump into real estate investing, which I had already been thinking about for years, but had the, you know, the, the about four or 5,000 income coming from the Airbnb properties. So I went ahead and looked on Craigslist and just basically found a real estate investors looking for somebody, a sales person and inside sales person, ISA right.

And just basically apply for the job. And he liked my experience. Obviously I had banking, I had mortgage, I had real estate agent experience. So I had a lot of experience and it was a real. I would call it downgrade because I had, I mean, I was getting paid a lot less when I’m normally getting paid, but I wanted to be in the game.

I want to learn from somebody that was doing exactly what I wanted to do. And I mean, I really learned that from bigger pockets, but you guys talking about it so much because I understood that, Hey, I need to be around somebody. Who’s actually doing this business. Not just read some books, not just, you know, go out and watch some podcasts or anything like that.

I need to actually be in the game with somebody. And so that’s what I did. And I went to go work for him for about a year until I went to the company. Yeah. Yeah.

David: This is probably like the perfect Cinderella story of everything that we tell people. This is how you do it. First off, you started off by doing a little bit of everything.

That is something we Brandon and I had a long talk about this on a romantic walk on the beach one day. And he was saying, you know, I think you’ve got to start off. Cause we were talking about how you have to say no to more things in life when you’re good. But in the beginning you had to say, yes, you should start off saying yes to everything.

You’re young. Say yes. Learn as much as you can get exposed to as much as you can see where you enjoy it, where you fit in. And then once you find that niche that, you know is your thing, then you start saying no. And it sounds like that’s exactly what you did. I love that the second piece was that you took the apprenticeship route.

You said I want to build big wealth with real estate, but I’m not. Ignorant enough to think I could do this on my own, that there actually is a method to the madness. And if I go work for somebody else, I can learn what they’re doing. I can help make that person money. They will help give me education that will help make me money.

Was that something you planned on doing, or is this just kind of how the situation unfolded as you took each little step?

Alex: Actually I planned it because I did read that book mastery by Robert Green. And there was a great, great chapter in there called the apprenticeship phase where we’re basically talking about.

So that helped me understand like what I had to do. You know, it really gave me like a roadmap, like, Hey, this is your apprenticeship shape. Uh, apprenticeship phase. And I made a commitment, honestly, because I had failed before in real estate of giving it 10 years. Like, Hey, I’m going to invest 10 years of my life in real estate investing because I know if I put in that decade, by the time that 10 years is done, I’ll be fine.

And so it would help me with. The story, the daily struggles and helped me with, you know, making this guy a huge amount of money and I’m making very little and swallowing my Eagle on a regular basis. Yeah. So I did kind of plan it that way, but you know, it did get to a point where I knew that, Hey, I’ve kind of plateaued with him.

And that’s where somebody who actually reached out to me and they recruited me to go work for a much larger company with an equity stake in, in, in the deals and a much more of a formal role and something where I could continue growing in just that next phase of the apprenticeship. Phase, so to speak.

Brandon: So how did that the first one? So you, you did the air, like the Airbnb arbitrage to get some money coming in through, right. Uh, can you just mention real quick? W w how did that strategy work? Like, what was it, and then we’ll go on back to the apprentice thing.

Alex: Sure. We were renting apartments in Hollywood where there’s a lot of tourists.

A lot of people coming in, this was like 2014, 15. Airbnb hadn’t really been heavily regulated yet. So we would basically get an arrangement going with department managers where they would get some slice of the income. So we’d offer them two, $300 and then they would allow us to do full-time Airbnb on those.

So we, you know, we do the Airbnb, we, I mean, we put furniture in there, we’d pay our Mo you know, rent every month we paid, we had a system with the cleaning ladies. So. We really put that together. And then it eventually being, it ended up being where we had about 10 of those. It was when my brother and I, and we were splitting the income on that.

But wasn’t that you do, what’s your head on the system. You didn’t really have that much actual work to do on each unit. So that allowed me to have that income coming in and go work for the first guy.

Brandon: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I like that strategy a lot and it still works. I know people who still do it today, but like you said, it was, it was kind of wild West back there.

Uh, and so there weren’t a lot of laws against Airbnb today. There’s a ton of like, Legislation. You’ve got to do this. You got to that, but there are still areas and there are still people who you find ways to get it done. And we’ve had multiple people on the show. Talk about that strategy over the years.

So also just to bring back something, we talked about a minute ago, Robert Green at book mastery. So for those who are interested, we did have Robert Green on the show. It was episode three 15, it’s a biggerpockets.com/show three one five, where he talked about that concept of the apprentice and the apprenticeship and the master.

So, okay. Devin, go back and listen to that. And I’m actually working through master right now. I read it quickly, like kind of like a real quick read before we had them on the show. I just trying to get through it. But because I like to do that before we have a big authors, but I’m kind of going like deep dive, one chapter at a time right now, uh, underlining stuff that, you know, it was anyway.

Very, very good book. So let, let’s go back then to that world of you got this, this gig working for the one investor, like basically being these inside sales person and then the other investor, how did those. To like, structured, like, Whoa, what was the, how did you make money on either one of those? What was that like?

And what was the difference between the two?

Alex: Sure. So the first guy was an inside sales agent. Essentially. I was a glorified telemarketer. I was in there just pounding the phones, six, seven hours a day. Also doing some door knocking. I was getting paid a small salary. I think it was like. $3,000 a month.

Okay. And then I was getting a flat fee per deal that we actually acquired when we acquired it, because he didn’t really wholesale. He was just all about flipping and he would keep all those small multi-family things that fit more of an income property. So I would get to $2,500. So, but his buying criteria was that he wanted to make a deep discount.

It was all about the discount with him. If he didn’t make a hundred thousand dollars profit on the deal, he didn’t even want to touch it. So it was really difficult to get them deals, but I was after the first deal, I got them about three months in every month after that, I was getting an average about one.

Brandon: That’s cool. That’s very cool. Uh, so why the transition then? Why did you transition from that to going out on your own?

Alex: Well, a great question. I, I always. That was always the goal, right? I want to be a full-time real estate investor, flipping houses full time, because I did love his blueprint. The first guy I worked for, but then I went to go work for that second company after a year.

And that company I saw there were different. There were like a flip, flip factory. They were flipping over 200 houses a year annually in Southern California. And they had more systems in place, had a lot more employees. So I got to see their operation from the inside. And at that, when I went to go work for the second company, And then that year and a half, I got them 54 properties.

And my best month I got them eight deals. So I saw volume in that

Brandon: eight deals in one month

Alex: and one month we closed on eight deals I brought in. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah. So during that year and a half, I just, I saw a lot, uh, and I learned a lot and I saved money because I was making more. And so right at, towards the end, I just felt that, Hey, I’ve learned enough.

I built the relationships. I got the knowledge, I’ve got enough money to flip, buy two houses on my own in Southern California. And that’s when I, you know, I left on good terms and I went on my own.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s cool. So this is actually when you walked into my life then, because you came, you had just start on your own.

This is like what? A year and a half ago. Maybe. I don’t know.

Alex: About 16 months ago.

Brandon: Okay. Yeah. So, right. So you, you went on your own and then you took a vacation and you came to Maui. I think you had done a couple maybe before that, but like, you were

Alex: just done like four or five on my own with joint venture partners and things like that.

Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah. It was definitely something today idea, because I know you use a lot of joint venture stuff, so I want to get on that. So you, you took a trip to Maui and you hit me up and said, Hey, I’m coming to Maui. And you wanted to know, I think you want to know where I go to church, right? So you met me and you actually showed up and we ended up talking for a while and then, uh, you ended up joining us for that Maui mastermind event that we had that Tara Yarber and I put on.

And like, you are such an amazing person to have a bet at that mastermind. I’m like, you, you, you were the last person that joined it. I had one more spot available and we were like, well, we just won’t have somebody. Then you came into the last second, but just having you there. You just have like the spirit, the spunk that like everyone was like, Oh man, I love Alex.

This is what I mean. So I, first of all, thank you for coming that you made that trip so much better, uh, that whole experience, but then you got around basically 18 other people who were all like, you know, high top, you know, high level, top investors. Uh, I’m curious like how that. Played into like everything else that came after that.

We’re about to talk about like, did you, like, I’m not asking you to like, give me a, you know, Hey, that Brendan’s event was great, but I just want to like, just get getting around those people. How did that play into your future?

Alex: Oh, it was game changer. It was a game changer because I was already heading in a positive direction.

I was already a huge fan of bigger pockets. I listened probably 200 episodes, you know, at that point. So it was an honor to meet you in person and then you, and then you, it was such a blessing because I was like, Oh, wow, like, I’m going to get to come back to Hawaii. And so it was short notice, but yeah, I came back and then my mind was so expanded by being around all these other guys, uh, all these other gals too.

And basically what it did for me is it helped me to just look at, you know, a bunch of bigger picture than what I was already thinking. I was thinking, Hey, I’m going to go and do my own thing. I’m going to flip. You know, say a house a month and just kind of live a good life, but I didn’t really have a overall plan.

But in that mastermind, a big theme of the mastermind was clarity. Like, what exactly do you want your life to look like? What exactly you want your business to look like? And it wasn’t like a typical real estate seminar, right? Where you’re just going there, you’re getting knowledge and you know, speakers are on stage and they’re giving you information.

It was group huddles. We also did amazing events together. We got to build these bonds. And I like to say I was the dumbest guy in the room and I’m proud of it because

Brandon: I think I claim that role

Alex: because they were such smart individuals there. And I got to also see their problems, which was much larger than my problems.

And so that was huge. And also they were all like friends, colleagues, and mentors almost at the same time throughout this. Journey where I’ve been able to call them lean on them, ask them questions, ask them advice, follow them on social, the media, continue to get inspiration and say, Hey, that person, I know that person.

And they’re killing it. I mean, I’m so lucky to have this person in my network. So network is huge because it has that accountability factor and the inspiration and all that in one. So it was an amazing event. So thank you so much for allowing me to attend.

Brandon: No, thanks for coming.

David: Alex, would you say that being exposed to people with bigger problems than yours changed how you looked at your own problems and in essence made them seem like they were easier than you were probably thinking before that.

Alex: Absolutely. I specifically remember ag, Osborne saying something about him having to buy like another jet. I remember I was like, okay, I don’t have problems like that, but I’d like to have problems like that. Huh. Well, so yeah, that when you’re exposed to other people that are living lives, like that are just like, okay, well, you know what, my problems aren’t that.

Big, and I need to have problems

David: you in realizing your problems aren’t as big as you thought is not just so you could say, well, that person’s more important is because now doing the work that it takes to be successful, doesn’t feel as hard. I got to, all I got to do is jump on the phone and call 25 people today before this conversation that felt like ridiculously hard.

I’m not up to it. I don’t think I can do it. Then you hear someone who’s talking about being sued or trying to manage 20 flips in a month or something. And you’re like, yeah, I’m kind of lucky that all I gotta do is make 25 calls. I feel like that’s something that I’ve really enjoyed about getting around more successful people is that you get perspective.

And then the load feels lighter. At least to me, it does. When I see what someone else is doing. And I, you know, I’m frustrated with an employee on my team and I hear someone talk about 20 people just quit their team and they got to go fill 20 positions. It doesn’t seem nearly as bad. I’m really curious to hear and we kind of skipped over it a little bit.

So I want to take us back just a little. When you left the employer that you had, you had built up some skills working for them that helped you put eight people in contract in a month. Obviously that is a very important skill to have in real estate investing. Because as we say all the time, it’s the ability to get the deal.

That’s the most valuable. Would you mind helping the listeners understand. The value that you place on the skill of talking to sellers and getting them to agree to put their house in contract or noticing maybe who’s motivated and who’s not. And how that skill served you when you said, okay, now I’m going to go start my own thing.

Alex: Oh, absolutely. I resonate the most with the acquisition side of real estate investing because selling and negotiating presenting are some of my best skills. So there were used a lot. So I found that I feel like I found a role that. I could use what I do best the majority of the day. And that was just getting after making offers, talking to sellers, but being able to talk to agents, being able to talk to wholesalers, being able to talk to sellers is one of the most important skills as an investor, because these are the opportunities that are coming to you.

And you need to be able to influence these people, to consider your offer and to give you, uh, to get some engagement there. And so it’s a huge skill. And I mean, maybe not everybody’s going to be in sales or in acquisitions, but then you need to have someone on your team that is great at that, because then you’re not going to get consistent deal flow.

And that’s what we look for. It’s not just one great deal we want, I want to get consistent, great deals.

David: So, let me ask you, if you started off again and you didn’t work for someone else, you take yourself on your first day, I’m going to go work for this real estate investor, but you started your own business.

You ascribed to that whole, I’m not going to go make someone else money. I’m going to make me money. How do you see your ability to build wealth or put people under contract being affected? If you had not had that training and experience working in someone else’s company.

Alex: Oh, wow. That’s a, that’s a tough one.

I think I would have struggled. I think I might’ve quit. I think I might’ve bought a bad deal or maybe not got as many deals because I didn’t have the financial backing. I didn’t have all the knowledge, you know, everything else that I needed to execute all these deals. So I just, I don’t, I can’t even think about it.

I think it would have been very difficult. Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah. Then yeah. I just, I love all this stuff and I want to stress this point that you made about deal flow, right? It’s not about so many new investors get into this game and in the beginning, yeah. You just want to get a deal. Everyone wants to get a deal.

They wanna get their first deal, but you’re like, it’s not about the deal, right? If you want to have a business, it’s like, imagine you owning a McDonald’s right. And like, you’re like, got to sell a hamburger. You guys, we got to sell a hammer and you go outside. You’re like, would you want to buy a hamburger?

Come in here. And then you get your hamburger. You’re like, we did it. We got a hamburger, like. And then you’re like, okay, crap. Now we can’t pay our bills. And that’s how so many people approach real estate. So I did that for years. I lived in very, like, go get a deal and then I would go get the deal. And then I’ve stopped all my deal, getting activities.

And then I would go, and now I’ve got to rehab that day. And then I go rehab the deal. Then I got to sell that deal. Or if I’m gonna flip it right. Or re refinance it or rent it or whatever I’m going to do, I got to, you know, operate the deal and then I’m out. And then I’m like, okay, take a deep breath. Oh, shoot.

I got to go get another hamburger. Right. And then I go out there and I do it again. Right. And so what you mentioned was like deal flow. What you want is not a deal. You want deal flow. So can you explain, like, what does that mean? So those who are listening and say, how do I build deal flow? Like how, how do you even, how did you, and how do you build deal flow?

What’s your, your like kind of techniques there?

Alex: Well, you need to have a system, right? A system for analyzing deals, a system for making offers consistently because I found that. If you don’t have those in, you’re just gonna kind of flying by the seat of your pants every single day. My number one goal is to make one solid offer and that could be an off-market deal.

That could be an MLS deal, but I’ve broken it down to that kind of single goal because I’ve found that. If I get overwhelmed, Oh, I got to make five offers this day, or, you know, so it’s more about having a consistent deal flow and to do that, you need to be making offers consistently and to make offers consistently.

You need to be analyzing deals consistently. So I just found that a lot of people are stuck, stuck in their head or in this theory, they understand real estate kind of the theory of it. But they’re not applying that knowledge and seeing that engagement that happens when you’re making offers every single day and getting in the game, too many people are sitting on the sideline because they just overthinking it.

But it’s not that difficult. The more deals you analyze some also, you know, I, I’m a big fan of, of the way you talk about that. Just analyzing a hundred deals. I think you talked a lot about that. Right? And at this point, I think I’ve calculated. I’ve. Analyze, probably 5,000 deals over the last four. So good.

Yeah. Last four years, but I haven’t bought 5,000 properties, you know, but it’s one of those things you analyze that, man, you just get this like spider sense. You just can see a good deal. I think that’s one of my strengths. Now I could spot a good deal. Kind of a mile away now. Like I sometimes just got to drop whatever you’re doing, because you’ve seen so many deals.

You’re like, Oh, this one has potential. And then a lot of what we do, as much as we’re disqualifying, we’re just getting rid of deals. This is not a deal. This is not a deal. Oh, wait. This one looks like it might have some, it’s not a deal. This one is not. And then you finally find that one and then you’re all over that the whole day, because it warrants that much attention.

So that’s

David: yeah. That is a great segue into my next question for you. And this is why we’re interviewing you because it’s very hard to find somebody. Who is, I mean, a lot of people will say where they get deals. I find them here. I find them there. The problem is if you’re the listener, once you find the deal, you don’t know what to do with it, or you don’t know how to tell if it’s a deal.

And I can tell Alex, because you worked for someone else, you got so many at-bats when that pitch comes out of the pitcher’s hand, you know, That’s going to be a strike. That’s going to be a ball. This is a curve ball. And you know how to adjust your approach based on the type of seller you have. So I want to see if we can pull some of that out of you.

Can you give us some practical advice regarding what you look for when you think you’ve got a deal? How you would know if it’s not a deal, maybe what are some of the things you do to disqualify. People. And then once we know what a deal looks like, I’ll ask you some follow-up questions about how you would analyze it.

Alex: Sure, sure. Um, well I think number one with it’s off market, I would say like having a true motivation. So being able to spot out real pain, I know that sounds bad, but it’s basically. If you use empathy a lot when you’re dealing with, or I do, because it helps you put yourself in their situation. So if you’re dealing with a hoarder, if you’re dealing with somebody that’s in foreclosure, if there’s a high level of pain and they have real intention to sell the property, that’s my number one when it comes to off market, because then I know like this person truly has to do something and I’m here to help them solve that problem.

And so I think when it comes to spotting out, um, opportunities on the off market, I think is just, and so many people ask me, they send me DMS on Instagram. They’re like, what should I say here? And what should I say there? Somebody is truly more motivated if you’re listening to, you could hear that they’re motivated.

Right. So I think that would be on the off Mark when it comes to like on-market MLS opportunities. I think what’s really important to recognize is, is having. True engagement with an agent in my market. I let a lot, a lot of the deals that I’ve got from the 80 plus deals that I’ve worked on over the past four years, over 50 of them have come from the MLS.

Brandon: Oh, wow.

Alex: Yeah. Wow. And of those 50, over 80 of them, I’m sorry. 80% of them, of those 50, the listing agent represented me on that. So first that would be one, right? Where you’re as an investor. You’re not, you’re not thinking about. Commissions, or you’re not thinking about any of that. You’re thinking about buying deals.

So that’s something that is important there that you could use that card. You have to use it in the right way. But what I have found is that when I get that real engagement from, uh, agents where they, they, they like me or they, they like what I’m. Saying, and they see my offer and then they engage with me.

It just having that back and forth, just kind of ebb and flow that you get from negotiating a deal P so many people think they’re just going to make an offer. It’s going to get accepted and then it’s going to turn into a deal, but it’s not like that you got to make offers. And then they, you know, you get a counter offer or, you know, you want to make an offer, talk to the agent and see what the motivation of the seller is.

So getting real conversation, going with agents, I have found to be another indicator that. You know, particularly listing agents is another good indicator that you have a chance of getting a deal. You don’t, they’re not going to tell you for sure how I’m going to give you this deal, but you’re in the running and that’s what you want.

You want to be consistently in the running to get your offer accepted or countered. So then that way you can sharpen your pencil, you can get your contractor in there, you know, make it more aggressive, offer it after the fact, after you’ve looked at it with somebody that you trust on the construction side.

So those would be the, probably the two things I think about when it comes to spotting out deals.

David: That’s great. So what I heard you say the most important thing is you’re looking for pain and this is what I find from every high level person that does what they do. When I say, how do you know the right lead regardless of your business, by the way, it’s the same in real estate.

If you come to me and say, Hey, David, I want to buy a house, but you know what? I’m really comfortable where I am. I live with my mom. It’s free. I’ll be here for the next 10 years. But if a great deal comes along, I’ll buy it. Yeah, you can tell right away, Alex, you’re like, yeah, that’s probably not the client you want to work with.

You’re going to be just working work and work. And they’re never going to go anywhere versus, Hey, we just moved. I’m coming to California. I got one month to find a house that is going to be the best client you’ve ever worked with. They’re going to be very responsive. They’re going to jump all over what you find them.

It’s like that with off market deals too. If that seller is not in pain, there’s no reason for them to give you a discount on the property. And what I find with amateurs is that they find a opportunity. And they say, how do I make this work? How do I make the seller take my offer? What Jedi mind trick can I play?

But that’s not really how you’re looking at it, Alex. You’re saying, okay, that’s not a deal. If they’re not in pain, I’m not going to try to make it work. I’m going to go move on to the next one, to find the person who is in pain, who has to get rid of this. So as you’re listening, please listen for. Points of pain.

That’s the person who wants your all cash offer. Who wants the quick close the person who’s not in pain. Doesn’t need a quick close there. They’re happy to go forever. And you also brought up a great point about on-market deals and off-market deals, how you approach them differently. Brandon, do you want to jump in there and share with some of your experience, what you’ve noticed about making the mistake of maybe pursuing an on-market deal with off-market strategies?

Brandon: Sure. I mean, like this is something that bigger pockets were, were. We’re trying to get more and more into this differentiated the two, because when new investors come in and they want to learn real estate, they want to buy their first deal. There’s a lot of strategies that work for on-market that don’t work for often, they do work for off and they don’t work for on, or I don’t know if I said that.

Right. But you get the idea, right? So. What I think is just important to realize. And we brought this up, I think it was last week or maybe one of the previous weeks is that there is a difference. You don’t have to only choose honor on the off, but there’s a difference between how you approach both. So I’m actually going to fire this one back over to Alex and ask, like, what are like when you’re trying to let’s start with on-market you want to buy on-market, which means the property is listed for sale by real estate agent.

What typically are you doing? Like what, what, what do you find works well for to find those on market and then we’ll switch it and talk about what do you find that’s working well for off market?

Alex: Oh, for sure. So on market. Well, number one thing that I do look for is that it’s listed within striking distance of making a deal.

So for example, in my market, if I see a deal listed, say at $400,000, and then I know based on my experience and maybe doing a quick and dirty analysis, desktop analysis of the deal real quickly, uh, if. I need to get that deal. Say 75,000 under the asking price or more. I won’t pursue it. I’ll let it sit because it’s going to probably become a stale listing.

That’s what I’ve noticed. It needs to be listed at a good enough price where it almost works off the listing price, because the way I have, what I see is that if that agent couldn’t even get that seller. To list their property at a sellable price, then they’re probably not that good of an agent and it’s gonna be hard for them to get my offer accepted whether they write it or not.

David: Right. Really good. And I know you’re still going, but that’s so good.

Alex: Right. And then also, um, they’re, I mean, they’re just. Not going to be able to negotiate there. So they’re probably not a good agent, like I just said. And so that’s one thing I just it’s out the window. I’m not going to continue to pursue that deal.

I’m going to let it sit. I’m going to set a reminder and we’ll go back to that. But, um, and obviously I’m looking forward that that genuinely needs work because if it doesn’t need work, then what value am I going to add? There’s nothing there it’s, if it’s really good condition, because a lot of times you’ll see a deal when it’s listed at a good price, but it’s just going a good agent.

They’re listing it low so they can get a lot of offers, but it’s not going to end up selling for a lot higher than that. And it’s in good condition and it’s what I call financial boy. If I look at it on my market deal and it’s clearly listed low, but it’s kind of financial, but maybe it needs a little bit of work, a little TLC, but it’s not really a flip opportunity.

So I think when you’re looking on MLS and on-market deals, I think like this 90% of the deals are going to be retail or overpriced, there’s that less than 10%, that might be an investment opportunity. And those are the ones that you want to focus the most attention on.

Brandon: You know, when it goes, when it comes to those 10%, what I like to say is I’m always looking for what I call hidden potential.

Right? It’s those things that nobody else happens to see or scares away everybody else. So I, I always say this example, but I think it’s a good one. I always look for to better now in my markets, typically I look for two bedroom houses that have over like a thousand, 1100, 1200 square feet, because I know that.

The value of a three-bedroom is usually way more than a two bedroom in most markets I investing because it’s family versus more, you know, young person transit nature, which is like the one and two bedrooms and studios. And then three, four, five bedrooms are bigger. So if I can add a bedroom because there’s 1500 square feet in a two bedroom house, well, I know that there’s probably like two living rooms and, uh, you know, a massive, huge back porch that they’re counting.

That could be a, you know, a family room or it could be a bedroom. Right. So I’m always looking for those opportunities. Like there. It smells like bad smells. That’s hidden potential. I love, uh, just like functional obsolescence where there’s just like stuff that you’re like, well, that’s like, for example, there’s a bathroom in between two bedrooms, the only way to get to the bathroom.

And like, if there’s one bathroom in the house, the only way to get there is by going through a bedroom, that’s just weird. Right? Because anybody coming over a guest is now got to. Go through a bedroom to get to that. It’s weird. Right. But it’s not a terrible li hard thing usually to move that around, to add a doorway or to open things up.

So those, like when I look for on-market stuff, that’s what I’m looking for. Is those, those hidden potential, I think to everyone else misses, or sometimes you get listings that have. Only one photo on the MLS because the agent was just too lazy or it’s such bad condition inside that they don’t even want to take a picture of the inside.

Right. So that’s hidden potential as well. Probably they’ve been sitting on the market for a long, long, long, long time. There’s hidden potential maybe there, because those sellers get more and more. Eager to sell if they can’t sell their properties, but on the market for six months or nine months. So there may be potential there.

So that’s some of the on-market stuff that I do. And I know you do as well. Now, what about off market? What’s been your kind of go-to lately for that

Alex: and the on, off market. I really like internet leads. I’ve done well with those, with like Google, PPC and

Brandon: PPC for those that don’t know

Alex: pay-per-click so basically you’re paying.

Four clicks to your website and then hopefully those, you know, those leads convert. Yeah. So those have been great. Also, still do cold calling. So I don’t do it anymore, but I have somebody that on my team that does, so we still cold call list all the lists that we’ve all heard about. Absentee owners, foreclosures, all that.

And so those are the main ways that I get off market deals, which is through the cold calling or internet leads.

Brandon: Now you mentioned to me yesterday, I don’t remember the exact number we were. Yeah. We were sitting surfing. I’ve been, we’ve been surfing the last couple of days. Right. And you said, you said something like.

Yeah. You know, I felt like my Google, or it was a Google ads. Weren’t, you know, doing all that well last year. And then I realized how much I had made off of them. Can you explain how much you spent? What was it? Google or Facebook ads? One of the two Google. Okay. So what, what was that like? Cause that, I thought that blew my mind.

Alex: Yeah. So I ended up getting three deals, uh, that made somewhere around $200,000. And, um, I think that we spent about $3,000 a month. So yeah, it was about $36,000. But what happened was. In the first four months we got the first two good deals. And then it was a huge gap until the end of the year. And the cost per leads starting to go up a skyrocket, skyrocketing up.

Um, the service I was getting from the company, I was running ads. Wasn’t what it was at the beginning. And so, and I, obviously, I didn’t even know that we’re going to make that much during that time. So then I end up cutting the ads off. I’m going to start them up again. Actually the last deal I just got came through my website organically.

Oh, nice. So that was, that was great. I’ll deal that we just closed on. Yeah. So it was like, I looked at the numbers at the end of the year and I’m like, wow, like I got to start this again, but I didn’t know that during w all I saw was like, I’m spending $3,000 a month and I’m not getting anything for it in the middle of, of that, uh, of that year.

Not anything, but it just was frustrating that the cost for a cost per lead was going up. Yeah, the leads weren’t getting better. We weren’t getting any contracts, but it’s one of the things you just got to keep testing and continue to market because you just don’t know what’s going to work. But once I looked at the numbers, I’m like, Oh, wait, I got to start this again.

Yeah. That’s so cool.

David: Yeah. It’s

Brandon: it’s and I think it illustrates another point is that you felt like you weren’t getting any progress, but then at the end it all came kind of through at some point and you realize you did right. I mean, this is true of so many areas of life. Right. And this is why we always tell people, trust the process.

Like we should get t-shirts and I’ll just say, trust the process, because sometimes you have to remind yourself that like, like for example, if you’re trying to lose weight, right. And you’re like, I’m going to stick with this diet for a while I’m doing keto or I’m doing vegetarian or whatever you want to do.

Right. Like it all works. Like all those different things typically work. If you work them long enough and yeah, we hit plateaus eventually. But if you just trust the process of diet and exercise, you’ll probably get the shape you want. Now you might have to tweak things. I’m not saying like, be lazy about it, but the same applies to real estate.

The same applies to everything, right? Like going on regular dates with your spouse. Is a process that if you did that regularly and tried to improve the quality of those dates, that process should lead to a deeper relationship by doing the same with your kids. I take in 20 minutes a day to play with your kid down on the floor.

It might seem like, Oh, I’m not making much progress. But over time, if you stick with it, it’s going to work. And so what you’re, what I hear you saying here is that real is about trusting the process. Like those tactics do work, but again, it doesn’t mean you’ll be lazy about it. It doesn’t mean all direct mail is going to work.

You have to continually refine your direct mail, refine your cold calling, refine your, your, whatever it is. You’re doing your, your SEO. Try to improve your website, try to improve your, your cost per click on ads. But if you do that and you’re consistent with it, you’re going to get the results you want.

And I know David, you do that with real estate agents as well. Like if there’s a process behind success in anything that we do, any business venture relationship or fitness, whatever. So yeah. Trust the process and speak. I want to bring up a process. We talk about this, David and I do webinars for BiggerPockets every year, week.

One of us we’ll do one and we teach like thousands of people about real estate. Every time the conversation at some point turns this thing that we call the lapse funnel lap S. And it’s just a very simple way of looking at real estate. Will you get leads somehow you analyze those leads. Like however you analyze leads, you run the numbers on them to figure out what you can pay.

And the great thing about real estate is you can learn. It’s like not too hard to learn. We do it live every week on these webinars. We work backwards from whatever we can sell it for. If it’s a flip or what we can rent it for what kind of return we want. And then we get a number and then we go after it.

So the L is at leads, a is analyze P is pursue, which is basically make, make an offer. Now we don’t call it offer because you know, if one, it doesn’t fit with laps. That sounds like a nice phrase. Allow us doesn’t sound quite as good, but it’s also because like, people are like, Oh, an offer is scary. Well, it’s not always an offer.

Right? Like, especially off market. You’re not always going to make an offer. Sometimes it’s a. Phone call of just pursuing the deal you’re going after you’re having a conversation. So tell me mr. Seller, what you know, like, did you have a price in mind that you wanted to get to a, you know, like have you been offered anything before?

How did you feel about that that’s pursuing, and then finally, if you trust that process, get leads and constantly improve the leads, you’re getting, analyze them and continually find better with analyze and do it more effectively and efficiently and, and like, you know, attract. And you continually pursue deals regularly.

Making offers. The last part of lapse is S success. You’re going to land the deals you want. You’re going to get success. And that funnel, right. Everyone knows. I love funnels here at BiggerPockets. That funnel is what gets you deals. And I always say that every real estate investor in the world, everyone follows the lap system, just some followup better.

And so when we talked about the skills earlier that you picked up from. Working as the apprentice up for these companies. I think a lot of those skills are just the lab skills. It’s learning how to get the leads regularly, learning how to analyze deals correctly, learning how to pursue offers and negotiate, and then getting those closing.

So once you have that, you can go out there. And the great thing is. Most of this stuff does not require money. I want to make this point because people are like, well, you know, I don’t know what the market’s going to do. Should I, should I pursue real estate right now? Yes. It doesn’t take any effort or commitment to do the lap.

Part of the lapsed funnel. You can get leads for free. You can analyze them for free. I mean, maybe you pay for a BiggerPockets pro membership, which costs you, you know, a few hundred bucks a year. So you have our, our analysis tools, but like really, it’s not like. It’s not a lot of investment here. And then you can start talking with sellers.

You can start pursuing deals. You don’t have to sign your name on it line if you, if you felt weird at the end. But if you did, if you landed the deal, like now’s the time to practice now, the time to get into it. So when the deal does land, you’ll feel confident. And like you said earlier, you’ve analyzed a lot of deals because now you’ve got that practice.

You’ve got the reps in so you can recognize deal. So anyway, they rant over, uh, but. I just love how everything that David and I have been preaching for years on these webinars on these podcasts. Like you just like, you’re the embodiment of it. So, you know, dude, you’re awesome. Let’s go some specifics back to your story.

How many deals have you done now since going out on your own? Like what, and what kind of deals were they?

Alex: So now I’ve done about 14, 14 deals on my own, and they’ve been mainly flips. And, um, I’ve done a couple of, a couple of those were joint ventures because you know, every so often I’ll run low on capital on them.

I, I like to joint ventures because. They allow me to, uh, bring in somebody else that I trust, like and respect into my, you know, my business. And then we split responsibilities and they fund the deal. And then we, I don’t typically wholesale that much because I do like to see the transformation of all these properties and also in my market, it’s a little bit harder to wholesale.

And sometimes when you’re buying stuff on MLS, it’s also more difficult to wholesale than if you’re buying it off market.

Brandon: Makes sense.

Alex: Yeah.

David: So tell me a little more about what your joint venture process looks like. How do you choose your partners? How do you split everything up?

Alex: So currently in my joint venture process process, I have a two or three joint venture partners.

So what I’ve found in the, in success with is that I will build these relationships with people that they know what I’m doing. They know because I’m out there, I’m pretty active on social media. And so they see that I’m actively flipping property. So if they are, they have interest, I’ll let them know, Hey, this is kind of how it works.

You would be basically responsible for funding the deal, um, all of it. And then I will find a deal. That’s going to make us at least $50,000 profit. And then we can go ahead and split that 50, 50. That’s currently how I’m doing, um, graduating to something where I will need to do that as much anymore, but it’s helped me get to where I’m at now.

So I don’t have anything bad to say about it because if you could find a great deal, it’s amazing to partner with someone. And that’s where you hear people say, Hey, you can do real estate without none of your own money, because if you are good at finding deals, then you don’t need the money. Just go out there and consistently find good deals.

Brandon: Yeah. And I I’ve done that now with, you know, with Greg, a number of times here in Maui. Now, David, you’ve done that a number of times as well. Like, uh, like it, it just, it works right. David, anything you want to add on that? Because, and again, I know you’ve been really successful with the JV stuff in the past as well.

Yeah,

David: I’ll give an analogy of when you watch the Moneyball movie about the Oakland A’s and Billy Bean. One of the highlights in that movie was Billy Bean was looking for players that could get on base. He determined that was the most important metric in baseball. If you got guys that could get on base, your team would win because then other players who hit home runs or had a good batting average would be driving him in and a walk was just as good of a hit.

What. A lot of people make the mistake on is saying, I want to be great. And I’m going to go practice based stealing. I’m going to practice how to be the best base runner I can. And they have this amazing skill set that never comes into play because they don’t get on base. And it doesn’t, it almost didn’t even help them with real estate.

Getting the deal under contract is getting on base with baseball. When you have that, when you have the deal, everybody else who’s focused on doing their job well needs. You. The title company needs you. The realtor who wants to sell houses need you, the buyer’s agents. They need you to list that house. The person looking for the deals that are looking to be investors need you the hard money lenders I could go on forever.

Every single role in real estate investing is relying on the person who gets that deal. And Alex here learned I’m going to do the most important thing. And then what he found was that finding money was easy. There’s people with a ton of money that are running around looking for who’s got the deal. I got to invest all my money and that question comes up so often to Brandon and I, what do I do?

How do I get money? Or how do I do this thing? And what you find is when you get a really good deal, they come looking for you, their job you’re their lead. That’s their lapse funnel is to find you, they’re looking for people like you.

Brandon: That’s so true. Uh, before we get to the deal, deep dive, which I want to get to in a second.

I want to talk real briefly about your use of social media. Because you’ve done a really good job over the past few months, and they lost a year of building your, your Instagram presence. For example, I want to know why do you do that? And what kind of benefit have you seen for that over the last

Alex: year?

Sure, sure. Well, at the beginning I was using it just to document my journey, right. Just to show people kind of what I was working on and build that credibility when I was working for the other investors. But when I went out on my own, I took it a lot more seriously because I did learn. Uh, some great advice and great tactics from investor go Brit from Brian piñata, uh, at the mastermind.

But the benefit I I saw was that I immediately got was I was attracting younger, real estate entrepreneurs in my market, which are perfect for me as an investor because they’re out there also pounding the pavement and getting opportunities, but they don’t know how to analyze the deals as well as I do.

They don’t know how to convert. As well as I do. So I, um, I saw a huge benefit when I got this deal that I did a joint venture on and my partner and I made $80,000 on that deal. And I didn’t really spend any money for marketing because I got it from somebody that reached out to me on Instagram. And so I looked at that kind of like the PPC, right?

The Google, where I looked at it after the fact I’m like, wait a minute, we made $80,000 on that deal. And all I did was share content regularly on Instagram, on what I’m already doing, but just cultivated a little bit better than I was doing in the past. And so, um, now I, I recently got another deal through Instagram as well through having my hashtag flipping LA.

And so I guess that’s trending. And you know, if you pulled that up, you could see like top 10 of the 20 posts are mine. And so somebody reached out to me and then we got a great deal. That’s projected make over a hundred thousand dollars profit too. So that’s why I keep using it because it’s attracting deals and people that I can.

Uh, influence and help and, and along their journey because there’s people that are starting out where I was two, three, four years ago, and I’m trying to help those people. And that was that’s who I post for that.

Brandon: That’s so good. That’s so good, man. Cause like, I, I think there’s a lot of people make the mistake of.

Being consumers and Russell Brunson who wrote a book called traffic secrets. This is where I got this phrase from, but people make the mistake of being a consumer of social media, rather than the creator of social media. The, the consumers of the people just scroll down. Not that we all don’t do that enough, but like when you become a creator of social media, you start using social media as a tool.

To attract people to build trust, to build credibility. I mean, I think we’ve raised in my, in my real estate fund opener capital. I think we’ve raised over $20 million on the last year. We have our third fund launching, like going on right now. And I think it’s like 90% of all the people don’t even come from this podcast, like, which gets, you know, a quarter million listens every week.

It’s from my Instagram. Why, why do most of the money I raised? Why is it from people from Instagram? Because they see. Me over and over and over the way that I treat my, my friends, the way they treat my family, the way that I analyze deals, the way that I talk about real estate and it builds trust and credibility over a long time, people bring deals to me from Instagram as well.

They bring leads, they bring potential off-market, uh, mobile home parks. So they have do all these things. Through social media, because I am a social media, I’m using it as a tool and you are doing the exact same thing. Uh, David here is doing the exact same thing as well. And so it’s just kind of cool to see that in the real world is, and to shift your perspective mean I’m not a social media consumer, I’m a social media creator.

I’m a content creator. Or, and even if you don’t think you’re good behind the camera, that’s okay. You can make posts. Like my most popular stuff is usually like, How to do stuff. I’m just like, here’s how my instinct I’ll be like how to find houses on the MLS. Here are seven tips or here’s, you know, whatever, like just putting out good information, makes people realize that you are a valuable person to follow.

And the hashtag thing is super cool. I haven’t utilized hashtags very much, but that, that you were ha you like, somebody found you by searching hashtag flipping LA. They

David: that’s just, that’s super cool.

Brandon: So. Yeah, kudos to you. All right. So that’s cool. Let’s transition to the next segment of our show. It’s time for the day.

Deep down.

All right. The deal deep dive is the part of the show where we dive deep. Into one particular property that you’ve recently bought. We wanna know all the dirty details about it. So Alex, are you ready to dive into something? Yes, let’s go. All right. So we’re going to ask you a series of questions here and we’ll just need some quick things.

So number one is, first of all, do you have, I know I spring this on you and, but do you have a property in mind that we can dive into?

Alex: Yes, I do.

Brandon: Okay. So first question then, what kind of property is it and where was it located? That’s actually two questions. This should be the deal. Deep dive. Question one and two,

Alex: but it’s a single family residence and it’s located in van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley.

Brandon: All right. Next question, David.

David: At what price did you pay for that property?

Alex: Five 34

Brandon: by five 34. Uh, and then. So we got, how do I, I don’t have my list in

Alex: front of us.

Brandon: Like we do. Hold on. How do we find it? Hold on.

David: Oh,

Brandon: okay. That’s the next one? How do you know we missed one? Did we miss one? I don’t know

Alex: the, I negotiated the deal, but it was a Google ads lead and, uh, the lady was very motivated, some medical issues going on, but I needed to buy the property actually at 500,000 or four 90 to 500,000 to flip it, but she allowed me to do the property subject to.

I, I I’m sure you guys have talked about it. I’m happy to explain that too. So that was why I was able to buy it at five 34.

Brandon: Okay. Okay. Next question. So I pulled up my list here. It was number one. It’s not like I’ve done this a hundred times at this point. It was what kind of property was it? How did you find it?

How much was it? We talked about how you found it. Right?

David: I don’t think we asked what type of property it was. Did we

Alex: still have a house? Yeah.

Brandon: And we’d have a where it was. We talked about how you found it, right. Motivated seller. And how much was it? We talked about that. How’d you negotiate it? How did you fund it?

Alex: Okay. I funded it because she allowed me to take, uh, to take over her mortgage. Okay. That’s right.

Brandon: Yep.

Alex: And all she wanted was a $46,000. So I just gave her the $46,000

Brandon: and now I just came from your own life, my own money. Okay.

David: Can you explain what subject two means?

Alex: Yeah. So subject two means that the property owner is going to sell you the property.

And they’re going to allow you to take over the underlying mortgage that’s on the property. You can’t do that with like cars. You can’t do that with other things, but you can do that with mortgages. There are some details to it, and there are some risks to it. I’m happy to talk about that, but yeah, it allowed me to, it’s a creative way to buy real estate.

Cool.

David: Okay. And what did you do with this property once you bought it?

Alex: Great. So I actually moved into it and made it my primary residence and it was a four bedroom, two bath house. So I did Airbnb on two of the bedrooms in the, uh, in the front of the house. And here’s a kicker. I transformed the detached garage into a.

Amazing office that I used to basically grow my business and to launch my company and to do deals. And so it was like a health hack, but also a business office had

Brandon: one and an Airbnb

Alex: and Airbnb with paid all the mortgage as well. Yeah. And then, um, after a little bit, over a year, I sold it and, um, Okay.

Profit over six figures.

Brandon: Okay. Yeah. That’s another question was, was what was the outcome? So you made a six figure profit.

Alex: Yeah. May close to, uh, right around a hundred. And it was great because I got to live in the property for free, basically that, you know, we’re very low overhead, got to use the office space, got to, uh, you know, it was an incredible deal.

And if I hadn’t done it creatively, that’s the deal I, I could have passed on.

Brandon: Yeah. Crazy.

David: Okay. What lessons did you learn from this deal?

Brandon: What

Alex: lessons? Well, first of all, I think one lesson is not to get attached to real estate because I did get a little bit attached to the property and it sucked up a lot of my capital and it prevented me from buying like one or two deals during the time I was in the property.

So I think you have to, as a real estate investor, you really need to use logic and. And as much as possible because I think our emotions get the best of us and we fall in love with what we have, and we don’t see that, Hey, there’s much better opportunities out there, or this is not the best decision for you financially.

So I think that was one, even though it ended up turning out great. I did run very low on capital, uh, several times because of that property. And another thing that I learned is that. You just gotta be able to think creatively. And it’s not all about price, just like terms as well, because I had pitched these, uh, subject to idea to several owners.

This was actually my first subject to deal because in Southern California, I think it’s a little bit harder because the loan amounts are much higher. So taking over someone’s mortgage payment of like, you know, 480 $490,000, it’s different than somebody that maybe it’s only a hundred grand. I think there’s that.

So just. Continuing to add different tool belts to their tool belt as an investor is something that you need to do that way. You’re not a one trick pony, right? You can do flipping, you can do wholesale and you can do creative financing, all that. It just makes you a much stronger investor. So those were two big ones that stand out.

Brandon: Yeah, so good man. So good that there’s so many good lessons in here. All right. So we’ve got to start heading towards the end of the show. Now kind of final question, probably I actually, two more before we get to the famous four, first of all, where do you see the next few years of your life headed? Like what do you plan to do?

What’s your kind of future look like with real estate? And then second follow up question to that. What do you need from our audience? What could they, how could they bring value to you?

Alex: Great. Thank you. So what I see going forward is obviously I’m living here in Maui now, so I’m going to enjoy Maui. Uh, I’m going to start flipping here in Maui.

Um, I’m also working on my LA business remotely, so we’re flipping about one property month there. So I’m, I’m working to scale that to, to, to, and, uh, just now move, start acquiring more small multifamily either in Southern California, or there’s a couple of markets that I want to start investing in because.

You guys, the first two and a half years of my real estate investing journey, I wasn’t really making that much money. So it’s only really been about a year and a half that it’s been kind of a breakout, you know, for me. So now I’m going to start acquiring rentals and things of that nature because people do ask them about that.

And believe me, I would love to have a huge portfolio, but, you know, that’s where I’m headed. I would like to start to build my, my rental portfolio. And as far as what the audience can do for me, I’m an open book. Um, you know, I am. Interested in helping other people get started in the business because it’s helped transform my life.

And so I derive a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment from helping other people young in the journey and real estate investing. So having reached out to me, um, my Instagram, um, or you know, anything else I’m pretty active on that. I respond and I’m happy to help other people, but if you’re looking for it, if you have any deals in Southern California that you’d like to sell in your wholesaler, Hey, I’m still buying in Southern California.

And also now in Maui.

Brandon: All right. Very cool. All right. Well, with that said, let’s get to the last section of our show. It’s time for our famous, this is, shall we ask the same four questions to you that we ask every week to every guest? I know you’ve heard the show many, many times, so you know, it’s coming, but all right, with that, let’s get to it, Alex.

Number one. First question. The famous for current favorite or long-time favorite real estate related book.

Alex: Okay. So. Mine is that classic book by Gary Keller, the millionaire real estate investor. That’s one of the first ones that I came across and it just so needy. And I know there’s some stuff in there that is maybe a little bit outdated, but with all the infographs in there.

And I just loved that book. I think it’s, it has some classic principles in there that you can’t go wrong with. Very cool.

Brandon: Very cool. Next

David: question. What is your favorite business book?

Alex: My favorite business book. I don’t know if you would consider, would you consider mastery by Robert Green and business book?

Yeah, so I think that’s my favorite business book, just because it really goes into the idea of like mastering something and having a vocation and having, you know, uh, work it’s something that you can build a career. Out of and think of it long-term and a lot of people want to be doing this and that and a million different things, but they don’t lock in and get great at something.

So I think that book is amazing because it helped me realize that, Hey, I want to become a master real estate investor. And so that’s my favorite business book. Very cool.

David: That’s awesome. When you’re not surfing with Brandon, what are some of your hobbies?

Alex: Um, I love trail running, so I love getting after it in the mountains.

So I’m up there. I’ve been going to a couple of these amazing Maui hikes. And I would do that a lot of that when I was in LA. I, I will

Brandon: say, uh, so Alex wants different for the first time ever. Was it five days ago? Something like that. Right. And didn’t know what he was doing. So I took him to a pretty, actually pretty hard beach to learn on.

It was pretty crazy, not like overly big ways. It’s kind of messed up anyway. And the first day, of course, like most people didn’t stand up the first day, second day we went out there with, it was like, yes, yesterday or two days ago, two days. Okay. Two days ago I went out there and, uh, yeah, I don’t know.

Within. I dunno, half hour, whenever you got your first wave rotor. Right. And it was awesome. And then we, at the end of the day, we went out, like we were out there for a few hours. We were getting tired. So, uh, we, we go in together and we both caught like for your second way, both caught it together. Alex and I were on the same wave, totally party wave.

It was awesome. We were like, woo. It was amazing.

Alex: Amazing, amazing. First and second wave down.

Brandon: Yeah, done. So now you’re, you’re pretty much a pro at this point. So nicely done. All right, man. Well, let’s get you out of here, Alex, what do you think. Separates successful real estate investors from all those who give up fail or just never get started.

Alex: I would say mindset from, for myself. I think having a mindset and because it’s believing that you can do it. If you don’t believe you can do something, you’re not, you’re not going to do it. So I think one of my strengths is having that strong mindset of believing in myself and taking action. But I think people too many times get stuck in that theory and they need to have that mindset like, Hey, I can do this.

And then that’s going to propel them to take action.

Brandon: So good, so good. All right, mr. David, green you on, uh,

David: question of the famous four slash five. Where can people,

Brandon: the next segment? This is the famous for is over. And now this is famous.

David: This is, this is just like the tumor to the famous for it. Like it just, we just like stuck it on there.

All right. Tumor question, Alex, what, where can people find out more about you?

Alex: You can reach out to me on Instagram. That’s probably the best way to reach out to me. It’s Alex Camacho TV.

Brandon: And Camacho is spelled C a M

Alex: a C H O.

Brandon: Okay. Just I guess I’ll ask Alex Camacho TV. All right. Very cool, man. Well, thank you for joining us here in the sea shed today.

This has been fantastic. I got to finally use my new little switcher. So if you’re not watching this on YouTube right now, I’m like, I like throw out the whole show today. I’m switching back and forth my cameras, which was pretty fun. Figure out how to do that. And you know, David obviously is not here, but we’ll get you here, Dave.

And we’ll do another, maybe the three of us round table sometime next time. You’re out here in Hawaii, David. All right. Well, I don’t know this was, this was fantastic. I knew you were going to be good, Alex. And that’s why we’ve been talking about getting on the show for a while, but it’s just not your hair.

Just, yeah. You blew me away. Thanks so much, guys.

Alex: It’s been such an honor. I love BP any way I can help other guys let me know.

Brandon: And thanks, man. Well, David Green. Yeah, you killed

David: it. Thank you very much, Alex. This was probably one of, I don’t know, I’d say one of the most beneficial podcasts for people that are trying to learn how to get into our investing.

Ever done. So thank you for being awesome. This is David Greene for Brandon. Everything’s a funnel Turner signing off.

Alex: You’re listening

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Alex: online.