Dean Graziosi narrates a ‘Deal of the Month’ where he bought an abandoned, hill-side lot with a run-down building—initially in pre-foreclosure—and converted it into a sellable home. He paid $30,000 for the lot, spent about $10,000 to clear it, designed a hillside home (using simple sketches sent to an architect), and had a contractor build a house now listed for $309,000; he emphasizes proactive outreach to owners of distressed properties and practical design/finishing choices that speed sales. The walkthrough highlights cost choices, layout (including a two-car garage and finished basement), and market positioning for the $300k price point.
Questions this video answers
$30,000
About $10,000
Approximately $40,000
$309,000
2,200 square feet
Chapters
Alright, here we are with another deal of the month where I just go over deals that I've done to hopefully inspire you, trigger something, get you to take action and share some strategies that I've used to allow me to be a millionaire in my 20s, starting with no money. You know, I talk about it a lot, but I think my no money strategies really came out of desperation, thinking outside the box and not being afraid to take action. But it's funny that we're standing here today because if you saw my think a little different real estate show, I'm standing in front of a run down house in one of the scenes where I said it was a pre foreclosure that the bank was going to take. Well now I'm standing in front of the house that we built in this place. We'll run some footage right now of the old shack that we bought. Let me just back up for a second and tell you how I bought this place. This was a run down house, abandoned. Everybody drives up and down this road, looks at the house all the time. I was just the one who stopped, got the address, took a look at it and went to the town clerk's office, the treasury's office where you pay taxes and go to your tax assessment department, whatever department is in your county or in your town. Found out who the owner was and got ahold of him and said would you like to sell your run down abandoned shack like building? When I first called him, he was in the middle of a foreclosure on this property. This was lumped in with a lot of other properties that he was going to lose to the bank and he said he didn't think he could sell it. I offered him I think $30,000 at the time he said he didn't know what he could. I didn't hear from him. Six, eight months went by. I just figured it was a dead deal and calls me out of the blue and says, hey, if you still want it for that $30,000, it's yours. Now let me tell you one more reason why this house probably didn't sell so quick. Doug, if you could film kind of down here, just towards the porch and the deck and then come back up to this way. You see that it's a hill lot. This lot's not super attractive, but let me tell you the attractive part about it. At the time I bought this, lots in this town were selling between 120 and $150,000 a lot. This is not only a buildable lot, it had municipal water and municipal sewer, meaning it saves you a fortune on the connections. You don't have to dig a well, you don't have to put a septic tank and you just plug into the lines. So I was able to get this place for $30,000. Well, of course it had a little hill and it had a run down building on it. So what we did, me and my team who worked for me up here, bought the place, closed on it. Now let me back up. I didn't use any no money down strategies on this one. I didn't buy it that long ago. Fortunately, the deals I did when I was younger with no money down that had generated me lots of money, allowed me to pay for this one. I paid $30,000 cash for it. Then it cost me about another $10,000 to demolish the building and clean the lot. Now I had $40,000 into a buildable lot with sewer and water. Hired a general contractor, a friend of mine, who built this entire house for me. I barely came here to even look at it. But here's what I did now. Thinking outside the box again. I had a hill lot, but you know what? I went online and went to Google and searched hillside homes and I found book after book of homes that were built on a hill just like this. I sat up one night late and got some graph paper, found two designs I liked. I put them together, made it a halfway, you know, on a graph paper. Nothing fancy, a novice approach, but sent it to an architect and built a beautiful home on a side hill on a lot that I had about $40,000 in. And now I have a home. This home is for sale right now. It's just getting done this week. It's for sale for $309,000. I'm going to make a great deal of money on it. And all it was is driving by a shack like building that hundreds of people have driven on this road right here, driving by this, and would have loved to make the 50 or whatever thousand dollars that I'm going to make on this. But they didn't stop. They didn't think about it. And you can't have that excuse anymore. If you're driving by a building that's run down or someone that moved out because of a foreclosure, or you're driving by a piece of property that has a tiny little for sale sign, call the number, stop and see the people. Send a letter, use the template, use the strategies in my book and my courses and what we teach you to contact that people, contact those people and Try to make a deal. Listen, and if it takes you 10 deals to get one or 20 deals to get one, does it really matter? Maybe you'll have 20 or 30 hours in getting that one deal that could potentially make you $50,000. I think it's worth it. So I hope I sparked some interest. You know, before we go, I'm going to take a quick walk inside. I want to show you some colors and some flooring colors and stuff that we on pretty much all the houses I build or all the apartments that we rent that really are attractive to people. So we'll give that, like, as a little bonus at the end. But I hope this sparked a pre foreclosure mentality of, hey, if it's ugly, it could be your best friend. So let's go inside. Okay, here we go. It's me holding the camera, and I'm not the best at it, but. Well, you know what? There's always problems. I always tell you, things come up, but who cares, right? You see the kitchen set is in the living room. Some extra hardwood on the floor. That's because this is the dining room area. That's because the plumber. The house was all done, and the plumber missed one leaky pipe under the sink right here, and it leaked for about 24 hours and hurt all the hardwood here. So they had to pull up all the hardwood, and the plumber is making good on it. So it's not the end of the world. Don't really care. But I just really wanted you to come in here to see some of the colors we use. You know, we. I stick with earth tones on all the homes I build. You know, if you can see the color of these walls, it's like an oatmeal color. I don't know if it's contrasting, but it's an oatmeal color right now. And I think over the next five years, dark woods are back in the light. Woods aren't as attractive to me, and I know I sell houses quicker with that. You can buy stainless steel appliances in today's world. Pretty reasonable. And it's very attractive. You know, kitchens and bathrooms are very important, especially to wives that want to have a good place to raise their family and cook and a good place to relax at night. You know, take time to figure out light fixtures that, you know, match today's. Today's world. We got a nice little deck out back there. We used kind of an oatmeal color here. We put some hardwood floor, you know, hardwood floor in today's world is unbelievably cheap compared to what it was just five years ago. You know, with the pergolike floors, it's not the old days of putting down the floor, sanding it and coating it. It's pre finished, ready to put down. So I've got a great deal on this little dark wood here. The one thing I really wanted to share, I won't walk through the whole house. We used an off white color which made nice. You know, we use a. I always put a Berber like carpet with some like, you know, alternative colors so it doesn't stain so quick and it gives it a nice contrast with the walls. But one good thing, I'm going to take you right downstairs here real quick. The thing that benefited this hillside home or this hillside lot is in the basement which we're going down right now. Sorry, let's walk downstairs in this house. This is the first time I've seen it in like two months. So it looks amazing to me. I'm so excited about it. Is the one thing to realize is we took the basement that should have seemed like a negative, right. And we put a two car garage on this downhill here. Let me turn on your light. Let me turn on the light here. Got a nice two car garage, right. But it was big enough to also add two additional rooms. So where this downhill seemed like a negative, I was able to optimize the space. Put in an extra bathroom down here, nice little bathroom. Then an extra room here that could be a family entertaining room with an exit going out the side there. That's one room and then an additional bedroom. So we crammed this smaller house and turned it into 2,200 square feet. We got it for sale at a very fair price of 309,000. And even in a down market, the market's down right now. It's horrible. Things aren't selling at all in this area. But this will sell. Because what's not selling are homes. Over 395 homes that are 450, 500 which so many people built and they're stuck with. But homes that are selling in that 300 mark are still selling. You got to find that price point. You got to know your area and know what's selling. And I know that $300,000 house, especially with the style, the color, the outside colors we used. This baby's going to sell. And I'll report back to you as soon as it does. Alright guys, we'll talk to you next.
