Is now a good time to buy, sell, or invest in real estate? If yes, where do you find motivated sellers and deals? Cut out the middleman to make great returns on real estate investments.Â
Today, Clint Coons of Anderson Business Advisors talks to Chase Maher, a real estate investor and entrepreneur in San Diego. Chase is the owner of Maher Real Estate, a house flipping and wholesale business that transacts in multiple markets across the United States. He also hosts a Top 200 ranked podcast called, “Life Worth Chasing.” It focuses on real estate, investing, and high-level business strategies.
Chase is passionate about creating generational wealth, while living a fulfilling lifestyle. Real estate is all about the numbers. The better the numbers, the more money made.
Highlights/Topics:Â
- Multi-Million-Dollar Decision: Chase chose real estate over cars for time to travel/surf
- House Hack: 10% down to buy $200,000 home, rent rooms, refinance, create cash flow
- Trial-and-Error Education: Chase learned from experts and listened to BiggerPockets
- Secret Sauce Strategies: Sales skills, door knocking, texts, cold calling, Facebook ads
- Triple Ds of Real Estate: Divorce, death, and defaults to find/filter names and numbers
- Rejections: Be transparent, create script, systemize, comply to do business the right way
- Creative CRM Strategies: Subject to arrangements, lease options, deal opportunitiesÂ
- Deals/Dealers: Wholesalers, real estate agents, and direct-to-seller marketing channel  Â
- Lead Generation: Consistency and volume over time are keys to success
- Staying in San Diego? May move elsewhere to enhance commercial asset class  Â
Resources:
iTunes Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-worth-chasing/id1460272793
Spotify Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0QiBcKBZORxuAQKF5Xa6mf?si=criYzilTSeeEPK1koh1mUg
Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/d3e05e6954c7/lwc
Chase Maher on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IamChaseMaher
Anderson Advisors Tax and Asset Protection Event
Full Episode Transcript:
Clint: Welcome, everyone. Hi, it’s Clint Coons here with Anderson Business Advisors, and this is another episode of the Anderson Podcast. I’m your host Clint Coons, and today, we have a very special guest that is going to be talking about a form of real estate investing some of you probably never heard of. In fact, I had never heard of this type of real estate investing before, and this particular individual has done extremely well for himself.
One of the toughest markets in the country (I would say) is in San Diego. Everyone knows how expensive it can be down there. I’ve never even thought of investing down there, just trying to get into that market with a toe hold is way above my comfort zone. But this young individual—and I say young because now I’m old, anyone who’s at least 10 years younger than me is young—is out there doing a phenomenal job in the San Diego market with some strategies that he’s going to be sharing with you.
How to go direct to the sellers, find the motivated sellers, cut out the middleman, and make great returns on your investment. Because (as we know) in real estate investing, it’s about finding the deals. We see so many people out there that invest in real estate, and they tell you, oh, I’ve got a seven cap, or I got an eight cap. How great is that? Up here in Washington State, I’ve seen investors convince me that four caps are a great investment.Â
It could be if that’s all you know, but I tell you what when you have a problem collecting rent, that four cap goes to a negative cap. We’ll see where you’re at then. Of course, we know in real estate it’s all about the numbers. And the better numbers you can find, the more money you’re going to make. That’s why this special guest—that I’m bringing on here in just a moment—has designed a system around that. He’s got a really interesting story to share with you, and it’s my pleasure to invite you on, Chase Maher. How are you doing, Chase?
Chase: I’m doing good, Clint. Thanks for having me on, man. It’s a pleasure. I’m looking forward to chatting with you, sharing some off-market lead generation strategies, how I got into the game, and just having some fun.
Clint: Yeah, I know. It’s funny. We were chatting right before we got on. You have a killer podcast yourself. You’re in the top 200 in the entrepreneur category in the country with your podcast. I mean, you’ve done so much. There’s so much to unpack with your life and where you’re at right now. You’re what, you’re 30 years old?
Chase: Yep, 30 years old.
Clint: Okay. Let’s give the audience some aspect of you. How you got started in real estate?
Chase: Yeah, man. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My mother and father owned a couple of used car dealerships, and I just grew up through the ranks from 12 years old, 16 years old, 20 years old, and then around 24 years old, I had already invested in a couple of properties around the college, but I wasn’t thinking about real estate. My dad sat me down and said, look, son, I want to retire. You’re the manager at the dealership now. I can either sell the dealership and retire in Costa Rica, or I can hand it over to you.Â
I told him I want to move to San Diego. I don’t want to be in the car business anymore. I want to travel. I want to surf. I still wasn’t fully thinking about real estate, but I gave up that multimillion-dollar opportunity. I went to San Diego, traveled for a couple of years, burned through a bunch of money, and realized that I needed to get something going. That’s when I became a real estate agent.
I specialize in finding deals for investors. I quickly realized the investors were making more money than I was as the agents, so I said, why don’t I just be the investor? Fast forward to now, I’m fixing, flipping, and wholesaling in San Diego; Tucson, Arizona; and in my hometown, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Now, starting to focus on putting together the rental portfolio as well.
Clint: Wow, that’s a lot to do in what, 12 years? That’s what you’ve done?
Chase: Yeah, and really, really focused full time on the investing side since about 2018. But from 2016 to 2018, I was an agent. Then 2018, sort of phasing out of being an agent and being the investor. And then all the last couple of years, fixing, flipping, wholesaling, and just accumulating some properties.
Clint: Your father wasn’t a real estate investor, correct?
Chase: Nope. Technically, you could say he was because he owned the dealership. He was a commercial investor. He owned the property, the dealership, and sold that with the business. Technically, yes. He’s owned a few properties, but he never looked at them as investments. They were more business. He runs a business in Costa Rica. He owns the property there, ran the dealership, owned the property there, had his single-family, and had one rental. But not something like you or me today.
Clint: What made you choose real estate over cars? Because car salesmen, they can make a ton of money. They do extremely well. But it wasn’t in your genes. You didn’t grow up with it. I grew up in a real estate investor family. My father had me out there, working on properties since I could walk. I kind of have that interest, but someone in your background, what gets you interested in real estate?
Chase: Well, you know what they say, 9 out of 10 millionaires invest in real estate. They don’t say 9 out of 10 millionaires sell cars.
Clint: Yeah, isn’t that right? That’s correct. Funny. We were talking about a strategy. You said you bought your first house and how you did it. That’s really interesting because sometimes, here’s what happens, people want to get started in real estate, and they just look at that upfront nut to get into it. They don’t have the credit (possibly), and they don’t know where to begin. But you found an opportunity for yourself where you don’t have to be this experienced investor. You didn’t have to have tons of cash to get started. Why don’t you show them how you did that?
Chase: I’ll say this. I’ll jump to the end of it and then I’ll reverse engineer it. I will say this, I bought my first property (on paper) the worst month of the worst year in the history of the US housing market—June 2008. Within 12 months, that property dropped 45% in value, and I had to put in about $25,000 in work using the strategy that I used, using the property management strategies with virtual assistants, and just saving the money.Â
I still own that property to this day—cash flow of $600 a month, and it’s not a bad purchase whatsoever. If I could do it in the worst month ever, then odds are, you’re probably going to do a better job than I did on my first one. The strategy is called house hacking. I had about $20,000 saved up, I wanted to invest in real estate, and I used a 10% down loan. I bought a $200,000 house, and I rented out three of the four bedrooms to college buddies when I was 18 years old.Â
This was 12 years ago, and it was before house hacking was the buzz term it is today, but that’s how I was able to afford the payments. Then eventually, I refinanced it, got it fixed up, and for about five years of owning it, I rented out four different bedrooms after I moved out, all on different leases. Instead of being able to rent the place for $1350 or $1400 a month, I was pulling in $2000 a month by charging $500 per bedroom. I was able to cash flow quite a bit.
Eventually, that time needed to put into it wasn’t worth it for me, so now I have a section 8 tenant, and they’re paying me $1600 a month. I just have to manage one lease and then other properties as well. But for me to get started, it was very important for me how I can maximize the highest and best use of the property. And then eventually get it refinanced, get it fixed up, and get it stabilized. If I wanted to put just one tenant in there, I could do something like that.
Clint: You see, that is key. It’s one of the things that my wife and I have done with our daughter. I didn’t know to call it a house hack, but she’s in college at the University of Arizona. The same principle, I said, here’s a house. You’ve got the bedrooms. You need to fill those rooms. That property produces positive cash flow—after it covers all expenses, mortgage, you name it—of $600 a month by doing that. It’s one of the things that out of necessity, you had to fall into it. But it’s looking at your assets and realizing anyone can get into real estate if they’re willing to reevaluate how that investment is being made.
I was on another podcast this morning with this individual, and we were talking about vacation properties. I said to him, wow, you must’ve taken a real hit with Airbnb. He said, no, you don’t understand how I buy. He said I buy properties that you can use for weddings. He said I’ve made more money right now during this downturn than I have in the last 5-6 years of doing this because everybody’s trying to book and secure their space because they’re so worried.Â
Again, I never thought about that before. You bring a unique perspective where you saw that opportunity. No one taught you how to do it, right?
Chase: No, I taught myself through trial and error and then I listen to a lot of bigger pockets over the years.
Clint: You value education, that’s important as well. You have to go out there and learn from other experts. You started this house hacking, then where did you go from there?
Chase: When the property value dropped 45%—it’s a classy neighborhood. A couple of neighborhoods over its pretty high crime, but it’s one of the better areas in Norfolk, Virginia. There’s a military base there. There’s a college there. There’s a hospital nearby. There’s a beach nearby. I remember hanging out in my front yard with my dog and thinking to myself, dang, my Zillow value is $135,000. Instead of panicking and just sitting here, why don’t I buy a couple more houses in this neighborhood, and I’ll just kind of average out my return? If I have a total loser of one house, but I make a couple of really good buys, I average out the whole portfolio.
I started door knocking and using my car sales skills, I found a couple of people that wanted to sell. I bought a couple of houses for $110,000-$115,000, put about $30,000 into them, was all in for $150,000, and then eventually, the property values went back up. Now, all those houses are worth $200,000-$225,000. I’m cash flowing really nicely. I just accumulated a couple of single-families, the same neighborhood. Doorknock strategy—that’s what led me to realize going direct to the seller is the way to get the best deals. When I moved to San Diego, I just brought those same strategies and the same mindset as the agent and now investor.
Clint: All right. The San Diego market, as we’re talking about, or I was talking about at the beginning of the show, that’s a tough market. There’s a lot of investors down there looking for those deals, and there are high priced homes. How do you get to the seller? Because you’re just one of many. Everybody talks about using the yellow letters, and they’ve got these various strategies you hear about on the internet. What’s been your secret sauce?
Chase: I will say, I don’t do rentals here in San Diego because they just don’t pencil for me. I fix and flip, I wholesale properties here, and then I do rentals in the markets back home in Hampton Roads, Virginia where the base is. The price to rent ratio is really nice. I make my cash here and I invest it elsewhere. I just want to be clear about that.Â
My strategy is a combination of door knocking, cold calling, SMS—so text blasting, and Facebook ads. When I first started, when I was the agent in 2016 and 2017, I used the yellow letters, but eventually, they stopped working. I think it’s because a lot of people started using them, but I used to use handwritten letters, and I got some good deals that way.
But now, I’m more of a volume investor, and I have a team of virtual assistants in Nicaragua and the Philippines that help me qualify the leads. I’m really only talking to the hot sellers and ready to go sellers. We send about 15,000 text messages a month. We make probably 30,000 cold calls a month, and I spent a few thousand on Facebook ads a month. With those strategies, we get some really, really good deals.
Clint: Okay. You make it sound so easy. You just do 15,000 text messages, and there you go.
Chase: I’ll break it down if you want me to.
Clint: Yeah. I don’t even have 15,000 people. I don’t even know if I have 500 people in my cell phone. I don’t know how to send out that many text messages. How do you do that, first off, to find the names and the numbers?
Chase: There are a few different ways. The first and easiest way is just your title rep. I have a really good relationship with the title rep here in San Diego. We do a lot of business together, and I got everybody in the county. Let me break it down like this. You can go niche list, which would be like pre-foreclosures, probate, tax lien, HOA lien, or anything that would cause some sort of financial distress—divorce. The time frame we’re going into right now, Clint, God forbid, but there’s going to be a lot of divorces, there’s going to be a lot of death, and there’s going to be a lot of defaults. The triple D’s of real estate. I focus on those three and tax liens as well.
Have your title rep make you a list. That list, depending on the county, could be 10,000 people. Or here in San Diego, it could be a couple of hundred thousand people. You also want to focus on filtering that list. Here in San Diego, I don’t want to send a text blast to a $15,000,000 home in Rancho Santa Fe because he’s got a code violation. I know that I’m never going to be able to fix and flip that property.Â
I focus on 20% below the median price point and 20% above the median price point. Everything else, I don’t care about. I focus on people that have owned at least four years, and I focus on properties that are at least 20 years old. If we unpack that a little bit, you get a list from your title rep, with different parameters—death, divorce, default, tax lien, and absentee own, things like that. Houses that are built 1999 and older, owned for four years or more, and with at least 30% equity. They’ll send you over that list. The next thing you’re going to do is you’re going to skip trace that property and you have a skip tracer online. I use IDI. Clint, are you familiar with any skip tracers?
Clint: No, no. I was just going to ask you about that. You can explain that.
Chase: I’ll explain it if you’d like, if any of your listeners would like. I don’t know if you’re okay with sharing a link that I have—
Clint: Yeah, we’ll put a link in the show notes.
Chase: They can get 100 free records, so each record is a homeowner. They can get 100 free, and then if they like the service, they can keep going. I’ll remember to send you that. Skip tracing is let’s say you upload a list of 1000 homeowners. You’ll receive back phone numbers, and email addresses associated with that property and that homeowner. You got your list from your title rep, ListSource, or PropStream.Â
There are a few ways to get it, or you can build it yourself door knocking then you skip trace it. Now, you have data. You have the contact information. Then you’re going to use a cold caller, text blast system, or you’ll upload into Facebook and run ads with that. We can really deep dive into that. It’s probably best for your listeners and maybe do some education on that themselves. I will say, I recommend picking just one strategy for at least 90 days. Don’t try to do everything.Â
I would recommend hiring a cold caller first. That way you can manage that person and maybe make some cold calls yourself. That’s what I would recommend. And you’re cutting out the middleman. You’re cutting out the agents. You’re cutting out the wholesalers, you’re saving people before they go to auction. You’re getting short sales, but you got to have the list, you got to have the data, and then you got to do the prospecting.
Clint: Okay, so what you said—if I heard you correctly—number one, get with the title rep to get this information. How do you approach someone like that? Because let’s say I don’t have anybody in my area that I’ve ever dealt with before?
Chase: Okay. If you don’t have anybody that you’ve ever dealt with—and some states are different. Some states, there’ll be regulations on how much data the title rep is allowed to deliver the investor, the agent, or anybody. Agents, if there are agents listening, this can work for you as the agent as well. You can just approach the seller in a different way.Â
First, you want to reach out to a title rep in the area. I recommend using one of the bigger companies because they have marketing dollars to spend. They have software and systems to use—WFG, Tycor, and Fidelity, companies like that I’ve had good success with in the markets.
I approached them and I say, look, I want to build a relationship with a title rep where I can get 10,000-20,000 homeowners records a month on these different lists—the list that I just described, the motivated list—and in return of you giving me those lists, I will give you exclusivity to all of my business. Whether it’s wholesaling, fix and flipping, or whatever. Every time I need a title, I’ll work with you. You’ll probably go through a few people who’ll say no. Eventually, you’ll find somebody who’ll say yes.
If that doesn’t work, your next option is a company like ListSource, listsource.com, where you can just buy the list. It’s like ¢3 per record, but that adds up, so I like getting it for free from the title rep. The last option and the best option, if you want to invest some money into it, is PropStream, propstream.com. It’s a $99 a month subscription, but that gets you 10,000 a month. You can set it up to drop them automated into your email inbox. That’s what I like to use now along with the title rep.
Clint: You got that list. Now you said you either send out text messages or you do cold calls.
Chase: I do all three.
Clint: Starting out, if you haven’t done this before, you should pick one or the other?
Chase: Yeah, I would recommend cold calls. That way, you’re having the conversations, and you’re building the skills. Cold calling build skills, it builds experience, and it finds the deals. Whereas the text blast, listen, Clint, I can burn through 300,000 records of text blasts in like three weeks, and then I run out of data.Â
Your listeners, when they’re first starting out, odds are they’re not going to be like myself that’s doing tens of thousands a month now. They’re probably going to start out with maybe 500 or 1000. You can use a text blasting system, burn through that in an hour, and then they’re out of data. I recommend cold calling, it’s a bit more sustainable, and it builds the skills.
Clint: All right. Roleplay with me. Let’s assume that I’m one of those sellers on your list, what would you say to me when you called me up and I answered?
Chase: I would say, hi Clint, my name is Chase. I’m a real estate investor here in San Diego, and I just bought a couple of houses in your area. I got one selling now, looking to redeploy the cash, I wonder if you ever thought about selling.
Clint: All right. And that gets you a good response? It keeps them on the phone?
Chase: No, but it’s a volume game, so 1-out-of-10, and maybe 2-out-of-10, good response, keep them on the phone. The other eight are going to say F off, never call me again, wrong number, I’m never selling, or I want to be out of here feet first when I die. I mean, we hear everything. That’s why I don’t do the cold call anymore. I pay $6.50 an hour to a VA in Nicaragua. He does the cold calling for me. That way I don’t get to deal with that mental—it’s tough, man. It’s tough, but I did it for a long time.
Clint: I mean, I think that if you’re going to do anything, you need to do it yourself first, so you can train other people on how to do it, so you can spot the issues. You know when the train’s going off the track when that’s happening, because if you haven’t done it, you have no way to evaluate it. Do you dial from a blocked number, or do you let people see your number?
Chase: We use several different phone numbers, and we use what’s called proximity matching. My cold callers are dialing Arizona, San Diego, Riverside, Hampton Roads, Virginia, and we have a bunch of phone numbers for each area. Depending on the area code of the seller’s phone number, its proximity matches which outbound number we want to use.Â
I use a software called XenCALL. The phone numbers I use for cold calling are different from the ones I use for SMS. They’re different from the ones on my website. They’re different from the ones that are on my Facebook ads. If they mark them as spam, we check it monthly, and we just drop that phone number and buy another one. They’re like $2 a month.
Clint: Wow. What is the most interesting rejection you’ve ever had when you called someone? I’m curious.
Chase: The most interesting rejection.
Clint: Like physical threat, I’m going to come?
Chase: Oh, man, that’s a good one. We’ve texted people, and I want to say this, I use 100% transparency. I love doing business the right way. We don’t spam people excessively. If they say take us off the list, we take them off the list across all platforms. I want to say you want to do this the right way, and you want to do it compliantly. If you’re doing a text blast, you want to make sure you’re using a compliance system, so you don’t get sued. If using cold calling, you want to use a compliance system, so you’re not getting sued.Â
I like to do things the right way. It helps me sleep at night. But that being said, you still get some angry people. I had a guy that we texted, and I think if the number is correct, he called us 2000 times in three days and left about 500 voicemails saying that he knew where we were, that he was going to come after us and this and that. I mean, super weird stuff.Â
Then I’ve had weird crazy cat ladies. The funniest ones are the ones where people play games with you. Over time, I just realize my time was best spent having others—virtual assistants deal with a lot of that. The only thing that comes on my calendar is hot, motivated, and ready to go people that want to sell in 30 days or less.
Clint: Okay. Did you create a script for your VAs?
Chase: Yes.
Clint: Okay. You got to create the script, and so if somebody’s listening, and they’re thinking, I got to create a script. Are there services out there that help in the creation of that script? How to handle the objections, no, this, that, and the other?
Chase: Yeah. Just google real estate wholesale script, real estate cold call script. There’s a lot of scripts out there. I will say that if you’re listening right now and you’re thinking I need the perfect script, I need the perfect script. The script helps, but it’s not everything. Volume is everything, so just making more calls. Sales fix all problems, volume fixes all problems.Â
If you’re trying to wait until you find the perfect script, there’s another guy that has no script or gal that has no script that’s making 100 calls before you make one, and they just got 123 Main Street at 60% ARV minus rehab, while you’re still trying to figure out the best script. I would not focus so much on getting the best tools. I would just focus on getting it all in motion.
Clint: People tend to get caught up in those details because they’re uncomfortable giving the train moving down the tracks and getting out there getting your hands dirty like, if I just had that script, this is going to be easier. Nothing is easy about what you do. It becomes easier as you turn it into a system. You systematize it like what you’ve done with the virtual assistant. Going to that virtual assistant level, you threw out there in Nicaragua, was it?
Chase: Yeah. Nicaragua, and the Philippines.
Clint: Okay. You’ve been on the other end of those phone calls before, people call you up, and you can tell right away they’re from a foreign country. They don’t get your name right. They say hi, my name’s Carlos. You’re like, the hell it’s Carlos. Okay, I know that right away. How do you deal with that? How do you find a good service?
Chase: I fix that problem. I was using cold callers from the Philippines. We’ve all answered a call from somebody that sounds like they’re from somewhere in Asia, and they just don’t sound like they know what they’re doing. The lady says her name is Jessica and you’re like, I know for sure your name’s not Jessica.Â
What I did now is in the Philippines, they do all my email, chat correspondence, and things like that where they don’t need a voice. Nicaragua is voice, and the reason why is I mean think about how large our Spanish population is here, especially in Southern California and Arizona. A lot of people that sound in some way, shape, or form, Hispanic, so it’s actually not that alarming.
I use good bilingual college-educated Nicaraguans who speak perfect English—even better Spanish—and they don’t hit those barriers that the Filipino virtual assistants do. They never really have issues with people thinking that they’re not from around here because they sound like 25%, or whatever the population in America is that’s Hispanic now. I kind of figured that out and stumbled across it and it’s been working really well.
Clint: You’ve really broken the system down to find success. When they find someone who’s hot, will they hot transfer over to you? How does that take place?
Chase: They set appointments. We use XenCALL. I have a CRM where all of our leads go into if it’s a hot seller. The way I’ve built out the systems, the CRMs, is they fill out a web form. The cold caller fills out a web form with the owner’s information, the address, and the notes from the call. Once they click submit, that goes into my CRM, and then an appointment is set on my calendar or my acquisition guys’ calendar to start making those calls.Â
The transition is really easy, hi, Clint, this is Chase. We’re a local real estate investment company, and it sounds like you just talked with my assistant about your property at 123 Main Street. Did I catch you at a good time? You just kind of take that transition
The VAs are filtering through all the noise, and then you or somebody local to the market that can meet with the seller is only speaking with people that have raised their hand, yes, I’m interested in selling in the next 90 days.
Clint: Those people that are interested in selling, how often do you find the sellers willing to enter into non traditional styles of contracting, maybe subject to arrangements, lease options, or things like that where it’s really no money out of pocket on your end or very little to get the deal secured?
Chase: Let me say this, not all the time, but depending on the circumstance, they’re very open to it. If they’re facing foreclosure, if they have liens that need to be paid on the property. I’m starting to see a lot more of it. You and I were just talking about one a few days ago. I’m starting to see a lot more of it, and I think we’re going to be seeing even more as unemployment stays high and when these balloon payments start coming due on forbearance, so pretty often. And that’s a tool on my tool belt that isn’t quite established enough yet of the creative strategies.
I’m excited to continue learning more because I can guarantee you there’s probably $100,000 in my CRM right now of deals that I didn’t think were deals that if I use strategies like that, we could probably make a deal out of them.
Clint: What you just shared with everyone on the podcast, I think they should be taking notes. I’m going to go back and relisten to this podcast again because of the things that you were stating there. You’re running through them pretty quick, but to go back and break that all down is what people need to go out there and get started. Or maybe they’ve been investing, but they’re just not finding the success they were hoping for. And by having that system in place, hopefully, that will bring them into that next level of investing.
Chase: Here’s the thing. There are a few ways to get deals. You have wholesalers, but after you buy a couple of deals from a wholesaler, and they get more experienced, they’re trying to maximize their assignment fees, so they’re selling to the highest bidder. I don’t know about you, Clint, but I never got wealthy in real estate by being the highest bidder. I got wealthy in real estate by getting a bunch of deals at a good price, so that’s off the table. Agents, they don’t get the volume, they might get one or two really good deals a year, but they don’t get the volume.
At some point, you got to kind of cut out the middleman, and I would recommend every established investor or new investor to at least add a direct-to-seller marketing leg to their business and just watch it grow and focus on it over time. It’s like putting money in the bank and investing in it, investing in it, and then once you start getting it built, you’re going to make that back 10-fold. Here in San Diego, people are flipping properties at 8% margins, and my deals are 15% to 20% margins because I’m cutting out the middleman.
Clint: Yeah, what you just said about the real estate agent, a lot of people are taught that. But you go, you develop a relationship with the realtor, and that realtor will work for you and find you the deals. They’re not finding you the type of deals you’re talking about. They’re finding the deals they just got on the MLS, since you’re competing with other individuals, and they’re getting paid out of it. The direct-to-seller market, cut out the middleman, definitely is a way to make more money.
You just have to put the systems. Because it sounds to me, everything that you’ve laid out for us is system-driven—having the CRM in place, the VAs in place, the scripts in place, the text blast, and all of that go hand in hand. With texting, is there a certain program you recommend there? Was is the […] one or whatever it was that you’re […] of.
Chase: Well the skip tracing is IDI, interactive data, and that’s to get the contact information. We’ll put that in the show notes. Like you said, I’ll have that link sent to you, so you can get the 100 free skip trace records. For text blasting, there’s a lot of systems, I like a system called ROOR. It’s nice, man. For all of these, it’s not a secret. There’s a lot of people doing text blast, a lot of people doing cold calling. Find the system that works best for you, but consistency over time and volume is really the key. But for text blasting, I like ROOR and then the other thing that we do is Facebook ads.
My specialty is Facebook ads. And with the cold calling and the texting, you’re going to get a lot of people that would sell for the right price. They’re just seeing what a cash offer would be. For the Facebook ads, you’re getting people inquiring about you. It’s more of an inbound lead and it’s a little bit more expensive cost per lead, but it’s a better quality lead because they’re actually reaching out to you.
Clint: You brought this up at the very beginning. What’s going on right now, there’s a lot of people sitting out there. They’re worried about their jobs, or maybe they don’t know if it’s going to be there when they open things back up, so they’re motivated. Reaching out to them is probably a great way to start a conversation right now and find those deals. Where do you see yourself going in the next 2-3 years if you’re investing, are you going to stay in San Diego or somewhere else?
Chase: I wish I bought more rentals in that 2013-2016 time period. I think we all do. Ever since about 2018, I just felt like I’ve been priced out, so I really haven’t accumulated that many. I got a couple of offers out. I’m starting to see the market change a little bit, and I want to dollar cost average a little bit. But I love fixing and flipping. I don’t love the wholesaling part.Â
Where I see myself 2-3 years from now is still doing fix and flips, teaching a lot of the stuff, doing less wholesaling, and more flipping probably not in San Diego. My girlfriend and I will probably get engaged, married, and move to the Seattle area.
A big goal of mine, over the next couple of years, is continuing to learn the commercial game, accumulating some buildings, and things like that. I know you have a large portfolio with single families. For me, I’m just very intrigued by the commercial asset class. That’s my next feather in the cap is to get something like that.
Clint: That’s interesting because I’ve talked to many guests on this podcast that I’ve been on over the last month-and-a-half, and it always comes up in commercials—where’s that going? Because a lot of people are working from home now. They’ve seen this new way of conducting business via Zoom. We’ve seen in our own business that we were worried about productivity, and we found that for a lot of our employees, it was not an issue. In fact, productivity went up. And then we asked about satisfaction.
We found that many people, far exceeded our expectations, 70%, highly satisfied working from home. I think it’s a certain personality. I could never do it, but how does that affect commercial space going in the next 5, 10, or 15 years because we don’t need as much space as we currently have if we go to that model.
Chase: For me, I’m not interested in retail or office at all. I like self-storage, mobile home parks, and class B and class C apartment buildings. That’s going to be my focus. I’m not going to touch the office. I’m scared as crap of office space. With retail, I don’t like retail either. I could see maybe medical and mixed-use being a fit, but it’s just not my niche. I like self-storage, I like mobile home parks, and I like the apartment buildings. I bring a lot of guests on my show that are experts in those areas, so I can learn from them. And I’ve just been studying and studying and studying.
Clint: What’s the name of your podcast?
Chase: Life Worth Chasing Podcast. We talk about real estate, investing, wealth building, and high-level business strategies. I love the entrepreneurial game, but what I love even more is living a lifestyle supported by it, that you can have fun and enjoy yourself. So I bring on guests that we talk about that. We talk a lot about investing as well.
Clint: And it’s really entertaining. Guys, we’ll have a link to his podcasts as well in the show notes. We’re coming to an end here. Is there anything you’d like to leave with the listeners?
Chase: Yeah. If you want to add that direct-to-seller marketing channel, pick one. Don’t get overwhelmed, don’t try to perfect it, and optimize it over time and take the leap. You’re going to get some good deals doing it. Just make sure that you stick with it, and you stay consistent with it. What I shared on the show, I hope it helps at least one person get a really good deal.
Clint: Great. Chase, thanks for coming on. Guys, check those links out in the show notes. Get out there, get investing, and we wish you all the very best going forward. Take care. Bye-bye, Chase.
Chase: See you.
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