I Offered More Than the Seller Wanted… And Still Made $19K 😅 (Wholesaling Story)

Oh, hello there. What's going on, everybody? I know why you're here. You're here for Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime, Tales from the Trenches. And let me tell you, I got a story for you guys today. Now, you haven't heard something like this before. I'm telling you, this story is about how I out-negotiated myself, how we were the worst negotiators when we first started wholesaling. I'm gonna tell you guys something that's gonna blow your minds, because when it happened to me, it blew my mind. Now, if you guys aren't familiar with what Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime is, it's me going back through my journey as a wholesaler and explain to you guys what it was really like to get deals and starting from $0, starting from not knowing anything, to making over $2 million in assignments. And I'm giving you guys the real, the raw, the real deal, because a lot of this stuff on social media is fake, right? Like, they just wanted to give you the highlights. I'm giving you the good, the bad, the painful, the ugly, everything about it. I want you guys to know what it's really like to start a business as a brand new wholesaler so you guys can navigate and see how I went through and how you can go through. And so you don't have to go through the pain I went through because I did go through a lot of pain trying to figure this out myself, and I want you to experience the gain and not the pain. So this is the point, Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime, so you guys can learn from my experiences. And I want to give you guys gifts. I want to show you appreciation for even taking your time to listen to my stories. So stay tuned to the end of this video, and I'm gonna hook you guys up with a gift. I've made $19,000 on this deal, and I want to show you guys the exact template, the exact marketing piece that I used to make $19,000. I'm gonna give it to you guys for free. I'm just gonna hook you up. So stay tuned, I'm gonna hook it up because I like I like to give gifts. I like to show appreciation. So a lot of you are probably like, well, Nate, how do you remember this story? Is this even real? If you haven't watched these videos before, I like to journal. I like to write down my experiences that I'm having. And right here, this is the first journal from my entrepreneurial experience as a wholesaler. And I have a lot more over there on that shelf where I've documented my journey. So this isn't something I've just made up, guys. This is the real deal. So let's dive into this story on how I did a $19,000 deal and I out-negotiated myself and it was the worst negotiation ever. It was terrible. I was nervous. I was sweating when I did this deal. If any of you feel like I had felt when I started wholesaling, I was nervous. I wanted to get every deal. I thought I was going to lose every deal. And I don't know if you guys feel like that, but that's how I felt. And I had a lot of sales experience. Okay, so this is my third deal, $19,000. I freaking pretty much blew it. Okay, but if it wasn't for luck, the rays and the sunshine of just like luck shining down on me, I wouldn't have gotten this deal. And I'm going to show you guys going to break it down right now and free gift at the end. All right. You're going to get a free gift. I'm going to show you the exact template that I used to make $19,000. The free— the marketing piece, it's all yours for free. Just stay till the end. If you subscribe to the weekly newsletter, you get all the free resources, the painless offer calculator, you get marketing templates, you get all this stuff that come from my stories. I want to give it to you so you don't have to figure this all out and just get it all yourself. I'm hooking it up. So let's go to this story. So if you watched the previous stories where I started out brand new, we ended up networking with a broker. He let us use his office. When we met with the broker, he told us, hey, Hey, flyering works, right? He's like, hey, go out and fly our neighborhoods and use these flyers. So that's what me and Corey did. We were knocking doors and we were cold calling and then we were flyering neighborhoods. So we had these little yellow notebook pads and we would copy like in a printer and it would look like we had written a handwritten letter, but really we just had copied a bunch of different letters saying, hey, we had just purchased a property in the area, we're looking for another one. Would you be interested? And we would just fly our neighborhoods. It wasn't like we're specifically specifically targeting houses. We were just farming and hitting every house. And on a Saturday— and by the way, this is 2018 when I first started— on a Saturday, I was just hanging out and I got a phone call. Didn't know who it was, so I answered, and it was one of the first phone calls we got from these flyers. And I was a little nervous, guys. I was like, hello, yeah, who's this? And the lady's like, hey, I got your flyer. My heart sank. I was like, oh my gosh, she's gonna yell at us for leaving a flyer. That's usually what happens, whatever. That was like my mindset at the time. And she said, hey, I got your flyer actually selling my house. Would you be interested in buying it? And I was like, Yeah, like I didn't really know what to say, but I fumbled through a conversation nervous and I said, yeah, yeah, can we go see the house? Can we go see the house and we can make you an offer after we see it? So she said, yeah, that's fine. It was Saturday. She said, come on Monday. I have some other buyers that are going to come through and you can, you can make an offer after you see it. And we're like, great, great. So me and Corey on Monday, we drove over to the house and it's her. Her name is Dawn and her husband, and they're just waiting at the house. And it was actually, I think her father had passed away, so she was selling the home, right? And we had no idea what we were looking for in the house. This probably was one of our first walkthroughs where the seller was watching us as we walked through and we were just looking at stuff like, that looks like it needs to be done, that's outdated. But again, guys, at this point I had no idea what I was talking about. I was just looking at stuff and just making comments, right? The house is outdated. It needed a lot of work. So after we walked through the house, I'm like, you know, what were you wanting for the home? And she's like, oh, you know, we were hoping to get $180,000. And I said, I think you told me there were some other buyers that were going to come see the house. Are we the first or are we the last ones to come through? And she's like, there's two others that are going to— two others that are coming and they're going to make an offer. I was pretty savvy. This was a savvy move. I think I said, hey, since I'm the first— we're the first ones to come through, do you mind if we make the last offer? I don't want to make the first offer and then get beat out by these guys. I would like to, you know, at least get the chance to make the last offer, if that's okay, since we're the first ones here. She's like, that's totally fine. So I said, we'll call you later today. We'll see how the other walkthroughs went and we'll meet you and we'll make our final offer. Offer because we're all about meeting with the sellers at this time, like in person. So we left and me and Corey were nervous. We're like, man, what if someone locks up the deal and she just gives them an offer and she just agrees? And that's why I said, hey, can I make the last offer? Just hoping that I could, you know, maybe just get the price from her and just see if we could beat it. Again, we didn't, we didn't really know what we could offer either. We, we were brand new. We didn't know what was the deal, but that's what we said to her. So it comes to the end of the day and we call her and we say, hey, um, are you ready for us to make our offer to you? And she's like, yeah, come on over. So since we had met her at her deceased father's house. We actually went to her home, which was in a different location, and we drove up. It's a nice home. Me and Corey get out of the car, and we're like not really sure what to expect. We were just going to go in there and make our offer. And so they let us in. They, you know, we take off our shoes, we sit on the couch. It's just me and Corey sitting right across from this older couple, and we're nervous, but we start the negotiation. So I start, I'm like, this is what I said, did the other buyers happen to come by and make an offer? And she's like, You know what? You were the only ones that came. The other two never showed up. So, yeah, nobody showed up. It's just you guys. And we're just excited to hear your offer. And me and Corey are like, oh, word. Like, wow. Like, just nervous and like, shocked that those other guys didn't show up. Come on, you got to show up. So I don't know what to say. I don't know what to offer. I was hoping just to beat whatever offer that they had got and if it wasn't too crazy and just go from there. But that didn't work out. So I look at her and I say, what price did you want again? And she's like, we were hoping for $180,000. And I'm sweating. Bullets. I'm like, oh my gosh, like, I don't know what to say. Do we just give her 180? I was tripping. And Corey at the time, my business partner, he had been in real estate longer than I had. And I didn't really like— I wasn't the negotiating expert. I didn't know to come in at 180, to go in lower. I was nervous. Okay, guys, just give me a break. I was nervous. So I look at Corey right next to me, got a little bit more experience, and I'm like, Corey, what do you think? And we're just sitting right across from the seller and he's nervous. He doesn't know what to say. And guess what? I still to this day cannot believe what Corey said. They again, they wanted $180,000. I'm emphasizing that they wanted it $180,000. Like no one else had seen the property and they were like, yeah, we'll just go. Like, we're ready to sell. So I look at him and he says, we can do $186,000. And I'm like, I look at him and I look at them and they're shocked. Like, they didn't say anything. They were just like, what? And I'm like, what? And they're like, sure, $186,000. And sigh of relief. Even though he offered $6,000 more than what they had asked for, it was a sigh of relief because they said, yes, let's do it. Let's sign the paperwork. And, you know, leaving that appointment, we were stoked because we just got our second deal. We just got it locked up. We had the contract. We knew it was at a low enough price. But, you know, later I was like, man, Corey, why'd you offer $6,000 more than what they asked for? They asked for $180,000. They would have probably done it at $180,000. And he's like, I don't know, man. I just froze. I just blurted out what sounded good. I offered $186,000. So whatever. What ended up happening was even though we had no buyers at that time, really, we had Roger had bought our first property. He wasn't interested in that one. So we were struggling to find buyers at this point for this one, but luckily we were able to find a guy. I think it was from going to REIA meetups. We found a guy that offered $205,000 for the property. So that means we made $19,000 on this deal. And when we blundered the negotiations, obviously we got it priced at a price that worked where we could make $19,000, but it just was ridiculous. Like, I froze, he froze. I can't be mad at Corey for offering $6,000 more than what the seller asked, but that's what happened. And, you know, to this day, it's hilarious to remember that situation where I didn't want to make the offer, so I threw it on him. And, you know, I guess he just took the move. I don't even know how to say. He just, he went for it. Okay. And so $186,000 got the deal done, $19,000. And that was how we got our second deal done as being the worst negotiators ever. And I'm sure Dawn and her husband were probably like, man, these guys suck at negotiating. They just offered us more than what we asked for. But hey, hope they're doing well. And again, the reason I'm telling you guys this story is hope you don't think that at the beginning of your real estate investing journey that you got to be the best. You got to be the greatest. Watch my videos, watch these and learn how I freaking blew it so you don't blow it. And the lesson that I learned from this negotiating, from this story and this experience was when you're talking to a seller, if they're asking for $180,000, there's two things you should do. Okay. One is you can go lower just so they don't feel like if you give them exactly their price that they're leaving money on the table. So if they're on $180,000, this is what the negotiation probably would have looked like. You know, with the experience I have now, I would have been like, oh, you want $180,000? I totally get that. Usually we buy properties in this condition that yours is like. We try to get them for around $170,000 to $172,000. Would that work, yes or no? And if they say yes, then we got it. And if no, we negotiate, right? But if you go ahead and just directly say, okay, we can do $180,000, unless they're ready to sign right then, they might be like, well, you know, we're going to just run it by a couple more people to make sure we're making a good decision. And they might try and find more people because they got $180,000 that quick that they might feel like they're leaving some money on the table. So as a negotiator, definitely don't give someone exactly the price in the beginning. I know it's annoying and it's like mind mind tricks and stuff, psychology. But that's really what happens if you want someone to feel really good about their decision. Negotiation does help, right? Because then they feel like they won. You want the seller to feel like they won. So in this situation, they really won because we offered $6,000 more. That's just what happens. Okay, so learn from my mistakes so you don't make those negotiation mistakes. And thanks for tuning in and staying to the end, everybody. I want to give you a gift for being a part of these storytime episodes. I hope they're fun. I hope it's engaging and you guys are not only engaging, educational, but I hope it's interesting, right? I hope it's fun and entertaining. So I want to give you a gift. This exact flyer, the template that we used for anyone that subscribes to the weekly newsletter where I tell these stories and I give you resources at the end of the email, I'm going to give you the exact template to this flyer of what it said, what it looked like. So you can go ahead and make them and maybe try flyering your neighborhood, going to a neighborhood that looks like it has some distressed homes and leaving some flyers. It works. People call you whether they're upset or not. They're going to call you and they're going to say, hey, don't leave flyers on my door. Or they're going to say, hey, I might have something to sell. We did several deals flyering like this. And we had a flyer company that went out. We paid them $0.07 per flyer. And we actually have a funny story about hiring a flyer guy who ended up throwing away all the flyers we bought him, and he just ended up walking around for months. And we thought he was flyering, but, you know, we weren't savvy enough. There's a lot of business mistakes that I made, and we'll tell you about that later. But I want to let you guys know again that this storytime is to let you know that, like, hey, everybody has to start from somewhere. And I was not a super experienced business person when I first started this. And I made a lot of mistakes and hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and have a fun time along the way and not just hear the highlights of like, oh, I just did a $30,000 or $50,000 deal, but hey, see the crap that I had to go through and hopefully you don't have to go through the pain and you can just feel the gain of real estate investing. So again, thanks everybody for tuning in. If you like this, please like wherever you're watching so the algorithm can say, hey, people are enjoying this, let me watch more of it or let me put in front of more people. And next week you're going to really like this episode. The next episode I do, I said next week, but that's just because the email comes out every week. But next time I go live, I'm going to be talking about the $28,000 deal I did with a guy named Lee who was unfortunately addicted to meth, and he threatened to kill us because his wire for his money did not come in immediately that day when the deal closed, or the next day. It had a 48-hour wait period. A lot more happened on this deal. I'm excited to tell you about it, but this was our next deal, $28,000, crazy deal. Now, another thing is I wish I would have kept it because really it was like a $200,000 spread on it, but we made $28K. Again, you don't know what you're doing when you first start. That's why you need a mentor. Not saying you get me as a mentor, but just in in general, we made $28,000, which is great. But really, there was a— it was a very, very big deal. We just, you know, didn't have the experience to get it all. But hey, no sweat. You live and you learn. And that's why you're watching these. You're watching my story time so you freaking don't blow it like I did. But hey, everything's a learning experience for your good. So you want the free resource? Subscribe to the weekly newsletter. I'll send you guys— just comment and I'll send you the link. And I'll be giving you those resources. Try that flyer out. And, uh, I'll see you guys on the next episode where we talk about Lee and how I almost died. Well, I didn't almost die. I got threatened to almost get killed, but I was not even close to being dead. I wasn't worried. See you guys next time.