How to Find Off-Market Properties WITHOUT Cold Calling! (Rookie Reply)

Okay, let's get your questions answered. I'm Ashley Kerr and I'm here with Tony J. Robinson.

And welcome to the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. Now today we're diving back into the BiggerPockets forums to get your questions answered. And guys, if you're listening to the Real Estate Ricky podcast, you need to know that the forms the BiggerPockets forums are the absolute best place for you to go to quickly get all of your Ricky real estate investing questions answered by tons expert. So today we're going to discuss number one, how to rent out both a single family home and an adu. And we'll define what that is here in a minute but and an ADU and keeping all of your tenants happy. We'll talk about if an end to wholesaling is a reality and what impact that would have for folks who are using that strategy. And finally we'll talk about how to approach finding off market deals and the best way to reach sellers.

Okay, so our first question today is from the Bigger Pockets forum. So if you have a question that you want us to answer or you want to reach out to the whole Bigger Pockets community community and get your question answered, you can go over to the Bigger Pockets forums and check it out. We got all types of investors to answer your questions or give their advice. Okay, so this question we picked out here says I'm working on a new investment property. It has a standard 1600 square foot three two long term rental. So three beds, two baths. But it also has a 600 square foot ADU additional dwelling unit which is a one bed, a one bath studio studio that I want to use as a short term rental. Looking for advice since this will be my first short term rental. So here are some of my questions. What are the best sources for attractive durable furnishings that minimize life cycle cost? Number two, any suggestions on how to avoid conflicts between the short term rental guest and the long term rental guest? The house and ADU are close together but separated by six foot privacy fence. And number three, how do you protect your short term rental from bed bugs? Okay, so this is actually a great question because I am about to have a property that is going to be the same exact thing, a long term rental in the main house and then I'm going to have a short term rental in the little cottage cabin. So Tony, do you have any properties that are in this situation at all?

We don't all of all of our properties are just like short term. We don't have any kind of mixed use, short term, long. But maybe we'll touch on that question first, like, how do you avoid conflicts between the short term rental guests and the long term rental tenants? A couple of things I'll say. Number one is that you can set, you know, we call them, quote unquote, house rules for your short term rental guests. And those house rules are basically, you know, like the agreement that your guests agree to or maybe the statements that you're, that your guests agree to when they choose to book your listing. So for example, at some of our Airbnbs we have house rules, the state rule, the the lights in the backyard, string lights and otherwise can't be on past 10pm that the noise level can exceed a certain decibel level and there's a noise monitor inside the house that tracks that. So you can put those kind of house rules into your listing on Airbnb and then if a guest violates those house rules, you can kind of let them know, hopefully they get back in line. And if they continue to violate those rules, you can ask them to leave. And typically, if it's in your house rules and you have proof that the guests violated those house rules, you, Airbnb will, will typically side with you as a host. Not always, but typically. The second thing I'll add to that though is that most guests are pretty awesome people. You know, we've hosted thousands and thousands of people across our Airbnb. You know, the several years we've been doing this and very, very rarely do we have issues where the guests are causing a nuisance to the neighbors. If anything is the other way around, where the neighbors are kind of harassing the guests.

Yeah, some of the things that we did in our listing was to make it very clear that there is another house property and it is a shared driveway and also the location of the house compared to the cabin. So like the house is after the cabin. So there would be traffic going by the cabin back and forth getting to the main house, but also describing as to where the boundary is, like where do you have access to as detailed as possible. We honestly should probably take an aerial view of the property and kind of like draw that boundary line too and add that onto the listing. Also then for the long term rental, we haven't put anybody in place. There's, we're still doing renovations there, but for that it will be like very clear. Here's, you know, this is a short term rental. There will be people Coming and going and then again defining what their space is, but also setting expectations as to what warrants a phone call to us and what doesn't warrant a phone call as to like these are the things the short term rental guest is allowed to do do.

So I think of trying to avoid some of that conflict. We're going to do our best by just really putting in as much detail the expectations and the rules and the policies of living on the property for both short term and long term.

Yeah. So just to quickly recap then on, on that first point, number one, set super clear house rules for both your short term rental guests and let your long term rental guests know what those rules are. Make sure you're super clear about the delineation between the property where the short term rental begin and where the long term rental begins as well. So there's no overlap there. And third, just understand that the majority of your guests are going to be good people and the chance of you having a lot of issues are probably a lot lower than what you think.

So one of the other questions I was asked was what are the best sources for attractive, durable furnishings that minimize life cycle cost? So the biggest project that I did furnishing was, was my a frame property and we got the majority of the furniture from Ashley Furniture, no pun intended. There, there was no naming reason or branding reason.

You're so vain, Ashley.

But the. We were really, really happy with this decision. It seems like a lot of people I see on social media at least order from different places online because it is less expensive. The benefit that we saw in going direct to this company was picking out the furniture in person. So getting to feel, touch, see it, see its durability, but also having them come and deliver and set up the furniture was a huge time saver and really was low cost. And then you can also get a warranty on the furniture too, and they'll come and replace if there spills damage to the furniture too. So you can buy that kind of warranty on it. But Tony, you definitely have more experience in this realm and are furnishing at a larger scale. So what is your recommendation?

Number one, do not buy a white couch. We've done that for one of our Airbnbs and it literally made it through two guests before it was like completely ruined. So don't buy anything white. We did do an episode with my wife Sarah. It was episode 468. So if you guys want to go back and listen to how we, we kind of set things up at scale, you can go back and listen to that episode. But at a high level, you, you want to definitely balance the durability with still the aesthetic appeal, because you're not, you're not, you know, listing a, a, you know, a doomsday bunker. You're, you're listing a, a property that people are going to typically experience a vacation. And so you gotta, you gotta make sure it's durable, but you also gotta make sure that it's something that's still aesthetically pleasing. We go to a lot of different places to source furniture, but there's one site that we really like. It's called Minoan M I N O A N. And it's a website built for folks in the hospitality industry where they've sourced pretty steep discounts on a lot of the big, like, furniture providers in the space. So Crate and Barrel, I think West Elm, Wayfair is in there for sure.

Pottery Barn.

Pottery Barn, yeah. A lot of those places that people typically shop, they'll go and negotiate discounts there. So I would say go check out maybe a site like Minoan that, where you can see inventory across a lot.

Of different places, and I'll tell you what not to do. And this is what I did with, with my first short term rental back in August 2018. And it was a Airbnb arbitrage. So we actually rented the property, it was an apartment. And we went around and we had our moms ask all their friends what kind of furniture did they have in their basements. And we drove around and looked at everyone's furniture in their basements and took what we wanted and put it all together. And I mean, it was definitely the cheapest furnishing we ever did. But eventually we really had to go through and, you know, replace pieces and match things better. But that's definitely not the way to go if you're looking to really maximize your daily rate.

I think one thing to call out though, Ashley, is that 2018, very different time in the world of Airbnb. And you probably could get away with like crushing it by doing exactly what you just did, where you're picking up all the free stuff from the people that you know in your life. But today, a lot more challenges, I think, in the short term rental space to, to really stand out there. So may not work as well.

So the last question was about bed bugs I fortunately have never had to deal with. So, Tony, is there something I should be doing by, instead of washing the sheets, cleaning, Is there something specific that we all should be doing to be proactive against bed bugs?

Not really. I mean, much like you, we haven't necessarily had that issue in our own portfolio. Obviously we swap the linens after each each turn so we kind of keep everything fresh.

Which hopefully everyone else is doing too.

Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully everyone's doing that. The one thing that we do, especially for our properties here in the, in the, in the Smokies, like our cabins, we put the mattress pad but then we also put a mattress protector over every single mattress as well. So there's like two layers in between the sleeping surface and the actual mattress itself. So that's the only thing might be able to really prevent. But again, we haven't had that issue ourselves. So maybe, you know, I don't know if I. Maybe it's just lucky or maybe what we're doing is actually working. I don't know yet.

Better knock on some wood, Tony.

Or we might have just get our first bread bug tomorrow.

Okay, we're going to take a short break, but stay tuned to find out if wholesaling won't be a real estate investing tactic in the near future.

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All right guys, welcome back. We're going to talk about a hot topic in the world of real estate investing, which is real estate wholesaling. And just a really quick definition for those who don't know what wholesaling is. It's basically instead of you purchasing a property yourself, you're getting that property under contract from a seller and then you're selling the rights of that contract to an end buyer and you get a fee in exchange for connecting those two people. So if you haven't heard, wholesale and that's what it is. But Biggerpock has just released an article that goes into wholesaling and how it might become illegal to wholesale real estate for in the state of South Carolina.

Yeah, so we'll actually link that article for you guys in the show notes if you want to read the whole article. But it goes along the the question here that's based on the article is wholesaling real estate seems like a great strategy. But with that strategy, I've seen a lot of fishy characters who promote things that aren't true, lie to sellers directly lie to buyers, and intentionally misrepresent information. Some of this misrepresented information includes things like after repair values, repair costs, rental comps, and more. I have even encountered wholesalers who push properties with title issues onto buyers that are not knowledgeable enough to understand that this issue could be a very serious problem. A lot of the pitch that wholesalers make to sellers is that they were going to be buying a property with cash even though they have no cash. So if they don't end up finding a buyer to reassign the contract to, they just lied to the seller and wasted their time. Again, this is not to bash on all wholesalers because I do believe that there are some decent people out there. That being said, the majority of my experience comes from people who are pushy salesmen who try to get you to buy something. At the end of the day, wholesaling real estate is like getting a net listing for a real estate agent, except the real estate agent decided to discloses that they will be making the difference upfront and not lying to the seller about buying their property for cash. That being said, in many states and jurisdictions, net listings are actually illegal. My personal opinion was that a lot of this wholesaling activity couldn't go on much longer. There had to be a breaking point where unlicensed and unaccredited individuals could be handling real estate transactions. Lots of these individuals didn't have mentors or licensed professionals to help guide them through a transaction process. And on top of that, I have seen files where there have been over five wholesalers making a cut from the sale of a property. So before that property went into the buyer's hands and went through five other individuals, they were all making money on this transaction and likely not being transparent with the original owner. I remember speaking directly with wholesalers who would tell me not to disclose that a profit is being made. Look, I respect the hustle. I'm all for individuals trying to make their way in the real estate sphere. But there has to be a way that is more transparent with individuals. We can't have a large amount of unregulated people pushing values and figures onto the end consumer who will be the one that's really suffering at the end of the road to extend an olive branch. There are also plenty of bad real estate agents that also push things onto their clients. But those individuals work under a broker who carries a fiduciary duty to their client. Here there are no licenses, regulations, or implemented ethics. What are your thoughts? So this really is a hot topic right now to talk about and debate. And even not now, I feel like it always has been something that's up for debate. So Tony, let's go back to kind of the beginning of this question and kind of go over one of the first things that they brought up as to being misrepresented with information such as repair values, repair costs, rental comps, etc. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I. Look, I, I think what he's more so leaning into here, she. Whoever asked this question is leaning into here is more so talking about the end buyer. So the seller isn't necessarily losing out in this scenario, but it's the person they're. They're wholesaling this deal to.

I, I honestly don't have a ton of issue with this happening because I think agents do the same thing as.

Well, you know, and sellers.

And sellers. Right. Everyone over inflates the after repair value and underestimates what the repair costs are going to be. Very rarely, even if you buy something off the mls, will the seller come to you and say, I haven't, you know, pumped my septic in 80 years, but I still think you should, you know, whatever it may be. Right. So you want to make sure that when you're the buyer that you're doing your own due diligence. Whenever a wholesaler sends me a deal, I completely ignore whatever they say for the after repair value and the estimated rehab costs. I can. I couldn't tell you what it was in any of the. The deals that I've gotten from a wholesaler. All I'm looking at are the photos and their asking price. And based on that, I can see, okay, where do I need to come in to make a competitive offer. I'm going to do my own due diligence, and I've passed on way more deals than I've actually committed to from wholesalers because usually the numbers don't work. So I do think there's a certain level of personal responsibility you have to take as a buyer to make sure that you're doing your own due diligence and not just relying on the word of either a wholesaler, of an agent, or even the seller themselves.

And I think too, with reap repair costs estimating a rehab, even if they're giving you what it would truly cost them, they got an estimate from their contractors. And that truly it is. That doesn't mean that's what it's going to cost for you to get it done unless you're using the same exact contractors. But pricing can vary. I have a great painter, but he's more expensive than the one that my general contractor uses. So he gets. When I use my general contractor, the painting is a lot cheaper. It's not as good of quality, but in his quote, it looks like, wow, this is great. My painting's only going to be this. But the one that I usually use, it's going to be very different. So I think you really, no matter who is giving you that rehab, you have to know who is going to be doing your rehab, what kind of quality you want, et cetera, and building your own scope of work and your own estimate. Because when they also state the repair costs, they're not including a whole scope of work of like this also means you need to 20 outlets replace, you know, and building you this niche scope of work. This is a very, very general, you know, estimate that they are putting together. Okay, so the next question that was kind of brought up is when a wholesaler is getting a property under contract, looks like they're going to be buying it in cash. But Then if they don't get anyone else to actually reassign the contract to, who actually ends up being the buyer, they sometimes have to back out of the contract because they don't end up having the cash, even though they signed the contract and said they'd pay with cash for the property, which I think this is unethical in a sense, in New York State. I don't know about anywhere you can put into a contract, Ashley, care or. And assigns as or something like that. You put it with your name. And I do this every single contract that I do because I might change my LLC that I'm purchasing the property in. Or if for some reason, which I only did a wholesale once, if I was going to wholesale property, I could convert it into the buyer's name. So I do put that as in I may be changing the purchaser who is purchasing the contract. There are many reasons to back out of a contract. I've had to back out of a contract before and forfeit my earnest money deposit because the deal did not make sense for me anymore. And it was. It was really hard for me to do that. But it was better to take that $2,500 loss than to end up with a $25,000 loss by going through with the deal. So I think that it is unethical going into a deal saying that you're going to purchase it and not end up purchasing it because you don't have the funds and the cash. What are your thoughts on that part, Tony?

Yeah, I agree with that notion. Ashley as well. I do think there's a little bit of maybe nuance to this as well.

Right.

Like, I'll give you two different examples, and one of these, I think is, like, totally wrong. The other example, there's probably not a lot of repercussions here, but on one end of the spectrum, you have the wholesaler who approaches the, I don't know, recently widowed single mother of three who is looking to sell this home, to relocate her family, you know, halfway across the country. And you approach her as a wholesaler with $0 in your pocket, and you say, I've got a cash offer for you. I can close in 21 days. She now go open, you know, goes and open up a lease in some place across the country, gets the moving truck, everything's scheduled, and you come to her on the day of close and say, hey, I actually couldn't find a buyer. And she's like, what do you mean? I thought you were the buyer in that situation. There is a lot of repercussions for the seller. And I think knowing that as a wholesaler, you've got to be super transparent with that person about like, hey, there's a 50, 50 chance that I don't actually close in this deal. So I wouldn't make any big life decisions until we were at the closing table. Now, the other end of that spectrum, you know, I've shared with, with, with you guys in the podcast that my, my son who decided this summer that he wanted to try and wholesale his first real estate deal and he actually got two properties under contract. They're in, I think they're in Alabama somewhere. But these were two properties an investor had. They were kind of like his, you know, redheaded stepchildren. He didn't really want to do anything with them. I think he like inherited him from someone else. They were literally just sitting there and he gets this call from this, you know, 16 year old kid saying, hey, I would like to, you know, buy your property. And there was no downside for him if that property didn't sell. He didn't have any intentions to list it. He wasn't, they were literally just sitting there, right, Paid for properties. And I think the, the, the purchaser contract agreement was like 16K a piece. Right. So very little impact for him that my son couldn't actually wholesale that deal. So I think a lot of it comes down to understanding the seller's situation and being transparent to say, hey, there is a possibility here that it doesn't work. But also knowing that every seller is in a slightly different position and sometimes you, even if you couldn't close in the deal, maybe you did more work for them than what they would have done for themselves. So I, I think it's really understanding that seller's unique situation.

Okay, to kind of wrap this up, I think Tony, we could maybe give out some, you know, disclaimers and things to be aware of taking caution, working with a wholesaler or actually becoming a wholesaler. And I think the first part, if you are someone who's thinking of wholesaling, make sure you check your state and local rules and regulations as to what you need to do. What is your responsibility? Do you have to have a real estate license? So know those laws and how you need to proceed with that. Then if you are going to purchase a property from a wholesaler, especially as a rookie investor, and maybe you've never even gone through the home buying process before, you need to have somebody who is familiar with that process who is going to help you along because the wholesaler is just going to want the get the the deal done and over with. So maybe that's asking an agent to say, hey, can you walk me through this closing process? If you're in New York State, you have attorneys, you have an attorney that can help you kind of through the process. But that would be my big thing is that as a new investor, not really knowing much about purchasing a property is that if you are working with a wholesaler that you have somebody to kind of guide you along that process.

Yeah. And just again to reiterate the point earlier, it doesn't matter who you're buying the property from. Never take whatever pro forma or projections or ARV they give you at face value. Always, always, always do your own homework. And guys, there is a ton of ton a ton of information in the Bigger Pockets archives in this podcast and the real estate podcast and the forums about how to successfully work with wholesalers and and make sure those deals, the deals become home runs and not not major headaches.

Well, we love talking all things real estate and if you do too, make sure to get involved by going to biggerpockets and joining in on the forums. If you like this podcast, make sure to follow it in your favorite podcast platform. But we're going to take one more break before we answer today's last question.

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So this one says I am fairly new to real estate investing and I was wondering what ways have you found the most successful in finding off market deals. What is the best way to find and approach people who are not necessarily selling at the moment and make them consider a sale? Now Ash, we talk about this often but we know that your absolute favorite thing to do is to door knock and cold call to get all those, all those good deals.

Hold on a second, Tony. I'm going to call someone.

So you know we're making fun of because Ashley has said often that she doesn't like the idea of like cold calling people and kind of reaching out to sellers in that way. And I think it's important to call out because you can still be a successful real estate investor without necessarily being the person that's actually doing the cold calling, taking the phone calls, the text messages and doing all that stuff. So Ashley, I guess what, what ways have you found to go off market to find deals?

Yeah, so I did mailers before and it worked out phenomenal. And even like years later I'm still getting calls. I think it's been two years. I'm still getting calls from this one set of mailing I did. And what I did was I set up a Google voice number so it's not calling me directly and having my phone number. And I also had somebody take those calls for me. So I hired somebody to come on. Not very expensive to have somebody answer the phone for you. Especially if you have somebody who's interested in real estate investing that wants to get involved. This is a way to have an intern or find a partner to do this. And they took all the calls for me and basically I had an information sheet for them so a VA could do this for you as to like here's the things I want you to confirm or want you to know while you're on the phone call or while you're texting them and then setting a showing appointment at that property if it gets to that point. So direct mail pocket listings, building out your buy box and knowing exactly what you're looking to purchase and sending that out to real estate agents so they know. So when they see a property that fits that buy box they think of you specifically and can reach out, hey, we're you know, go about to put this on the market. Do you want to make an offer, come and look at it before we put it on the market and then you don't have to get compete with anyone if you're able to make an offer before it's actually listed on the mls and then word of mouth referrals, just telling anyone and everyone what you do, what you're looking for. I'm purchasing a house right now that is from my dad's best friend. It was his parents house and I was the only person that knew that he was selling it. I didn't have to compete with anyone and getting it for a great price and the deal worked for him. So I think word of mouth too, that shouldn't be your only lead source, but word of mouth, the mailers, pocket listings and then just keeping your agent informed of what you're looking for so they can bring you MLS deals too. Not even just pocket listings.

So Ashley, a lot of what you shared kind of falls into the bucket of relationships.

Yeah. Really? Networking.

Yeah, networking and using your existing network and expanding your network because there's a lot of life happening outside of your own life and sometimes those things that transpire leads people needing to sell the homes or sell their homes and sell them quickly.

Right.

And you, you can be a solution there. For, for us, we've done some of the, the relationship kind of off market stuff as well. Agents have brought us off market deals, both new construction and just kind of resale homes. So we purchased a few that way before. We've done some direct to seller marketing as well. We've done postcards and we've done cold calling, texting. I don't, I don't necessarily mind like the rejection. So I think I'm, I'm like a weird person that way or I can have people hang up on me all day and I don't, I don't lose sleep over it. So we've done some, some cold calling. So we actually found our very first off market deal with the postcard. Our second off market deal came from a cold call if I, if I recall correctly. So there's a lot of different ways to make it happen. I do know a lot of folks right now who are really focused on kind of the agent referral network because you got to remember agents a big part of their job is prospecting. So they're cold calling homeowners often anyway trying to get listings on market and sometimes they'll come across properties, Ashley referred to them as pocket listings that maybe aren't the type of property that you'll typically list on the mls or maybe that seller is in a bit of a distress situation, they need to move quickly. So anyway, there are, there are investors that I know where all of their off market deal flow though comes from. Networking with agents and just saying, hey, what stuff do you have off market? And the other piece that Kind of leverages the on market is just going after expired listings. Right. I've met other investors who all they do is they wait for a listing to expire on the mls and that very same day, they're cold calling the, the owner and saying, hey, I saw your house and sell. Would you like to like me to make an offer?

Three of the last five properties I bought were from estate sales. Two of those were pocket listings where the family just didn't want to have to deal with showing the property the price was right for them. Like, look, let's go and get this done with. And I always put in the offer that they can leave whatever they want and I will take care of that. Which is a great thing for a family that's grieving, not having to worry about where they're going to put everything that they don't want or don't have room for. And then the other one was my dad's friend, which was also in a state that, you know, his parents passed away. So I, if there's a, you know, you can kind of stalk the obituary, I mean, I would be very careful about that. I have not had to do that yet. My deal flow is still that good. But I do know that people do do that. They go and they look at the obituaries and then find the closest family members. And in some ways that may be a blessing for the family as to like, wow, this person wants to buy the house. We don't have to worry about it. Now that's one thing off of our plate too.

Yeah. And the second part of this question is like, how do you approach people who are not necessarily selling at the moment? Right. And make them consider a sale. So if, if you're doing like marketing, if you're outbound marketing, so you're sending postcards, you're, you're doing ppc, any of those things. Typically when people call you, they're either a calling you with like some expletives telling you to never call them again, or they're calling because they're actually interested in selling. Right. So those people, you don't necessarily have to convince that it's time to sell, but for the folks that you're reaching out to, Right. Say maybe you got a tip from an agent, maybe you, you were driving for dollars and you saw a home, but there, there wasn't necessarily them raising their hand. That first conversation isn't really about the number. Right. The first conversation is just understanding their motivation. If they have a desire to even entertain an offer. Right. Like that's the purpose of that first conversation is will you even entertain an offer? And then you can get things like their condition, their motivation, their timeline, and whatever those things may be. But just like any relationship, it's all about building that rapport, understanding what's driving their. Their decision here, and seeing if you can actually help. And if you can help, then I think that next step becomes a little bit easier.

Yeah, we actually had Nate Robbins on an episode where we talked about cold calling and scripting and talking to a seller. And his advice was that initial contact should just be getting them to say if they are open to an offer. So no, they're not open to an offer. Like, okay, like, keep me in mind, maybe follow up, up in a couple months. If they say yes, they are open to an offer. Like, that is your initial goal. It shouldn't be to get them to say, yes, I would sell to you. It wouldn't, you know, be to negotiate right there. So he says that's his first thing. And then if they ask what would you know, what do you want to buy it for? And respond with, I would really like to come and see the property. That way I can offer you a. A fair price that works for both of us based on seeing the property instead of just throwing out this low ball number and making them understand that you really do want to give them a fair price for what the property is worth. And if you can have the opportunity to come and look at the property too. So I always think those are great tips that Nate gives out. I will never use them because I will never talk to Cold Casa.

But I've watched other. Actually, Nate Robbins came to visit me once and we. We drove by a property and he stopped and he looked it up and he found like the sister of the person that had lived there, and he went and drove to their house. I'm like, no, I'll stay home. Let me know how it goes. Wrote their house, talk to them on all this information, and, you know, went through like the whole process of like finding out they they'd sell the house. So it was pretty neat to.

To see in person, see it in action. And Nate was episode 326 for those who want to go back and listen to that.

Okay, well, we're going to wrap up today is Rookie Reply. Remember, you can go to ww.biggerpockets.com forums and check out some of the community members. If you have a question, just go ahead and make a post and we may select it to be on the show. Okay, well, thank you guys so much. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe to get updated for new videos. I'm Ashley and he's Tony, and we'll see you guys next time on Real Estate Rookie.

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