In this instructional video, real‑estate investor Joe Homs walks viewers through a recent off‑market house‑flipping acquisition he completed in Huntington Beach, California. He explains how he sourced the property from a pre‑foreclosure list, leveraged his team of wholesalers (led by Alex) to contact the distressed owner, and persuaded the owner to sell before a looming foreclosure. The narrative details the rapid negotiation timeline—spanning just three days—while coordinating with a trusted escrow company (Corner Escrow) and title firm (First American Title, represented by Noah Presswood) to secure a cash closing that halted the foreclosure. Homs emphasizes the importance of direct‑to‑seller deals, the speed and flexibility they afford compared to MLS purchases, and the value of long‑standing relationships with service providers. He concludes by encouraging viewers to use pre‑foreclosure lists as a primary lead source and to reach out for further guidance.
Chapters
We're here in sunny Huntington Beach, California, and we're at my latest deal. And I wanted to talk to you about where I get these deals because I get calls and emails and texts all the time. It's like, you know, where do you find these deals? How do you find these deals? So let's be specific and talk about this one deal. This one deal was literally, we pulled a list Of pre-foreclosures and we have a team of wholesalers. Alex is the head guy on my team of wholesalers. He's behind the camera now. He does a lot of stuff for me. But anyways, he reached out to the owner and long and behold, the owner is getting foreclosed in, you know, less than 3 months. And so there, that's where the conversation started, you know, are you interested in selling? Yes, I'm interested, but I'm not ready, blah, blah, blah. Alex kept on top of him, kept reaching out. We're like literally down to the wire, just— and I'm talking down to the wire here. He's going to be foreclosed on in a week. We've contacted the bank. The bank says we've given them plenty of chances to redeem this loan. Plenty of chances to put this property on the market and try to sell it, and he has refused. So no, we are foreclosing on a Monday. So on Tuesday of that week before the Monday foreclosure, Alex finally convinces him that we need to talk about selling your home because if not, You're looking to lose about, say, $200,000 to $250,000 if you get foreclosed on because he did have equity in this home. And so finally convinced them, yeah, okay, we're ready to go. I'm ready to go now, but can you come over? This would be Wednesday morning. And I told Alex, no, we can't do it. We need to close on this by Monday. Are you kidding? Like 3 days. Yeah, it's just like virtually impossible. So Alex convinced him, okay, let's, let's go down there Tuesday evening, get the contract signed, get this thing going. So we did. We came down here, he signed the contract. The next day we're on the phone to the bank, to the bank, seeing if they'll postpone it. We've got a contract signed. We know we're going to close. It's a cash transaction. All this stuff. Bank says no, no, no, no. So I start my escrow company, my title company, on the process of doing all this stuff to get everything ready so that we can close by Friday. Of course, things come up. Title says he owes alimony to his ex-wife. So Alex calls him back up, says, hey, you know you owe like $20,000 to your ex? Oh yeah, I forgot. Okay, well, you know that's coming out of your portion, not ours. He says, yeah, I understand that. Okay, so we're doing this, you know, calling back and forth and agreeing to everything. We're down literally to the wire on Friday and we're getting ready to close. We just need permission from them to close because we're obviously not going to send money to escrow and then escrow has a process where they have title send the money to the bank. So we want to make sure that, you know, that's All going to take place. So they tell us, yes, Friday you need to get the money over here to us before 1 o'clock New York time because they're New York. Okay, so that's like they're 3 hours ahead. So we have to make sure that we have a letter from them saying, okay, yes, we will stop the foreclosure on Monday if you send us the money on Friday before 1 o'clock. So believe it or not, 3 days. Great escrow company, Corner Escrow. They're in Laguna Niguel. If you need more information, please contact me below. And First American Title, Noah Presswood. These people I've been doing business with for many years. That's the type of relationship that you need to build with people. They know me very well. They know what I do for a living. They know I know what I'm doing. They were able to get this done by Friday. They actually postponed the foreclosure on Monday. We did close on Friday, but even if you close and they want to go to foreclosure, they technically can. I mean, they'll sell it to somebody and then let them know that, oh, oops, we had sold it on Friday. So here, we're going to send you your money back. We're canceling the foreclosure sale. But, you know, I didn't want to go through any of that stuff or any process or put somebody else out. So we were actually able to close 3 days quickly. That's how we acquired this property. That's how you acquire property. I very, very, very extremely rarely buy properties off the MLS. I may buy 1 or 2 a year. We actually just bought one the other day. But that's a whole different story on how we do properties off the MLS. If you go direct to the seller, you go direct to the source, you're going to get the best deal out there. You're going to be able to negotiate with somebody that can say yes. You're not competing with anybody else in this deal and you can get things done. So that's what you need to do is pull your list. Pre-foreclosure list is probably the easiest list to pull and the easiest list to start calling because you already know that they're in trouble. You already know that they're going to get foreclosed on. You just have to get them to make a decision and a decision on, yes, I'm going to sell it and yes, I'm going to sell it at the right price to you. Okay, so if you have any, any more information, any more questions, please reach out to me below. Make sure that you like and share this video. That will help me out tremendously to help other people just—
