- Speaker #0
and it started thinking you know like all right how do we actually sock away some money that's going to make a difference right and um i looked at everything i looked at real estate i looked at gold i looked at crypto i looked at mutual funds like what what can we do that's not going to take 40 years to get this done when i say double close um typically what we do is um we have an a-side contract so we are the buyer on the a-side contract we we offer on it as if we're flipping it where are the buyer and then on the b-side contract we create a separate contract between me and the end buyer and i'm physically selling them the property like hey if the market's gonna lose two percent of value every month that you hold this home do you have enough net margin to still be profitable in that situation right so like yeah there are life lessons learned over these 25 years or so of market conditions but really easy just to measure it and then go build criteria we're negotiations for investing in real estate.
- Speaker #1
They're winning. They're making money.
- Speaker #2
What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back, wrapping up season six in just a couple of episodes here. We have another fantastic guest. I'm super excited about this one, you guys. I know you're going to get a lot of value if you do five-star review, share it with a friend. Mr. Jason Roberts, you've been in the business for about five years. You do a little bit of everything, wholesaling, fixing and flipping, mentoring, education, and I think you do some retail brokerage as well. So I want to get into all of that, get into your background. I know you have extensive background way beyond five years because you were watching your dad do it when you were growing up. So welcome to the show, man.
- Speaker #0
Thanks, Kevin. I really appreciate being here.
- Speaker #2
Take me back. Sometimes we talk about rich dad, poor dad, and your dad was your rich dad. He was your mentor. So take me back, man. He was up in New York. You were watching him build his success.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think it's a really cool experience growing up in real estate, quote unquote, right? I was really young when my parents owned their real estate businesses. My dad was a new construction builder. My mother was a real estate agent. But I think it was really, really cool to watch two people that like didn't even get a high school degree, not super educated, but like built success kind of just on the sweat of their backs, you know, and slowly kind of took risk and worked really hard. And so it was really cool to watch that. It was really cool to see them, you know, graduate into new construction and start looking at these million dollar homes in New York. And... It was a really cool process. Now, for me, you know, they lost everything in 2007, 2008. And so it was a really big shift in my life and really kept me away from real estate for years and years and years. But super grateful for their, you know, path that they kind of blazed, you know, in this in this industry and the examples that they've set.
- Speaker #2
And you were really young in 2007 or 2008, if I remember right, like. early teens or maybe not even that. But going through that with them, it still stuck with you. You still didn't want to get into real estate. Maybe you were a little afraid of real estate because of that.
- Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we went from a pretty well-off family to, my parents were 50s, 60s when that hit and they just decided they were done at that point. They They own probably six or seven pieces of land. At that time, and absolutely nothing was selling. So they went through, you know, bankruptcy and foreclosures and, and that was it. Right. So we're living off of Social Security at that point. So it was a very, very, very big transition, you know, and scared me away from real estate for a very long time. My, my background was engineering. I went to school for engineering for automotive engineering, and real estate didn't come up till much, much later.
- Speaker #2
What gave you the confidence to get involved after you witnessed such devastation?
- Speaker #0
Well, I think that's, you know, it's always a lesson to be learned, right? I got back into real estate or really got my start in real estate just because I wanted to learn how to not retire when I was 70 years old. You know, I think everybody works their tail off to some degree. And I was, you know, making 110K years an engineer. I'm 25, 26, and I was married and we had, you know, one child at the time. And it started thinking, you know, like, all right, how do we actually sock away some money that's going to make a difference? Right. And I looked at everything. I looked at real estate. I looked at gold. I looked at crypto. I looked at mutual funds. Like, what what can we do? That's not going to take 40 years to get this done. And, you know, diving into real estate, understanding how fix and flipping worked, really learning about that opened up my eyes to like, hey, I don't need to use any of my own money. And I could replace my own income in four or five, six months doing fix and flips rather than just, you know, putting three, four, five hundred dollars a month away every month. Like that was a really big eye opener for me. to be able to leverage kind of the lending situation that goes on in real estate in general.
- Speaker #2
Okay. Was your parents, did they like help you at all or give you some advice or how did that, no role in you getting involved,
- Speaker #0
No, not at all.
- Speaker #2
Wow. That's crazy.
- Speaker #0
I think they were probably just as surprised as me, you know, that I was doing that. Funny enough, I actually started fix and flipping with my father-in-law. Um, rather than, than my parents.
- Speaker #2
Were they, were they like discouraging you or like, how did the conversations, how were the, how did those go?
- Speaker #0
you know, I think it was more just like, Hey, I'm doing this thing. Like I thought, you know, my parents role once we got started, um, was actually pretty cool because there was somebody, when you start a business, you don't have a lot of people that you can lean on. I would say. that really understand what you're going through. But my parents did. You know, I could call up my dad and say, this contractor's an ass. And I could call up my parents and they would understand, like, what goes into something like this and the risk that is associated with it. And I could really lay my heart out there. And that was a huge blessing for me. Like, there's going to be times every four months, six months, once a year, where you know things don't look like they're going the way that you want them to and and so they're you know they've definitely been a good safe haven for people that actually understand what's going on rather than just somebody who's trying to be polite and kind of give you the right thing to say so
- Speaker #2
you're saying things don't always go to plan no i'm sure you know that sir yeah i've i've I've experienced some of that. So what I'm trying to do here. Jason is get some, like maybe a lesson learned. And here's why I'm saying that. Some people think that we're either in a recession or maybe right on the edge of one right now. Like we're in a challenging time and you have this unique perspective, not that you necessarily went through it, but you were a part of one, a recession that had an impact on real estate. So what do you do differently because of that time or your parents lessons.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think that's an extremely important question, right? Because the failures of the market are going to repeat themselves, right? We have to understand what's gone on over the last 20, 30, 40 years so that we can plan our business around that, right? Like we want to be recession proof so we can survive. And if you can't design your business in that way, then it might go well for two years. It might go well for five years. It might go well for nine years. But at some point, there's going to be a rug pull. Um, I think personally, the lessons that I learned from my parents is number one, you can't have all your eggs in one basket. They didn't have W2 income. They didn't have, you know, regular W2 jobs. Everything that they made was 100% in real estate and specifically 100% through these new construction sales, right? There was some real estate agent income from commissions, but when the music stops in 2007, in 2008. and there's not a lot of real estate commissions going around well there's not really a lot to like float you in that scenario right so when we dove when i dove into that and tried to understand what happened and how do i avoid it um you know all of their cash was wrapped up in um in land which is not an asset class that can really do anything for you like from a rental perspective or a cash flow perspective or a survivability perspective like if nobody's buying properties you can't really do much so for me personally like the fix and flips were an amazing opportunity to make 92 return on investment in four months or make 120k per project that we're taking on and then scale that significantly which has been phenomenal But I've always said from day one, and I encourage a lot of our students in this space, hey, you have to keep your W-2 job so you are always stable no matter what, and you're not making financial decisions when you're in a stressed financial state. to where now you have to get rid of this fix and flip, and you're making unwise decisions because you're really worried about the financial outcome here in the next month or two because you've stretched yourself. For me personally, I always wanted to live on either my wholesale income or my real estate commissions from the brokerage or the other assets of this business, not just fix and flips because they pay you every four to six months, which is great, but they do have overhead associated with them as well.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. So the way I'm hearing this is there's two things, I guess. I don't like that word things, but I don't know how else to describe this, Jason. There's people with W-2 or some steady income that invest in real estate. And then you have people that generate their income in real estate, like maybe commissions or something, and then they invest in something. So what I'm hearing is wherever you make your money, that's fine. Just take that money out of there and invest in other assets. to create some buffers and diversification?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, risk management is always going to play a factor, right? If I know I can always wholesale, regardless of what fix and flipping is doing, I know that then I can be safe. You know, if I can build in other businesses that are all complimentary, then we always have something moving. And I think that's kind of the missing piece for a lot of real estate investors in general is, you know, they're relying on one investment strategy and then that you know they're stuck in that if a market shift happens pretty dramatically. So, you know, you could say, hey, it's prioritized cash flow in real estate. So that can then keep you survivable no matter what. But I think there's multiple ways to do it. You just have to find out what's your niche and like what's going to work best for you.
- Speaker #2
I'm in a couple of different peer groups, like mastermind groups. And this comes up quite often. The idea of staying focused or diversifying and which is better, right? It's a constant grapple. And what it seems to be the best answer for that, Jason, is to stay hyper-focused to make your money. When you start diversifying too much, it starts becoming a little bit more tough. Like the riches are in the niches. We hear that, right? But then get that money and diversify in the investments. So what I'm hearing you say is multiple streams of income, which I agree with. And then I'm hearing these. peers of mine that are much more successful than me say and stay focused. So what's your thoughts?
- Speaker #0
I think it's a really challenging thing for entrepreneurs. Like I think if you're an entrepreneur, you're pretty, you know, risk tolerant, you're pretty confident in yourself, hopefully, and you kind of feel like you can conquer the world. So it's pretty hard to say no to things. I happen to be very fortunate, like yourself to have some gray hairs around me to kind Okay. Tell me no. And to stay focused every once in a while. I still have four businesses.
- Speaker #2
I thought you were saying I had gray hair. I was like, yeah, I have a hat on. Um,
- Speaker #0
and I think I've experienced that too, of like, when we get too spread out and too spread thin, you don't, you're not making as much money as you should be in either one of those things because you're still a newbie. It's like playing sports, right? Like your freshman year. you can still be good, but it's going to take a while to really develop the skill and you're just getting the big chunks in the beginning. And then sophomore year, you're starting to get better. And junior year, you're going to be pretty stinking good at whatever you're doing because you've got the minutiae down, you've built the skill sets up, it's second nature to you. And now you can really scale that activity from there. I think it's the same in entrepreneurship, right? Like if you're taking swings at pop tops and new construction and fix and flips. Like you're a newbie in every single one of those things until you've done it for quite a while. So I agree. I don't think it's wise to spread yourself too thin, but I do think you need to have an income source that is risk tolerant and that is risk, you know, risk tolerant all the way across the board. Whereas like if you are dumping your money into an asset that has a fluctuating value, then there is some risk there. right so do you have something that is going to be consistent for me personally it's the wholesaling business right like it's incoming every two weeks i can scale it to three five ten deals a month um there's no risk on my side because we have outs on our on our contracts right versus you know some of these other avenues um that are maybe more profitable in the long run but uh you know we want to make sure that we at least have a backup plan i love the wholesale business for all the reasons you just said.
- Speaker #2
And I know it's a difficult business to get into because not that the barrier of entry is hard necessarily, but finding the properties to wholesale can be challenging. What do you do to get to find those? Where do your leads come from?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think we've got about 10 or 12 different lead sources right now. And we kind of take the humble and curious approach to like this, the boring scientists approach to, hey, you know, let's try this lead source. Let's try for three to six months. Let's see what comes out of it. And then if we don't get a return, let's move on. And so we just have kind of incrementally worked down the list from, you know, probates to real estate agents to, you know. cold SMS blasting, you know, different lists that we're pulling to calling around different remediation companies that do meth or mold remediation and building relationships with them. So there's certainly not like a one size fits all there for us personally. I really, really, really love building relationships with real estate agents because it's repeat activity. They can go out and they can, you can leverage them to work on your behalf you while you're not doing something, right? If I can create an army of agents, 20, 30 real estate agents that are actively hunting on our behalf, that's going to lead to multiple repeat opportunities rather than strictly time for money. So I think that's been a really solid lead source for us, which sounds basic and simple, right? But, you know, we've made $150,000 assignment fees from real estate agents that have brought us deals. right? Off market, on market, wherever. I think another really good one that's worked for us recently has been the probate space. These are less emotional sellers that are inheriting a property and are usually coming out in a win-win situation no matter what. And so a lot of the times they're out of state and they just don't even want to deal with it, right? So it's a little easier to navigate that space with the numbers that we need, right? To make this work for everybody when somebody's not.
- Speaker #2
clutching their pearls on every little you know aspect of that home and personally tied into it yeah my best deals were probate so i and i can relate to that one for sure or is everything you're doing assignments we actually don't assign anything so maybe i shouldn't say that we
- Speaker #0
we double close everything uh for for a number of reasons but uh you know i think number one it allows us really to operate as an end buyer rather than a wholesaler um you know and it and it It separates the assignment fee, quote unquote, to where whoever the end investor is, you know, it's it's candidly none of their business how much money we're making on this deal. And I want to keep everybody happy and make sure that they're repeat clients. And so, you know, if if I see a forty thousand dollar assignment fee, you better bet I'm going to negotiate pretty hard the next time I deal with that wholesaler because I don't want to pay 40K markup. So we double close everything and we've got a pretty good system.
- Speaker #2
So for the listener's benefit, they probably do know what that is, but explain double close.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I actually think that there's some terminology that gets misinterpreted here because some people define a double close as, hey, I buy this home. I put up money for it and then I turn around and I sell it. And that can get expensive and that can get risky because you're taking possession and ownership and putting up 400 grand, 600 grand, whatever you're doing. And some people do that or some people will get transactional funding from a particular lender. But that's expensive. They charge you a point or two, you know, to do something like that. So that really eats into your margins. When I say double close, typically what we do is we have an A-side contract. So we are the buyer on the A-side contract. We offer on it as if we're flipping it. We're the buyer. And then on the B-side contract, we create a separate contract between me. and the end buyer, and I'm physically selling them the property. The big difference here is it all happens same day at closing, same place, but we use pass-through funding in this situation. So the very end buyer's funds are what is funding the A-side transaction. And so we don't have to pay lenders. We don't have to pay fees. We don't physically have to be responsible for taking possession and ownership of this property. if the end buyer does not perform. And so it all really hinges on that very B-side, you know, the very end B-side contract, but works out kind of for everybody's benefit in this situation.
- Speaker #2
And you're in Florida, right? We're in Colorado.
- Speaker #0
We're in Colorado.
- Speaker #2
Oh yeah, you're up North, right? Fort Collins?
- Speaker #0
Yes, sir.
- Speaker #2
Are you, so you're, for the listener, what he's talking about here is what we would call a dry double close, which means there's no side A money. There's no funding on side A. So the side B just flows all the way through. So side B closes in escrow. The money's held there. Side A closes and the money flows through. We're finding that very difficult to close those. You're still seeing success there. A lot of states. Um, including Colorado frown on that and some it's, they won't even do it.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I think it depends on your partners, right? So title companies are going to be kind of the, the go, no go on that. Right. And some kind of title companies will do it. And some title companies will not, it really comes down to disclosure. So our title partner that we use as a disclosure form that tells, you know, goes out a couple days before closing tells the seller. Hey, this is, you know, this transaction is dependent upon the closing of escrow number X, and it does the same thing on the B side transaction. So everything's above board. You know, there's disclosure to everybody. Everybody understands what's happening. It may happen later on in the process, but I think that's been the big differentiator for us is having a good title partner that's willing to do something like this episode is brought to you by Pine Financial Group.
- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we've got six deals available currently.
- Speaker #2
Okay. Well, we definitely need to make sure we get your contact information so we get added to that buyer's list. All right. Tell me about what you're working on now. I know obviously you're a big wholesaler, but that's not all you do, Jason. So tell us what else is involved in your business. Like what other divisions do you have?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, realistically, like our business is predicated on fix and flips. We started out fix and flipping in 21. We did our first project, you know, had to sue my contractor on our very first project. but made like 80k on that deal and the light bulb kind of went off it was like well this was three or four months we made 80 grand that was almost my entire annual salary in four months right and the biggest difference for us was we got into real estate and realized that sales was easy right i have a sales background there's a lot of products that you try to sell that just don't have product market fit it's like pushing a rope and it's very very hard to sell that product We did not find that to be the case with real estate and specifically with raising private money to go fix and flip. Right. So we finished that first project and then we raised like 400 grand, you know, the next day to go do four or five fix and flips simultaneously. Right. So we scaled our business to doing about four fix and flips at a time, started doing about 20 a year and then really started to scale that to, you know, the higher end fix and flip. So we do a lot of like bigger square footage, big layout changes, homes that are going to finish at the one point three to two million dollar range. And that's what, you know, our investment business is based around. But I went from making one hundred K to making four hundred K a year in this real estate space in a matter of like six months. And that radically changed my life. I mean, like. we're able to save we're able to have opportunities travel help family like live the life that we really wanted to live and so we started and created a mentorship program to teach other people how to do this because that's where my heart is at right like as i want there's no magic this is not like you don't have to be a software engineer or elon musk to figure out how to do this thing right like real estate has been around for hundreds of years we're not reinventing the wheel So... You just need good systems and to understand how to do this well to protect yourself. And you could transition into making a hundred grand a project, even if it's just one deal a year, like that's life-changing for most people. So we've been doing that for about three years now. And we just launched that project or product nationally rather than just in the state of Colorado. So that's really where our focus has been on the last six, eight months.
- Speaker #2
How's it going?
- Speaker #0
It's been great. it's been great we have a first-time fix and flipper who's got a little bit of a construction background that just finished a project um and he's making 180 000 on that deal right now um did you you wholesale that deal to him too yeah we found it it was actually it was a crazy story This was a home where there was a double homicide in the home. This is actually, it's a really sad story. This is a personal friend of one of our brokers. We own a brokerage and one of our individuals, her family's friends were killed in this house. And the house was then set on fire afterwards. So it was fire damaged property that needed fire remediation. The home. Went through this long process with the son and daughter who inherited it. We helped them with the remediation process. We helped them with the insurance claim process. And they went through about six, seven, eight months of dealing with that. And then we brought them through three potential options to sell it. And they were just done with it. Like they're paying two mortgages that they can't afford. They wanted nothing to do with it. It's obviously very emotional. Everybody in the neighborhood seems to think that the neighbor is the one that actually um was the perpetrator here so they didn't want to be anywhere near the property um so it was a win-win for everybody like we were able to wholesale this to a student of ours who took over the insurance claim made about a hundred thousand dollars out of the insurance claim finished the remodel in like three months and is making we're under contract opening weekend for like 15k over ask So it was a really good deal.
- Speaker #2
Wow. That's really sad too. So that's a great deal. So yay.
- Speaker #0
It's a great deal, but like, these are the types of people that like, they would not have an outlet or a resource to be able to do something like this. And they would have been trying to sell it on market in a really, really poor condition, you know, had we not been tied into them. So I'm really thankful for them and I'm glad it just worked out for them in general.
- Speaker #2
For sure. Did they figure out what happened? Was it the neighbor?
- Speaker #0
I'm still unsure. Still unsure. We're under contract. We're pending. We're closing like 10 days. So I'm hoping your podcast comes out a little later than that.
- Speaker #2
We're not going to see an address here.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, the seller or the buyer is aware of everything. But it's crazy because the student that picked this up, we do wireless cameras on our projects to ensure that contractors are showing up and everybody's getting stuff done and to protect ourselves from theft and things like that. But there was a case where one day that a SWAT team pulls up and he sends me this video and he's like, you know, I hope this doesn't pop up on the news soon because a SWAT team jumps out of the truck and you just see them run into the neighbor's house off of his wireless camera as he's trying to complete this project.
- Speaker #2
It was him.
- Speaker #0
Still don't know. Still don't know.
- Speaker #2
Oh, gosh. Yeah. Gosh, I kind of want to Google this, but I won't. I'll leave that. I'll leave it alone. Well, great job on that. So you're, you're wholesaling. So did you help them with the management of the construction also, or is your buyers on their own for that?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So the people that are involved in the state of Colorado, um, we're really hands-on, um, like we, and this is what I feel like really separates our program because my worst case scenario is like, I educate somebody and I bring them through a program and I set them free in this world. And somebody, you know, some wholesaler convinces them. that a property is worth X and it's nowhere near that, or the construction budget is Y and it's nowhere near that. Right. And then they go out and lose money and everybody's upset. Um, in the state of Colorado, we've solved that by just being extremely involved. We help find the property. In some cases, we, actually part of the reason that people pay us is because they get exclusive access, 24 hour access to our off market deals before anybody else. Right. So they're getting access to deals that we know are going to work. that are really deep discounts. We're helping them with contractors. We're helping them with the design. We're helping them with the construction budgets. We're helping them with the project management. And then we're physically there to list it as the brokerage on the back end of these deals as well. And so, you know, there's been plenty of situations where we will physically walk these job sites after a certain number of weeks and be like, what's going on here, right? And be able to kind of point them back into the right direction. Whereas I feel like a lot of other programs are just recorded and you go and it is what it is. And, you know, we really want to be involved in the success of our clients.
- Speaker #2
Okay, that's cool. So tell me, like, give me a little bit more detail. If I'm interested in being mentored by you or your team, how does that work and what do I get?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, the first step there is just to come to BetterBlueprintAcademy.com. We've got a few different options. Again, nationwide, there's a program that we have that is based around teaching people how to do six-figure net profit flips. Again, we're averaging about $120K net profit per deal that we take on. And so that is recorded. There's about 36 different tools in there. Some really, really, really important tools between contractor agreements, builder agreements, Gantt charts, project management tools, our deal analysis. And that's all recorded. Right. So you can self pace through that if you really want to get through it in like three weeks and go pick up the fix and flip. Like that's the route that you want to take because you can get through the content. But it's Jesus like 24 hours worth of recorded content and professional studio like it's it's killer. Then we kind of step up from there and we have what's called a fast track coaching. And this is designed around, okay, now you guys have the knowledge to do six figure net profit flips. How do we scale that activity? How do we take the limitations off? What are the bottlenecks? How do you understand how to manage multiples of these at a particular time? How do you risk mitigate in that scenario, right? So we go from how do we do a six figure net profit flip to how do we become a seven figure earner flipping homes? wherever you're at, you know, whatever state you're in. Um, and that is live. That's over 14 weeks. That's much like we are right now over zoom. Right. And, we're bringing through people through all of our tools and all of our content.
- Speaker #1
Okay. So it's like a group, group setting. It sounds like.
- Speaker #0
Yep. Small group. We kind of limit to about 15 members per session.
- Speaker #1
Okay. And what's the cost to get involved?
- Speaker #0
So for the fast track coaching, it's just a flat 10K. And we can even break that up. For the recorded version of our main flagship program,
- Speaker #1
it's 5K to get into the program. So 10K, let me make sure I get this right, Jason. So I give you $10,000. I get all of the pre-recorded in-studio professional stuff. Then I get time with you or your team live every week. And I get access to your deals where you're averaging $120,000.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, 100%. 100%. And you get our support in analyzing these deals and doing the design. And you get access to our contractors and access to our design crew. And we'll even cut you a deal on listing it on the back end to save some cost and be more cost competitive there as well.
- Speaker #1
Damn. So betterblueprintacademy.com. Betterblueprintacademy.com. All right, man. We are in. In the, well, at the end of the time here. So what I would like to do is go through my notes, just share with you what I learned on this podcast episode, and then shed any color on it, shed some light, whatever. And then I would love to hear a final piece of advice for maybe somebody just getting started out in real estate. Some piece of advice that would, I guess maybe you wish you told yourself when you were getting started. All right. So we started off with your background, your last five years. But prior to that, you watched your parents go through the crash in 07, 08. And one thing you said that you saw your parents become really successful. Now, they made some mistakes, which we also talked about, but they became very successful. Neither one of them had a degree. So the question was, do you even need a degree to have a lot of success in business and specifically real estate? Things don't always go to plan. We joked about that a little bit. So make sure that you have a plan when things don't go to plan. And one way you could do that is not keep all your eggs in one basket. So what Jason talked about is multiple streams of income, not putting all everything into one specific niche or product type. Keep your job if you have a job. If you don't have a job and you're doing real estate as your job, stick to what is cash flowing and producing income. If that's wholesaling and you're good at that, stick to that and then do flipping on the side. But make sure you have that income source. And I said, I even wrote down multiple streams of income, but also figure out how to stay focused. So what's that balance? We talked a little bit about that and maybe mastering a skill and then adding to it. Try not to do two or three things to master at one time because you're still new. But that is a tough balance there, right, Jason? So we talked a little bit about that. Number one is have income. And then we talked about how you Thank you. have your income and that's mainly from wholesaling. So I asked the questions about how you find in your deals. Everybody always wants to know about that. And you just said multiple streams. You have several different pieces of marketing out there and you're always testing. So you have a few that work really well and you keep doing those and then you're adding to it and you're testing. That's great for marketing. It's marketing 101 guys. Realtors are a great referral source, but anytime you could have a referral source, it's good because it's residual. You can keep coming. And then you also said... probate works. And I, that was the last note I took because we got into your program a little bit. So I didn't take a lot of notes on that. but how did we do?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think it's great. You know, I think some of the key takeaways there too is, you know, while we understand that there are big market dips over time, how do you then build in solid mathematical criteria to set yourself up for success? So like one of the big lessons that we learned from 07-08 and in Colorado in 22 was a really big dip for us. Like we saw a 15% market dip from the peak of 2022 to the bottom. of 2022, which is really hard to be successful flipping during that timeframe. But I think, you know, the fun part about this is that you don't have to take my word for it. You don't have to take anybody's word for it. You look at like Zillow, they have home data available for every month over the last 25 years. And you can say, what's the worst market condition in my market over the last 25 years? And just take this document, export it, graph it, whatever. and build your criteria off of that. So like we built one of our keynote go no go criteria off of 2022, where we saw prices dropping at 2% per month, right? So now we've built in like one of our worst case scenario includes, this is not the only thing it includes, but it includes like, hey, if the market's going to lose 2% of value every month that you hold this home, do you have enough net margin to still be profitable in that situation, right? So like, Yeah, there are life lessons learned over these 25 years or so of market conditions, but really easy just to measure it and then go build criteria around it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So that would be like a stress test.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, like we combine that with, all right, what happens if you go over on your construction budget and what happens if you hold this longer than you anticipated? And if all three of those things happen, are you still profitable? That's like a very, very good litmus test for me to say, hey, yes, this is a deal.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So I'll tell my clients, you know, we want to stress this. So what if you lost 10% of your value? And we always add a 10% contingency. So we're capturing those two. But you're right. The holding cost is a big piece there too. If you're not moving quickly, or if your contractors are slowing you down, which that never happens, that could cost you, that could cost you big time also. So great point there. Is there any final piece of advice here, Jason?
- Speaker #0
I think just get tied into people that you really respect. in this industry and and don't just get tied into them adjacently like go work with them or go work for them like if you have an expert or or a mentor or somebody that is just crushing it in your industry just go work with them like when i got started i started working with a small investment firm that was probably doing 30 fix and flips a year and that's how i cut my teeth like i learned what they were doing. And that really... Let me learn their lessons rather than losing money, learning my own lessons. Right. So that's what this mentorship program is for, for everybody else here. But that's how I would get started is, you know, if you have a particular avenue, wholesaling, being an agent, fix and flipping, whatever it is, like just go be around top performers because it's hard to put together a championship winning team. If you have no idea what a championship winning team looks like.
- Speaker #1
Awesome advice. Well, you're super busy wholesaling a bunch of properties, fixing and flipping million dollar houses. You got your brokerage, your mentorship program, and you still jumped on here with me for the last 40 minutes. So Jason, I really appreciate your time.
- Speaker #0
Kevin, thanks so much for having me.
- Speaker #1
And for the listener, you have other podcasts you could choose from, and you chose the Real Estate Educators podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. If you got any value, please five-star review, share it with a friend, and I hope you make this day a great one. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh yeah, and tell a friend.