MLS Investor Deal Breakthroughs

The reason why I thought it would be so interesting to have this special guest on this podcast is because there’s something that we’ve noticed out there right now in the industry of the real estate investing space. Finding good deals is getting harder. You have more investors competing for the same properties. We see this over and over. People say, “Hey, where do you find the deals? The deals never seemed to be there.” If we talk about MLS properties, you’ve all heard this. If you see a property on there, it’s been on there for more than five days, it’s not a deal and you should avoid it. 

My special guest that we’re going to have on this podcast has found a way to take MLS properties and actually profit from them. He has a unique system that he’s developed which he calls way upstream investing where you go out there and you can blow away your competition by finding deals that will help you take your investing to the next level. This is going to be great. Everyone who wants to add another tool to their investing toolbox, this may be the one for you. 

With that, I’d like to invite on to the podcast, Keith Aichele of fsbovault.net. Keith, how are you doing?

Keith: Hi, Clint. Thanks for having me. I’m up doing great. I’m excited to be here today and share some great content with your audience and listeners.

Clint: Excellent. As you heard in the opening, I was talking about buying properties on the MLS. Anybody would tell me that you can go there to find deals, I’ll look at them and think, “You’re not a real estate investor. You can not find deals on the MLS.” Obviously, you have. I’m just curious. What is your background that led you to be able to find these properties? I’d like to hear a little bit about that and then we’ll go into the actual investing strategies.

Keith: How I came across and stumbled along is that back in 2000, I actually launched a company designed around marketing real estate and I did this back in Chicago. I became very, very successful in marketing properties. I actually owned a real estate brokerage, I owned a titled company, I ended up being a mortgagee, appraisals, and the whole thing. Within 18 months, we took over a massive market share. We became number one in the industry. In five years, I sold it all off.

In that time and in that experience, there was something that I identified and it still happens today. There’s so much opportunity out there that people aren’t looking at. At that time of being in real estate, you’ll start realizing that there are people way upstream that need help. When you figure out how to get in front of them in the early part of the stages, you just open up the doors massively for the opportunity.

Clint: Okay. You realized that there are other opportunities out there and drew your culmination of experience in these various spaces within real estate. You saw this. The question is, what is it?

Keith: If you break down real estate, there are two parts to this equation. One is the big piece that’s true for any business which is understanding marketing. A real estate investor is a marketer. At the end of the day, you’ve got to be out there marketing your business. A lot of the investment strategies that are caught today, there’s really not a lot of marketing as much as there is getting access to a list. All these properties that are foreclosed on or going to auction, et cetera, and you try to strike a deal.

The reality is when you can reach people to the right marketing and catch them at the forefront before they ever actually hit a level of being in default, if they stop making payments on their home or before they hit the true point of distress, you can be in front of them first, you start the conversation. What happens in that part of it is you’re not even competing with the people that are all downstream. They’re not on the no default list. They don’t have the grass six inches tall in the yard and chose the science of […], et cetera. 

The MLS is flooded with those types of properties. When you combine that with the right techniques and strategies to create a deal and structuring a financing, that’s where the world changes as an investor. That’s what we figured out and been doing for the last 20 years or so.

Clint: Okay. You said a lot there. I’m going to break that down a bit so the audience can understand where you’re coming from. I have some questions just thinking about the marketing aspect. There’s a lot of groups out there that talk about marketing—yellow letters to hit everyone in a certain area with, postcards and things like that to find sellers. How do you differentiate yourself from those other people that are doing exactly that? They’re just inundating the market.

Keith: We focus first on the marketing piece. To your point, one of the keys in anything is there are some great strategies out, think about Blue Ocean by Chan Kim, who wrote the book—being where the competition’s not. The way to get ahead of those particular yellow letters and other things is creating that relationship when a seller first comes on the market. We’ve developed at fsbovault.net through our NextGen real estate strategies, a way to connect with home sellers before they even get 30 days on the MLS.

In most markets, there are over 9000 properties that are more than 90 days on the market. That means they hit a level where they’re getting started to get distressed. When you can reach them upstream and you already have that relationship with them, you’re making the offers with them before they get distressed. We built those mechanisms to reach those sellers in advance and create that through an incredible partnership and network at fsbovault.net.

Clint: Okay. When you talk about hitting these individuals before they get distressed, that to me, sounds like distressed real estate. You’re going out there, you’re finding someone who’s behind the mortgage, behind on taxes. There are ways to do that. You can just search property records so you can find that stuff out. Again, dropping marketing on them or trying to develop a dialogue. 

What I’m also hearing you say often is you’re thinking of properties that are on the MLS, you’re saying they’re been on there for 90 days. They become distressed because they just need to sell their property, they’re getting frustrated because the properties aren’t selling, and they’re starting to get concerned? Which one is it?

Keith: It’s both of those. It really is. You really have to realize that people will fall into one or two places. One, they’re lost their jobs. They’re about to stop making payments on their homes. They’re about to hit a point where their financial world is crumbling. The other scenario is their home is not selling. They want to relocate. They want to be done with this property but they don’t want to sell it at 70% on the market.

That’s where you’re in front of them and you have created strategies to be able to work with them and use creative seller financing techniques that help them out their situation before they ever miss a payment. If you don’t have to buy 70% ARV (After Repair Value) or loan to value, you can actually get them at full-price offers. This is a win-win.

Clint: Okay. You’re talking subject-to then. It sounds like what part of this is you’re going up to these buyers and you’re explaining to them, “I can put you in the situation where I can take over your payments, I can buy your house from you. You move out. You can do what you want to do with your life and you’re not using your credit.” Many times they have a low-interest loan. Is that […]?

Keith: That definitely is one key strategy. That’s one of the reasons we love Anderson Advisors so much. The way that you can structure and be very creative in those types of scenarios, Anderson Advisors is a company that understands 100% how to protect you as an investor. That’s definitely that scenario. 

There’s a flip side on that, Clint, which is if I’m investing in another strategy we do a lot is rent-to-own. If I could put a rent-to-own buyer and I can actually already have a property rented with above-market rents before I ever acquire it, I’ll be willing to pay more than 70% ARV. I might not pay full price, Clint, but I might pay 80%-85% of its value of 90% because I’m already secured in the transaction.

I’ve got equity built-in. I’ve got no vacancy. I’ve got no repairs to do. I’ve got a tenant already lined up who’s a solid tenant for me. I might actually buy using traditional financing or investor financing right off the bat. It is a combination, Clint, there. Those are just the two of many strategies but those two are quite the most common ways that we will do that. Now, all of a sudden, I’ve already got this problem resolved before they ever missed their first payment.

Clint: Got it. Talk about subject-to investing. I’m surprised. There are a lot of people at my events. When I bring up the term subject-to, they have no idea what I’m talking about. Ten years ago, everyone knew about subject-to but it seems like it’s falling out of favor. Part of it may be because there was a time in there when the mortgage meltdown hit and so many investors that are engaging in that strategy got a bad rep. People then shied away from it because they were typically leaving the homeowner and the property. They called it equity stealing. 

Now, it’s falling out of favor. There are opportunities there because a lot of people aren’t aware of this technique. Maybe you could share with people how it works in a subject-to deal so they can understand that term more. 

Keith: Yeah. Another thing to your point, Clint, it shows a fix and flip this house, to fix and flip shows, did everybody think of a world of investing where you’re buying and creating all these pretty homes and decorating them up? I think that’s really the investing education community has leaned more towards that because they feel like it’s an easy audience. People can see it, they get it. You started talking about subject-to and it’s over people’s heads because it contracts and it’s different from what people can mentally picture.

The idea, there are a couple of ways to do and put this in the simplest of form, is that when you work with a seller, they’re in a situation where they may not need to sell and get all their cash out of the property at this point in time. When you can work with them and whether you come in and rent their property from them to buy it later or there are things called Contract for Deeds (which I won’t go into depth in here), they work similar to how we make a payment on the property and that’s fixed for both the seller and the buyer. 

At a certain point in time, we actually then purchase it outright. That opens up the door to solve what I will call bleeding from the seller’s perspective. They’ve got a property that’s draining them cash flow-wise. The cash is bleeding out of their bank account. This gets that problem solved for them which in many people is the most important piece over just getting the cash-out, getting the loan off their credit. They just don’t want to go through bankruptcy. They don’t want to go to foreclosure and destroy their credit for life.

Clint: What are some of the risks, though, in engaging subject-to deals?

Keith: That’s a really good point. Subject-to, you really have to know what you’re doing from a legal standpoint and to make sure you get yourself protected if you’re on the seller side, if you’re on the buyer side. There are laws around it that state how you can and can’t do it which is why I always tell people, “If you are planning to do this, you want to get a good solid attorney behind you.” Anderson Advisors is the one that I recommend because I know you guys understand how to structure those protection clauses.

Some of the big things are just making sure that they don’t sell the property out from under you. I see that that’s one of the biggest risks. There are ways when you structure your deals, that’s different than what Anderson does. They’re not telling you what a good price of the home is. You’ve got to make sure you know what’s a good value from the home and what it can rent for. 

If you set up your structure and you’re negotiating the right way, you can actually even protect yourself so even if they sold the property, you’re not out of money. It’s very creative financing. It’s something we teach in our NextGen investing platform of education. When you understand how to do that, you can minimize your risk not to zero—never zero—but you can minimize it so that your risk on your credit is very low. Your risk of capital is very low on and controlled. You always know what your worst-case scenario is. If you know what the worst case is and you’re comfortable with it, bingo! You’ve got a great deal. You’re focusing on the upside.

Clint: Okay. Walk me through this then. If I’m in Pierce County, Washington, how would I go about finding properties where someone is behind on their mortgage? Where do you typically look to get that information?

Keith: Actually, Clint, I’m one step ahead of that. They don’t even need to be behind yet. See, what we’re doing is predictive behavior. We’ll look for an example. I can show you in 10 minutes, I can probably find a perfect opportunity right off of Zillow. We show people how to do that. There’s a hack trick where they have all three conditions but you’re looking for a seller who is either at least 60 days or 90 days on the market, we called that a stale listing. Now, their mindset is shifting. It’s something called the seller mindset shift. Over 1200 transactions, you’ll realize, sellers start losing their faith. There’s the seller mindset. 

Once they start getting distressed, now they’re open to more options. We look for stale listings. We look if it is vacant and we look for if there’s a price drop. Any of those three or a combination of all three is the hack trick. Perfect. If it’s vacant and they got a mortgage on it, they’re bleeding every month. It’s costing them the whole bits. They don’t know how long that’s going to last. They’re more open to working with you, Clint. They may not be behind on the mortgage, but they don’t want to keep draining their savings account. If I can stop that bleeding $2000 a month right now, if I did that for six more months I’d save all that. That’s $12,000 in your pocket just by working with me. 

That’s the first part. We’ll show you how to identify and how to reach them; how do you actually get in front of them so they want to work with you and call you to say, “Help me.” In that way, we’re not even waiting as long as you match it.

Clint: You’ve got that realtor there. It’s on the MLS. How do you prevent the realtor from screwing up the deal?

Keith: It’s actually very easy, Clint. One of two things happens. The way we structure our marketing campaign, we get the realtor on side of us selling your deal to these sellers. Keep this in mind, that realtor, once its list becomes stale, they risk losing that listing. That’s a negative thing for them. We can turn instead of losing that listing, how they get it solved. We get the realtor on our side to work with us because it’s in their best interest. We can even get them to cash upfront as the agent.

Or, if they don’t want to work with us and we’re not licensed, we could go directly to the seller. We can work with them. They might not work with us until their contract’s over or they might work right away.  There are strategies that we do if realtors put themselves in a bad situation if they don’t follow the fiduciary responsibility and at least start to work with us. That does happen, I’ll be honest. It’s in their best interest to work with us when people learn how we go about it.

Clint: Okay. In that situation, I understand what you’re doing. You’re just finding someone who doesn’t want to have a carrying mortgage any longer. They realized they have to get out from under the property. They will and probably look to negotiate more on price or on terms of how you can structure that deal. I get it. 

How about those individuals that are truly distressed that are behind? Do you have any ways in which I can find those without going to MLS? Is it because they don’t have an agent they’re working with? They’re in such a state of mind right now that they don’t know what to do.

Keith: I’m glad you brought that up. One of the things we do at fsbovault.net and through our NextGen Real Estate Investing platform is we have something called the guaranteed offer platform. We tell our investors, leverage our platform to be able to make multiple offers on properties guaranteed within 1-7 days. It’s multiple and full-price offers. We give them a range. 

Because of having that platform, we actually get attorneys calling us up. We get agents calling us up saying, “Hey, I’ve got this property.” We still come across those properties that are further downstream. We might do a cash-out offer. There’s nothing that says that we won’t make an offer at 70% of the market or 60% of the market. We can do that too.

I’d like to give sellers options. I like to say, “Here’s a variety of options for you. We can do a complete cash-out or we can do this.” We’re reaching them at all levels of the game whether they’re early instream or even downstream because of that multiple guaranteed offer platform that we put together. We have that available across the country. It doesn’t matter where the sellers are at or where the investors are at. They’ll invest whatever good opportunity to help someone to create a win-win situation.

Clint: With those […], do you ever approach them with almost a full price offer but put some caveats in there, subject to your inspection and things like that? Just to get them to talk to you rather than just hitting them without making an offer or with a low ball offer. Is that a strategy that you found success with or not?

Keith: Yeah, pretty much every time. What we do is we know how to structure the offers the right way and get them attracted. Look, here’s a good deal. I’ll give them multiple offers up for their property. They could use those as leverage against the regular retail buyer. I’m not concerned. There are thousands of sellers that are not able to sell their property. If they did use my multiple offers as leverage, maybe get that perfect buyer at full price, and close that right away, fantastic! I’ve made a difference. We know it’s not going to work for everybody. For those that can’t find the retail buyer that wants to pay the full price today or what they need where there’s a backup, that’s very, very, powerful. It’s actually one of the nine mental triggers of reciprocity. 

We’re creating a relationship early. I love helping people. That’s really what investing is about. The one thing I want to make sure I throw in here, Clint, whenever you look at a foreclosure list, and you look at all those properties going for foreclosure, going to auction, or going to share of the sale, those are missed opportunities by us as investors. Those are people that we did not reach as investors early up in the game. Nobody wakes up one day and says, “Man, life would be great if I could just not be able to make my payments, go bankrupt, get foreclosed on.” They missed. We missed as investors, we missed the opportunity to help them. 

Our big push at fsbovault.net and nextgenrealestateinvesting.com is to teach people as investors how to help people earlier upstream so we don’t have those foreclosures, so we don’t have those auctions. Yet, change is the model for people who are making their living off that level of the model but it doesn’t matter. For me, it’s more about the people and helping them first. The property is just a piece of the puzzle, but it’s really about the people that are in that situation. It’s not about the distressed properties, it’s about the sellers. Don’t focus on properties, focus on sellers and people. That’s what this relationship is about.

Clint: All right. I do want to hit on that subject-to topic so that people understand that when you’re buying properties subject-to, you’re not taking over their mortgage. You’re just agreeing to pay their mortgage and keep it current. Many times there’s prepayments behind. You’ll bring it current then you continue to pay that mortgage. They’ll move out of the property and of course, you’re going to rent it or sell it or you’re going to do something like that with that house after the fact.

Any challenges that you’ve seen in 20 years of doing these types of deals, that when you take over someone’s mortgage, somebody that wants to set up a deal like that, they should be looking out for?

Keith: Yeah. One Of the first challenges is just explaining to people how it works. There’s obviously the due-on-sale clause. If they ever get concerned about it, there are ways. Clint, you actually got videos online on how you help manage around due-on-sale, using a land trust, and things like that to protect. 

Number one is helping them understand the process and helping them through the mental keys that, “I haven’t got rid of my property officially off my credit,” and so forth. That’s going to be one of the biggest challenges. There, it’s really about helping them understand the outcome and benefits that they provide versus not going on this path. I think that’s number one in one of the biggest challenges.

The second piece is always for yourself. You gotta make sure that you understand the other side of the equation which is the renting side or the rent-to-own side or what you’re going to do with the property. You just take over a property and you don’t have experience in managing investments, you create your own set of challenges. 

If I could only pick up two due to the time, those are probably some of the biggest ones. Of course, at the very beginning, someone’s got to know what to say. I get investors that have been investing for 15 years. They could be in front of someone right now and have no idea how to actually have that conversation. It really doesn’t matter. All these become almost moot if you don’t actually know how the strategies work. That’s why I always encourage.

One thing we did differently in NextGen Real Estate Investing, rather than paying $20,000 for education, we tell people, “Look, I know this stuff works. How about this, I’ll help you get your first deal. When you make $50,000 then you pay me $20,000.” That’s how education works in this space. That’s what we get because we know it’s not just about giving facts, figures, and a book all day, and videos online, Clint. It takes in the field to really know how to do this.

Even on the investing side, I get tired of people giving away their entire life savings for education but can’t actually close a deal because they don’t know what to do. If you’ve done it enough times, I’ll help you do it. Pay me after you make your money, for those that really want to learn and want an expert to do it.

I’ll want to put my money where my mouth is. I know how to do it. It’s actually very easy, but I will be honest, it takes time to learn. It really does.

Clint: Yeah. You hit on there. I hope the listeners pick up on this. When you’re negotiating with someone, it’s sales. You have to know how to sell yourself, sell the idea to that person, and pick up on the verbal and nonverbal cues you’re getting from that distressed property owner to make them want to work with you. They’re just being inundated. They’re in a depressed state already with their financial situation. You need to show them how to work out of that. 

What I find just working with people in general, a lot of people don’t know how to speak because they haven’t been trained. They don’t know what to look for, they don’t know how to pick up on those cues, and they just don’t have the confidence. 

You have training that you take people through. I imagined this is part of the training as well in addition to the strategies. You’re going to be working with people to show them how to engage, how to pick up on these types of cues, and what they should be saying?

Keith: Yeah. We break our training into two parts. It’s really simple. We have a one-day workshop where we give people the whole in and out of how this works. They know what it looks like on this side. “Is this the space I want to be involved in?” We actually charge for that training because of its value. It’s true value. We don’t charge ridiculous amounts of money because it’s only worth something when someone does something with it. 

We have people actually learned the basics of how to find the properties. Finding is the easy part. They’re everywhere. That’s what we teach in the one-day training. I’ll show you how to find 9000 in your area, 3000 in your local area. I’ll show you how to reach them, how you get them to want to work with you and have the conversation. Actually negotiating is where we help you, how do you structure the right offer. That’s what we actually do hands-on. We don’t charge anything extra for that other than when someone makes $50,000 (like I said), then pay us $20,000. Don’t pay us unless it works. 

It’s two parts. One is to learn the basics so that way, I don’t have to teach everybody over and over the same thing they can learn on their own. I cannot teach you how to have that sales conversation, as you say, Clint, you are so right. It’s sales. It’s the words you use. It’s MLP languaging in your conversations. That’s neuro-linguistic programming for those that don’t know. It’s incorporating that in those discussions. That comes with more practice and experience. That’s where our training separates. We’ll help you do it.

Clint: That’s the thing I see in a lot of investors. When they’re struggling and I ask them, “What’s your elevator pitch?” or, “How are you approaching people?” they don’t have an answer right away for me because they never really thought it through. They don’t have that pre-program speech that they’re going to pull out of their pocket. As speakers, when you go out and you’re going to present, I have a presentation that I can give any time on a moment’s notice because I’ve given it so many times. I know how it works. If you’re a real estate investor, you need to develop that skill if you’re trying to get sellers to work with you so you can buy their property. Yeah, you’re right. I think that is really, really, important.

In fact, you’re going to help me get through a deal and you get paid only on the back-end if you find success is a novel way to appreciate it. A lot of people (like you stated) paid on the front-end and sometimes struggle in the back-end to find success. It sounds like you turned this around. You’re giving the coaching away for free in order to become a partner, essentially, on their success. I think a lot of people can ascribe to that belief system. How would they get a hold of you?

Keith: The best way is if they went to nextgenrealestateinvesting.com. There’s a list of our upcoming workshops. People can join in person or online. What I’d like to do, Clint, if it’s okay, I’d like to give a special bonus to your listeners. If they go to that website, they’re going to see our workshops are typically $297 with a money-back guarantee. I never want to waste someone’s time. I’m confident in the strategies I teach. But because they’re part of your network and listen to this podcast, if they use the promotion code “ANDERSON” and they punch that in, they’re going to be able to attend that for only $47 with the money-back guarantee.

I don’t want people showing up that don’t have any type of commitment whatsoever because I want them focused on learning, but I’ll put my money behind it. You will not attend no matter how long you’ve been in investing real estate, and not learn something worth at least $47, if not hundreds of dollars, if not thousands. This is stuff you can use for life. You can get involved in real estate investing and expand your portfolio if you’re already in it today or get started from scratch without needing income, capital, or credit. We’ll show you exactly how to do it in that whole day training online or in person. That’s in nextgenrealestateinvesting.com.

Clint: We just touched on one of your strategies. You have multiple other strategies that people will learn about in a workshop that’ll teach them how to go out and buy these properties that other investors just passed up. For $47, you’re just crazy not to invest in it. This is something that I think is so important when it comes to education. I’m always investing in things like these to obtain more education. It only helps me grow my portfolio and business. I hope people take advantage of that.

I want to thank you for offering that to our listeners. Keith, it’s there anything else you want to leave in parting?

Keith: I would just say this. I think every person, we all know that real estate creates more millionaires than any other path. I think it’s unfortunate our school systems don’t have real estate investing as part of the curriculum. I think that it’s important people learn it. I think they have to realize it’s not overnight.

I tell people right away, “This is not to get rich quick. This is about building wealth over the long term.” That’s how true wealth is built—long-term. It’s about investing, learning how to build, acquire properties that you could hold long-term, create passive income.

If you’re looking to get rich quick overnight, this is not the right path. If you really want to learn how to create wealth, I think everybody has the opportunity to change their future via real estate. That’s what this is really about. I encourage everyone, for their own benefit, whether it’s through us or anything, learn real estate. Get involved in it. Understand it. Make it a part of what your plan is for your own retirement and wealth-building.

Clint: Well said. Keith, thanks for coming on. You shared your wealth of information with all the listeners. I wish you the very best. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Keith: Thanks for having me, Clint. It was great being here.

Clint: I know, bye-bye.

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