EP 567 – Working With Senior Families To Sell Mom’s House with Phillip Vincent

This is the no closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We close notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here today. And I'm really, really excited about this episode we're going today. I'm really excited about the guest. We've got a. Shh. A secret being shared, a very successful secret and something that I believe is going to affect each and everybody on this call at some point in the near or not too distant future out there. And I'm really excited. Our special guest is a guy who's been killing it. And this not only applicable to the note business, but also to those of you in notenation across the country that are listening or watching this, that are in the traditional real estate side of things. And I'm excited. We've got my buddy Philip Vincent joining us here from St. Louis, Missouri. No, wait, Kansas City, Missouri.

Right. We're in Missouri, Kansas City and St. Louis. That's right. So you're right on both fronts.

Okay.

All right.

Good, good, good. And he's got years of experience, been doing hundreds of deals. He's good friends with my buddy Ben Rao up in the neck of the woods as well. I've known for years. And he is literally going to share today how investors from all across the country can find the best leads for your business with a secret strategy that helped him close on just 50 deals alone last year. And so I'm really excited to have Philip Vincent join us here. Hey, what's up, Philip?

Hi. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

Hey, I'm glad to have you on. And so before we give away the secret everybody's excited about there. Talk a little about kind your real estate background and kind of got to where you're at today.

Yeah, I'd love to say that I started this business backwards. I started when I was 20 years old building my first house. So I started with new construction and I graduated in 21 years all the way to wholesaling, which I find funny because everyone wants to start off at wholesaling and then they. What do they say every time? Do a couple wholesales, I'll put that money into rehab and then rentals and then maybe I'll do new construction. Right. So I did it backwards. And the reason why is the older you get, the real you figure out what you're good at or what you want to spend your time doing. And then I wasn't a very good adult babysitter, so I didn't really like the contracting side. Wholesaling is kind of fun because it's always new, it's always ever changing. So monotonous. I really like working with families. That's what I've succeeded at is trying to figure out that Rubik's Cube of problems that they have and trying to get that put together for the families. And so it's never a dull moment with helping families in this time of need that I help them with. Yeah.

And that's the thing is we've all got family. We're all getting older. And as they say, one of the top five market segments is working with the elderly people that are getting older who need help in a variety of ways, whether it's health or healthcare or housing or working out, helping them with other things of aspect. Right, Phil? Yeah.

So what I do is kind of a marriage of all those things that you just said. The aging population. Can I give what it is?

Hang on. Hang on a second.

Drumroll. I love it. Simply put, I help the adult children of seniors that are moving mom. Into senior living. And if you've been in real estate long enough, you've already been helping this type of customer anyway. And I formalized that back in 2011. I said, we only did 66 deals that year. And I said, what is it about these 66 deals that's similar? Right. I'm a curious person. I'm always trying to find the fountain of leads. Right. The best leads. I'm never content. Cause if you're in. If you're in real estate, you really realize you're in marketing very quickly. And it's never done. You know, we used to do the yellow pages, and we'd get 10 deals a year, and that's graduated all the way down to one deal a year, you know, and so what did work doesn't say the same. And like, today's trends are simply cold calling. And rvm, that wasn't even a thing to me five years ago. Right. But with all of these trends, I call them waves, you know, and the thing about a wave is they crash. And so I feel like what I'm doing with helping those adult children moving into senior living. You want to talk about how big this market is that 7 out of 10 people over the age of 60 are going to move into some sort of assisted care in their life. So keep in mind that means that they're. They haven't passed away, right? They've just moved into. But that is the moment when they need to sell the property to pay for that care. It's not. You know, I love probate leads and we can talk about probate leads, and I love them. But let me just share with you quickly how much better these are than probate leads. So, Scott, let's say you and I are brothers and we lose mom and the house goes into probate. Cause she didn't have her stuff set up, right? So now you and I, not. It's not greed, it's just more what's in it for me and you. We're concerned about us, our concern, you know, about what's going in my pocket with these leads. They don't, I say they don't care. It doesn't matter as much if you pay 74 or 82 or 91 for the house, because that money's going to mom's care, right? So the kids are actually more inclined to go with somebody trustworthy and. Trustworthy. Did I say trustworthy? Right. Because they don't want to be messed around with. So sometimes they go talk to the real. Everybody knows a real estate agent, right? The real estate agent comes in and says, clean this house out, right? There's a two month task, rehab this house before I put my precious name on it, right? And then I'll take pictures and then I'll sell it. So in a perfect world, you're talking about kicking the can six months down the road. And these families don't want that uncertainty. They just found out that mom's new care is 8,300 bucks, nine grand a month, you know, because you're not, you know, let's talk about this American thing that is senior living. There is no senior living in China or India because you move them in with your house. It's an American thing to do that. And so the adult children have this guilt built up. So what do you do about guilt? Like, if you have guilt, you try to over splurge for mom, you get her the nicest one. And the nicest one's also the most expensive. It's funny how that works, right? And so that pressure, where that's gonna be paid for and from very, very quickly, we go back to the house. And so when I think about what a perfect lead is for me as a real estate guy and Why I was so excited about this in 2011 when we kind of figured it out was that the two things I'm looking for are motivation and equity. Right. That's the perfect lead. And these are those leads I was telling you earlier. I've been keeping this a secret since 2011. The reason why is I didn't want anybody else to do it. And so in my curiosity about life and growth and as a human, as a person in business back in 2017, I kind of set out to say, if I do this much good for my community in St. Louis, what can I do at a nationwide level?

Right.

And so what I've started to do is create these relationships in big in data and getting to these leads even before it's like I said, if me and you were a brother, if we needed to help mom. Do you think we're doing a Google search to help mom find senior living if we don't really need it, you know? No, of course not. We're not. So when somebody does that search, they are, they need this situation to be handled right then. And those leads are the best leads I've ever found. And so what I'm doing now is trying to build out a nationwide network of trusted investors and heavy on the trust side because you said earlier about those market segments where there's good money to be made or future. True, but what else do you know about the senior seniors? They're also some of the most taken advantage of groups. And so for me, the integrity side, the trustworthiness is more who I want to work with than just anyone that wants to buy a real estate lead. That's not what I'm shooting for, you know, so that's what I'm working on with mom's house.

That's awesome. I mean, I could not echo that more than what you said there is. You gotta help those folks they are taking advantage of, unfortunately, because a lot of times they may not know and are embarrassed to ask questions or to check or even talk with other advisors about stuff. But also health. You know, if they're looking at that, usually their health is deteriorating. That's the number one priority. Let's get, hey, let's try to find the best healthcare, how to take care of ourselves or our mom and dad. And you know, they don't want to deal with having to fix the house up to get it moved, to get it listed. They'd rather have somebody come in and take care of that, you know, and make it a win win across the board. Because most of the Time especially good senior healthcare is not cheap by any, any, any stretch of the imagination, especially if you've got deteriorating health and things like that. And you don't want to put mom or dad in a roach motel either to do it. You want to help out.

Exactly. Right, Right.

So you're generally leads straight off of Internet searches and then you're putting it in a database and then finding territories or how's that kind of working then for you?

In essence, that's what we're working on. I would consider that like the phase two. So I don't want to jump the gun. What I'm. What I'm really doing today is finding those people that I might work with in the future for those leads. And so I want to, I'm teaching people right now what I've done to build that channel. And what's the sexiest part about the channel is that once you build it, it's free. You know, we spend a lot of money on all the other types of marketing. We don't need to list them all here, but every other type of marketing we spend money on. Right. And they're good too. They have their attributes and why they're good. And some are worse than others, but these are the best. And so I think the older I get, I'm getting to that point where I'd rather talk to 10 people and buy five houses than I would want to talk to 150 to buy five houses.

Amen.

Yeah.

That's the truth. More you can streamline things and deal with truly motivated people that want to make something happen versus those that are just tire kickers or kicking the can down the street is for sure.

Right. You got it. I'll give you a good example. Like all the phone, all the phone leads we're getting these days, what do they say? Oh yeah, I'll sell my house for the right price. Only. Only every day do we hear that right. That's not these type of leads. It's the exact opposite that they need to sell the house. They're concerned is mom's care. This guy is going to. If he does what he says, it takes a whole burden off of us. You know, it's just. You're fishing in the right pond.

You know, we see. I could see this working. Cause we get a lot of. With us buying distressed debt, we see a lot of borrowers that are actually the elderly side of things that can't pay their mortgages or can't pay the taxes or they're, you know, they're Living on Social Security and that, you know, we deal a lot with the family members on negotiating with that house. Same thing. You know, hey, let's work on something. You know, let's do a deed and lieu or some sort of fashion to help you out and let you walk on the stuff versus taking a foreclosure and not only being on win side, I mean, true win, win is what we all want out there. It makes things a lot better in life. Right? So I can see the.

I feel like the money side in real estate is going to come. I don't worry about that as much. It's. If I help the customer the right way and keep my reputation in the senior living that I know the greater good is still coming. Because think how big of a deal it is when a $50 million senior living community refers to you, how much trust they have to have in you. Right? And so, you know, like the bandit sign. Got nothing against bandit signs. But like, I look at a person that puts out bandit signs versus what I'm doing, they couldn't be further apart from each other.

So shady guy in the corner, they want to buy a watch for me. Come on.

From an old person. Are you kidding me? It's like, oh, can we. Can we make this any worse? You know, and so that's what I'm really teaching is down at the granular level of how all the stakeholders in this senior industry, which is very insulated, wants to be dealt with. And if you unlock it, it's magic. It's really the best thing I've ever found in our business. That's why I'm so excited to talk about it. Are you?

I'm sure you are. But besides just the local senior living facilities there in Missouri, you reaching out to other places in the country?

Yes, yes. I'm building nationwide networks. And so there's a lot in the data side of when you're starting to go through this with your family, what types of searches you're doing, and, you know, you get caught in these webs of this is the time that they need to be talked to. Right. For me, everything with marketing, it's a timing thing, right? If the timing is right, we have a value. And if it's not, then they're not really that good of leads. And so even like, you know, like a driving for dollars, let's listen. You know, I love driving for dollars. I love them. They're great. But because you drove down the street and that house looked crappy and you put it on your list, that House might have been crappy for 20 years. It doesn't mean they need to sell. Right. And with most other things, it's like even like, I'm not here to bash other types of marketing.

Right.

That's.

No, no, no, we're not at all. Yeah.

Comparatively, these have been the best. Are you.

Have you found any correlation in. With your borrowers or. Sorry. With some of the homeowners having second or. Not second mortgages. Reverse mortgages, because that's often an elderly product for quite a bit of time. You seen that?

I do. And so one out of 10 might have had a reverse mortgage. And I'm going to tell you right now, every one of those one out of ten doesn't understand what they had almost every time. And it's like, no. They're like, no, we don't have a mortgage. And it turns out they owe 140 grand. It's like, how do you know? And I don't know who to blame on that one. I just know that industry. I don't think they understand what it is. And by the way, if there's a reverse mortgage, I always say that I was probably the best thing for mom anyway because she got to stay in the house longer. So good for her. Right. There's an equity anymore like there used to be. But good for mom that she.

At least.

I don't know if that's winning or not. I'm not old enough yet to tell you the answer, but I think staying in my house as long as I can is the win in this life. I'm not, you know, we'll see. I'll let you know in 40 years.

Well, but I think that's right. I mean, the United States is such a different animal compared to other countries where in other countries are elderly, are worshiped or taken care of. It's the whole goal to have the parents live with you, take care of them, to show that respect that they've earned over time versus here in the United States. It's. It's such a different, different animal. It's not that case, which is unfortunate. Says a lot about our society as a whole.

Yeah, it's a throwaway society.

Yeah, it's. It's sad. But that's the, you know, that's the one thing. Mom and dad don't want to stop driving. They don't want to stay home. You know, they like that independence, no matter how old they are. You know, I don't think anybody else want to go through that on a weather aspect of things. So Anytime you can help them out and make sure it's a. It's. It's a tr. Win and trustworthy and help them out of a bad situation. Because the most. These elderly don't have the time. They don't think they've got the money to fix the house up. You know, they like the brown shag carpet from 1970 in there. They lived in it for years. It makes for an opportunity for both places to come out smelling good and then doing really a lot of good. What's been. You got any? I'm sure you've had some amazing stories from some of your clients.

You want fun ones, bad ones, weird ones. What do you want?

Let's do a good one and then a weird one. Why don't we talk about that? Because everybody loves stories.

Good one. I saved a lady from getting catfished one time.

Oh, let's talk about that.

So she wanted to sell her house. I find out why she's moving from a nice house that's paid off into, like, an independent care. And she needed to unlock that money to send it to her boyfriend in Africa who was working on a $500 million deal, but he just needed 85,000 to unlock some permit to get the 500 million so he could come back home and live with his princess forever. I'm like, I don't think so. You know, and the more I asked her, you know, and it's so sad. It's like she. It kind of haunts me to this day. I go to pick her up to take her to closing, and she. And I keep asking her, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure I do this? And she goes, you know, I just don't want to be alone. I'm like, oh, you know what I mean? There's a lot of. I mean, I have a very jovial personality, if you can't tell. But I try to be happy and everything I do. And we're dealing with life and death matters and sad things, and, like, there's crazy stats in senior living that just blow your mind. Like, 60% of people living in senior living don't have a visitor. So think about that. We got families and kids and life, and, you know, we complain about how busy we are, and then one day, no one ever comes to see you again. More than half. What? You know, I mean, life is short. You know, you got to enjoy it. And, you know, I love my job because I have always loved real estate, and now I get the joy of helping these families, too, with this Burden. You know, you talked about the kids and the shag carpet and all this. A lot of times the burden falls on one of the kids that's still in the hometown. Other kids live 400 miles away. So they all think that the sister who's in town and Santa Mom's deteriorating is crazy. Oh, you're crazy. That's in your head. It's not as bad as you think. But that kid that's here. When I say kid, she's 60s. But the kid here is dealing with mom and taking her to the appointments, right? That burden, it's a very emotional time for families, and that's why I'm talking about this. I want to work with the best of the best, right? The people that would rather lose a deal to save face than to try to get one over on somebody. That's not it at all. This is more put people first and do the right thing. And in real estate, we already know that, you know, the houses that need the updating is where we. That's our opportunity to add value. Right? So that's what I'm doing.

Wow, I love that, man. That's such a. It's a good thing. What's. That was a great story there. What's another story you got?

The craziest one is a lady sold me a house that was worth 250 grand for 50 grand. And I'll never forget because this was like a nice house in great condition. And she goes, I need you to have a seat before we tell the story. And I'm usually asking them to take a seat, and she's like, I need you. So she goes through the whole thing. And long story short, her husband did something really bad and the FBI came after him. He fled the country for years and listened. And she was rich, right? She was rich. Here's a crazy thing. She spent millions of dollars that they had over those years when they finally caught him in the divorce. Now she owed him half of that money even though he was gone on the run. And it gets better. I'm not even close to none of that story from prison. He took the house out of her name and put it back into a trust name that he had. So when you're in prison, you have plenty of time on your hands, right? So he got the county convinced that the. That it should go through the deed or the quick claim deed. Quick claim deed, Right. And he got to put it into his name. So then she had to fight with lawyers to get her house back from, in essence, herself. We had One where a lady signed as a wife and it was really his worker. It was a mobile closing. And we go to clean out the house and the wife shows up. The wife never. The husband never told the wife what was happening. That one took a couple. You know, we're dealing with humans, right? Oh, I've got to go. I'm gonna think of the right way to say this. Two sisters. The brother passed away. He had a three bedroom house, a master bedroom, an adult movie room and a prayer room. The sister said, we're not going back in there again. Just make us an offer. It's humans. We're dealing with humans, right? Takes all types and we'll go around, doesn't it? I don't know. I like it. If everything was normal, I wouldn't like it as well. That's the fun part you're unlocking. I always like to say I'm a puzzle piece. I either fit in really easy or I don't. And either way.

Now where are you seeing on the issues? I mean, the issues you had. Are you seeing issues with family members that are stepping in and trying to get emotional and stop things from happening because of greed or anything else? All the time, I'm sure.

Always. You know, in St. Louis we got a lot of Catholic families. There's a lot of families have six, seven, eight kids. One of them's not ready to be, you know, doesn't grieve the same way, you know, or doesn't. They're not ready for this with mom that, you know, that things aren't the way they used to be. You have to be loving and kind in what you do. Right. But you also have to help them get to their goal of getting that house liquidated back, you know, for the, for mom's care. And so I teach very good strategies on how to work with that person who's not ready and how to, how to show them that. Well, good example is, let's say that. And this would be in an inherited situation. But if one person thinks it's worth a million dollars and there's four kids, that one that's worth the one that thinks it's worth a million. I always say you should buy your brothers and sister out for 750 grand and then you can do whatever you want. You see their to changes, you know, there's strategies for all this. I like a loaded question too. I ask, what color kitchen would you guys. Because if they ever say, well, we might rehab it ourselves. So what color kitchen would you put in here? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, you're gonna rehab the house, right? What color kitchen would you put? And they have no. They're woefully unprepared to rehab a house. You know, and it's not even. Sometimes it's the money, but it's more the time. Who has time to come chase down 27 contractors and get three bids? And by the way, these families are wanting to get money quickly, not spend money to try to get a couple extra dollars. Have you ever heard of something called the cost versus value guide? Yeah, it's amazing tool. You know, you spend 10 grand on a deck, and it's worth 7,600. Well, even. And almost everything's that way. There's hardly anything that actually gives. There's one thing that I know of that gives you more value than what you spend, and I'll tell you right here, it's landscaping. Up to $1,500 is the only thing that actually gives you more street value than what you spent. So I don't know. Well, I've got stories, Scott. I mean, I don't doubt it on film. You know what I mean? These are the ones I can say on camera.

We're gonna have to share some time when I'm up there. And here's some more of these interesting stories. So. So where are you. Are you seeing. Is most of the deals you're doing primarily right around your area, or are you doing stuff in other parts of the country?

For the most part for me locally, it's St. Louis. But what's happening with my lead sources is that they're starting to ask me, do you have a buyer in Albuquerque? Do you have a buyer in San Diego? Do you. You know, and so, yes, when you're in real estate long enough, we know a ton of people we're friendly with. But I'm trying to find the best of the best in every city.

Cool. What's the best way for. For people to reach out to you to either a. I don't say register a territory, but get on your referral list or things like that for you?

Momshouse.com.

That'S easy, man. Momshouse.com. i loved that one. Ben sent that over to me. I was like, oh, brilliant.

You know why it's that way in the industry? Even if dad is the one that's still alive, I swear, the caretakers, the people, me, we all refer to, what are we gonna do with mom's house? That's what we call it. That's because mom is the caretaker of the home. She was the. You know what I mean? It's the, It's Mom's house. That's what it's called. And so that's who we're helping. I love that name too. I like any good domain name that a 7 year old could spell is usually pretty good. And this one's on the nose of what I'm doing.

So could not hit it harder on the, on the nail head than for you there, Philip. Well, I love what you're doing, man. Once again, Everybody, check out momshouse.com We've got listeners all across the country on our radio networks and watching the YouTube, of course, listen to podcasts. So highly, highly. Take the time, reach out, you know, schedule a phone call, see if you're a fit. Probably want to have some experience in doing some real estate stuff so that you know what you're doing for sure. And for the most part. But that's one of the things I love about Ben, your partner there. Know Ben for years. Just absolutely high quality guy. Same thing with you. But you've got. I honestly have to say that sometimes you guys put yourself last in a lot of the deal flow you're doing because it's the right thing to do or hey, it's just not a fit and let's move on or refer it out to somewhere else and go from there. So that's the beauty of it. So. Well, Philip, thanks so much, man, for coming on the Nook Closer show today. Love, love it. I'll be reaching out to you.

Thank you.

Yeah, definitely. And then let's, let's talk some more. Once you. A little bit more further along, we'll talk some more. And maybe on our Monday night Note Night in America webinars. How's that sound?

Sounds perfect. I would love to. Thank you for having me.

Thanks, man. Thanks for being here. All right, guys, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Note Closure. Like I said, check out momshouse.com get on the phone with Philip and then see if it'll fit for it. See if it's an extra way to find some deals and add some deals into your deal flow. And if you go out and take some action, guys, help some people make it a win win. And we'll see you off the top, everybody. Bye.