I Thought This Hoarder House Was Easy Money… I Was Wrong

Oh, how you doing? Good to see you. Good to see you. I know why you're here. You're here for Nathan Payne's Wholesaling Storytime, Tales from the Trenches. Well, I'm glad you're here, guys. I got a big one. I got a big old story for you today. I've been in real estate for many, many years, and this is probably one of the craziest stories I have. All right. It involves hoarders. It involves moving trucks. It involves negotiations, ups and downs, tears. I'm telling you today's story, it involves love and compassion and service. It has everything. It has everything of a good story. Anyway, if you enjoy stories about real estate, this is for you. Okay. Now look, this is a deal. This is one of the first deals I did, and it's a deal where we made $17,000 on the deal. Okay. But what I'm going to do, if you're interested, stay tuned to the very end. I'm going to tell you the exact pitch I used when I knocked on this door. I got this deal from knocking doors. Okay. How I was able to convert it. And if you're not yet subscribed to the Nathan Payne's Wholesale Telling Storytime. Check it out because you're also going to get the training and the script and exactly the word for word of what I said to get this deal. This is one of the first deals that I did. I think this was like the 5th deal I did, and, um, this is how it went down. Me and Corey, my business partner at the time, we were getting most of our deals through, at the time, cold calling, knocking on doors, and flyering. So me and him hit the streets of Sandy, and we found a neighborhood that looked— it was an older neighborhood, homes were in the '60s, built in the '60s and '70s, so a lot of homes needed to be updated and repaired. So we're like, let's hit this neighborhood. And we started knocking doors. One of the first doors I knocked on, this grungy guy opens the door. Not grungy like dirty-wise, but he was just like a rocker, you know, younger guy. And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, hey, we're in the neighborhood buying homes, you know, wondering if you're selling, pretty much. You know, that's not the full script, but that's pretty— this is the gist. He's like, this isn't my house. This is my grandma's house. This is her number. And he gives me her number. Okay. So then I call her and I basically like, hey, I talked to your grandson. He says you're thinking about selling. Is that true? And she's like, yeah, I'm thinking about selling. She wasn't at home at the time when I knocked on the door, but she's like, yeah, I'm thinking about selling. So I wasn't able to go over there when they set the appointment. Corey went, and I ran the comps, and I said, hey, houses in this area go for around $270,000, so we probably could get it at $215,000 if it doesn't need a lot of work, and you lock it up, okay? Because, you know, I assumed that the house had a basement. Most homes in Utah have a basement. So Corey went to the appointment, locked it up at $215,000, and we were excited. But then I found out 'Oh, it doesn't have a basement, does it, Corey?' I looked a little deeper. He's like, 'It doesn't.' So we ran our numbers wrong. We didn't have all the full information. I gave that information to him. I just, you know, assumed it had a basement. So the problem was that we got it at the wrong price. So we had to go back and negotiate and get her down from $215,000 to really $170,000 because the basement adds a lot of square footage, and that's where we needed to be. Plus, I think $215,000 was still a little high. So Corey went back to her and was like, 'Hey, we're really sorry. I know it's been like 2 or days since we signed the contract, but we actually need it for lower. We thought this had a basement. We're going to need to renegotiate. And he felt the wrath of this seller. I'm not going to say her full name, but the wrath— she was upset. She's like, get out of my house. I'm not renegotiating with you guys. And we don't know, obviously she, you know, it was 3 days. Like, obviously she, she was upset, but we didn't really quite understand why she was so mad about it. And just to kind of let you know the situation she was in that we found a little bit more about later is, you know, she was an older woman, was on Social Security. She had her 40-year-old son and her 45-year-old daughter living off with her and her grandson, all who did not contribute to, you know, the income. They were just living kind of mooching off of her, not talking bad about them, but that was the situation. And she was on Social Security and her Social Security was making enough to basically just for like the essentials, like food and to pay the mortgage. So there was not a lot of money and she was in a bad situation, but she didn't want to talk to us. You know, she wasn't willing to negotiate, but she needed to move. She was not in a position where it's like, you know, she was going to be able to survive in that and thrive in that situation where she had all those people mooching off her. Obviously, she's not going to run them away, But anyway, so a couple months later, me and Corey are diving deep into sales training, negotiation. I think we took John Martinez's sales training. We're going really deep, working on getting better at talking and empathy, you know, working with sellers. And Corey and me are just having a chat and he says, look, Nate, things are going to change for us. Like once we start looking at these people, the people we serve, like with love, we have to want the best for them, not just as a dollar sign. We can't look at these people as dollar signs. We have to look at them with empathy and love and care about them. And I was like, you know what, Corey? You're right. You're right. We should do that. Do you remember the seller? She was ready to move. And when we told her we had to renegotiate, she lost it on us. You remember her? She was in a bad situation and I want her to be in a better situation. I love that lady. We should go back and talk to her. And Corey's like, no, man, I know what I just said is true. Like, we should love, but she's not. She's done with it. She doesn't want— she's probably already moved. She doesn't want to talk to us. I was like, bro, no, let's go talk to her. I'm feeling something in my heart. We should go see how she's doing. And he reluctantly was like, fine. All right. But I don't think after She, you know, tore me up for canceling, like having to change the contract or renegotiate. I don't think she was going to want to talk to you, but let's go, go to the house. And so we get in the car, I'm driving. Corey's not really feeling it, but I'm driving. So I park in front of her house and I'm like, all right, let's go knock on the door, let's go talk to her. And he's like, I'm not getting out of the car, bro. You can go talk to her, but I don't think it's worth our time. He's just not feeling it at that time. So I'm like, whatever, bro, you said about the love, let's— I'm gonna go love on her. So, uh, I go up, knock on the door, and, uh, she creaks that door open and she's like, it's you. And I'm like, yeah, it's us. Like, we're just checking to see how you're doing. I know we had signed that agreement in the past. We're really sorry. My apologies for getting the numbers wrong. How's everything going? And she says, I don't want to talk to you, right? And I'm like, whoa, okay. She shuts the door and I start walking back to the car with my tail between my legs. I'm like, man, I was trying to love and she just rocked me. She's like, get out of here. So I'm almost back to my car. The door opens. I see a hand come out the door and it's her hand. She waves me back in. I'm like, oh, She wants to talk now. Okay, so Corey's looking at me like, what's going to happen, man? What are you going to— I'm like, whatever. We're about to find out what's going to happen. So I go in, she waits me in the house, walks me inside, and she points to something on the floor. She points to 3 boxes and says, you know what those are? And I'm like, no, what are those? Well, obviously they're boxes, but like, what is it? She's like, when I signed that contract with you guys and you said you were going to buy my home, I packed up my house. And then you told me 3 days later, you can't buy my house. And I put all that work into those boxes. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to do that. But sincerely, I was like, okay, maybe she got in her mind she's ready to move and we just crushed her dreams. I guess that's what happened. But I said, I'm sorry. Is there anything we can do to make this up? Is there anything we can do to change things? And she said, let's take a seat. So that's when the negotiations started. I opened up my heart to her. She opened up her heart to me, and we started negotiating and talking about the scenario. It was hard for her to move. She was, you know, I'm not talking bad, but she was a hoarder. She had a lot of stuff. Packing up those 3 boxes was probably a big deal to put that stuff in that box and to just move on. And we crushed those dreams, you know, unfortunately, but we brought them back through love. So this is where it started with the negotiation. And this is a deal that took quite a bit of time. So the negotiations with the seller was not easy, okay? Because she had an emotional attachment to the home, the emotional attachment to where she lived, emotional attachment to all the stuff. She was not easy to work with, which is fine. And this took multiple times coming to her house, just see how she was to talk about it. Tears, came. And again, we were deep, deep into sales training and John Martinez negotiation at this time. I still remember, this was amazing. We were sitting with Corey and her son. Her 40-year-old son was sitting with us too. He'd come in and hang out as we talked to her. And we were talking about bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be. And are you willing to bridge that gap? That's John Martinez sales training. So Corey says to her, look, Mrs. Seller, I know it's hard to be here, but I know you want to be here. She told us she wanted to move. She wanted to move down south. I said, I know you want to be here, but there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be. Are you ready to bridge that gap? And he paused. He paused. And I paused. And everybody— there was— you could hear a pin drop in the room. And she wasn't saying anything. She was just thinking. And her son, her 40-year-old son, comes in. And I still remember this. He says, Mom, are you ready to bridge that gap and move and sign the paperwork? He came to the rescue. He was helping us with the negotiations. He was the acquisitions manager in that deal. And he says, Mom, are you ready to bridge that gap and move or what? And she looked at him and said, I'm ready. And she signed that paperwork and we signed that deal. I think it was $178,000 that we agreed on. We weren't done yet because she still— we had still talked about like she wanted a place to move. She didn't have a place to go. So when we signed that original agreement, we had signed it with, you know, a close date out until the end of the year. And we were in like October. So that was like 4-month close because we said, hey, we'll close on this when you are ready to— when you find a place. So we connected her with a real estate agent down south where she moved. He was looking for properties. This wasn't someone we just push her out the door immediately or she was ready. We had to help her through like a little, like a child, like walk her hand in hand. We had to do that. We met with her many times after that. It wasn't like once she was ready to bridge that gap, it was immediately she crossed that bridge. It took some help walking her through that. What ended up happening was our buyer that bought our first deal, we had walked him through there and he's like, I will buy the deal. But this was in October, right? And this deal ended up closing like in December. So he agreed to buy it and we were like, okay. So we got it assigned, everything was ready. We're just waiting for her to find that house. Now look, we didn't hear from her for like a while, right? Like, because we knew the agent was looking for the home and we just were like, look, maybe this might not work, she might not ever move. And we put the closing date out so long, maybe it might not work. But it was interesting because me and my wife were at the Dollar Tree, we're just looking at some random stuff, and, uh, I see the seller and her daughter, they're shopping. And I say, oh, hey, hey babe, this is, uh, this is the seller and her daughter that we've been working with. How's everything doing? And I haven't talked to them for a while. And she lets me know, she's like, we found a house, we're ready to move. And I was shocked. I was like, whoa, really? You're ready? She's like, yeah. So I'm like excited, like, whoa, I didn't think this was going to happen. Let's go. So I told Corey the next time we meet with them, we were getting everything ready for the close, you know, the date and everything. So we reach out to the buyer, we talk to the buyer. It's been a couple of months, but, you know, it was still a good deal. Prices had obviously increased at that time. It's not like the deal had gotten worse. And the buyer, this was anything but smooth, guys. Guess what? The buyer tries to stiff us. By the way, we're ready to close like in a couple, like in a week or so. He's like, yeah, guys, I'm actually going to need it for a lot less. So he tries to stiff us knowing that we're about to close and we had not put any effort into finding any other buyers. He's like, I'm going to need it less. He tries to cut us and I'm like, we don't play that game, buddy. So we said, nah, forget it. And we found a buyer within like a day. I know I've had some problems finding buyers, but we did not have a problem finding a buyer on this one. We found a buyer within like a day who paid actually $5,000 more than he was willing to pay. So forget him. I have no ill will towards him. I'm just saying you try to stiff us. It didn't work and we found a better buyer. And I'm still friends with that buyer that sold the deal, that we sold the deal to. Jordy Clark, shout out to you, man. You're the man. The other guy that tried to stiff us, no ill will. Hope you're doing good, but we're not friends. Not that I don't want to be friends. I just haven't talked to him in a long time. I hope you're doing good as well. He tried to undercut us. We didn't let it happen. Found a better buyer. You might think the deal is over. You might think that that's all that there is to this story. This is where it gets saucy. This is where it gets really interesting. We had agreed with her that we would move her. I would personally move her. It would make her feel better. More comfortable if I would pick up the boxes and Corey would pick up the boxes and we would move her and help her through this time. So that's what we agreed on. Now, I've never moved anyone like that in my life. I had moved, right, but not someone else. So we agreed, not thinking it was a big deal. Once we sold the house and it closed, the buyer was like, hey, she's got to get out of there. And we were like, oh, we didn't really think about that happening that soon. We got to take action. So we got a U-Haul truck, drove to her house. We're like, we're ready to move you. And she's like, I don't have anything packed. Neither did her 40-year-old son, neither did her 45-year-old daughter. Nobody had anything packed. And I said, oh my dear goodness. And not to mention, this is a lady that's been living in the house for years, 30, 40 years accumulating stuff, hoarder stuff stacked to the ceiling. I didn't really comprehend what I was getting myself into. Not to mention, she had a big garage, guys. It was something that out of a horror movie. You can't even imagine what we— when we actually got in the house and actually tried to move around, what we saw and what we were having to move. Okay, so we have a cold calling team at this time and we hired two of our friends from college. We said, Guys, you got to get over here. Forget cold calling today. We're moving the seller. And they're like, all right, as long as you pay us. And we were paying them. So they get over and we have to pack their stuff. We got to put it all in boxes. And let me tell you something right now, none of my cold callers really wanted to pick up anything. They didn't want to pack their stuff. They want to take their clothes. And me, I'm ready to get down and dirty. I'm putting her stuff, her clothes in boxes. I'm moving stuff. After the whole day in this 26-foot truck, we didn't put a dent, not even a dent in the house, not even close. Me and Corey were like, bro, this is gonna take 2, 3 weeks to move the cold calling squad and me and you, like, this is not going to happen. I'm just feeling down because the buyer's like, you got to get her out of there, man. I'm ready to flip this house. And this is the first time where we've needed to move someone. Most of the houses we did, we didn't have to worry about that until that point that we wholesaled. So I'm not feeling good about what's going on. I feel pretty bad. I'm like, I don't know what to do. This is what happens. This is an answer from on high, in my opinion. I go on Facebook, I look up moving companies, and I find some random moving company. I don't know what it was called. It was like junkyard movers or whatever, like prison yard movers. We call these guys and we say, hey, we got a 26-foot truck, but we might need two to fill this, like, to actually move this house. The guy's like, don't worry, we'll be there tomorrow. So from the first day of not having any luck putting a dent, we show up and, uh, to the house the next day, and the— and these guys show up. They start getting out in like white vans, and I'm not judging these guys, but man, these guys were tough. They had like tats on their neck. They looked like they had just got out prison. One guy had a limp, but he was stronger than an ox. He was carrying like the, the most heavy things I've ever seen on like one shoulder. These guys, there's like 3 or 4 of them, they came in like the Tasmanian Devil. If you guys have ever seen Space Jam when he does a spit shine, these guys within an hour or two freaking clean that house and were Tetris-ing, stacking. They had this house done, 2 truckloads done in a matter of minute— well, it felt like minutes or hours. And I was thinking the Lord on high for this miracle. Because if it wasn't for these guys, we would have been there probably still today packing her up. But they whipped this thing out, they got everything ready, and I was so grateful. They moved, packed two 26-foot trucks, U-Haul trucks full of her stuff. No offense, some of it maybe might have been garbage, but to her it was important, which is good. I drive one U-Haul down. She moved 2 hours away. I personally drive the U-Haul U-Haul. Okay, I drive the U-Haul down. One of the other movers from the junkyard removers, or whatever you call them, he drives it down. I'm down there. Corey, we coordinated, drives down 2 hours just to drive me back so I'm not just stuck down south where at her house sleeping the night, spend the night over there. Guys, crazy experience of going from negotiation to moving. Look, this is not something that I deal with these days because I do most of my deals virtually and not having to move people. But when you're in the beginning, when you're trying to get deals, you're willing to do pretty much anything. So learn from my experience sense that when you're willing to do anything, just pay the $2,000, take it out of your assignment fee to have someone move. Because if you do it yourself, you're gonna be in a world of hurt like I did. Now look, after driving the U-Haul, moving them all down, you can imagine that this was something extremely difficult for the seller and her family. They had just moved. Maybe it probably would have taken them a year to actually do. We had done it in like 2 days, so they weren't that happy, okay? And I get it. She was probably pushed to do something she never thought she could do. We made it happen. If it wasn't for us, it probably still be there in this house this very day and in that same spot or in a worse spot. But we got it done. She's mortgage-free. She bought a house cash with the equity she had. She has no payment. Hope she's loving life down there running in the fields with the horses in southern Utah where, you know, it's beautiful. Her son, he wanted to be a jeweler. Hope he's opened up his own jewelry store. And her daughter, hope they're all doing good. That's my desire. Okay, to end this story, and I wanted to end this with a good note with them. I met them halfway. They drove up an hour and I drove up an hour and I met them at McDonald's and I had brought her a couple other things that we hadn't moved in the truck that she wanted. There was like a lamp that was like an Indian lamp that we forgot. I brought— I said, I'll bring that down. So we met at McDonald's because I was like the halfway point, and I said, hey, are you guys hungry? It's breakfast time. Would you like me to get you guys some McGriddles? And she and her son and her daughter were like, yeah, that'd be nice. We do like McDonald's breakfast. And I said, who doesn't like McDonald's breakfast? So we sat down together at McDonald's and we had some nice McGriddles. And I said, hey, I apologize for, you know, how the ups and downs of how this went, but I'm glad we were able to get it done. And they said, yes, thank you so much. And she actually gave us a little bit of money for the moving costs because it was more expensive than we had thought with the truck and everything. Nothing crazy, but she, she did that. So that was nice. And I gave her her lamp and we parted ways, friends. Now I haven't talked to them since. I love them. I hope they're going good. I hope they're all in great spot in their life and they're doing better in southern Utah than they were here where, you know, maybe it would have got not been as good because the expenses and everything. But glad they bought a house. So this is a longer story, but this is one of my favorite stories because this is not something I deal with. And I was I was able to show love, compassion, help get her an agent to find her a house to move. Now, these are things I probably wouldn't do now because of how much effort it takes, but I was glad that I went through that experience. And these are the lessons I learned, everybody. Never offer to move someone if you can just pay a moving company that's an expert professionals that have superhuman strength, like the guy with the limp. I don't know how to this day how he was able to carry a desk on one shoulder with a limp, but he did it and it was miraculous. And so were the other guys. They just moved amazing. Amazing. They were great. I still even use Rob. Rob's still one of the movers. He crushes it and he's amazing. So never move someone if you can pay. It's too much work, especially a hoarder. Lesson number 1. Lesson number 2: empathy, love. It can open up doors to doing— helping people, you know, bridge the gap. And thanks to John Martinez's sales training, we were able to bridge that gap and help the seller get from where she was to where she wants to go. And her son was able to help us with that acquisition process. Another thing I learned is knocking doors works. You can do deals knocking doors. If you think that doesn't work, it does, especially if targeted. So like I told you guys, I'm going to be giving you— anyone that subscribes to the Painless Wholesaling Storytime is going to get in the email that we send every week, and one of the resources we're going to give you, the exact script that I used to knock on her door, actually going to give you the training of how I did it and what flyers, what to put on flyers, and how we got this deal. So if you found this enjoyable, please give it a like or a comment or share it. Guys, really, this this was fun to talk about just because I'm grateful that I had that experience and that— oh, someone gave me a thumbs down. Okay, maybe that was me. Maybe I did it. But anyway, I'm grateful that we had this experience and I'm grateful that, you know, for this job, it's fun. It's fun to help people. So anyway, again, if you want more stories like this, just subscribe to the newsletter. I got hundreds and hundreds of stories because I've done hundreds and hundreds of deals and they all have ups and downs. That's how real estate is. So if you're interested in getting into real estate or wholesaling and you think it's all sunshine and rainbows, it's not. It can be, but it also can be pretty— a lot of turbulence. Okay, so you got to learn from my experiences what to do and what not to do. So anyway, have a great weekend, everybody. Share, like, hit this subscribe, do all the things that help me grow so I can get this in front of more people. Love you. And everybody have a great weekend. Peace out.