Transforming Real Estate Deals through ezREIclosings with David Olds

So yeah, we're doing those things, we're putting out the signs. And just all day, every day, you know, people ask, what do you think is the secret for why you were successful? And I'm like, well, it's not, not that I'm that smart because I'm not any smarter than anybody else. But we were determined. Like with a minute, my feet hit the floor. In the morning, all I thought about was real estate. I went out all day and did real estate. I drove the neighborhood, knocked on doors, whatever it was. And the last thing I thought about at night as I'm putting my feet in bed is real estate. So yeah, it was just, it was, we were just very committed to it. You know.

Just how do you build a real estate portfolio with over a hundred property is properties in it? How exactly do you deal with this whole real estate wholesaling process? Well, we're going to learn a lot about that. We were joined today by David Olds, who, who has done that. He's built a monstrous real estate portfolio, a multimillion dollar portfolio himself. He's been around the real estate game for a long time and he's absolutely revolutionized the real estate wholesaling process into something that's accessible and affordable for people. And so Dave, we're really excited about having you with us here today. Landlord, you're a wholesale coach, you've been a real estate investor for a long time. I'm excited about you sharing your journey and specifically maybe some tips and tricks for our listeners about where they can start to maybe rethink some of their real estate investing that they're doing and find new opportunities maybe in a ever changing marketplace.

Yeah, it has changed a lot over the years. When I started in 2002, so what's that, 26, 26, no, 22 years ago, something like that. Yeah, yeah, you could tell we were talking. Math is probably not my strong suit, but yeah, it's been a long time. Been over two decades. Yeah, I tell people I was just too dumb to quit. That was really all it was. That was the secret to my success. Just to, to, to dumb to quit, but yeah. So been in real estate for a long time. Thank you. Very nice introduction. You know, I'm located in Chattanooga, Tennessee and run a couple of different businesses. One of them is easy REI closings. And what we do is we help investors and wholesalers all across the country get their deals closed because you know, most wholesalers very much like me as a, as a 15 year wholesaler, fantastic at going out and talking to people and starting businesses and kind of that hustler running around, you know, making stuff happen, you know, personality or that attribute, but that typically that person who's good at that, the flip side of the coin is they're terrible at paperwork. So that was one of the reasons that we started this company, was to help them do that. But yeah, you know, easy bunch of rental properties, owned some interest in some other businesses, but. But it wasn't, it definitely wasn't always like that. When I started in 2002, I had just gotten married to my wife, we bought a house. You know, it turned out to be a foreclosure, which in 2002, nobody really even knew what that meant. And you know what happened? It's funny, I went to the closing table with my realtor and there was nobody else there. Like I was thinking, like the closings that I'd seen on tv, right, or in the movies or whatever. It was like there was supposed to be somebody there and signing papers and doing things. And anyways, as we walked out, I'm like, why was nobody there? And why did I buy it from Wells Fargo? And she's like, oh, dummy, it was a foreclosure. So. So yeah, that's kind of where we got started. We bought this house to live in and fixed it up and turned out I needed to move to get closer to my new job. Two years later and we sold it and same realtor going into the, going into the closing company again, she's like, hey, did you know you don't have to pay taxes on the money that you're going to make today? I'm like, what? What do you mean? She's like, yeah, because you lived in it for two years. You know, in the United States, that's the homestead exemption and it's tax free money up to a certain amount. So it was like 52,000. And in 2004, that was pretty good, right? I'm like, wow, that's really great. Let's do that again. Let's try that again. So. So yeah, that was, you know, the very core of how we. And then, you know, I was in a. And this is probably the most cliche thing that you've heard so many times. I was in, in the airport in Orlando and leaning on the counter in the bookstore and picked up this book to read and it's Rich Dad, Poor dad, you know, and, and that was sort of the beginning of the journey there. At the, at the end of the book, Kiyosaki says, hey, if you want to be in real estate, you should go, you know, go and get a, a real estate meeting or, you know, something like that. Go get around real estate people. And for me, that was, that was really where it started. I went and got super involved until all the meetings and weekend boot camps and just all of the things that I could. I hired a coach and just tried to learn about real estate, right? Like what, what did I want to do? And you know, one thing I knew, I had seen a lot of people make a lot of money, right? I watched this old house on tv, and back then, flipping shows were just, just starting to come onto hgtv. So I knew that it was a thing. But the one interesting thing about real estate is there are a lot of ways to make money, right? I tell people it's like being a doctor, right? You'd be the eye doctor, the nose doctor, the ear doctor, the toe doctor, the butt do whatever, right? Lots of ways to make money in real estate, whether it's wholesaling or being a landlord or flipping houses like TV or land development or condo conversion, right? It's just limitless. And you just have to find one that fits your personality, right? Clearly, I am not going to be the guy doing short sales, right? I don't, I don't have the patience to sit on the phone all day and talk to banks and fill out, you know, reams of paperwork, you know, checkbox this, and, you know, that's just not going to fit my personality. But flipping houses and wholesaling, you know, was something that I fell into kind of easily.

That's really interesting. And, you know, thinking back to my own journey, and I was getting into real estate around the same time you were back in like 1999. And of course, very different marketplaces, but, you know, there's, there's a lot of these little learning things you do and the same idea. So 1999 is when the purple book came into my life. And we talk about three colored books. The purple book, which is rich dad, poor dad, the black book, which is becoming your own banker by R. Nelson Nash, which is what our focus is here. And then the red book, which is the go giver book by Bob Burke, who's also been a guest on our, on our, on our platform. And so what's. When I think about all those, putting them together. You read a book, then it says, oh, you go get into a real estate circle or community. And I did exactly that same path that you did. So I think it's just so interesting how, how not Only how a book can put you on a path and a new direction in your life. So, so that alone is of interest. But it took you on a journey and the experience of just owning your first home and literally being forced to move for a job position, you know, to making a decision as a family almost created a ripple effect to everything that really started to happen in your life. It was the first domino being knocked down. And so I'm guessing you went from that vantage point to now focusing a little bit more on the rehab side as part of your, you know, initial, you know, foray into being this, doing this more on a more frequent basis before you started getting into the wholesale world. Is that, is that kind of the natural?

For sure. Like, I had a, I had a full time job. I was a plant manager for a lumber, big lumber company. We actually made doors and millwork and moldings and all that type of stuff. And my wife was the assistant purchasing manager for a large custom home builder. So yeah, we had real jobs. Like we went to work every day, but then when we came home at night, like that was what I really focused on was, you know, trying to learn some stuff and figure out how to do this. But I think going back even a little further, where you talk about the book and you've been around doing this as long as me, I think there's just something inside of certain people that predisposes them to, to making that leap, right. Or following through or just chasing that dream or you know, whatever it is. Because now obviously not everybody does it. Lots of people have read Rich Dad, Poor dad and did absolutely zero with it, right? But I think for me, you know, in my case, I was always driven, like from the. I was a little kid in Boy Scouts and I want to be the leader of the boy Scout group, right. I got my first job and I was bagging groceries and I was so mad that I couldn't be the cashier because I was 14 and the manager said, you're not old. I'm like, I can ring register faster than this girl. So all the way through my, my, all of my jobs, you know, even when I ran big retail stores, I'm like, oh, I could be the, the regional manager or the president of the company. You're always thinking bigger, right? I think I feel like that's a commonality among a lot of successful entrepreneurs. And yeah, I feel like that's probably something that drove me to just keep pushing and figuring it out. But a hundred percent started just with rehabbing houses, you know, we just were doing a couple a year and you know, had great jobs, certainly didn't want to leave those. Didn't even really think about in the beginning not working like that. I don't know, it wasn't really a consideration until, until the end times, which was 2009 when the market really crashed. And you know, things were, things were challenging to say the least.

And at that point in time, like did you had, you know, you were doing rehabbing, you were probably selling and flipping some and then were you keeping a few others or was your path more to, to do the rental and then keep. What was the kind of model for you?

I wasn't smart enough for that back then. You know that if there's any regret that you probably talk to lots of people that any old investor has, that's been around for a little bit of time as, oh, should have kept more houses, should have kept more houses. But no, we were just, we were just flipping houses and you know, selling them and at the time making 30 or $40,000, which was fantastic. You know, we weren't smart enough to be saving money. Like, I mean, we were paying, paying off our bills, but we'd go on vacation and just living a really great lifestyle. So what happened is I bought my last house in Florida in August of 2008 and it was a foreclosure. Bought this property, I'll tell you, it was little, very typical, just ranch, three bedroom, two bath in Deltona, Florida. And I bought it for 97,000. It was a probate deal. But one block over and two blocks to the left, the identical house had just sold for 214, something like 97,000. This is great.

It was like a no brainer.

Exactly right? Like, like deal. So August bought it. And back then I was younger, skinnier, and had a lot more energy. So I was doing all the rehab, scraping the ceilings, putting down tile, doing all the things and finished it in early November. Called my realtor and she's like, you don't want to put it on the market now it's Christmas time. Nobody's really buying houses. Let's just wait till January. Okay, that made perfect sense, right? You know, I mean, up until now, every time we had a house, they were, they were selling pretty quick. So this was the last house. And by this time we'd started to see that something was about to happen. You know, being in sales and building materials and my wife in the construction business, like you could feel a slowdown. But nobody knew that we were about to go off Up a cliff, right. Clearly that, you know, an earth shattering event was, was about to come down the road. So. So anyways, January comes around and she comes in, she's like, you did a great job. I said, I know she did. You looks really great. I'm like, I know, thank you. And as every cocky young investor would say, and I said, what do you think we can list it for? So she says, yeah, probably like 147. I'm like, oh, hold on. One block over, two block, 214. Yeah, that was then. So what had happened in the meantime was the banks had flooded the market with foreclosures.

Foreclosures everywhere.

So again, in hindsight, everything is clear as day. For years and years, everybody's been talking about pre foreclosures market to pre foreclosures, buy pre foreclosures, take over mortgages, do all these things. I mean, literally at every real estate meeting you go to, this is all people were talking about. Never dawns on anybody that we are not buying all of the foreclosures. And the banks were taking all these properties back for years and years and then just the floodgates open and when they hit, it just decimated the real estate market. So it was, it was really bad. So when we finished this house, even before we put on the market, like we realized we were going to leave central Florida. Like it was a, it was getting to be a very difficult place to do business. Not just because prices were dropping, but so many people were doing it. The competition was just, just crazy. So started looking around at other markets initially just where we could invest and because we wanted, we wanted to level up and buy some apartment complexes like everybody, it's like Monopoly, right? Yeah, let's go from single to duplex to quad 10 to 10 units. So we, we looked at a lot of different cities and we decided on Chattanooga, Tennessee for a bunch of reasons. It was an emerging market. Lots of things were going on. Volkswagen had just decided to open their first production facility in the, in the United States here. Amazon was opening two fulfillment centers. Like it was just a good small market that nobody really knew about yet.

Where the jobs go, the real estate seems to benefit. So.

Yeah, right. So Amazon, or sorry, Volkswagen, was projected to bring in 20,000 jobs. The whole county was only, the msa was only 200,000. That's a 10%, that's a lot, right? That, so it was poised to actually just take off. It was also the first city in the country to have gigabyte Internet to every single house Right. So everything was just poised for Chattanooga to be. To really go on fire. And it. It 100% has. It was a good choice. So anyways, we. Realtor comes in 147. I'm like, absolutely not. She starts, and this is back in the days when they bring you like, these flip books, right? Because there was no. There was no iPads or nobody was running around with laptops back then. So she's like, well, this house sold for this and this. And showing me all these houses, like, literally, like on the same street and down at the corner. And I did what every young dopey investor does. I said, well, my house is better. Which I can't even say with a straight base anymore, but, you know, and we're looking at these houses and there's like, you know, just people literally left in the middle of the night. Just stuff everywhere. And I am in this beautiful house. She's like, yeah, but nothing selling. It doesn't matter. So I sat there and I'm like, okay, so we were going to sell this house and make 100,000, and this is what we were going to move. And, you know, at this point, we decided to move. Like, we're going to buy stuff and it's going to kind of help us launch because we hadn't been saving money, like idiots. And she's like, that's what it's going to sell for. So I thought, at this point, I thought I was being the most magnanimous person ever. I'm like, we'll put it out there at 159. She's like, okay, she's a listing agent, right? She doesn't care. She puts a sign in the front yard and then out she goes. So for a month, not even a call, like, nothing. Like. And this is so crazy because a year ago, like, we were selling. Selling properties just like normal, you know, Month two comes around. I'm like, okay, let's drop it to. You think 152 would work? She's like, no. So I'm like, well, what do you think the number is probably like 142. I'm like, it was just 149 or, you know, whatever. And it just. It kept dropping. So we dropped it and nothing happened. Dropped it again still, you know, a couple showings, but nothing at all was going on. And, you know, it's so frustrating for me now to be on social media and hear people talking about the market's crashing. I'm like, the market is not crashing. Let me just tell you What?

Right.

If you want to envision it in your mind, if you're listening to this or you're watching, I want you to picture a fat kid chasing a golf ball down there, down the driveway, down a hill, right? That kid is never going to catch that golf ball. Right? You just. And that's. The prices were falling so fast, you couldn't get ahead of it.

Right?

There was nothing you could do, you know, unless you just, you know, take that first massive cut, you can't get ahead of it, and you make a little cut and it drops more. You make a little cut and it drops more and you make, you know, so that's what the market was back then. So we ended up, you know, luckily, again, I had done a lot of real estate classes, so I knew how to do a lease option. So, you know, lease options, just where the person gives you a little bit of money down, which would be towards an eventual purchase, and then they're going to rent it from you in the meantime. So we took a $5,000, you know, option fee, we rented it, and that's how we left Chattanooga with literally $5,000 in our pocket. My wife, by that time, had lost her job. You know, obviously I was leaving my job. So we came to Chattanooga knowing nobody and with $5,000 in our pocket. And I tell people I had a. I had a wife, two boys and three fat dogs. And that's. We came here to do real estate, did not know a single person. It's the worst decision. I would never tell anybody to do that. That whole, like, burn the boats. We're going to, you know, we're burning the bridge behind us and we're going to go make this happen. That's great. If you're a young single person, you should 100% do that. Do not do that with a wife and kids, because you're responsible for them.

Right.

It was a challenge.

So, I mean, I'm glad that you mentioned all that because it's, you know, it's the. In all the interviews that I've done with real estate investors and just the private conversations, it's through those periods of tremendous adversity, going through a market cycle where the rubber really hits the road and it allows a period of introspection and then an ability to refocus. Okay, so we don't want that to happen again. So what are we going to do differently going forward? To. To have our, you know, have our radar up, to be aware of that. But also, how do we position ourselves in such a way where that's not going to happen. So once the move to Chattanooga happened, how did you guys kind of reinvent yourself in the real estate space at that point?

Yeah, good question. So over, you know, the four or five months before we, you know, that was January when the thing started with the house. We didn't actually move until June. So we were going back and forth. My brother decided to come in and he wanted to do real estate too, which again, I tell them, you came into real estate, you know, you know, on paper at the worst time, at the worst time ever. But. So we've been going back and forth and we're starting to buy some houses now. The thing was, we had no money, right? So we were buying using creative strategies. We were taking over a mortgage or having the seller finance the property to us. So anyways, we get up here and we don't have the $100,000 that we thought we were going to have, and we really didn't have any place to move into. So on a one of the trips, you know, when I come up, maybe around February or something, we were doing some marketing, putting out the little we buy house assigns, doing that type of stuff. So anyways, I went and looked at this house from this, this. His name was Terry. I can't remember what his name was, but he had just gotten married and he had this real old house, like this 1900s house. Not in the best area, not in the best side of town. So we made a deal like he couldn't afford both mortgages. So he's like, hey, if you'll just make the, take the payments over on this, like, you can, you can just literally have it. So when we left Florid, you know, we packed our U Haul, we pulled out. New person pulls in, we drive to Chattanooga. 577 miles went directly to the title company. We closed on this property. So the 5,000 that I had, I probably paid $800 in closing costs to buy this property. So we, we get to the house and Richard, I have not been to this house in like two months. And your mind, your brain gets a little fuzzy about things, right? We pull up and of course, everybody's tired. We're exhausted. I go into this house and like, the floors are crooked. You know, the doors don't really close good. There's a mouse running through. You know, the electricity is not working in half the house. It's a 1900s house and it's June in Chattanooga. And it's hot. It's so hot. And there's no Central Air. So everybody's tired. I drag in a couple of mattresses and, you know, literally we just collapse onto these mattresses, put a little, little oscillating fan to try to get some air, move in and felt, you know, everybody went to sleep. But I laid there that night for a long time and just, just thought, oh, my God, what have I done? Like, what? Like, this is bad. Like, we had a great house. It was remodeled. We didn't have to sell it. Surely I could have found another corporate job or retail job or something like that. Like, I left all of that behind. Drug my wife, two boys and three fat dogs to Chattanooga to do real estate. We don't even know, like, we don't know that this is going to work. And like, I cried myself to sleep. That, that was a terrible, like, I thought everything I've done, I failed. Terrible husband, terrible father. Like, like every one of these decisions I made was the worst thing. But, you know, woke up the next day and said, okay, well, we have to clearly figure this out. There, there has to be a solution. And, you know, we went and got some more blank signs or, you know, started writing we buy houses on them because we were broke. We were half a broke. We didn't even have enough money to be considered broke. So we had to come up with something that we could generate some leads and do some deals. And the interesting thing was, you know, now I've done over 1600 wholesale deals. But back then, so when I tell people this, they think it's crazy. I had never wholesaled a deal. We, everything we did was bootstrap desperation. So went out, you know, put out signs and just answered the phone whenever it rang. And luckily, because we were so focused on it, that was all that we did. You know, we did our first deal within a couple of weeks and then just really got a lot of traction and started doing, doing deals so that we could, you know, put some shoes on the kids before they went to school in September.

So for the folks that don't maybe fully understand what a wholesale deal is, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're getting basically on paper the contract to be able to buy a property and then you're finding someone else who's actually going to be the end user buyer, fundamentally. And in the, in the, in the middle of that is this beautiful thing called the jelly in the sandwich, which is the money that shows up in David's pocket.

Right, right, right. Yeah. The simplest exploit. Let's say I went and told somebody I was Going to pay. You know, I would buy their house for 50,000 and I would then go find a cash buyer who might give me 65 or 50,000 buying or 50, maybe I was 55,000, 56,000. Somebody would be willing to pay for that house. Now that person was, is generally a cash buyer, right? Somebody who has the cash that can show up and they're going to buy it and rent it out or fix it up or. Right. So I'm selling to somebody who is cash. So cash is king. Those people always want a discount. But the thing you have to understand is, well, why would they buy this? How are they going to make money? Because they're typically an investor. So this house that I contract for 50 might be worth 120 after somebody puts $30,000 into it, right? So, so yeah, that's a wholesale deal going and finding a property or somebody. Either the property or the seller is in distress, right? Meaning they need a quick, very quick solution.

Right.

A cash, a cash transaction. And this was easy to do back then because nothing was selling, right. Things on the multiple listing service weren't selling because nobody could get a loan. Right. This is why we weren't able to buy apartments because banks were so busy taking properties back. They, they certainly weren't financing any money. So we were able to find these properties, go find a buyer who had cash, who most at that time, most of them were landlords, right? Because nobody was fixing up a house to resell it because again, nothing was selling. So we really in, in the early years we made a lot of money just selling very low priced houses to the landlords where I, I could contract it for you know, 15 or 20,000, you know, sell it to a cash buyer, make 5, 6, 7, 8, $9,000 as the spread and they would take that property, fix it up a little bit and rent it for seven or $800.

And, and you were, you found a way basically to do that with some volume. So you got really probably aggressive with the signs, the bandit signs.

All we did, the city was not a fan. They don't like that.

Some municipalities, they definitely like to find you. If you don't pick your signs up, you're putting them in the wrong spot.

We sort of play cat and mouse with the city for a few years. You know, they knew that we knew that they knew like everybody knew who it was. They just couldn't prove it for a long time because we would go do it at like one in the morning on a Friday night. But yeah, eventually they did catch us and we got, we got fined, but, you know, there was nothing else I could do. You know, the market was different. There wasn't texting and cold calling companies, and it wasn't that. And we were broken. So, you know, we are handwriting like letters to send to people. Hey, you know, my name's David. My wife and I were driving down the road and we saw that your house, you know, we're looking for a house in your area, and we saw your house, 1, 2, 3 Main Street. Hey, if you'd be interested in selling, you know, please give me a call. And hey, if you know anybody else you might want to sell, call me too. So, like, we were doing everything we could. And back then it was what we call driving for dollars, which is just pick a part of town that back then it wasn't hard, that had a lot of vacant houses or rundown houses. And we would just literally drive up and down every street like, like a typewriter, just back and forth. And we would write dresses down. And then we would go home and my wife would look them up and we would, we would write letters to them, said, hey, you know, basically, you know, I'm looking for a house that's it's vacant or it's run down or boarded up that somebody might want to sell. So we drove for dollars. We knocked on doors, you know, you know, typically nobody was there, but then we'd go knock on the neighbor's door and say, hey, we're looking to buy a house in this area. Because the neighbor always wants the, the.

You know, broken down, the boarded up house to be.

They will tell you who the owner is.

Right?

So, yeah, we're doing those things. We're putting out the signs. And just all day, every day, you know, people ask, what do you think is the secret for why you were successful? And I'm like, well, it's not, not that I'm that smart, because I'm not any smarter than anybody else. But we were determined. Like, the minute my feet hit the floor in the morning, all I thought about was real estate. I went out all day and did real estate. I drove the neighborhood, knocked on doors, whatever it was. And the last thing I thought about at night as I'm putting my feet in bed is real estate. So, yeah, it was just, it was, we were just very committed to it, you know.

Well, and you, you, you found yourself a niche because it was, at the time, it was the only way to potentially generate revenue quickly enough to pay your bills. It was also the only way that you could get properties moving because the market itself wasn't allowing them to move. So really your experience at becoming a wholesaling expert was almost accidental to. To many degrees. And it was very market sensitive, really is what created it was, you know, and necessity is the mother of all invention. Speaking of invention, you know, we've got easy real estate closings. And your experience now in doing all these wholesaling deals, obviously, you know, with. Not every deal goes smooth. And I'm sure you have a lot of great stories to talk about that. And so what were some of the straws, you know, some of the hair pull out kind of moments that made you realize, man, there's got to be a better way for people who are doing what we're doing to have an easier, simpler path at completing this process? Yeah.

So, I mean, the truth is I found every way to screw up. I found every way to not be successful in the business. One of the things that, that, you know, I was told early on, even from my brother who was working with us, is, hey, we should hire some virtual assistants or we should hire this person. We should do this. And you know, again, something that's very common with entrepreneurs is because we're really great at one thing in our business. For me, it's marketing and sales and talking to people. You think you're good at everything and what happens is you try to do it all in your business. And you know, in the beginning you have to do that.

Right.

If you're just starting out, but as you start to grow, then you have to bring in some other people to help you. Right? So like I almost crashed our business into the wall a bunch of times. And I was literally working 14, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Well, six days a week. Eight hours on Sunday was a half day. So. But yeah, what I realized after times I started to bring some people into the company to help us, we were able to grow. Right. Because now I could focus on the parts of the business that I was really good at. And that really got me out of bed in the morning. But one of the things I hired was a transactions coordinator, this woman, her name is Heather, she's now the COO of my company. But I brought her in and she started taking all the paperwork off my plate, which was the stuff I didn't like to do anyways. And it's always the stuff that I would put off to the last minute, you know, oh, call and find this desk certificate. Where's the trust documents? We need the LLC documents for your buyer Right. All the stuff that needs to happen to get a property closed. I realized I was terrible at it, and all my friends were terrible at it. To go, like, pretty consistently, it's, you know, going and getting someone to sell you their house and knowing that it's going to be a great deal and you're able to help them and, you know, everybody. We're going to make money. Like that, like, really gets the adrenaline going, selling that deal to somebody. Knowing you're going to make $40,000 or 30,000 or even 5,000 DOL really get you excited, right? And then you get to the paperwork part, and it's like, you know, all of a sudden, now we're walking through quicksand. Now I'm gonna die a death of a thousand paper cuts. Right? It's not the fun part of the business. So anyways, I. I bring in Heather, and, like, I noticed, like, sales. All of a sudden, we're doing. We're doing more business. And what it was was not that Heather was doing the deals for me, but I would have that contract, and I would hand it off to her, and she just took care of it. I kind of like the wizard behind the curtain. And now all of my time was focused on my business and helping my sales team and really grow my business. And I would. I would look at my phone, I'd be like, on my bank of America app, and I'm like, oh, what's this? $22,000? And I want to walk in here. Actually, funny enough, this was her office where our podcast studio is. I'm like, Heather, what's this $22,000? She's like, well, dummy, that's that deal that you sold three weeks ago. I'm like. Like, I literally had forgotten about it because I was just. Now I could just focus and turn my business into an assembly line. Right now, the part of the business that I was good at, I could just be. Be focused on, and all of that could be handed off to somebody who was really. And loved, like, love to do it. Like, loves problem solving, loves spreadsheets and CRMs and all of those kinds of crazy things. And, yeah, so that was, you know, kind of where the idea came from. And then lot it's a little bit longer story, but Covid hit, and some of my friends laid off, you know, a lot of their. Their team. And, you know, people knew that this was kind of the part of the business that we were good at. So they called, said, hey, can your. Can your transaction coordinators help us? You know, do These couple of deals. And then of course, the market went crazy and everything took off again. So that was, that was kind of the idea behind Easy REI closings was, you know, that there was a need in the marketplace for somebody that could, you know, have a really turnkey concierge level service where we will take all the paperwork off your desk. You just go focus on the parts of the business that you love.

So you, the, the typical person then that would reach out to user service is someone who's already an active real estate investor and they're spending a good chunk or a decent amount of their time focusing on a wholesale aspect of their business primarily.

Yeah, for us, you know, qualified to work for us, you, you have to at least on a deal or two, right? You have to be wanting to grow your company. We always say our avatar, our ideal customer, somebody who's doing two, maybe three deals a month and is looking to grow, right. And wants to get their time back. They want to not be spending time chasing down sellers for paperwork or airs or getting notaries sent. Like they don't want to do that type of stuff. So, you know, we're very strategic in who we go out and hire. We have 18 coordinators now, all in our office, helping 300 clients all across the country. And all we do is close their deals. And we see over and over again now that they're not having to do it, they're focused on their business and their businesses, just the majority of them are growing.

What's really interesting about that, I mean, the volume of deals that you get to see. You know, again, 300 clients over multiple.

Marketplaces, multiple states, 2200, over 2200 files last year will hit over 3500 this year. We're growing rapidly.

With that in mind, I think about the data that you're going to have access to around seeing trends, market trends in given areas. You know, just, just, just recognizing certain individuals who maybe obviously are producing a higher volume than others. What are the skill sets maybe that they have that's creating that or what's the path of marketing that you're using? So there's all these really fascinating things you'll be able to see from a. You know, I always say, like get in your helicopter and fly up to 5,000ft and you can look down at everything. You know, if you're looking down at a forest, you can see little paths and trails, whereas if you're in the forest, you might be on that trail, but you can't see the one beside you.

100%. And we have people that ask me all the time to buy our data, which we will not sell. But yeah, we can definitely look at it because we. We do deal all types of deals in all 50 states. So, you know, if you were to say and ask me, hey, what are the best states for novations? Right. A novation is a little bit different type of a deal. We can pull the data and go, oh, these are the top five states for novations as far as volume. But wait, these are the top five states for novations for spread.

Right.

Where you actually make the most money or subject to. Or wraps or wholesale, whatever it is. Right. Yeah. No, one thing we do is collect. Collect a ton of data.

Nice. And so you mentioned wraps. Do you have people that. Do you help. Is there anything or component of this process that you're also helping people who are doing, like, lease options as well, or is it really strictly mostly focused on the wholesales? Because you did mention wraps, maybe some seller financing aspects.

We work with Eddie Speed's note school. We do all of their. Their notes, the processing of their notes. So we do a lot of that type of business. Lease options aren't really something that somebody would need us for because there's no title work involved. So there. A lease option is pretty straightforward. You can print a lease option off and, you know, have it signed. It's not something that even really needs to be notarized for us. Where we specialize in, Richard, is most investors, wholesalers or, you know. Yeah, investors, when they're doing their marketing. What are we looking for? We're looking for people who have some kind of indication that they would want to sell. Right. So we go out and we pull a list. Foreclosure, probate, you know, bankruptcy, bad tenants, like all of those types of things. Well, what happens is. And that's fantastic, right, because the more problems we can solve, typically the lower price we can get. So if somebody goes out, if you go out and you, you know, you contract a property from Mrs. Smith, who. Mr. Smith passed away last year, and she's in foreclosure. Well, that's. That's great. You're able to help her. You're probably able to get a great deal. But to sell to me, that property has to have clear title. Right. So somebody has to clean that mess up. Right. We're the. We're the kind of the cleaning crew that comes in behind, behind the investor. And, you know, some of these sellers who have bad deeds or bought it at a tax sale, did all those types of things. And we can clean that up and get it so that you can sell it to your end buyer with clear title. Because if you can't clear the title, you can't sell it. So all the work that you did up till there was really for nothing. Right. All the marketing, the money that you spent, your acquisitions team, you know, contracting.

It, marketing, meeting with the sellers.

Yeah. All of the things you did, none of it matters if you can't, if you can't close.

Yeah. Fantastic. And I would imagine the, you know, the, the title management systems that exist in the, between the different states and counties. I understand there's some variability that exists there in, in Canada. It's a little bit more concise across the board. It's a little bit more succinct, let's just say, than it is, you know, in, in the United States. But I, I recognize just from, you know, being a lot of courses and knowing people who've invested in the states a fair amount, that there is a real need for that, getting that clarity. And it's not easy to get that clarity depending on the jurisdiction that the property might be located in. So what are some of the. Could you give us an example of maybe a difference between one county versus another where there's, you know, a vast difference?

Sure. So in the US we have one thing about us, as you know, we're. We're the United States of America. Right. So we have 50 states who all like to do things differently. So some states you may use a title company, Other states it may be an attorney company, which means you have to pay two attorneys to close your deal, which will be far more expensive than just a title company which has a licensed title agent. Like I'm a licensed title agent. Anybody could be a licensed title agent. I mean, you got to pass a background check and do some things, but that's a little bit lower bar than as far as what you would pay as opposed to paying to attorneys in New York. Right. So the time of, how quickly it's going to go is going to be different. And then we've got escrow states and some states like California that do a combination of things. Right. Depending on whether you're in North California or South California. So every state can be different.

Right.

The laws that, that, that they have vastly different. So, you know, in Tennessee, I may be able to close something in seven to 10 days. In New York, it's going to take me 60 days. Easily 60 days. So 50 states, that's not bad enough. We have 3,100 counties who all get to do things just a little bit different. So they're, you know, one county in Alabama may require that you have a release from the water company, that the bills have all been paid. Where that doesn't matter. Almost anyplace else. Western Pennsylvania, there is a law where you have to have a rental inspection by the city before the property can change hands, right. So if you don't know these things, like, your deal will die because time kills all deals. So if you, you know, you've only have a 30 day contract and you wait till, you know, the 27th day and you realize this, you're probably not going to get these things done in time and again, your $30,000 deal can die. So, yeah, very important to understand how all of these different counties and states operate and at least, you know, if you haven't done a deal there, because we haven't done a deal in 3,100 counties. But understanding how to get that information and what it is that we're going to need to look for. Because for me, if you send me a contract, you sign your contract with Mrs. Smith, who's the seller today, I want you to give that to me so I can start getting everything ready and prepared. Because I'm going to assume that you can either you want to close on it yourself or you're going to find an end buyer and you're going to want to close quick because you want to make your assignment fee, you want to make your profit. So the quicker that we can get that, the sooner we can go to work and make sure that that process is just as smooth as possible.

Well, just the example of, you know, 20, $30,000 deal being killed because you didn't get a rental inspection. I can imagine you only want to, you only go through that process about once before you realize, boy, that sucked a lot. We need to find a solution to that problem in the future.

It can be painful. And you know, my job to my clients is to not let that happen.

Right.

They count on us to, to be the best and we have to do that. You know, we have to make sure that we will do everything we can to get these deals closed. Can will some not close? Of course. Some are just such a rat's nest of title problems. You're going to make $2,000. And I'm like, man, this is going to take 18 months to close. You know, we'll follow it through if you want, but I don't know that this is the best place for any of us to spend our time, but it happens at least once a week. We have a deal that's been a year old that we've been working through the process that maybe it did have to go through the court system and, you know, we get those things closed.

Wow. Amazing. Well, David, I mean, you've shared an incredible breadth of knowledge and experience with your 22 year career in real estate investment. Much more to come in that. And using innovation of finding out basically the problems that you yourself were incurring and, and discovering and then turning that into a scenario where you get to help so many more other people, not just the real estate investors, but, but really the people that they're also serving, whether it's the end user buyer that they're selling a property to or the individual that they're acquiring a property from. So it's really a, an expanse to your reach, your potential of how you can assist people in that environment. So very grateful and appreciative for you joining us on the program today. A question we always like to ask for folks that join us here is when you think about everything that you've been doing and you reflect back on your life and you project forward to your bigger and brighter future.

Yeah.

Who is it that you would most want to be a hero to?

Oh, my goodness. Every dad wants to be a hero to their kids. Right? And that's the hardest person to be a hero to because, you know, kids see you in your best and worst moments. And yeah, you know, I think I want my two boys to look up to me and go, oh, you know, you made a difference in the world. And that's so hard for kids because they're so close to the looking glass, you know, to see sometimes the, you know, whether or not you're making a difference in the world. So, yeah, I'm sure that's cliche and that's, again, that's what everybody says. But, you know, I think, I think everybody in the eyes of at least their family wants to, you know, wants them to feel like, you know, they're proud of you and that, you know, that's like for your parents, right, that you're, you're. I want my parents to think that they raised a good kid.

Yeah. Amazing. Well, Dave, thanks so much for being with us. For those of us joining us, of course, on YouTube, you'll take a quick look and you'll see, boom, there's a little playlist that just showed. It says, you should watch me. This is really good content. So we're going to encourage you to do that. And for everyone else, we will see you right back here. Wealth on Main street next week.

Thanks so much.