Dean Graziosi narrates a ‘Deal of the Month’ about an 11-acre French property he bought cheaply because a silted stream made it appear swampy. Lacking the $40,000 needed, he presold three lots (collecting 50% deposits) to raise the purchase/subdivision funds, cleared the stream with a backhoe, subdivided and built four houses (including his first home), and claims the hill alone generated well over $1 million in profit. The video mixes practical strategy (creative financing, presales, contractoring) with personal motivation and lessons about thinking outside the box.
Questions this video answers
11 acres.
$40,000.
50% of the money for each of three lots.
Four houses.
Well over $1 million (he says "well over a million dollars" on the hill).
Chapters
Hey, this is Dean, and welcome to Dean's deal of the month, where, as you know, I'm going to try to lay out every little speck of every piece of what I've done to make a deal happen. And today we started this camera out on Rue du Vin. It's a street that I named. We happen to be in France. We stayed on a street called Rue du Vin. So we decided to name it. So it was pretty cool. We got to name our own street. We're staying on a subdivision here that I want to share with you. Subdivision may seem a little advanced, but let's just start with the fact that this is one of my best no money down deals. And it was outside the box, thinking it was something you may have read about in one of my books. I don't think it's something you'll read any other place. But really, the fact is something that, you know, I always share is be creative. Think outside the box. This piece of property we're standing on right now is 11 acres. And it was for sale for a long time. And it was for sale for a long time because we're standing at the entrance of this subdivision that we did. We'll take a walk up the hill and I'll show you the houses that we ended up building and selling. But the reason I think this property didn't sell for so long, I bought it so cheap, is because, as you'll see in a second, we'll film there's a little stream running through right through the property here. And if you know what silt is, silt is what lands at the bottom of a stream. And what it did with this stream coming through here, for years, silt built up wasn't allowing the stream to flow on a regular basis. And it made water settle in this whole area behind me. It made water settle. So when people parked on this main road behind the camera guy, my buddy who's filming this right now, they would just step in wet water and just think, hey, this is swampland. It's not buildable. So I got this property for peanuts because it seemed like swampland. And all I did when I first got the property was get a guy with a backhoe in here to clean out the stream. And it emptied all this supposed swamp land and showed how beautiful it was. But let me just tell you, at the time I bought this property, I didn't have the $40,000 to purchase it, nor did I have the money to subdivide and do all that. So here's what I did. Thinking outside the box, I realized that I had found an amazing piece of property at a great price. So what I did, this is a strategy you can use. I presold three of the lots on the hill at an extreme discount and got the money, got some of the money in advance. Literally I got 50% of the money for three of the lots I was going to subdivide and sell. I gave the people that bought it a great discount and I used that money to buy the place and subdivide it. When people talk about a no money down deal, they think about it as this one thing really. It's like it's ingredients to a cake. If you have a whole bunch of ingredients, you can make all different kinds of cakes. Well, the ingredient I used here was I found a piece of property other people didn't want. I sold three lots in advance at a huge discount. But I took their money, I purchased the property and ended up building and selling and, and generating over a million dollars on this piece of property. So let's go up the hill and I'll show you some of the houses we did. Alright, we're now up at the top of the hill and this is the subdivision I created. And let me just tell you on a personal level how this got so good for me. Prior to doing this subdivision, I literally lived in a probably 600 square foot one bedroom apartment. I know that sounds like a heck of a story, but it's true. But through real estate and creative thinking, doing this property with no money down, I built the house behind me. That's my first house that I ever built for myself. I went from rented apartments to. That was my first house and it was done completely through real estate. I never sold a book or a tape or a course prior to moving in that house. I went from being broke, living in a trailer park as a kid to literally that was my first house. And to me it's absolutely amazing. I love it. But let me just tell you, allowing myself to think outside the box and just going for it and not letting anybody talk me out of my dreams, literally when I was going to buy this property, my dad, who loves me more than anything, told me I was absolutely crazy. Told me I was going to go broke, I was going to lose everything, stick with what you know, be conservative, start saving your money and I went for it. I didn't listen to them. And you know, I share this because I just happened on the plane ride here yesterday. I'm in New York, I came from Phoenix yesterday. I watched the movie Seabiscuit, you know, and it was a broken down horse that was too small, a broken down owner because his son died, and a broken down jockey. But, you know, when they got together, they didn't listen to anybody else. And I want to ask you, are there outside influences your life stopping you from trying to find a deal like this, a swampy piece of property that you could possibly lock up on paper and find some other people to contribute? You know, in my book and everything we teach, there are so many ingredients to a no money down deal. I was lucky to find three people that wanted a discount on a lot to give me money up front and have faith in me to buy this property, use their money to buy it and subdivide it, and then I made a great deal of money. Can you find that? Do you have anybody in your life that could lend you money? Do you have anybody in your life where you could find a deal like this and instead of owning it yourself, pass it off to somebody else for a $10,000 profit? I see my camera guy, it's in the middle. It's the first nice day in New York. There's mayflies everywhere. You see a fly bounce around the screen. But I'm not here to worry about the flies. I'm here to give you some inspiration to know that you could do deals like this. And backing up how it felt for me to go from a little one bedroom apartment to that beautiful house. I was able to do it because not only did I buy this property and subdivide it, use other people's money to buy it, I also sold these houses. There's 1, 2, 3, 4 houses. I sold just the lot on the house on the hill. And you'll see this we're showing you in the screen. But the other three houses, I ended up becoming a general contractor and I built those houses and those profits went into my house up on the hill. So I ended up owning that house and owing minimal amount of money. So at the end of the day when everybody told me I was nuts for buying a swampy piece of land when I didn't have any money, at the end of the day, I looked like a genius. And it was only because I stepped out of my comfort zone and I took action. You know, there's a saying that I love is you never see a statue built of a critic. Everybody criticized me for buying this property, but on this hill alone, I don't know my exact profit right now, but on this hill alone, I generated well over a million dollars on this hill from a guy who was in an apartment, didn't have money to put down. I don't know the exact profit, but it was hundreds of thousands of dollars just on this hill. This is just one. And we're going to go next is I ended up buying the property next door to me and the property over the hill and generated millions of dollars just with those. So let's go.
