How to Get a Better Price on That Off-Market Property

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie Episode 240.

Jamil:
Look at the math here. We know that you’ve got to speak to, at minimum, at minimum 200 homeowners before you’ll get a contract. What I see is that if you talk to, say, 50 real estate agents a day, who are each prospecting themselves, imagine if you talk to 50 agents who are each talking to 50 homeowners to try to get listings, how many effective conversations am I having a day if I go that route? If 50 agents are each talking to 50 homeowners, that’s me talking to 2,500 people. So the math doesn’t lie.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr and I’m here with my co-host, Tony Robinson.

Tony:
Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, information and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. I want to start today’s episode by shouting out with someone from the Rookie audience who goes by the username, Dudette Three, and Dudette Three left us an honest rating review on Apple Podcast, a five-star review that says, “Love Ashley and Tony. I love their podcast so much. They provide valuable insight and good motivational stories. Both seem to have a very positive and upbeat outlook on life. I’ve learned a lot and look forward to what is to come.”
Then Dudette also dropped an Instagram handle. It’s at Mitten Rentals, so M-I-T-T-E-N R-E-N-T-A-L-S. So make sure to give Mitten Rentals a follow as well for giving us some five-star love. So if you haven’t yet and you’re listening to this podcast, please leave us an honest rating and review. The more reviews we get, the more folks we can help. And I kind of got some beef, Ashley, because I’m seeing some of these newer podcasts coming up, and right out the gate, they’ve got double the reviews that we have. So I want to challenge our Rookie audience to help us out here. Don’t leave us high and dry.

Ashley:
Yeah. We would appreciate it, you guys. Tony diligently looks at the reviews constantly. I cannot, in case there’s a bad one. So I rely on Tony to read all of the good ones when we are recording, and I appreciate every single one of them. So thank you guys so much. So Tony, today we have a unique episode again, just like the past several Rookie replies have been, where we were live at BPCON. But while we were at BPCON, the first day we decided to do an Instagram giveaway, where we announced it at BPCON on stage that we were doing this Instagram giveaway and we had to be tagged in their story. The very next day we picked a winner.
We gave, I think, Ethan, what, maybe an hour-and-a-half notice that he was going to be on the podcast and we’re recording live and to come meet us. So we have Ethan Wilson on, who we just met at BPCON. We randomly picked his Instagram account. We messaged him and he was able to come. So we also have another guest on with us too, Jamil Damji. So we literally took everyone that we knew you guys would want to hear, and we dragged them into our podcast studio at BPCON. So we have two guests on for this episode, and they both provide tremendous value. I mean, Ethan, I think we hit the jackpot. We were shocked like, “Wait, this is your story, and we just randomly picked you? This is amazing.”

Tony:
Yeah. It was so funny. I was in the back of one of the rooms, so it was actually the social media presentation of BPCON. Sarah was on stage, and our good friend Rob was moderating and Brit was up there, a few other folks. I was at the very back of the room, and this kid comes up to me and he shows me his phone, and it’s an Instagram message from Ashley. He’s like, “Hey, is this real?” There’s a lot of fake profiles floating around, so I wasn’t sure. I was like, “I don’t know. There’s a lot of fakes out there.” I messaged Ashley and I was like, “Hey, is this real?” She’s like, “Yeah.” So it was funny how all of that came together. But Ethan was a great story. Then Jamil, if you guys don’t know Jamil, Jamil is first just a fantastic human being.
This guy just radiates positivity and warmth. Not only that, but he’s also an amazing real estate investor, and we definitely have to get him back on the podcast to give a masterclass to all the Rookies listeners around his strategy for finding off market deals. But anyway, before we go too far with Ethan and Jamil, we do want to take a question from the Rookie audience. So if you guys want to leave a question, get active in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, or you guys can go to the BiggerPockets forums. Today’s question comes from Heidi Cawood. Heidi’s question is, “When buying from a wholesaler, is the asking price pretty much what you have to pay? Or is there room for negotiation?” Luckily for you, Heidi, there is always room for negotiation. Like most transactions, like most buying and selling, you can always negotiate the price.
We’ve purchased a few deals from wholesalers at this point, and pretty much every time we’ve been able to negotiate a little bit off of the purchase price. Wholesalers are just like regular sellers. Sometimes they’re going to price a little high in anticipation of the fact that people will probably negotiate and the price will come down a little bit. I guess I just do want to share a story. The last time that we purchased a property from a wholesaler, there was a significant amount of negotiation on the purchase price. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but this is a property that we had under contract for, I don’t know, $250,000. I had never seen the property in person, and I’d just seen photos and videos. So we get the property under contract, and I’d worked with this wholesaler before, so it wasn’t the first time I worked with them. So I knew them. We already had a relationship.
We get the property under contract. Then Sarah, my wife and our crew, they go and walk the property without me. As soon as they get to the house, Sarah calls me, all upset. She was like, “Babe, what are you doing? We’re not buying this house.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “I know it’s a little rough, but it’s not terrible.” She was like, “The whole roof has collapsed inside.” So when you walked into the living room, the ceiling inside of the living room had literally collapsed. I went back and I looked at the photos and I was like, I would remember if the roof had collapsed on the photos. That wasn’t the case. So I called the wholesaler, I let them know what happened, like, “Hey, my wife and my crew are there and the ceiling has collapsed.”
He was like, “Are you sure?” I was like, “Yeah.” I sent him the photos that my wife had sent me and I told him, I was like, “Hey, this is going to be the cost to get this repaired. We need this deducted from the purchase price.” He was like, “Hey, I’m sorry. We sell all of our properties as is.” I think if I was a new investor, I probably would’ve panicked a little bit. But given this wasn’t my first rodeo, I knew what to look for. So I politely pointed out to him that pretty much every purchase and sale agreement, at least a good one has a clause that says the condition of the property cannot materially change from the time that it is placed under contract until you close. I asked a wholesaler, I said, “Do you think that the roof collapsing would be considered a material change?”
I was like, “Look, we have two options here.” I was like, “You guys can give me a discount on the price, or I can take you guys to small claims court. And it’s up to you. But I would think that if I showed a judge, an arbitrator, whoever that this is what it looked like when I placed it under contract, this is what it looked like today, they would probably agree that a big gaping hole on the roof would constitute me being right and you being wrong.” So a little bit of back and forth, and eventually they were able to negotiate the price down, and we all walked away from that transaction pretty happy. So that was my experience from negotiating on a good wholesale deal.

Ashley:
What happened with this house? Did it turn out to be a great rehab?

Tony:
It actually did. Not before it got really, really terrible because immediately after we closed, we went back to start demo and we couldn’t get in. We ended up finding out there was a squatter in the property after we had closed on it. So we had to kick the squatters out. It was definitely a challenging rehab for us. But the property’s actually done now. We should have our permit here for the short-term rental in a couple of weeks, and then we can put all of this behind us.

Ashley:
Good. Well, thanks for sharing that story with us, Tony. I think it gives a little bit of insight that even as an experienced investor that things don’t always go smoothly, and there are a lot of challenges that we all face every single day. I’ve actually never bought a property from a wholesaler, and I think it’s mostly because there’s not a … I’m investing in rural areas, where there’s not a huge supply of wholesalers going in and buying these markets where there’s very few investors investing in.
But in the actual city of Buffalo, I’m on quite a few buyers’ lists for wholesalers, and it’s always interesting to see. I was at this meetup once, where wholesaler came up to me and said, “Someone said I need to talk to you, that you buy in this area.” It was not even half a mile from my childhood home growing up, and I knew exactly where the house was. So I’m looking at the address and I’m like, “I know something about this house. What is it?” And just by googling the address, it comes up meth house, meth bust, people arrested, all this thing. I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s why.” And I just want to say I grew up in a very nice home life. I did not live in a bad area growing up.

Tony:
No breaking bad.

Ashley:
Literally in the middle of nowhere. My bus ride to school was an hour long. So this little house there had been a meth house, and it probably had been, but when this happened, it was probably eight years, 10 years before that. And the house has sat since then. Somebody has owned it. I don’t know if it’s changed hands or what. But with some place being a meth house, you want to have some kind of remediation. So I asked the wholesaler, “Has there been any kind of remediation on the property?” He had no idea that it was a meth house at all.
So he was like, “Do you think you could send me that information you found?” And this was literally just by me googling the address, all this stuff came up and it was just kind of a shock to me, like, “Oh my gosh, wholesalers don’t even google the properties that they’re trying to sell, just to see any kind of information that’s out there that definitely could benefit them before even putting the property under contract.” So I’ve followed the property a little bit, and I’m assuming they canceled the contract because I never saw that it changed hands at all from the current owner.

Tony:
Yeah. I mean, so would you have bought the house at the right price?

Ashley:
Actually, yes, because I looked into the remediation of it, and it was just like mold. People are scared of mold. I used to be scared of mold. But now that I work with this great mold company, I’ve bought a couple of houses now with mold. They come in and do the removal, and it costs money, but I know what to budget for it. So yeah, you just have to budget for it. But what he had it under contract for, he eventually told me what it was, after I said that I wasn’t interested or whatever, and he wasn’t even trying to make that much off the assignment fee. But yeah, he couldn’t move because he didn’t know when he went into it that it needed that remediation.

Tony:
Yeah. That just makes me think if can, when you’re working with a wholesaler, if you can put off submitting your EMD until you have had a chance to walk the property, that’s always ideal. That’s an area that I shared with that wholesaler. They have a non-refundable EMD, and I want to say it wasn’t a small EMD, it was 15 or $20,000 we put up as EMD, and it was non-refundable from the moment that we wired it in. So that’s why I had to threaten them with litigation to either get my EMD back or for them to discount the price. But if you can, when you’re dealing with a wholesaler, if you can walk the property first, get a sense of what might need to be done to it before you submit your EMD, you’ll have a little bit more flexibility there as well.

Ashley:
Yeah. I smirked when you said it was only 15, $20,000. The last property I put an EMD down, it was $2,000.

Tony:
Wait. Okay, let me share one story about, I think, the best return on EMD that I’ve ever gotten. I don’t even know if that’s a phrase, return on EMD, but this is what it was. So everyone knows we have cabins in the Smoky Mountains, and we bought a bunch in 2020 and 2021. We haven’t purchased anything in 2022 yet. But we got a new construction cabin under contract at the end of 2020. It was December of 2020, and it was a $2,500 refundable EMD, fully refundable EMD, $2,500. The cabin, I think we got it under contract at 780 is what we got it under contract for. It was supposed to be done in the spring of 2021, so six months after we put that EMD down. Well, supply chain issues, labor shortage, I don’t know what, but it got pushed from spring of 2021 to fall of 2021, and then from fall of 2021 to winter or to spring of 2022, and from spring of 2022 to fall of 2022.
So we’re actually just now closing on that cabin in about 30 days. But here’s what’s happened over that timeframe. The cabin is in a new development of short-term rentals. So I think altogether there’s 22 cabins that were built in this one development. Well, out of 22, my cabin was number 21. So one through 10, 12, 15, my cabin has already been built, the same exact floor plan, and some of those cabins have already sold. And my cabin under contract at 780, the exact same cabin sold for 1.2. So we built, what is that, almost $400,000 in equity on a $2,500 refundable EMD. So it was crazy. That was the best EMD I’ve ever put down in my life.

Ashley:
I remember we had a guest on who was doing that in Austin, Texas with new builds.

Tony:
I can remember that.

Ashley:
Yeah. As soon as was a new development, he’d put a deposit down. It was like $1,000 to have it built. By the time it was actually built, they put in so much equity, and he was doing this every year and house hacking it for a year, then going on. As soon as he closed on that first one, he’d go put a deposit on for one for the following year. Since these were the first houses in that development, by the time people were coming into phase two to buy them, they were paying more than he had paid for that phase one. Yeah, super interesting. Okay. Well, today let’s get into our actual guests that we have onto the show. So you can meet Jamil, and you probably have heard him On the Market, the podcast. Tony and I like to joke that it’s the second best podcast and we’re number one, but it really is truly an amazing and informative podcast. So if you guys haven’t subscribed yet, you really should.
Then also we have our winner on, Ethan, and I’m not even going to say anything about him as to what he’s been going on, except that he is very young and fresh out of college and is doing amazing things. So make sure you guys check out this episode. Ethan, welcome to the show. So we also have Jamil here with us from the On the Market podcast. So this is a super special episode that we are recording live here at BPCON. So Ethan actually won a giveaway that we did on Instagram. We decided to do this yesterday, and he was our chosen winner, the lucky one, and we are so honored to have him here with us. He just gave us a 30-second little spiel of what he has going on, and we are already amazed and can’t wait to hear more. So Ethan, you can tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in real estate, please.

Ethan:
Yeah, well, thanks first and foremost for having me. I’m honored and grateful to be part of it. Yeah, so I’m 23. I started my real estate journey just a year ago, a year and four or five days ago. Closing my first single family house down in Huntsville, Alabama. I was in college at the time. I was a busy guy running around. I was playing soccer, taking graduate classes, coaching and trying to make it through school and everything. The opportunity came up to get the house just in the neighborhood next to the college. So I got it. I rented out to my roommates who were my former teammates, and they paid my mortgage and a little extra. I fell into a good group of people. A big fan of Bigger podcast. I found Cody Davis and Christian always good on BiggerPockets, listened to their podcast, loved their story, loved what they were about. It really spoke to me, resonated. So I joined them, joined their mentorship and, like I said, got around a really good group of people. Learned a ton over the past couple months. On Friday we just closed on our first eight-plex-

Tony:
Congratulations.

Ethan:
… down in Texas. Yeah. So, super excited about that. Three weeks ago I quit my job to do this full time, pursue my passion. Real estate’s just what burns my fire. It just wasn’t in … the jobs are dangerous, as they say. It’s comfortable. It’s easy to get stuck in the nine-to-five and just do real estate on the side as I planned. But I’m young. I took on the risk and took the leap, and I’m loving it, under contract for a six-unit outside of Knoxville, Tennessee and going from there.

Tony:
Dude, first, congratulations, man. At 23, I think I was working at Foot Locker, so you’re doing some amazing things, brother.

Ethan:
I appreciate it.

Tony:
So what’s next? So you quit your job, you’re going full time, you got a few small multis. What is the goal for you?

Ethan:
Yeah. So one of my buddies, Eddie from Nashville, we’ve been best friends. We’ve always been hustlers together. We’d work our internships and then immediately after going, start doing landscaping, hauling, moving, stuff like that and saving up our money. He started a business. I bought my first house. Next, he’s going to leave his job soon. I left my job. We’re going to go together in real estate and take it on together. He’s more of a flipping guy. He flips couches and he wants to flip houses. He’s going to be the capital-

Tony:
Very similar.

Ethan:
Yeah, exactly. What’s the difference between a couch and a house? But he’ll be the capital provider for my long-term opportunities and in the meantime find private investors to come in with us.

Ashley:
So being so fresh and so new at doing these first couple deals, what’s your one piece of advice for a rookie listener right now?

Ethan:
Jump in. Whatever you think that obstacle is, it’s probably not as real as you think it is. My obstacle was just the lack of knowledge and just the fear of not doing it. I think a lot of people struggle with, and this is all over BiggerPockets, I know, but analysis paralysis. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad years ago and started studying, studying, studying, analyzing deals, looking all this, what am I going to do? I finally pulled the trigger. If I had done it earlier, maybe I’d be somewhere different, but live with no regrets. That’s my advice, just jump in.

Ashley:
Well, super cool. And thanks so much for coming on the show. Ethan is actually going to help us co-host today as we talk to Jamil. So Jamil, welcome to the show.

Jamil:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Ethan, first, it’s evident why you’re the chosen one, bro. So congratulations again. Just phenomenal work.

Ashley:
And you know what? It was random. We got super lucky. Great guests.

Jamil:
Just super random? Wow. Wow. I mean, I would’ve picked him. Really cool, really cool story.

Ashley:
Yeah. So Jamil, tell us a little bit about yourself for anyone who doesn’t know who you are.

Jamil:
Well, thank you for having me, guys. I’m Jamil Damji, the co-founder of Keyglee, in my opinion the best wholesale operation in the country. We are franchised in 130 markets. I started Keyglee in a coffee shop with my sister and two other business partners, Josiah Grimes and Hunter Runyon. It has been a phenomenal ride. We do on average in our corporate store, anywhere between 60 to 80 transactions a month. Then our franchises do hundreds of deals. Outside of that, I am a dad, a loving husband. I love my wife, she’s the best. Also, I am the star of Triple Digit Flip with my best friend, Pace Morby on A&E. So that’s super fun. On top of that, I am the leader of AstroFlipping which is, again in my opinion, the best wholesale community that exists on this planet.

Tony:
Jamil, so not to make you feel like outshined, but what were you doing at 23 years old?

Jamil:
Man. I was working at Taco Bell. Yeah, I was working at Taco Bell. I still had ambitions to be a doctor, so I was living my parents’ dream at the time. I come from an East Indian background and for us, it’s you either be a doctor or don’t come home, right? That’s our life. So I tried to get into medical school and I failed at that. I actually, I did really well in the medical school entrance exam, had a near 4.0 GPA and I bombed the interview. So when I wasn’t accepted into medical school, it was heartbreaking for me because I literally had done everything right. I was volunteering. I was all of the extracurriculars that you could possibly think of, I was doing.

Tony:
Then why do you think you bombed the interview?

Jamil:
Well, I was young.

Tony:
Was it a subconscious thing where you-

Jamil:
No. I was answering truthfully. And I think what ends up happening in those is people rehearse and they come in with a prepackaged, they tell the interviewer what they want to hear. I was very honest with what my ambitions were. I wanted to be a plastic surgeon because I wanted to make money. So I was honest with the panel. And I was told that I was a little immature and that I should try to reapply again after some time, but that was a great candidate. Now what’s funny is that my cousin, who might be listening to this, sorry I’ve been outing you as of late, but he cheated off me on the medical school entrance exam and he got in.

Tony:
Is he someone’s doctor today?

Jamil:
Yeah, he’s prescribing people stuff. So when I think of that, it’s like outside of the fact that I made the decision consciously to never let somebody be able to decide my destiny, and I think that was the moment because I had worked so hard and somebody else could decide. That’s when I knew I had to be in a field where I was driving the boat, and that’s what happened. I went from there into entrepreneurship. It was a bumpy ride. I got into a business at the time, this is now 2001, 2002, and we had started a media company, where we were convincing businesses that they should stop advertising in the Yellow Pages and move their business online, start advertising with a website.

Tony:
Wild idea at the time.

Jamil:
Wild idea. So my job essentially consisted of cold calling businesses out of the Yellow Pages, and explaining to them how some of their funds that they’ve been spending on advertising here could be used to go online so that people could find them, and that it was this revolutionary way that people were going to start doing business. We did really well. I did really well at my job. I was a phenomenal closer. I was selling these five-page websites for 600 bucks a pop. The problem was, is that my business partners hadn’t really ran our costs right. So every time I sold a website for 600 bucks, we lost $100. So I did so well at my job that I put us out of business.
The beautiful thing though is that I was given proximity to my business partner, who was also in real estate. And him and his father were knocking down these old houses, and this is in Calgary, Alberta, and they would build new duplexes on these old lots, and they were having a problem finding more building lots. So thus my real estate journey begins because I basically interjected myself into a conversation they were having, and I came to find out that if I could just help them find some of these houses, I could make some money. So the next day I was walking my dog, called a For Rent by Owner and the rest is history. My first wholesale deal. I made $47,000 after I paid the lawyer their piece and never looked back.

Tony:
So I want to give you a chance to ask Jamil some questions too because this is a great opportunity for you. But before, so Jamil, our audience are mostly rookies, right? So if I’m a rookie and I’m terrified of talking to strangers in rejection, what are some tips you might have about cold calling and being effective with that?

Jamil:
So here’s the thing, right? They’re strangers. So what’s going to happen? I mean, let’s just think about it. What is the worst that could possibly happen? Somebody is mean to you? I mean, okay, right? It’s a person you don’t even know that’s being mean to you. So I think that just understanding the reality of what the fear is based off of. The fear isn’t that someone is going to cuss you out or be not receptive to your call. I think the fear is really, “What if it works? Now what?” Because you don’t know what to do next, right? So many people get stuck and then they think, “Well, I’m all alone in this.”
That’s why I’m just such a big proponent of being a part of a community. There’s so many communities out there. I mean BiggerPockets, for instance, is a massive community of helpful, wonderful people. You can get into the forums and you can talk to folks who are going through the same thing as you. You can squat up with people and really help spread the burden of that fear out. I think once you start to talk to people who have walked that walk, who have literally done the thing that you’re trying to do and they’re alive, nothing has happened to them. They may be richer for it, right? So once you start doing that, I think that the imaginary fear dissolves and then life opens up.

Ethan:
Yeah, I love that. I want to back up first and say, I love what you said about the entrepreneurial mindset. I don’t want to give my time to anybody else. I’d rather work 80 hours for me a week instead of 40 hours for somebody else. So that was always the mindset getting into something like this. And that’s a great question from you, the cold calling, because that was one of my biggest problems was picking up the phone and just calling somebody. I didn’t know who they were, I didn’t know what they did, I didn’t even know if it’s the right number, and I didn’t know who was going to pick up. So I’d call and be like, “Hey.” At first it comes off super salesy. I don’t even know what to say. But I think you hit it on the head with joining a group. I said this already before, but I was in a great group.
There’s guys younger than me, they’re 19 years old, Caleb and Chucky in the multifamily strategy group, they are just wheeling and dealing. And it’s good to have those people who are ahead of you. Christian and Cody, who have shined the light on where I want to go. They helped me from day one all the way to get to where I am. But it’s also good to have people in the group who are exactly where you are and moving along with you. Those guys are same guys who are making the cold calls. And you meet up every night and you’re like, “Dude, I can’t talk to any of these people.” And they’re getting deals and deals. But then you look in the group, and there’s people who are still with you and to help you move through those challenges. It’s definitely good to have those support groups. It goes a long way. There’s a lot to be said for that.

Jamil:
I agree. May I ask, Ethan, the first deal that you did, how did you get that deal? What was your lead generation strategy?

Ethan:
Well, the first one was just the single family house on market.

Jamil:
On market? Awesome.

Ethan:
I offered the asking price. It was just me and one other bidder. It was right after the peak of COVID, so it had just started going down and I think a lot of people were afraid. So I lucked out. I was willing to take the risk and it paid off for me.

Jamil:
Awesome. I want to clear a bit up about my strategies because it’s always been a little bit different from the common conception of how wholesalers will go out and find deals. For the most part, you see a lot of wholesalers out there pulling lists of distress and skip tracing those lists and then calling homeowners direct. I am too lazy for that. I realized that there was a much smarter approach at doing this. I primarily … And the second piece to that is that you can’t build relationships with those people. It’s how do you scale that? How do you scale a business where I’ve got to spend a dramatic amount of money to get one contract? I think the average cost per contract right now in the US going direct to seller is anywhere between 7 and $14,000. I mean, that’s insane, right? That means you’ve got to make at least 10 to 15K just to break even on time and energy.
So my approach has always been a relationship-based approach, where how can I do a certain amount of work but be able to come back to the well and keep drinking? So the approach that I’ve taken is I work primarily with real estate agents and other wholesalers. Now there’s a complete different cadence, technique, follow-up process that is required to do that. You have to be really good at underwriting, you have to be really good at communicating. You have to really be able to take down the guards of these agents who have come to the conversation. When they hear about wholesale, they’re immediately, it’s like their spine stands up because they’ve heard all these horror stories of working with wholesalers. But the facts are is that we provide a significant value to the business place, especially for these houses that are in such terrible condition that they’re not financeable.
And for oftentimes these retail real estate agents don’t have the wherewithal to even handle a house like that. And typically they’re of such low value that it’s not even compelling for them to want to do the deal. So first and foremost, I think that everybody listening to this right now, if you have any ambitions to do wholesale, bet on yourself doing this for a while, right? Believe that you can create an incredible business from building relationships. I look at my wholesale business as one of the most incredible money-printing machines that you could ever have. We’ll do a million, do a million dollars, a million-and-a-half dollars a month in assignment fees. I mean, how many properties do you have to own to have that, right? So this is the approach. And I think that we have to, as a community, understand that we don’t have to go to sellers.
We don’t have to go and try and get one over on grandma to get a deal. That’s not what this is about. For me, I love working with agents who understand what I’m looking for, who know that when you are buying a house that’s in distress condition, that it has an as is cash value. And that cash value has to be compelling to somebody in order to come and make the investment. So this whole question of getting, taking equity, it doesn’t even exist because this equity doesn’t happen until I force it. I’m forcing appreciation on all of these deals by adding value to the situation. So that’s my approach. I’m not a cold caller. I don’t text people. I’m not going to be the guy who’s coming into your phone right now that says potential spam. That’s not me. Everybody that I’m talking to, the real estate agents and wholesalers, they want to hear from me.
Realtors spend thousands of dollars to just make their phone ring. When I call, I’m an actual cash buyer that has the ability to close. I mean, that’s compelling. That’s something that I think that especially if you are getting started in this business, the fastest way. Last thing I want to say to that. Look at the math here. We know that you’ve got to speak to, at minimum, at minimum 200 homeowners before you’ll get a contract. So what I see is that if you talk to, say, 50 real estate agents a day, who are each prospecting themselves, imagine if you talk to 50 agents who are each talking to 50 homeowners to try to get listings, how many effective conversations am I having a day if I go that route? If 50 agents are each talking to 50 homeowners, that’s me talking to 2,500 people. So the math doesn’t lie.

Ethan:
Real quick point, I just want to reiterate the importance of what you said about the relationships. I mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re in wholesale, flipping or multi-family commercial. The most important investment you can make, in my opinion, is relationships, especially early on. I mean, that’s the biggest thing for me is the people I’ve met, the people who I’m going to meet, who are going to provide me with the opportunities and the knowledge that I need to reach my goals.

Jamil:
23 years old, right? You do this for 20 years, man, you’re going to be, I mean, you will be one of those people that people talk about. You’ll be on stage at BiggerPockets. You’ll be the guy that folks will be learning from, right? It’s just so incredible to see young people coming in and being as willing to care about their futures as their parents want to care about their futures. Like you said, 23 years old, man, I was working at Taco Bell. I wanted to be a rapper. What was wrong with me?

Ethan:
Can you rap?

Ashley:
Can you do a little piece for us?

Jamil:
No, no. [inaudible 00:34:49]. Yeah, yeah, I listened to too much Tupac.

Tony:
So I also wanted to be a rapper.

Jamil:
Did you?

Tony:
Literally I have two mixes out on fooling around here.

Jamil:
Get out of here. I got to find them.

Ethan:
I mean, when you first started, what was your biggest focus? How did you go about cultivating those close relationships?

Jamil:
So simply, I literally called between 30 and 50 real estate agents every single day. That was my goal. I could hit that sometimes in a few hours. Sometimes it would take me all day if I got a Chatty Cathy on the other line. But I would make it 30 to 50 calls every single day. And my business exploded. It exploded. I mean, it’s not even close. If you compare our deal volume, our deal size, our longevity in the business and the fact that we franchise now into 130 markets, no one can touch us when it comes to our process and our capacity to get this business done.
So it was absolutely focused on real estate agents. It was minimum KPI. I would try to have my conversations last two minutes to five minutes at most, and that was just it. I was relentless. I never let a day go by. The only day I took off was Sunday, out of respect for people and their time with their families, and if they were going to worship that day, I didn’t want to be bothering them. But beyond that, I was on it, consistent. I showed up every day, and now look at it.

Ethan:
Yeah. I think that’s super important. I think anybody can watch a YouTube video or have a little conversation and get motivated, but staying consistent, being disciplined and putting in that work to kick off those relationships, making those calls, that’s a whole another story.

Jamil:
Absolutely, brother.

Ashley:
Well, Ethan and Jamil, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, that was really awesome. Yeah, the round of applause you hear in the background.

Ethan:
Perfect timing.

Ashley:
So Ethan, can you tell us where everyone can reach out to you and find out some more information about you?

Ethan:
Yes, I am E 7 Wilson on everything. Instagram, E 7 Wilson, Snapchat, Facebook, Venmo if you want to bless me. But E 7 Wilson, that’s my social media.

Ashley:
And Jamil, what about you?

Jamil:
You can find me on IG at J-D-A-M-J-I. Also on YouTube, it’s just youtube.com/jamildamji. But you can also find me on the … I’ll just because you guys, the second best podcast on BiggerPockets, On the Market, where I have an awesome time with Dave Meyer and the rest of the crew there. It’s just so fun to be a part of the BiggerPockets family.

Ethan:
Love it. One more thing. I think I speak for you guys as well. Please do reach out to me. Reach out to these guys. I mean, everybody who’s here is very willing to have a conversation in the DMs, on a phone call if you can find the phone number. I mean, if you’re ahead, next to us or beneath us, I mean, everybody’s in their own path and wants to help each other. So please do.

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. I’m Ashley at Wealth from Rentals. He’s Tony at Tony J. Robinson. And I will say it, we are the number two podcast compared to On the Market. But you’re still right, the whole BiggerPockets host community really is amazing, and just to be able to be a part of this family is really awesome.

Jamil:
Can I say one last-

Ashley:
Yep.

Jamil:
Hey, if any of you guys can find the mix tape, I will pay you $250. So go out there and find the mix tape and make some money.

Ashley:
How much for a music video? Because I do have the link to that.

Jamil:
Oh. 300.

Ashley:
Deal. Well, I have to go make $300. So thank you guys so much for joining us and we’ll see you next time.

Tony:
Later.

Speaker 5:
(Singing)