How to Know If a Seller is Wasting Your Time in 5 Questions

For those of you that don't know me, my name is Nathan Payne. I've been wholesaling, fix and flipping for about 5, 6 years, actually 6 years now. I just had my anniversary. I've done hundreds of deals, done millions of dollars in transactions, and what our goal is to show you guys is how to do deals, okay? How to analyze if you got an opportunity, because I talk to a lot of people every day that are like, man, I can't get deals at the right price. I'm just wasting my time with sellers. And our goal is to show you guys that you can't fit a square peg in a round hole, okay? You have to find the right opportunities. That's the key to making money in this business. It's not about it's about making a deal happen. You don't find good deals, you make good deals happen. So anyway, that's me, Nathan Payne. Who are you, Nathan Valley?

What's up guys? My name's Nathan Valley. I've been wholesaling for 4 or 5 years. I really gotta sit down and figure it out, but about 4 or 5 years. Done over 100 contracts in a single year. Some of you might've seen 30-day challenge I did a little while ago where I picked totally brand new market where I had no contacts, no resources, nothing, and did a $20,000 deal in 30 days. Without spending any money on marketing. The reason why we're doing this is, guys, there's a lot of people out there struggling to wholesale, and we don't want you to be one of them. So with that said, we ready to jump in, man?

Yeah, man. I love that your claim to fame is that you went to a brand new market, no buyers, no relationships, and you freaking did a $20K deal because that's pretty dope. That's dope.

The crazy part about it that I don't even mention is, is I only worked on the challenge when the camera was on, and I only went live for about 2 to 3 hours each morning, Monday through Friday. And the crazy thing is, guys, I'm a big believer anybody can get lucky one time, right? Even if that the deal that went through, even if that didn't happen, because I had so many hot opportunities on the table. Yeah, it was crazy.

It was—

it went well.

Absolutely insane. You know, and I was there. I did the challenge too. And if you guys, you know, didn't see me, I was able to get a $5,000 deal. Not that juicy upfront, but I own an Airbnb in Fort Myers because of it. Because the buyer that I knew, because we talk about having great relationships with buyers, the buyer was like, you know, I was like, man, you're not going to make a lot of money up front. Upfront on this one, but I sold it to him, gave it to him on terms. Now I own a portion of the Airbnb and he takes care of everything. And yeah, that's how it goes. So anyway, let's dive into this, everybody. Okay, now you know who we are. Why are you listening? Like, what's the plan of this call? Why, why should you listen today, guys? What we're going to do is talk about qualifying opportunities and identifying if something is worth pursuing off of specific questions that we have for academy members that we work with in Painless Flipping. But we're bringing this to you guys so you guys can identify opportunities as well. We're going to— it's kind of like a game. We're going You're going to see exactly what we think just from face value off of just information that we ask people. So when you're working with a seller, you can say, okay, is this someone we're working— I could work with, or am I just trying to force something? And if you guys didn't know, we use Batch Leads to run comps. We want to use Batch Leads to get leads. If you don't have it, check it out. You know, if you use the code Painless, the promo code, you get like a 7-day free trial, or you can just DM me and I'll send you the link. And again, what we're going to do is we're going to show you guys. The plan is that we're going to actually teach you and show you because it's all about taking action. You learn by doing, okay? You learn by doing. That's the best way to learn. Okay. So, this is great to watch, but we want you to watch and then go do it. Go do it. That's our plan and our promises. We promise you that if you go and do what we're telling you, it's going to work because that's what happens. You learn again by doing. So, that's what we got for you today. So, let's dive right in. Nathan Valley, what you got for us? I know you got a deal you're looking at.

Yeah. So, this is a lead someone submitted to us through our Payless Flipping Academy. And so, this is something we're underwriting. It's in Georgia. Need to clarify a few things because it's like 5 addresses that got submitted, but it's the same seller. So basically, the seller is older. He's 78 years old. He wants to unload the properties that he owns. So what I'm trying to understand is if it's just vacant land or if one of them is a house. I didn't see the house, but right now it looks like it's at least 4 vacant lots.

So let me give you just my feedback immediately after, off of doing this for 6 years. When someone wants to offload multiple properties at once, I've, I've never had like great success with someone that's trying to sell everything all at once because either usually they're not able— I haven't been able to get it at the right discount. Most investors that I would sell to don't want to buy everything all at once unless it's a fire sale and a great deal. I don't know about you, Nate, but that's been my experience. Well, how about you?

Yeah, I'd say mine. Mine also very similar. If they're an investor and they've got multiple properties that they're looking to sell at the same time, typically in my experience, they've just listing them individually and just having an agent that kind of handles the back and forth because it's twofold. It typically the person that we run into that, you know, who owns multiple properties, an investor, guys, cash offers and buying at really good deep prices. That's what we do as investors when we buy, but that's not how we want to sell them, right? So, and again, guys, this isn't like 100%, you know, for every single person. But in my experience, more often than not, when I speak to someone that owns multiple properties, it's a little bit trickier, right? And a lot of times it's because they're an investor. They want to get a good price for their home, which is super reasonable, right, for their portfolio. But just typically, you know, we're not the right buyer for them. And guys, if there's one pro tip I can give you, don't sell something to somebody that doesn't want it, right? Guys, if it sounds like it's an investor and if it sounds like he wants top dollar, there's nothing wrong with that, right? Makes perfect sense. That's why he did the hard work in finding these properties, holding on to them for so long, taking care of them, or whatever the case may be. But that's typically not who we're looking for, right? As investors, when we're acquiring properties, right? Well, specifically wholesaling, guys, we're looking for distressed situations, right? That's our bread and butter. That's our specialty, right? So right off the bat, motivation doesn't seem very high.

So the first, like you just said, if they're like, I have multiple properties, I'm willing to get rid of them if you pay me this, right? Like, very difficult to, like, come up with an offer for all of them. For me, this is what I would do in this situation. I'd be like, all right, just curious, like, do you need to sell these? Like, have you thought about listing them? Like, I'm going for the route of like, this is not something I usually deal with. This is not something I'm really interested in buying all these lots. Why do you want to sell it this way? Why do you— like, I try to find the situation out. Nate, what about you? Versus like trying to like, let me analyze every single one of these properties and come up with an offer, give you the offer, get it under contract. That's a lot of wasted time on my part. I got to talk to the seller. I got to— and by the way, this is a lead that was submitted to us where we haven't talked to the seller. We're just looking at the information. Then we go in and we dive in deeper depending on the information we get. That for me, I only care at this moment about the situation of why he's selling versus going individually and comping all these. That's not worth my time.

Yeah. And if you guys have been watching, right, you'll know that what we want to know is the core questions that I ask every single seller, right? Hey, have you thought about maybe just listing it with an agent and going that route? Okay, well, have you thought about fixing up the property and then selling it? Have you thought about renting it out? All right. And last but not least, have you thought about just staying there? Right now, in this case, it's a piece of vacant land. And, you know, there's actually a fifth question that I usually ask depending on the scenario. Right. So something like this, an older guy, one question I'll sometimes ask is, hey, you know, have you ever thought of just— I don't know if you have any family or kids. Have you thought about just hanging on to it and maybe passing it down to them? And guys, why do we do this? We want to push them in every other direction, right? All their other— and guys, I promise you, you're not introducing anything that they haven't thought of before. I promise you, right? What we want to do is we want to get them to tell us why we are the only solution for them. If you're like, oh, Nate, I'm not that good at sales or negotiating, well, this is perfect because you don't need to be good to ask these questions. And what's great is when you know you're the perfect fit for somebody, you don't have to be that good, right? And it's not salesy either. You're just asking about their situation and their other options. Sounds like you genuinely care about them. Which is a good form of practice. It is, right? So these are the questions that I would want to know a little bit more about it if the motivation isn't obvious upfront. The other thing that I'm doing is I'm taking a look at the general area.

I'm curious really quick on that form. Don't mean to stop your train of thought.

Yeah, please go ahead.

What's the reason why he's selling that they put on there?

So the motivation is he's old and he wants to unload his properties. So he's old, he's looking to cash out.

That's okay. But you got to dive in deeper than that, of course, right? Like, Okay, you're old and you got offload your properties. That mean if you don't sell them, like you're in a financial bind, like, are you going to lose them? Motivation, guys, like when you're asking questions on motivation, like you got to find out, like, yeah, getting old, like maybe old, that's subjective, right? Like, who knows, is old like 40, 50? How old is this guy, right? Like, is he going to die soon? No offense, but like, that's like you got to kind of know the more details on it, right?

Right, guys. And one of the ways I love to do that is make a statement and let them correct you. Right? Even if it's kind of silly, right? So if I was talking to a seller and they're like, you know, I'm old, I'm 78, just looking to cash out, I'd be like, 78, come on. I was like, it's 2024, 78, that's the new spring chicken, man. Right? And I'd make a joke and be like, you know, and then the response, that next response, that's where you get a little bit deeper, right? And they're like, well, no, I wish, but this is my problem. Or like, well, you know, it's not just— it's not so much age, it's actually this is the reason I'm looking to sell, right? And sometimes it's not something painful at all. It's like, well, I'm just looking to move and, you know, go to the Bahamas and just, you know, spend all my money. Who knows, right? But a lot of times you guys would be surprised, right? Again, just think of it from— he is 78 years old. Who knows how long he's owned his properties? Could have been 10 years, 20 years, 30, 40, 50 years. Who knows? But there is a reason why right this minute he is considering selling now, right? It's like 78 years old. I mean, he could have been old at 77. Some people think they're old at 60. Some people don't think they're old until they're, you know, 90. Why is it right now he thinks he's old and needs to cash out?

These are vacant lots. Is it really creating an issue? Like, what's like— guys, you have to understand, like, with sales or negotiating or understanding how to provide value to people and do deals is like you got to find out the reason why, like, you know, their values, what they think, what they're trying to accomplish in order to help them get what they want. Like, you got to go into sales— or not sales, but in any encounter with someone looking for that win-win scenario, you genuinely— Nathan Payne says you genuinely care more about their success than they do. Like, that's, that's how we have to approach it. So we want to know why this dude is selling so we can help him get his end result. Because as investors, unless he has something that we can solve, like, we're not his best option with a cash offer. Right. Like, unless it's something that we can solve. So, yeah, we're definitely going to have to tune up those, those questions.

So where do we go from here? So, okay, you know, yeah, we want to know some more questions about motivation. Now, one exception I will say is, yes, motivation, we really want to understand that. Like, that's always priority number one. But at the same time, if, you know, maybe you don't do a great job at kind of pulling out that motivation and uncovering all the information, or maybe they're just giving you a really hard time and they're not really giving any information. But if their price is a price that works, sometimes you can just make that happen too. You know, that was actually my very first wholesale deal I ever did. The guy, you know, I was new. I didn't really know what I was doing, right? So I'm sure there's motivation there. I just didn't really know how to uncover it. But he was like, now this is the price I want. And he was stuck on his price. He was like, yeah, I just figured if someone was able to make this price work, I'd sell it. Okay, I think this price might work right now. I was luckily able to find somebody and sell it. But again, on this price, right? So that's the next thing we're looking at here. So it looks like the price is $265,000. And I believe I'm a— and this is again something I would want to clarify. I believe he's asking $265,000 for all of them combined and about quarter acre each. And so what I did was— and again, guys, you can use Batch as a great tool for comps. So what I would do is I would use Batch and I would look at, okay, vacant land comps in the general area right now. I'd want to go— this is vacant land, so I'd want to go kind of broad. And for quarter acre lots, when I look at, okay, well, what's sold And then also at what price point is stuff currently for sale? I mean, at that price point for $100,000, you know, there's stuff for sale that's over 7 acres, right? Again, $100,000 for 7+ acres or $265,000 for 1.25 acres. Right. So the price he's asking just at a quick glance seems like way, way, way, way high. Again, not a motivated price. So what I would do is I wouldn't really spend any more time, right? I'm not going to comp this any further. I'm not going to, right? Because I don't know enough about it. And they're vacant lots at a quick glance. Again, it's not like, ooh, these are properties that like just investors would be, you know, just jumping at, right? So when I look at it, it's everything stacked up. One, doesn't sound very motivated. We could go back and do a little bit more homework there. That could change. But right where things stand right now, the information that's in front of us, not really motivated, right? Also, the price doesn't sound remotely close to where we would need to be at.

And guys, most people ask for what Zillow says or more. So price, it usually is not in the money in the beginning. That's why we hit so hard on motivation, because if the price was super high and he was like, I got to sell, I'm going to lose it, I'm under, I'm behind on my tax payments, they're going to take it, like he has to sell. Let's— we have to provide a solution. Like we want to help him succeed and create a win-win scenario. So that's why motivation is so important, because 90% of the time they always want above what it's worth. That's just how people are. Why wouldn't you want more, right? Why wouldn't you want top dollar? Yep.

So where we're at, guys, is, is again, number one, doesn't sound very motivated. Number two, the price seems, seems really, really high, right? Way above retail high. Number three, these are properties that would likely be difficult to sell, right? These lots do not seem like they would be easy to sell in the market that they're in, in the areas. Right. So doesn't sound motivated. Definitely not even remotely close to an investor price, and they would probably be really difficult to sell. Right. All of that combined, is this something I want to spend more time on? My answer would be no. I would say, hey, move on to something else. Now, if this was— he doesn't sound that motivated, you know, his price is a little high, but this property, like, this is a property that investors like, you could sell it in 5 minutes and they would pay a premium. Sometimes it's worth spending, you know, a little bit extra time. What I would do, what I would recommend is I would recommend going back to the seller and just kind of confirming motivation because again, guys, the big question mark on every deal comes down to the motivation because just like Payne over here was saying, motivation can change everything. Motivation can change his asking price from $265,000 to selling them for $10,000 apiece. That's not an exaggeration, guys. We just did a deal 2 weeks ago. The seller originally was asking $850,000. We got it under contract for $650K. Okay. And that was because the motivation was there. And $850K was not even remotely close to a deal, right?

Not even. It was above retail.

But the motivation was there. You know, when the motivation's there and you know you are the right solution and you are the perfect fit for that person, price, price can drastically change and it can change like that.

That's why. Yeah, that's why, like, price is a deceiver. When they talk about the four pillars of motivation— timeline, condition, you know, they throw price in there, but price is iffy because because everybody wants as much as they can get. You can't blame someone that's motivated for that, and you can't say that person's not motivated because they want a lot. It all comes down to back to the motivation, and then you got to go timeline and then condition of property, right? And this is land, so the condition isn't really going to be that big of a motivator. What else is there, Nate? I know it's timeline, condition, and, uh, it's not—

timeline, condition, motivation, and price.

Okay, it's motivation. Yeah, so motivation is pretty much— but again, price is a deceiver. It can be a deceiver for a lot, so don't think so much on that price and let that stop you. Because I've done so many deals that they've asked over, over retail, and you— but you focus on what they're trying to accomplish, the end in mind, what they want. The price fluctuation changes. I'll tell you right now, like, my buddy, just sitting down with him at Tropical Fruit Smoothie, and he was like, man, I have my house listed, it's not moving. I think we're gonna do another price drop. And before he even listed it, he had high hopes, I'm assuming, like most people. And he was like, never would you be able to just talk to them like the first day listed and get like a deal. It's the realization that you're not gonna get— people aren't willing to pay what you think it's worth. That's what resets expectations a lot on price. So if you can focus on these things, the things that you can really serve and control— you can control and help on their timeline, you can control and help, you know, help them achieve their goal and their motivation. And usually condition, we help because they don't need to do anything. That's why cash is such a good strategy, you know, a lot of times, because we solve the problems. Now, if they aren't willing to budge on the price to get these these solutions than we do. So, you know, you do creative or you can do Novation. There's other options. But these, in my opinion, are the most important things. Obviously, you need the price to get the deal done. But yeah.

And guys, the reason why this feedback can be so valuable is I know early on in my career, guys, I would waste hours out like with anybody. I was like, I'll consider a cash offer.

Anyone you talk to, you're like, maybe we can work.

The people that curse you out and hang up on you, like they're doing you a favor, right? Because they're at least not wasting your time. It's the people that are the tire kickers. And guys, that can eat up years, right, of you wasting time and not even realizing it. And because think of all the different options. It's like, oh well, you know, he sounds interested, like, is it the right price? And it's like, well, you know, I gotta comp it. And guys, you know, comping, like, it can take hours and hours. And like, you still are like, ah, I don't know, is it here or is it there? And you're like, well, what if I found the right buyer? You know, they could do a commercial, or like, oh, this is his own multifamily, or, or, well, what if he wanted to do terms and seller financing? And like, people waste so much time on one person, one property, all to come to the conclusion of, yeah, I'm not interested, right? And you wasted all that time. So that's what we're here to do. And that's why I'm— again, you know, Jared here, he's part of the Painless Flipping Academy. So which is the— where this is kind of what we do. It's a done-for-you service. It's not a mentorship, it's not coaching, it's a done-for-you service. You get to submit— it doesn't need to be a deal, it's a qualified lead. And what we do is we actually this is not what we do, but we make a custom video to where we comp it all, we go over everything, we go over the whole situation kind of in-depth, and we say, hey, you know, here's what we think, you know, about the entire scenario. Here's what we think ARV is, here's what we think you should offer, here's what we think, you know, if you should spend your time on it, if you shouldn't, and then here's the exact next steps of what you should do with the property. And, you know, if it's an opportunity and if you would like us to just do that for you, great, we can do that too.

Yeah, and the reason why we can't share our screens is because we're live, and obviously BatchLeads, the services we like to use to break this down. They show too much good information, right? Too much info where YouTube and a lot of the platforms are like, hey, that's bullying, you're showing too much information.

It's too good to show, to show on air.

Exactly. So guys, you know, what we just showed you, it might seem simple, right? But it is the key. I would say the key to doing deals, and not only like wholesaling residential, commercial, doesn't matter, real estate. You have to be able to look and say, is this worth my time? Is this person worth running? Because this— you don't know how many people when they first start, they, they run all the comps, they go really in-depth, they make a lowball offer and all wasted time. This— you have to find out if this guy is even worth your time by getting down to the nitty-gritty and saying, hey, sir, totally get it. I, you know, I kind of have an idea where I'd be at, but it's going to be a lot lower. Have you thought about listing it to get, you know, the most you can get? Because you're asking for retail and, you know, obviously I want you to get as much as you can. Have you thought about listing it? No, screw that. I'm, you know, I'm too old for that. Okay, so So you want retail, that's how you get it. So if you're not willing to do that, are you willing to, you know, sell it at a price that makes sense for investors? I'm not willing to do that either. Okay, well then, so you're finding out what he wants because again, the key to success in this business is getting people the result you want. People to succeed. If you can get that client you're working with to succeed and hit their goal, you win. You both win. That's, that's how sales and that's how business works. If you're winning and they're not winning, it's not going to work out. They're going to ghost you. They're going to cancel on you. Maybe it might work out, but not likely. They'll probably have someone else that will come in and tell them what they need. So anyway, that's just my thoughts on it. Nate, do you have anything else you want to say?

No, man, that's, that's all I got, guys. If you're out there taking action, making things happen, and if you want to be able to just focus on the first step of wholesaling, right, which is finding qualifying opportunities and be able to be really effective at it, guys, go to painlessflipping.com. Check it out. Check out what the Painless Flipping Academy is about. Again, it's not a mentorship. It's not coaching, completely different. It's a done-for-you service. And guys, we just launched this like a few weeks ago, so it is at a stupid price right now. I promise you, whatever you think the price is, it's not that. Check it out because it's, it's crazy.

And if you guys were on the call we did last week on, uh, this call live, uh, we actually had— we did an $86K deal. Now I know that's kind of crazy, right? Like, that's not the norm. We did an $86,000 deal and someone from the Academy brought it to us, Justin, and he's on there. He told his story, but he brought the deal and we gave him, you know, we obviously paid him for being a deal finder, a prospect, a property prospect finder, and, uh, 20%. So he got $17,200 off of just bringing a qualified lead. We did everything else, got it under contract, negotiated, so, you know, do put it through title, sign the paperwork. I mean, you name it, we got it ready. We coordinated the close, everything. So if you don't know any of that or that scares you, it's okay. It scared me when I first started. I didn't dispo any of my own properties in the beginning. Well, I disposed a couple, but I actually teamed up with a wholesaler for about a year, and he disposed all my properties, and all I did was focus on one thing. I got really good at it. But, you know, that's just how it is. You want to— you want to master a skill set, focus on it.

That's all I got, brother. Well, guys, I hope you got a lot out of today. And what— we'll see you guys next week.

Yeah, we're here every week and we look forward to hitting you up. Guys, if you ever have any questions about— you go to paint flipping, you're like, I don't even know what this is talking about. Or if you just have any questions in general, please DM us. We'd love to chat with you. As you can see, we're pretty chill guys. We're not here to sell you on anything or make you guys feel like you need to work with us. That's not our style. But we'd love to do deals with you if you want. Let's Let's see what this is. When I first sign up for the Academy, do I need an LLC? Absolutely not. You do not need an LLC, Manuel. I know there's a lot of mentorships out there that try to get you to get into an LLC. It's not a bad thing to have an LLC, but it is not necessary. A lot of— there's a lot of big investors that still do deals in their own name. They don't— they sign, they close, they do not have to have an LLC to do a bit transaction.

All you need is a cell phone and a dream, baby. Cell phone and a dream.

And you gotta work. You gotta do work. So no, you do not need an LLC. And if you work with us and we help you on the deal and we close and everything, we'll be doing it through our LLC anyway. And we'll make sure, you know, we agree on the paperwork and everyone knows exactly it's above board. Everyone feels confident. But yeah, don't worry about LLC. They cost like $200. Depends where you go, but they do cost money. So if you're kind of balling on a budget, everybody, don't even worry about an LLC. If you want an LLC, DM us, we'll point you in where we, what we would do. But anyway, great question, Manuel. And yeah, hit us up, DM us, message us, we'll respond, we'll help you out, see what we can do to kind of get you to the next step. Peace out, Nathan. I appreciate everybody here, and, uh, talk to you guys later.

Later, guys.

Hey everybody, what's up? It's Nathan Payne, and for the first time ever, we just released this insane training bundle that has literally everything that I've learned from doing a combined 4,000 deals in real estate, all from starting with absolutely no previous business background experience or any real estate experience. Plus, there's over $19,000 worth of free gifts that we're throwing in, all for an insanely low, low price. If you want to get your hands on this, be sure to click the first link on the description below right now.