In this instructional video, real‑estate coach Chris Prefontaine challenges the common belief that real‑estate investing has a slow season. He explains that, especially in the creative‑financing niche, the traditional market’s off‑peak periods (fall, winter, and early spring) are actually the most productive for investors, a period he calls the “harvest season.” He outlines a year‑round prospecting and nurture workflow: heavy lead generation in the summer, followed by consistent follow‑up during the slower months so that prospects convert when the market picks up. He shares personal anecdotes of closing deals over Thanksgiving and Christmas, illustrating that even holidays can be hot for creative deals. Prefontaine then introduces the concept of “wealth stacking,” which involves accumulating deals, skills, and mindset to transition from solopreneur to CEO and eventually build a self‑sustaining portfolio. Finally, he promotes bi‑annual training events in March and September, offering a 50 % discount via a specific URL.
Chapters
There's a misconception when it comes to real estate investing that there is a slow season. See, this tends to come about because in the traditional real estate investing, there are slow seasons and hot seasons. If you're living up, say, in a place like New England like we are, there's a winter, so there's a change in season. And in the change in season is a slow season for real estate. Traditionally, buyers out there buying real estate. So your average realtor or the average real estate investor would think that the only time in which people are gonna be selling is during the summer or the summer and spring, and that you should pack it in when the winter comes. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's completely opposite when it comes to real estate investing, at least in the creative financing niche. Our actual hot season, or the time in which we take on the most amount of properties, is when the traditional market is slowing down. During the fall and the winter, and even parts of the spring, is when we call it harvest season. We spend the time during the summers of out there recruiting or really generating as many leads as physically possible, or prospects as physically possible, during that time frame because we know that at one point during that season, the traditional market is not going to be able to provide a solution for each and every seller. So when we call it quote-unquote slow season, that is when we as real estate investors are in heavy prospect mode. Anywhere from about April all the way to September is heavy, heavy prospect mode. So it's not that you're doing anything different as a real estate investor. Just the expectations are slightly different. Now, with the change of the real estate landscape right now, these comments could be up for debate, meaning that there may be more at-bats for you as a real estate investor in this upcoming season because of how fast this market is shifting. And when the market is on a downturn or there's turmoil, that's when you should be celebrating as a real estate investor. Because that's when you're gonna have way more opportunities to build and scale your portfolio because you're now in a position to solve more challenges. So I digress there. So let's head back. So you're not gonna be changing any more expectation or any more actual action items or tasks that you do on a day-to-day basis. Your job as a real estate investor, especially at the beginning, is to be prospecting. It's to be making phone calls, to be communicating with sellers, to be structuring deals, going on appointments, trying to acquire as many real estate deals as possible. Or if those deals are not ready to pop right now, meaning the seller is not ready, I should be going into a nurture system. Now during that nurture system, then your main objective is to consistently follow up with that seller until they are ready to make a decision. So during the slow season, you're just prospecting, you're building and building and building your funnel to one day when the season starts to peak forward or when the season starts to come to fruition, meaning we start to enter into the fall, all of a sudden, all of those prospects that you spoke through for the last 6 months are now calling you back and ready to make a deal. That's why we call it harvest season. So you remember many times, Me, Chris, Nick, we go up to Vermont during Thanksgiving. We've been doing it for, it's 10 out of the last 12 years. The only times we didn't do it is the birth of my son, the birth of my daughter. And I remember specifically, as recent as a year or two ago, us sitting up in Vermont, having conversations with sellers in between our vacation time, and having Nick on the phone with buyers looking to close properties and move into properties on Thanksgiving. I remember specifically we had deals in which buyers were moving into the property on Christmas and Christmas Eve. As a buyer looking to get the dream of homeownership, there is no other, there's no more greater urgency than trying to move into a property to have Christmas with your family. So even during the holidays, with creative financing in real estate investing, you could consider it a hot season. So as I kind of circle back around here, their misconception of there is a hot and cold season or a slow season in real estate investing, that's not an actual thing. Because as real estate investors, our job is to consistently do real estate deals. And especially if you're at the beginning of your real estate journey, it's about consistently putting in that effort So that eventually you can build a system and a team around that effort, and then eventually you can eventually step off the treadmill. We have a thing that we call stacking, or wealth stacking, but stacking in general. And that is, yes, we teach each and every one of our students how to stack deals upon themselves so that way one day you can step off the treadmill, but it's also about stacking the right skill sets and mindset so that way you can one day move from solopreneur to CEO, and then eventually step out of that and have a portfolio that's running on its own. We consistently teach this through many different facets, but we really get to dig in deep when we meet with our students and we meet with our community on our bi-yearly events in March and September. And because you've stuck with me through watching this video, I want to ensure that you have a link that gets you 50% off The upcoming event. All you gotta do is go to smartrealestatecoach.com/50off. During these events, we teach you many different things, but we very much teach you how to be able to stack so that way one day you have an amazing portfolio and you will never have to worry about a hot and cold season.
