The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Finding GREAT Deals in ANY Market with Anson Young

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast, show 438.

Anson:
So as an investor, I honestly haven’t looked at the MLS for investment purposes in about three years, with 19,000 agents and let’s just say, even 1% of them have investor clients, I’m up against dozens and dozens of investors.

Speaker 3:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place, stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What’s going on everyone, it’s Brandon Turner, host to the BiggerPockets podcast here in the Sea Shed with my buddy, Mr. David, the jujitsu master grimm. What’s up, man, how you been? Are you okay?

David:
People are going to actually believe it when you say that, that was said very facetiously.

Brandon:
No, it was not. You’re killing me on jujitsu, you’re very good. You’re very good. We’ve been rolling a lot. We’ve been very sweaty together a lot lately in the middle of my garage floor.

David:
That’s the best, sweaty hot Hawaiian jujitsu.

Brandon:
Yes, it’s been amazing. Anyway, it’s been fun having you here. And today’s episode is also a lot of fun because we sit down and we dive into a topic that everybody has to deal with, and that’s getting your first deal. Now, maybe you’re listening to this show and you’ve already got a couple of deals, it’s fine. The exact same thing applies today whether you’ve done five deals, a hundred deals or no deals, but we really try to keep the cookies on the lower shelf today and we dive in with our buddy Anson Young. And we say, like what should people do actionably right now this weekend to drive leads into your business that you can get deals, should you go on market? Should you go off market, should you do direct mail? What’s driving for dollars, what’s the best strategy?

Brandon:
How do you stay consistent over the long haul? We cover all of that stuff today on this episode, you’re going to love it. But before we get to that, let’s get to today’s quick tip.

David:
Quick tip.

Brandon:
So today’s quick tip is, the reason, well, I shouldn’t say the reason we wanted to bring Anson tonight anyway, but the reason that we’re bringing him on this week particularly is because we are actually doing something we’ve never done before at BiggerPockets and that is we are launching a private book club. In other words, like a group that can get together and talk about a certain book, and this book that we’re choosing for the first book is Ansons’s book. It’s called Finding and Funding Great Deals: The Hands-On Guide to Acquiring Real Estate in Any Market.

Brandon:
So we’re going to be going through this as a group, a BiggerPockets pro and premium members. You have to be a pro member or a premium member to be part of the group for the book club. And we’re going to be going over this book and with Anson specifically on a live Q and A with him. I think that is on February 11th, I believe. Yeah, I think he’s going to be doing it on February 11th. So it’s going to be awesome. And you can ask as many questions as you want of Anson, he’ll be there answering questions and discussing the book.

Brandon:
So if you are interested in that, just go to biggerpockets.com/anson, A-N-S-O-N to learn more how you can potentially get a free copy of this book if you don’t already have it, or maybe get a 50% discount depending on if you’re a pro member or not, because you can upgrade to pro and potentially get the book for free. And oh, go check out the details I don’t want to go into it, because this is a much longer than it should be quick tip. Quick tip. And I think we’re ready to do this, because we got to get this show out, so you and I can go and do some more jujitsu out in the garage.

David:
Yeah. And Anson does a great job today, so I’m excited to bring him in.

Brandon:
He kills it. All right, here we go. I hope you guys enjoy this interview with my good buddy, a real estate investor from the Denver market, Anson Young. All right, Anson, welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. One of the few four Peters here on the show, how are you doing man?

Anson:
I’m doing great, man. I couldn’t even think of like four, that’s crazy, but I hope you guys are doing well out there in sunny, Hawaii.

Brandon:
Thank you, we are attempting to. David here is of course joining me in the Sea Shed and we’re going to pick apart your brain on how to find deals, how to fund deals, how to do yoga. I think those three things are our topics today. So with that said-

Anson:
Indeed.

Brandon:
… I want to start with downward dog.

Anson:
Hold on, let me back the camera up a little bit for you.

Brandon:
Yes. Let’s begin with finding deals. So who are you Anson? How did you get into real estate for those who have not heard one of the last shows, which was episode 34 and then 96 and then 235, but it’s been years since that. So who are you? What’s your story?

Anson:
Yeah, so I am an investor out of Denver. I do fix and flips, I do wholesaling. I’m also a licensed real estate agent. I’ve been doing real estate since 2005 and my start really quick is that I got laid off in IT and while trying to figure out what to do next, if I want to go back into IT or what I want to do. In the meantime we had moved down to Phoenix and I picked up a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is kind of the basic investor origin story that got me launched off where I landed in Phoenix and said, you know what? New city, new me, kind of had a eat, pray, love moment. And just went all in and you know what? Took me about a year to get my first deal but we did that and it was kind of off to the races and that was back in the 2005 days.

Anson:
So, but yeah, that was kind of the start. Moved back to Denver right after that first deal and just kind of started doing fix and flips, wholesaling, got my license a year later and then just been doing whatever I can ever since.

Brandon:
So definitely go check out Anson’s previous shows if you want to know his full story, but I’m curious, Anson, let’s go to today. What’s your portfolio look like? I mean, how much are you flipping? What is your real estate look like today?

Anson:
Yeah, so right now, mainly just flipping, not doing a whole lot of buy and hold yet, but like 12 to 15 properties a year that we’re flipping, another 10 or so wholesales. And then on the agent side doing a dozen or so on that side right now. And so total probably about 30 deals a year and kind of keep the team small, keep it a lifestyle business, make sure that I’m not working a whole lot crazy, 80 hour weeks or anything like that. So that’s the goal and we’re sticking to it for now.

Brandon:
Well, one thing I really like about you and the reason I brought you on the show again today is because you are really good at balancing that lifestyle piece with trying to actually make enough money to live and survive and thrive. And I have a great life, but not working 80 hours a week. And so I want to really dig in today on the nitty gritty of what are you doing to find deals in this crazy competitive market? How are you putting them together? How does that work? Like what can people do to achieve it? What’s the 80/20, I guess, what’s the 20% that’s going to give you 80% of the results? And I think you above almost anybody else I know have like really nailed that. So lets, I guess just dig into it today. Let’s say I am a brand new real estate investor wanting to get started with real estate, wanting to buy my first rental or my flip or whatever, I just need a good deal, what should be my first step?

Anson:
I mean, if you’re just starting off and I know a lot of listeners here kind of are in this boat, this is kind of like the number one question that a lot of people come at least to me with. But really some of the things that I talk about will really depend on your goals, your end goals, what that looks like, your budget, how much time you have allocated to real estate investing. And so, first really analyze those things and figure out, okay, like my goal is to own two rentals and I’ll be happy. Like that’s one goal, but if you want to go flip a hundred houses, those are two very different directions that you could go, two very different basically playbooks that we would write for you. And so that would be number one.

Anson:
And then number two is definitely make sure that you just have what it takes to stick with whatever you’re doing to get to that goal. And so kind of that consistency, stick with it, to witness whatever that word is that people are calling it.

Brandon:
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, are you saying that I can’t get rich quick overnight in real estate Anson? Because I’m going to shut this podcast off right now, if that’s okay.

Anson:
You’re done, yeah, shut it down. You can, I mean, I always say like, if somebody is starting to whatever they’re doing, if they’re starting to market, if they’re starting to do direct mail or something, it’s like, yes, you could absolutely get the very first phone call in is just a killer deal and it’s just super that easy. But most of the time it’s consistency and two, three, four months of consistent effort will pay off. And so a lot of people quit at month two when they should have stuck with it, because the golden nuggets are in month four or five, six of consistency, at least when it comes to something like direct mail. And so people I think want it, they want the instant gratification of just, boom, I did this, I need this back and now I’m a millionaire, whatever.

Brandon:
So Anson, this is a common theme I’ve seen in real estate investing and it’s really not different than everything else in life where if you’re expecting instant results and you don’t them, it’s very easy to quit versus if you’re expecting it to be a grind, those people usually make it. Very similar to something like working out. You’re not going to build muscle when you first start going to a gym, that consistency is what matters. Do you have advice for people that know they struggle with that specifically that they just, that’s why they’re maybe having a hard time getting traction in life that you tell people that keeps them encouraged so that they don’t quit?

Anson:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a killer question because obviously the 100% fix if I had that, I could bottle it and sell it. But I think like kind of the fundamentals of that question are, do you have any kind of accountability? I know when I was writing the book I had Brandon to keep me on track. I wasn’t always great at it and he had to drag me along sometimes, because we were both writing and we wanted to hit a certain amount of words per day. But that accountability, knowing that I had to show up, put my numbers at a spreadsheet and then every week or two have to answer to Brandon, it’s pretty intimidating. But-

Brandon:
With the whole like, if you don’t get your weekly numbers, we cut off a finger, that actually motivated you quite a bit.

Anson:
It did. And I’m nine fingers now or eight.

Brandon:
Eight and a half.

Anson:
Nine and a half fingers now.

Brandon:
Yeah, we didn’t get the whole finger off at that time because you did pretty good for your goal, but …

Anson:
But I think accountability is huge. I mean, having somebody else to kind of bounce that off of and you tell them your goals of like, hey, even though I’m just starting, I want to do 50 phone calls this week and then breaks down to 10 a day and then have a system in place where you can be held accountable to those. Because, that external accountability is honestly one of the biggest factors of starting out and being successful, having like someone to answer to, you’re either going to disappear and you’re not going to hear from that person because they’re just kind of embarrassed that they’re not hitting their goals or they’re going to step up and they’re going to be like, I don’t want to let Brandon down or I don’t want to let David down because I know that they’re … I told them I’m going to do this, now it’s on me to do it.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s really good. It’s one of the reasons that we interviewed Chris McChesney a long time ago on the podcast, he is the author of the book, 4 Disciplines of Execution and I love that book. And one of the reasons why is, yeah, they’re so big on like every week you meet with your team, this is like team focused, not necessarily accountability group focused, but like your mastermind focus. But like you meet with your team and you’re like, this week I commit to making 50 phone calls and the next week you got to be like, last week I committed to making 50 phone calls. I only made 45, and so like you self identify as a loser. And so like, nobody else needs to call you out and be like, hey man, you failed, you know it because you just said, I said I was going to do this, I didn’t do it. Yeah, extreme accountability is so important. David, what do you think on that? I know you utilize a lot of that in your life.

David:
Yeah, that’s a huge part on our real estate team is we have to meet as a team and we talk about what we’re doing, which keeps everybody engaged. I think that there’s like another level of depth that we can probably take this because when you’re not good at something, is when you feel the most shame and when isolate the most. So you hear people talking about real estate investing, you want to get started, but you know you’re not good at it. And so you don’t want to bring up the topic where someone’s going to say, how many doors do you have and you get to hold up the goose egg. Okay? The problem is the community is what brings the accountability that Anson’s talking about. When you’re around other people that are doing the same thing, you are way more likely to follow the path that it would take to get to success.

David:
And so what I found is the best thing you can do is to humble yourself and jump in with other people that are doing well and talk about it because it brings that 50 number that Anson is talking about to the front of your mind. Every day you wake up and you’re thinking about, I got to get my 10 calls. I got to get my 10 calls. I don’t like this feeling, I’m going to make 15 and makeup because I only made five last week, which is why we love BiggerPockets because that’s what it’s doing. It’s bringing investors together, creating a community. So what I would say for people that are having trouble either getting started or just sticking with it, you’re not in a community. That’s one of the reasons CrossFit does so well, is that is a community of people that identify as workout people.

David:
It’s very hard to skip your workout when all your friends are going to say, where were you today? When you’re going to the gym by yourself, it’s very easy to skip that workout. So that encouragement I would have is if you’re, especially, if you’re having a hard time getting started, you need more accountability. You need more people. You need to get deeper into the community. You need to make more friends and that’s really one of the reasons BiggerPockets pro leads to more people finding success because now they’re on this journey with others, as opposed to, I just kind of show up, I look at what you’re doing. I sit in the back and I’m the first person out as soon as it ends.

Brandon:
Yeah. And a little bit of a tease here, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk about this yet, but we are working right now on a thing for BiggerPockets pro, which is going to link people together in a mastermind group in a stronger way. Like right now through the intention journal, we have a mastermind group that we help people form, but we’re taking that to a whole new level this year. And so in 2021, you guys are going to see some big changes to the pro membership specifically in regards to what we’re talking about today, which is how to get more accountability with other people on the same journey. And I know Anson, that you and I have used it both in our lives. David, you use it in your life so that’s phenomenal. Anything else you would encourage people that are just struggling with like giving up, because we all know like if people stuck with things long enough, they’d probably be fine, but they’re not, so accountability, huge. Anything else you’d throw in there?

David:
Yeah. I mean, obviously the road to the first check, I always like, I’ve seen people who get their first check and it’s all the validation of all of their effort, all of the pain, sweat and tears that they went through to get there. I try to help people visualize that of like what it’s going to be like if you have 5,000 extra dollars or whatever, and then also don’t compare yourself to others. Like I look at the BiggerPockets podcast titles and I could see even I’m intimidated by, it’s like this arms race of like 23 year old owns 10,000 units. And I look at that, I’m like, okay, I’m 40 and I don’t have 10,000 units. What am I doing with my life? Like, I could see how that could be a comparison where you’re always comparing yourself to the younger, faster, more units kind of thing. And it’s not an arms race, you run your own race.

David:
If your goal is two units in the next two years, like run that race. Don’t worry about the 23 year old kid with 600,000 units or whatever it is, run your own race. And don’t compare because that’ll easily derail you and discourage you. And when you’re discouraged, you’re not going to put in the work to kind of get to where you want to go.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s an interesting topic of like, how do you decide between … like how do you balance between being inspired by people? Because I love to hear the stories. I have a 25 year old kid who is just killing me and like just dominating, but then how do I not compare? Because I don’t want to feel bad about myself. And I think that’s, I think you nailed it there. It’s like you remember everyone’s running their own race. So the real question is, are you running your race or are you sitting down and watching TV on the side of the road? Because that’s what most people are doing. They’re scrolling TikTok on the side of the road, not running their race. And if you’re running your race, who cares if somebody else is running their race faster or slower or whatever. I mean, I think keeping that in mind. David, real quick throwing that at you, how do you balance the comparison versus inspiration with what you see in the online world?

David:
What I think about it a lot is that I don’t have a family. People like you that are married with kids, so I have more time to put towards it. And frankly, I may even have more ambition because my energy is not split amongst several different areas. So I think more people are looking at me like, oh, that guy’s an animal. He does all these things, how does he do that? And I know, well, the reality is I don’t have to worry about a four year old. I have nothing else to put my energy towards, but this, so I tend to see people that watch me saying, look at the race he’s running. I’m not good enough and say, no, no, no, that’s ridiculous. Because when I have a family, I’m probably going to do nothing. I may just say, I don’t want to do it anymore, I’m just going to focus on that.

David:
So it’s very good to recognize there’s a part of us that always wants to compare ourselves to other people as a shortcut for being honest with ourselves. But I do this with other things, I do it with fitness, you see someone in the gym with an insane body. And I just think, I just don’t want to work that hard. Right? I don’t want it as bad as that person does. And units and wealth is another thing. If the purpose of doing this is to have more time with your family, the dumbest thing you could do is to try to get to 10,000 units working a hundred hours a week and taking massive risk because that wasn’t your goal. So this goes back to what you and I were saying earlier, Brandon, people are going to have to know what their goal is. They have to know what they want, the purpose of what they’re trying to do is because if you don’t, you become susceptible to the arms race that Anson talked about, I’ve never heard that phrase Anson, I thought that that was a brilliant way to put it.

Anson:
Yeah. I mean, I think I was just scrolling through my podcasts and it just seemed like, and I get it. It’s, everybody wants to hear from the person who’s doing it better, who’s doing it faster, who’s doing it younger. And so yeah, it just kind of occurred to me like, oh man, some people could be very discouraged by this kind of arms race of things or be absolutely inspired by it, like Brandon said.

Brandon:
Yeah. All right, so let’s go. So look at your end goals. I’m trying to, jotting down these notes here. He said, look at your end goal. Like, what do you actually want? Because it can help to find a lot of how you find those deals for your first step. Like, understand that this takes a long time. It’s not going to happen overnight. Don’t compare, right? Like run your own race. What else you got for like getting the first deal? What are some tangible things that people should be doing right now to land that first deal?

Anson:
So it’s going to depend on budget, but definitely learning how to analyze your market, kind of what you’re working with, make sure that that aligns with your goals. I think we’re going to hammer on that pretty hard, because you can analyze your market and Denver may not be great for $90,000 cashflow rentals. And so you’re going to want to know that immediately. And so, I think if you’re ever anywhere interested in real estate at all, you’re probably already doing this, but going into the Redfin and the Zillow and just kind of looking at neighborhoods, what properties are selling for, go in and look at what they’re renting for, that market analysis piece is huge. But taking action, definitely. I think based on budget, if you don’t have a lot of time or if you don’t have a lot of money, but you have some time, there’s a lot of free ways that you can use your time to capitalize on that.

Anson:
So I would say, go drive for dollars. That’s still my number one list right now is people who are taking that time to get in their car, looking at the neighborhoods, some of the deals that we get aren’t on a lot of these other lists, they’re not getting direct mail because they’re not over 65 and they don’t have a hundred percent equity and they don’t have kind of these low hanging fruit metrics that other investors are using, but their house has some deferred maintenance issues. And you wouldn’t know that unless you’re driving through the neighborhood and you have your eyes directly on that house.

Brandon:
Can you give an exact, like if I’m brand new, I’ve never heard the term drive for dollars before, I don’t even know what that means, like Anson, tell me exactly what I should do this weekend. Like what do I do?

Anson:
So yeah, this weekend you should definitely identify some neighborhoods that you’re interested investing in, whether it’s fix and flip, rental, whatever. And then you’re going to go and you’re going to drive every single street of that neighborhood. Grab your Google maps, map it out, whatever you need to do, you’re going to drive every single street, you’re going to look at every single house, you’re going to look for deferred maintenance issues. So is the roof bad? Siding, windows, does it look vacant, overgrown? Is it half burnt down? It’s like all these things that you could look for, and then you’re going to write down the addresses and then you’re going to go home and you’re going to look up who owns those properties so that you can get in touch with them.

Anson:
So that’s a great way to spend your weekend if you have time and you’re short on cash, you could build out, I think somewhere around 50 to a hundred properties in a couple hours of your time. And then you can get started on whatever you want to do next. If you want to cold call, if you want to direct mail, if you want to go knock on their doors, whatever is in your comfort zone, in your goals, in your budget, all of those things.

David:
So we’ve got that method. We’ve got the, like you said, the Zillow, the Redfin method, if someone’s listening and they’re not sure which method is right for them, how would they walk themselves through that decision making process?

Anson:
For the market analysis?

David:
Or the strategy, should I go off market or should I go on market?

Anson:
Got you. I think the Zillow, Redfin piece is more just kind of getting these high level ideas of what’s going on in those neighborhoods and then the market. So if everything in this neighborhood selling for $400,000, but you’re only pre-approved for 200, you’re going to waste your time going driving for dollars in that neighborhood, unless you’re looking to pick up a killer deal. I think it’s more about just getting more market knowledge of kind of what’s going on in your city. What’s going on in these different zip codes, in these different neighborhoods, so that you can have a better idea of where to go focus so that you’re more laser-focused instead of saying all of Denver with one million people, could I narrow it down to two zip codes or 10 neighborhoods where the properties are trading at a level that you need. So if you’re looking for cashflow, if you’re looking for fix and flips or wholesales, you have a better idea of what’s going on in those neighborhoods.

Brandon:
That makes a lot of sense. All right, so let’s go really quick back to, you’re going driving for dollars. You find some properties around there, you find this cool, like [inaudible 00:22:17], maybe tarp on the roof. And you’re like, all right, I’m going to go home and look up that information. First of all, what information am I looking up? Where do I go to find that? What do I do once I have that information?

Anson:
So the easiest way is to look up on County tax records if your state allows it, some States are non-disclosure States, which means that, that’s not public information. So if you’re in one of those States, I know that Brandon’s called out this information for, I think, out of the Facebook group or something, go to County tax records, see if you can easily look it up by address. And then if that doesn’t work, go to a site like whitepages.com where you can either look up this info pretty easily or sometimes it costs a couple of dollars to get that information. But yeah, that’s kind of how you extract that information for the next piece.

Brandon:
All right. So once you find those people, then what do you do with them? I mean, what’s your advice on reaching out to those people?

Anson:
I mean, if you’re just starting out and let’s just say we’re back to the scenario where you’re cash strapped investor with some time on your hands. Once you know who they are and have some information about them, have their address and maybe their phone number, depending on how big the list is and your goals or whatever, I would advise you to start just calling those people. That’s going to be your lowest cost, best use of your time, kind of instant gratification. You instantly know if they’re interested or not in moving forward in the process. And so calling them, you’re just using some of your time and your cell phone, so what can be more cost-effective than that?

David:
Yeah, that’s cool.

Brandon:
Do you find newbies tend to work too hard on non-motivated sellers? That’s a pattern I’ve noticed, I’m wondering if it’s similar for you?

Anson:
Yeah, absolutely. They feel like, oh man, I got these five people that I talk to. And then they hammer those people for like two months and they kind of spin their wheels and waste their time without really doing a needs analysis on, hey, are they actually motivated? Are they actually looking to sell? And if they’re looking to sell, are they looking to sell for a price that makes sense for an investor. Absolutely.

Brandon:
That’s a great piece of advice to hammer out. I see new agents do this. I see it with new investors. Your nature is going to be, how do I take every tool that Brandon Turner gave me and apply it to these five people and figure out which one of these deals is going to work. But though experienced people, they don’t even bother getting their toolbox out of their truck until that person has said, I need a rehab on my house and this is the price I’ll pay. And then you can use all these strategies. So you’re looking for motivation, then you’re looking for realistic expectations. If they want top market value for their home, they’re going to go to a real estate agent, they’re not going to sell it to you.

Brandon:
If they got to sell it and the price they’re giving you makes sense, that’s when you can start coming up with these creative strategies and bringing up seller financing and a wholesaling options or whatever, but I’ve just seen so many people spinning their wheels saying David, how do I get this person to understand why they should sell me their house at this price? You know what I’m talking about Anson? Have you seen it too?

Anson:
Oh yeah. And it’s brutal because you can get stuck on so many different parts of that process. Like the phone call. Some people will just set every appointment and so they’ll waste their time going out to spend an hour or two more of their time than they need to on somebody who’s not motivated enough. Somebody who’s just not great for what you want to do. Absolutely.

Brandon:
All right. So What about those people? So if you have no money, but you got some time, driving for dollars is an amazing way to get started with off-market deals. But let’s say you’ve got some money that you could spend on marketing. You’ve got a few hundred or maybe a few thousand dollars you could dedicate towards this, what do you then advise for finding that first deal?

Anson:
Yeah. So the next step up for the first person is just more time-intensive, you’re like, hey, I got some money now, but now I’m going to direct mail, that’s great. You’re kind of getting out there and doing the right things, but now when all those calls are coming in, that’s a lot of time, that’s time intensive. And so, I think what we were just kind of chatting about on the side there is exactly what I was going to say, which is you can absolutely hire in these things that take up a lot of time. So if you don’t have time to answer the phone, hire a company that can do that. If you don’t have time to do mailers, to get together better lists and then pull the trigger on that, you’re not going to want to sit there and lick stamps.

Anson:
You don’t have time for that, but you got the money to either pay someone else to do it or hire a company that does that. So you’re basically building a business around the deal finding process, rather than just being the all around guy who does everything and has no time to do anything else because you’re busy stuffing envelopes and taking phone calls. Where in this scenario, you’re the guy who has the money to hire that out and not a lot of time to do the inner working pieces of those things. So you can infinitely scale those things if you don’t have time to go on appointments, you can hire in acquisitions. If you don’t have time to sell the property, hiring an agent, a lot of things that you can absolutely outsource.

Brandon:
That’s kind of what I did with my mobile home park fund. I was like, I really want to own a bunch of mobile home parks and now get into multi-family, even larger stuff. I was like, I really want to do that, but I don’t have time for that, so I just hire people to do each piece of it. I’m like, I hired Mike to be the investor relations. I hired Ryan to go and do all the due diligence and kind of lead things. I hired Walker to help acquisitions. And so these guys just kind of took over and they do it way better than I could do anyway. So now I don’t spend hardly any time on it, but we get 10 times more done than I could ever do alone.

Brandon:
And so, but again, I had the money in the beginning to actually do that, which is why I chose that route. Not everybody has the money in the beginning to be able to do that. But even if you don’t have money, you could probably JV with people. You could find other ways to get it done. And I would argue that like, let’s go back to the direct mail marketing. Yes, I would not … Well, I’m curious what you would say Anson, but I would generally recommend not printing or handwriting each of your own letters, would you agree? It’s just, it’s too cheap to hire other people to do that, just companies out there.

Anson:
Yeah, it depends. Like I wrote letters when I had 50 people on my list-

Brandon:
Okay, yeah.

Anson:
… and it was just like, it was easy to do. I was like, this will take me, I could be watching a video or listening to a podcast while I’m doing it. It’s kind of easy to do, but there is a point where you have to just analyze, like is my time worth something that I could do 25 cents a letter, is my time worth the $15 that I’m going to spend on having someone else do it. And there’s definitely a point where you’re like, my time is better spent on other things than just writing letters or just licking envelopes, stuff like that.

Brandon:
Yeah. I mean, if you’re sending a few letters, I don’t see the problem with that, but if you’re trying to do 500 letters or a thousand letters, you’re just completely wasting your time.

Anson:
I’ve tried it. No [inaudible 00:29:00].

Brandon:
All right, so first of all, who do you mail these letters to? What kind of list are you sending to? How do you get a list? Let’s start there and then we’ll move to what the letter might want to look like or say.

Anson:
Yeah, of course. So lists could be its own three hour thing, but in general, besides the driving for dollars list, of course, we already talked about that. But my idea with lists is that the harder that they are to get, the less competition you’re going to have. And so niche lists is what I like to look for. So a brand new investor may not have all the ins and outs of what this looks like and how to get them, but have that at the top of mind, because when you go after foreclosures, that’s a public list in almost every single state. And so when foreclosures are published on Wednesday, everybody who has an internet connection knows that, that property has some motivation and can be bought basically. And so everybody’s going to have that on their list. So think about the easier that they are to get, the higher a competition that you’re going to be facing.

Anson:
So something that’s like a listed property is there’s 19,000 agents in Denver. They’re all going to be looking at those properties. And so as far as niche lists, think more like, okay, utilities shut off list or people who are being evicted, kind of an eviction list. Who can you get in front of, who can you talk to to help you get lists like this? Is it an attorney cousin of yours who has access to court records? Anything that you can do to get these niche lists that are small and then you’ll have much less competition. So just a quick example is probate is a big thing. One of the counties in Denver, the only way to get a probate list is to go down in person and, well this is pre-COVID, but go down in person, you can only pull 20 records a day. They cost a dollar a piece.

Anson:
And so if you’re looking for 500 people for this probate list, it’s going to take you some time to go down and get there. And then there’s no guarantee that there’s real estate in that probate case. And so it was very labor intensive, very time intensive, but I guarantee that we were probably one of the only people who were actually putting in the work to do it, so our competition was much lower. So just think along those lines.

Brandon:
I love that. And I think a lot of the wealth is where things are difficult. We talk about a lot of this, run towards hard, it’s a common phrase we say in the podcast. Can you explain real quick what probate is? And then I want to dig in a little bit more on that.

Anson:
Of course, yeah. If somebody passes away without a will, a lot of times it’ll go to probate court. So then the state will decide what to do with all of that person’s bank accounts and house and belongings and all of that stuff. And so yeah, so the court has to get involved and then a lot of times there’s court cases that are attached to that. So you can go and find out who’s the executor or who the court signed in as an executor. Sometimes if they do die with a will, but it could be contested or something, it goes through court. And so you’re going to want to get in front of that to kind of figure out what’s going on inside those probate cases.

Brandon:
That’s really good. And by the way, people want to know more about the probate stuff of way back, eight years ago, on episode number 12, with Sharon Vornholt on the BiggerPockets podcast, we dove deep into the world of probates. You can go back and listen in there a little bit, but again, it’s a more difficult task. Now, what I think is I get these emails or DMS or whatever on Instagram occasionally, maybe several times a month, but people saying things like, hey, I found this X, Y, Z program, which is just going to in one click of a button with doing no work whatsoever, it’s going to give me an amazing list of motivated sellers. What do you think on those kinds of things, like those companies or those programs that just pay us a fee and we’ll give you the list right there?

Anson:
I think, I’m kind of torn on them. I think that there are a lot of ones that are probably good. It was weird because I got something similar where all of a sudden, like every other Facebook message is like, hey, I pull lists. I can do this. It’s kind of this weird boom of people who maybe just have a list source account or something. But I would say definitely vet those companies, vet those people. I know that when I go through like my direct mail provider, that that company is actually pulling good lists, that I’m paying them for.

Anson:
Their absolute professionals are doing high volume, who know exactly what they’re doing. And so I don’t have any issues with saying, hey, I need 2000 more people in my market, can you pull XYZ lists? Or what kind of lists do you think I should pull and have them do it? That’s one thing. But if somebody is just offering a course or program or some random person in your Facebook messages, I would be very wary of that kind of list because I could pull you any kind of list source list. That doesn’t mean that it’s good-

Brandon:
It’s good, yeah.

Anson:
… that it’s quality or that you’re going to get anything out of it.

Brandon:
And a lot of times the strength of the list depends upon the area you’re in. I’ll give you an example. As I once did a direct mail campaign to great Harbor Washington, which no one was doing direct mail. I still don’t think he was doing direct mail there. And I sent 300 letters and out of them I got 40 phone calls and I literally just pulled the most basic list. Like I went to ListSource, I bought like absentee owners who had owned their properties over five years. That was all I did, just absentee owners. Over five years, I got 40 phone calls from 300 letters because nobody was doing that in that market.

Brandon:
If I went to Denver right now and did like absentee owners, meaning people don’t live in the property and they’ve owned it for over five years. It’s such a like probably common list that it would probably, I get like 1% or a 0.1% response rate because those people are just getting saturated from a lot of different investors. So a lot of it depends is your area saturated, is there a lot of people doing direct mail there. You got to be better than the competition. So in some areas that means you’re going to be really good, some areas you can just be average.

Anson:
Exactly. Yeah, no, you hit it right on the head. Some markets are great for that because marketers haven’t come in and ruined it for everybody yet. And then other markets like this one and a lot of the top metros are exactly like that. Your direct mail response rate is like dirt low, it’s so low.

Brandon:
And then there’s also, we could talk about … let’s say even if your direct mail has become a commodity in your area, like every potentially motivated sellers getting a dozen letters, there are also ways to stand out, right? There’s a postcard versus a letter. You could include a little trinket. You could call them first. There’s different ways to differentiate yourself, right, to increase your conversion rate at least even if everybody is doing it. Do you have any good tips there on how to get a better response rate on your direct mail?

Anson:
Yeah. No, and I have an example that’s like tailor made, even though we didn’t talk about this beforehand, but I started a mailing campaign based on driving for dollars in a brand new neighborhood that I was working in. And I didn’t cross check to see if anybody owned multiple properties. But I ended up mailing this guy based on this duplex that I saw that didn’t look that great. So it ended up on my direct mail list and he called and he’s like, “Hey man, kind of what’s the deal?”

Anson:
So I kind of explain what we do. And he has seven properties in this area and he’s probably on everybody’s list because he’s owned them since the ’80s. If they’re not all the way paid off, they’re very close. It’s a very hot neighborhood, actually pretty close to BiggerPockets headquarters. So a lot of things are gentrifying and changing around there. So of course it’s just this hot area. And he said, he gets about 10 letters a week per property. So he’s getting 70 letters per week per property or 70 letters a week total. So if you look at the whole month, he’s getting a whole lot of mail.

Anson:
And so why did he call me? He called me because he actually just liked my mailer. It was bright, colorful, had my logo on it. So it’s branded mail. So it makes me look like a professional company versus just an anonymous yellow letter or something like that. And my goal for direct mail is handcrafted and high quality. So it just looks and feels like a high quality piece from a professional company, but has personal touches in there, a letterhead with handwriting on it. So you’re mixing kind of the personal touch of a yellow letter with the professional touch of a professional letter.

Anson:
So you’re trying to hit all the boxes there. And then that was the very first mailing. We started talking about a different property that we’re still talking about and it’s been a year. So sometimes consistency and sticking with it helps. But we’re still talking about it, property with a house and a duplex on it. And I really want that property. He’s just not 100% ready to sell. I think he has to wait for a few things to fall in place. But he called me out of 70 letters that week. And that was the first time I ever mailed him. So it goes to show that you can stand out in a very crowded market.

Anson:
And a lot of times it’s just like, and you’ll get to know this when you go on appointments, some people just love to show you their mail. Like look at all this stuff I get. And you’ll see, there’s like 10 pink postcards, 20 yellow letters. If you’re not doing pink postcards and yellow letters, you’re already standing out. You’re not doing the basic thing just to blend in with everybody else. Why is somebody going to call you on your yellow letter that’s going to stand out from the other 19 yellow letters in that mailbox? I don’t think there’s a lot you can do there, but there’s a lot of other things you can do to stand out.

Brandon:
And this goes back to why I like the whole driving for dollars thing, because that’s your list. Like you didn’t just buy the same list that everyone else gets. So hopefully you get those people who haven’t gotten 70 letters. They’ve gotten three in the past three years and yours comes at a good time and so, yeah. It reminds me, we had the conversation with Marie Forleo last week on the podcast, she’s all about marketing. How do you stand out? How do you appear different?

Brandon:
And then this coming Sunday, we’re doing kind of a follow-up, a part two of that, where David, I, and Kevin just really dig into the world of marketing and what that means. So I want to encourage you guys, if you’re interested in this direct mail thing, you want to be better at marketing, we spend in this coming … I think it’s this coming Sunday what episode? Kevin, let me know what episode this is. Kevin’s our producer. What is it 439? I think is the one that’s coming up this week is where we just dive really deep into this world of again, marketing, how to distinguish yourself.

Brandon:
And I talk about kind of the four ways that if you have a commodity type business, how you can stand out. So we’ll be talking about that on Sunday’s episode. So that’s that? Okay, so let’s go. We covered some driving for dollars. You cover some direct mail marketing. Now, I want to shift a little bit here to, I guess, on market strategies. So, first of all, should new investors even be looking on the market or are the deals all gone? Like the ones that are listed by real estate agents that are just for sale by a real estate agent? Is it too hard to find anything there? Are still in the market?

Anson:
Oh, man. It’s brutal. It’s hard to find like full market retail houses just for regular buyers, like putting my agent hat on. It’s a blood bath, just to find a normal $600,000 house. You have to bid higher. You’re going to always be in multiple offer situations. So as an investor, I honestly haven’t looked at the MLS for investment purposes in about three years. It’s just been that long where with 19,000 agents, and let’s just say, even 1% of them have investor clients. I’m up against dozens and dozens of investors who, if that’s the only way to find deals is through their agent, I want to shift to the left and I want to go and attack homeowners directly in my kind of market. We have super low inventory. And so it’s going to be really hard that any time just a normal house pops up, it is gone in two or three days. When a fixer house shows up, it’s gone like almost immediately. It’s insane.

David:
Yeah. And your market is a little unique in the sense that Denver is one of the hottest markets in the entire country and has been for five years, at least. It’s red hot. So you make a good point. A deal isn’t going to fall into your lap in Denver specific, because there’s so many people that are looking for it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a base hit. And in a market like yours, I think agents can really help with just getting somebody into the game or getting a deal that you can house hack. And then that becomes a rental, or maybe even finding a rental property with an agent. What are your thoughts on how you apply the different strategies we’re talking and which one would work in what kind of market?

Anson:
Yeah, absolutely, and that was a good point. If you’re in another market, if you’re in a Grays Harbor or a smaller kind of market, you probably can find deals just off the MLS. I think I was talking to another investor in Oklahoma City and they’re like, “Yeah, you can buy 1% deals just right on the MLS.” I was just like that doesn’t exist here. Obviously, different markets have different things. So if you’re at a low competitive market with higher inventory, there’s a lot of chances for those on-market deals. You can wait until they hit 90 days on market or 120 days on market and then go in with a lower offer.

Anson:
Whereas a market like mine or Portland, or San Francisco, Boston, whatever, when days on markets like three, you don’t have that opportunity to go in and the seller’s a little bit more desperate because they’ve been on the market longer, all those kinds of things.

David:
That is such a good point.

Anson:
So in a market like mine, you almost have to go off market to get anything done. And yes, you can absolutely do house hacks. You can do kind of a more appreciation, friendly rentals on market all day long. But if you’re looking for like a killer fix and flip with $100,000 profit, it’s going to be lot, lot, lot harder, so.

David:
That’s a good point, Anson, your strategy is set up for that. You need something with so much meat on the bone that you can buy it, pay your closing costs, pay your rehab cost, pay your holding costs, pay your acquisition costs, pay the team of people that you put together, pay your direct mail-

Anson:
Make a profit.

David:
… and still make a profit. Whereas someone who’s using an agent really has no expenses other than their closing costs and maybe an inspection and then an appraisal. So keep that in mind. Don’t get discouraged when you hear us talking about these hot markets. And you said something that was gold, that had to do with the days on market. I bought a lot of real estate. I help a lot of people buy real estate. In my opinion, this is like the best tip I could give anybody. Look at days on market.

David:
It doesn’t get talked about. It gets overlooked. It’s the biggest secret in real estate. When I’m looking for houses for myself, like I’m looking to buy a couple in the Bay Area. I’m also in Hawaii right now, buying properties in Maui. I set my on-market filter to whatever the average day on market is. I just double it. And I say, okay, I only want to see houses been on the market for this long. So I have two in contract right now in Kihei that were both on the market for over 250 days. And I’m going in and I’m getting a good discount, but it’s not because I’m this insanely good negotiator. I found sellers. And I just kept asking until finally they said, “Yeah, I want a 1031. And I have a deal. I need to get this thing sold.” Boom. Now, I’ve got motivation. They don’t have any other options.

David:
That’s so different than our clients that look at the hot house on Redfin and say, “I want to see it right now. It’s been on the market for three days.” And so does half of the state of California. And you know there’s no way that you’re going to get it. And they set themselves up to be frustrated. So thank you for pointing that out. Don’t swim upstream when you’re doing this. There’s an easy way, which is just to see what came out on Zillow and go look at it right away. Don’t get pre-approved first. Look at the same homes everyone’s looking at. You’re going to find yourself very frustrated, looking at stuff that’s been sitting on the market for a lot longer is an incredibly useful strategy even with on-market deals.

Anson:
I learned that through REO because they would always do price reductions at a 30, 90, 120 day increment. So I knew if it was 89 days on market in one or two days, we should be seeing a price reduction. And so that trained me to just look at days on market like a hawk.

David:
So I never thought about that, brilliant. Yeah, that’s cool.

Brandon:
All right. So we got to wrap this pretty soon, but I want to know, we talked about on-market stuff, working with a real estate agent. We talked about direct marketing. We talked about driving for dollars. And those are kind of like the three big that I teach every week on the webinar. Those are the three that most real estate investors could probably find a deal. If you work those three strategies, you’re probably going to figure out something, right?

Brandon:
But let’s say you want to be a bit more creative. So maybe I don’t want to dig into these topics. I just want maybe almost a list from you. What are some other things people can just do to find deal that you’ve seen working, whether in your market, other markets, friends of yours, whatever? What are just a list of things people can do and what is it? And then people can go and research that on BiggerPockets or look up other shows to learn more about it. I don’t want to go into each one because we’ll be here for hours, but what else can people do?

Anson:
We’ll be here all day.

Brandon:
There’s a lot.

Anson:
No, I think I kind of hitting on the theme from before is, kind of look at the stuff that’s not normal right now. So higher days on market. If you find a short sale in your market where right now we have like three on the market here. So getting into one of those short sales could be a great way to find some equity where people don’t want to deal with it right now. They just need to move. So kind of look for the things that are rare, like REOs aren’t super-hot right now. Is there a way that you can get a house hacked REO through Fannie Mae and FHA offer? And that’s something that’s so rare right now that not a lot of people are looking at that. Whereas everybody who was looking at REOs only like 10 years ago. So that could definitely be a way.

Anson:
Cold call, email, anything you can do to get in front of the seller, door knock, leaving people voicemails, and then putting everybody in a CRM, so you’re staying consistent. So if you do have a list, make sure that you’re consistently following up, consistently hitting these people so that you’re top of mind when they go yeah, I think I do need to sell. Like I’m right at the point where I need to sell. Yeah. So those are just kind of a shotgun approach of different ways. There’s almost nothing new in real estate and deal finding. And sometimes it’ll shift a little bit, this works better than that. Marketers ruin that. Now we have to do this. But making sure that you’re consistent and making sure that you’re following up because that’s a thing that a lot of investors don’t do is some killer follow-up and you’ll find a lot more deals that way too.

Brandon:
Yeah. What you find is … and I’m sure you find this in an agent world David as well. Where it’s like, they go and they send some letters and then they didn’t get many phone calls and then they tried looking on realtor.com. And then they didn’t really find anything there. So then maybe a couple of weeks later they maybe did a little bit driving and they saw a couple of properties. And then they called them while they were sitting in front of the house. It didn’t really work out. So then a couple of months later, it goes by and they’re watching a lot of TV and like 35, 40 years goes by and they’re dead.

Brandon:
In fact, that’s what most people do is they lack, they’re like, why don’t we run this like a business? And this is what I’ve seen you Anson do really, really well is like put it in the CRM. How are the leads coming in? What’s our cost to acquire a customer here? You know your metrics, you track them, you run your business like a guy running a McDonald’s. You don’t have to be amazing at the beginning. Like it’s not that complicated to do this stuff. And there’s a million and one programs out there that can help you, and BiggerPockets, even has stuff that can help you with this stuff to track it. But it just requires doing this stuff. You have to treat it like a business. You have to start knowing your numbers, knowing your metrics, and you’re going to get the results that you want if you treat it that way. Agreed?

Anson:
Yeah, absolutely agreed.

Brandon:
Okay.

David:
And understand that businesses … McDonald’s did not become a freaking machine of hamburgers when they first started it. They opened it. They said our goal is to make hamburger, making more efficient, and they like to see where two people bumping into each other. Let’s move around the floor plan. All right. We’ve got way too many ingredients is taken too long, let’s get rid of them. Let’s think about the ones that want, right? And as they went, it became more efficient. They started to learn what worked. I would just throw that in there. You run it like a business, but you have to have the expectation in the beginning. You’re going to suck and that’s totally fine. You get good from doing it-

Anson:
Don’t go in.

David:
… until you’re good to start doing it.

Anson:
That’s so good. So good.

Brandon:
All right, man. Well, Anson, last thing before we let you go. We’ll get into the famous four here in a second, but the last question before then. Tell us really quickly about the book you wrote and this book club thing. Tell us a little bit about that. We mentioned it during the quick tip at the beginning, but just really quick now. What’s going on with this thing?

Anson:
Yeah. So I mean the book itself was just all about finding and funding deals. So it gets you from zero to the closing table. Like I don’t care if you want to flip it, if you want to wholesale it, rent it. I don’t care what you do with it, it gets you from zero to the closing table. And so everything that we talked about, whether it’s marketing, negotiation, market analysis, funding, different types, different deal analysis. So if you’re wholesaling or flipping or renting, there’s different ways to analyze that. And even through repairs and ARV and all that fun stuff. So it gets you from zero to the end. And then what you do with it from there is up to you.

Anson:
But yeah, the book club is pretty exciting. Sounds like this is a brand new thing that you guys are doing. And so basically you’re going to host a Q and A session on February 11th, I believe.

Brandon:
Yep.

Anson:
And it’s all about finding and funding great deals. And if you want to go to biggerpockets.com/anson A-N-S-O-N, you’ll find out all the information you need to know right there.

Brandon:
All right. Well, thanks dude. I’m looking forward to it. With that said let’s get into the next segment. The last thing on the show. It’s called our famous four. Let’s go through the famous four. We’ve asked you these three times before because you’ve been on the show three times before this Anson. But number four, maybe they’ve changed. Number one, actually before we get into the famous four though, let’s hear what’s going on this week around the BiggerPockets podcast network.

Ashley:
Hey guys, it’s Ashley from the Real Estate Rookie podcast. Last week we had on Rich Kelly, he’s done four deals and use four different types of financing: hard money, 203K loan, 401K loan, and a commercial loan. If you guys want to learn about these, go back and listen to last week’s episode.

Brandon:
All right. Anson famous four, number one. What’s your current favorite or all-time favorite or life-changing favorite real estate related book, other than Finding and Funding Great Deals, which you wrote, other than that one?

Anson:
Other than that one, I’m going to say I’m really enjoying … I don’t read a lot on real estate books. But my new favorite is Ken Corsini’s book, because then I get to actually look at other people’s favorite deals and life-changing deals inside of there. And so it’s kind of like a podcast in a book form. I can pull it out, read one chapter and get some really good information. I’m not trying to promote just BP stuff, but I honestly don’t look at a lot of real estate books, but that’s my favorite one right now.

Brandon:
Cool. Profit Like the Pros, Ken Corsini. Yeah, that was a good book.

Anson:
That’s the one, yeah.

Brandon:
And my face is on the front cover and in a drawing and it’s beautiful.

David:
It’s the best you’ve ever looked.

Brandon:
I love it. Let’s see. Next question dude.

David:
What is your favorite business book?

Anson:
My favorite business book right now is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink.

David:
Wow.

Anson:
I wasn’t expecting it to be, but I was listening to it on audio and it punched me and they got so many times but I felt like I just got done rolling with a jiu-jitsu master, which he is. But yeah, I felt very beat up at the end of that book, but that’s just because it’s a lot of things I need to work on. So I love that book.

David:
It’s beautiful. And you know when you talk to Jocko, he leaves you with that same feeling honestly. When you’re in his presence, you’re very aware of your own immortality and insufficiencies, but you don’t feel bad about it. You just want to be better because he’s got this perfect aura. And when you read that book, it definitely. It’s just one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. I love it. Brandon and I talk about it all the time.

Brandon:
Yeah. Jack was a good dude. And we interviewed him on our show back on episode 365. So Jacko 365, we talked about real estate investing among other things in that show. And I think it’s one of my favorite shows.

David:
You got to listen to it and look for the chicken bone method.

Brandon:
The chicken bone method, that’s right.

David:
He’s the only person that we’ve ever interviewed that uses that method. I’m not going to tell them. They got to go listen.

Brandon:
All right, go listen to it. All right. Next question.

David:
Next question. Anson, what are some of your hobbies?

Anson:
Hobbies are kind of like still outdoors stuff. I love to hike, go outside. This summer we picked up a paddle-boarding to add to that. And so we did that pretty much the whole summer, because what else was there to do during kind of a quarantine time, but it’s great because the reservoir is sparse and we can go paddle around and not bump into anybody, so is perfect.

Brandon:
Very cool. I’ll ask last question of the day. What do you think separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail or never get started?

Anson:
I’m going to say that … and it’s another favorite book of mine, but Grit. So having grit and that means that you’re willing to stick with it, even when it gets hard. Even when it gets tough, even when you kind of maybe lose faith in what you’re doing. But sticking with it through the hardest times of real estate and it’s not always easy, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. It’s not always Maui, Hawaii. It does get difficult and it does get tough. But sticking with it, getting up the next day to kind of roll with the punches and keep going at it will set you apart from 90% of your competition. And so whether that’s through marketing or getting hit on a property, whatever it is that grit to keep going, even when it gets tough, I think sets you apart 100%.

Brandon:
Awesome. 100% agree.

David:
So good. All right, Anson, thank you very much. Where can people find out more about you?

Anson:
If you want to find me on BiggerPockets and send me a message, you can contact me there or just look at the author page there and get to know me a little bit better there, but that’s the best way to get to know me better and contact me.

Brandon:
All right. Well, thanks dude. Appreciate having you on your show again. Every time we talk, I always come away like oh, man Anson is so smart. There’s a lot of things I should be doing that I’m not doing. So once again, thank you for enlightening us, but good luck to you man.

Anson:
Thanks for having me guys.

David:
Appreciate it. Anson. This is David Greene for handsome Anson Young and Brandon [RipCurl 00:55:07] Turner, signing up.

Speaker 3:
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