In this episode of "Wholesaling Storytime: Tales from the Trenches," Nathan Payne recounts a 2018 wholesale transaction that netted a $28,000 fee but also put his safety at risk. After following a mentor‑recommended targeted list, Nathan’s team connected with Lee, an inherited‑property owner battling meth addiction. Over several visits they provided groceries, removed competitor mailers, and negotiated a creative‑finance arrangement that gave Lee a small upfront payment and interest‑free monthly installments. Lacking a solid buyer pipeline, they first tried to sell to a previous buyer, Roger, who low‑balled, and ultimately wholesaled the deal to a broker for $28,000. The broker later flipped the property for roughly $500,000, highlighting the missed upside from not having a buyer. At closing, the broker’s delayed wire caused Lee to threaten Nathan and his partner, underscoring the danger of getting too close to volatile sellers. Nathan extracts key lessons: maintain professional distance with high‑risk sellers, build a reliable buyer pipeline, and structure deals that protect both parties. He also promotes free resources – a targeted list, a Painless Offer Calculator, and a newsletter – for viewers seeking to replicate the strategy. The episode ends with a teaser for the next story about a hoarder’s property.
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What's going on, everybody? Today you're here obviously for Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime, Tales from the Trenches. That's exactly what we're going to be going over today is my experience as a brand new wholesaler getting deals, giving you guys the truth because a lot of the stuff out there is not real. A lot of people just talk about their wins. I'm about to tell you guys about my wins, my losses, so you can learn from my experiences. Okay, so if you were here on the last week's episode where I told you how we got a deal from working with Don and the $19,000 deal that we got from flyers, and if you're part of our email newsletter, you got the exact template of the flyers that we use so you can use them yourself if you want. But this week, this deal that I'm about to let you guys know that I did a $28,000 wholesale fee, sounds great, it was good, had a lot of ups and downs, and my life was threatened, okay? And I'm not just exaggerating here, this, it was really threatened, and I want to let you guys know how to avoid situations like this if you can. And, uh, about this crazy deal, because the deal with Don, if you remember the last episode, it went by pretty smooth. We were the worst negotiators ever. We offered more than what the seller asked. We just walked in that one, we got lucky. This one, this deal that we're going over this week, the $28,000 deal that we got from targeting specific lists, which I'm going to give you this specific list we targeted inside if you're subscribed to the newsletter, I'm going to give you the exact list we hit. This was not an easy deal, guys. This was like my third or fourth deal when I first started. It was something I've never dealt with and I'm going to get into everything about it. So let's, let's dive right in. So the year is 2018, okay? First year I started, documented here. And we targeted a specific list that one of the mentors we had at the time said, "Hey, try this list, it works." So we did it and we got this lead from it. We ran into a guy named Lee. He had inherited a home. His father had passed away and inherited a home. And he was desperate. He was in need of cash. He inherited the home. And unfortunately, guys, this was my first experience in my entire life of dealing with someone that was addicted addicted to meth. Okay, never dealt with anyone with like that in that situation, so I didn't really know how to navigate this situation. I just— you'll hear in the story, but yes, he was addicted to meth, and it was a very interesting story which, uh, I'm gonna lay out with you guys. A lot of challenges, okay? And nothing like dealing with Dawn where we sat on the couch with her and her husband and we just came to an agreement. This was not like we just went and had a civilized conversation. This had ups and downs and arguments and threats. It was like walking on a tightrope to negotiate this deal, but we were able to negotiate it. So again, if you want the resources, if you want more information about what I'm going to deliver in this story, make sure to subscribe to the newsletter on Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime: Tales from the Trenches. But let's dive right into this. So we meet with this seller, super urgent to get money, and you know why, okay? He needed money, and he was like, I need to sell this house, I need to make money, I need to get my money right now. So at the time, I wasn't going there to negotiate with the seller. Corey was going with the broker we were working with. So they ended up going to negotiate with Lee multiple times, and I was doing leads management, and they were doing negotiations, acquisitions management. We were bouncing ground rules at that time. But anyway, so they're negotiating, and I think they had to go like 7 or 8 times to Lee's house to negotiate, and they ended up finding that he had no money. They— we ended up buying him groceries so we could help him make it until the day that we closed. And during negotiations with Lee, you know, this is interesting. Corey told me this when he got back. He's like, bro, we were at his house, and on his kitchen table, he had like 20 or 30 mailers from other investors in the area that were interested in buying the house, right? They had mailed this house, and Corey was like, Hey Lee, are you planning on calling these other investors to get their offers or what are you doing? He's like, no, I'm going to work with you guys. So Corey is like, okay, do you mind if I take these then? And Lee's like, yeah, that's fine, take those mailers. So Corey took all the competition, all the mailers from the competition, and he just took them. I think we just looked at the mail pieces to see what they were saying, but that probably saved us getting the deal versus like having a bidding war. But hey, he said it was cool and he was going to work with it. He liked working with us. But anyway, we worked with Lee, we got him groceries, we were able to kind of work out a deal, and he owned the house outright. He had inherited the home. There was mortgage on it. So the deal that we ended up working out with Lee was that we would make him do a creative finance deal where we would make him payments every month. And he liked this because, you know, he didn't want all the money up front where he would just blow it on, unfortunately, drugs. He was like, just give me enough and that will keep me from blowing it. So we made him payments every month and we structured a creative finance deal where we gave him a little bit of money up front, made him monthly payments interest-free, right? Just made him monthly payments and we would pay him off once we were done flipping the home. So they were able to structure the deal. And what happened was, again, guys, this is very beginning. I did not focus on buying, finding buyers. I focused on— unfortunately, I focused on just finding deals. So when it came time to sell these deals, we didn't have a lot of buyers. So we reached out to Roger, who bought our first deal, and he was at this point, he was like, you guys got to pay your dues. I'm not paying what really the deal was worth. He's like, you guys, I'm not going to pay that much. We had a great deal. The house was worth about half a million, $450,000. We got it at $215,000. Again, it was not in good shape. It needed like complete rehab. But Roger, our buyer, was like, nah, nah, I'm not paying you guys as much as the house is worth. And we had a hard time finding someone, uh, again, in the time that we needed to. So we ended up wholesaling it to the broker, and we wholesaled to him for $28,000. Now, great deal, right? Everyone— that was the biggest deal we've done at that point. We were stoked. But knowing what I know now, if I would have had buyers or if I would have known how to flip, I would have definitely kept this deal. Because guys, we ended up wholesaling it to the broker, and the broker ended up flipping it and selling it for half a million dollars. So he made probably about $100,000, $150,000. We made about $28,000, which is fine. I'm not like saying, hey, I regret that he didn't make— that he made good money. Good for him. But knowing what I know now, you need good buyers or you're gonna lose out big on some deals. Okay, so We ended up wholesaling the deal, but that's not where the story gets crazy, guys. This is where the story gets crazy. We wanted to ensure that he'd make it to the title company to sign when we were buying the house. So we picked him up and he shows up. He's an older guy, but he's got like a ball cap, a gold chain. He's looking G'd up from the feet up. And he comes with his girlfriend. We take him to the title company. As we're driving to the title company, he is letting us know the craziest stories, experiences I've ever heard. You think my stories are interesting? He was letting us know when he was homeless and things that he did with the homeless people for fun. He told us like as he was a bouncer, how he would take people out. They were crazy. A little inappropriate as well, but I'm not going to get into that. So we get to the title company and he signs. We sit at the closing table with him and he signs and everything's fine. And they let him know, hey, the money will be released within 24-48 hours. Now, he probably didn't hear the 48 hours part because the next day when he did not receive the funds that he was going to get the next day, because apparently maybe the broker didn't fund it on time or whatever happened, he didn't get the money next day. He ended up calling me and Corey, cussing us out, saying he was going to kill us, he's going to find us, he was going to take our lives because he didn't get the money immediately. Guys, it was crazy. It was a crazy experience. I've never had my life threatened seriously like that before. And the lesson I wanted you guys to learn is when you're dealing with situations like this, I've never dealt with someone that, you know, has highs and lows from withdrawals and drugs. You have to keep your distance. You got to be careful because in this situation, I think we got a little too close with him and friendly where he felt like he could talk to us like that. It was a really interesting experience. But anyway, we were able to get over it. He was obviously— he got the money. It just got wired to him the next day, like within 48 hours, like 2 days after close. Interesting experience. Definitely nothing like, guys, nothing like what we had experienced with Dawn, the nice lady with her husband. But look, I wanted to share this experience because you're going to run into situations where people, you know, when we work in this industry, we want to help people that are in situations that need to sell fast, quick, easy, convenient, and they can't sell traditionally. You're going to run into some situations like that, but we handled it the best we could. And what I want to invite all you guys to do is I want to give you a gift of the list that we targeted so we could get this deal done. And if you subscribe to the email, we're going to give you that exact list. We're going to show you exactly how to do it and give you link where you can get access to it for free. Okay, so you can target it. But I just want to let you guys know that, you know, this, this game, honestly, it's not fun talking about this guy that's, uh, addicted to— was addicted to meth. I hope he's doing great. Shout out to him, like prayers go out to him. I hope he's overcome his addiction. It's not fun seeing the withdrawals that he went through, how he was really happy when he was high, and when he was not high and going through withdrawals, he almost looked like he was going to die. It was terrible. And I feel terrible that, you know, he had to go through this, but hope he's doing good. And, you know, I wish there was more we could do for him. Obviously that money that gets the inherited house, like, that's probably not going to solve his issue. He's probably, you know, hopefully he's gone to rehab. Anyway, I don't want to talk too much about that, but look, as you go through this journey, you're going to run into some people, so just do your best to serve them and help them. And, uh, you know, the solution that we came up with him, it did help him because again, he didn't get all the money up front. He wanted that, and we were able to negotiate and work through that deal. Just be careful how close you get when people are running through those highs and lows because you don't want to get your life threatened. All right, so I hope you enjoyed this, today's episode of Wholesaling Storytime with Nathan Payne, Tales from the Trenches. I want to invite you again to subscribe to the newsletter. We're giving away the Painless Offer Calculator that cost me thousands to make and hours to build. I'm gonna give that to you for free along with weekly resources for free, guys. I want to hook you up. Go get it right now, and we will see you next week where I talk the hoarder that I moved personally. I moved her stuff, got into U-Haul, drove 2 hours away. This is a crazy story. You're gonna find out about that next. We'll see you on next week's episode. Later, everybody.
