Buying Properties Without Your Own Money

There are so many people out there that talk about different strategies when it comes to real estate investing. As an avid real estate investor myself, I’ve sat through those presentations before. That might have worked about seven or eight years ago, but I’m not seeing that in the market right now.

There is a certain individual that I’ve been following for a while that is really tapped into the new market as I like to refer to it right now, this new way of investing. It’s not really new. It’s been around for a long time. A lot of people are not aware of it, and the beauty of it is that you can actually get into real estate. Make purchases without using your own money.

When you talk to someone that you meet and you say about seven houses and it didn’t cost me anything, you can just watch their eyes light up or else they look at you like you’re a liar. But who cares? You’re finding success, but in order to do so, you need to go to the experts. That’s why I want to bring on to my show, an expert, Chris Prefontaine. He is an avid real estate investor, and he is someone that has been out there through the smart real estate coach, teaching individuals some very key strategies that I think in this market right now are killer and can help you take your real estate investing to a whole new level. With that, help me welcome Chris Prefontaine on to the show. Chris, are you there?

Chris: Hey buddy, I’m here. Thanks for having me.

Clint: Awesome. Thanks for coming on. I’ve got a ton of questions lined up for you because this topic is so relevant, and it’s really interesting. You and I talked about this earlier that at Anderson, we have a lot of people now calling in and asking really about everything that you do, what you teach people. Why don’t you start off and just let us know exactly some of the things that you’re seeing in the market, and when it comes to real estate investing how you’ve seen it shift in the last a couple of months?

Chris: Sure. In the last a couple of months, we’ve had probably three times the amount of properties that we are taking under contract as are our students. To your point earlier, it’s super important. We’re in the trenches, you’re in the trenches, and if you’re not as much as two months ago, you’re outdated because things are changing so fast. From (say) January, February 2020, we went from the sellers being (I’ll use the word cocky) very independently thinking that they can sell on their own or with a realtor to please help me. Please be my guide. Please come do this. We are seeing an influx of those right across the board. I’ll say one more thing about it. Because the banks are making it tough for everyone, we fill the gap. That’s how we’re doing right now.

Clint: There is a lot to unpack what you just said right there. I was writing down a couple of key terms. You said sellers are saying come help me. How often do you get a seller that approaches a buyer and ask for the buyer’s help, right?

Chris: Yeah. What’s neat is we have (let’s just say) hundreds of thousands if you count the student calls that had been made in January and February, without knowing unbeknownst to everybody. Now, every one of my students are showing shocks, still going, you wouldn’t believe it. This person who wasn’t even interested in February, they’re calling me now. That’s happening right across the board.

Clint: And then you talked about lending. That’s been tough. They’ve tightened up their credit scores. I think Chase was the first one to come out a couple of weeks ago and said they’re raising their minimum credit score to 720 now on loans. Is that something you’re seeing as well?

Chris: Yeah. This happened in 2013 where everyone told me I was nuts to put properties under agreement then, but now it just got magnified. When the banks do that, I say we’re the only door with an open sign on it because they just pushed out a whole bunch of great buyers, which put a whole bunch of great sellers in jeopardy.

Clint: That then shifts the market. It goes from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market, thanks to the lending institution. They’re actually our friends now. They’re working for us by putting the sellers into the situation. What we have then is buyers that are out there like you and I, and we want to get into these deals. We talked about this before. The sellers have shifted. They want to get out of properties because they’re concerned.

They think that the properties that their tenants aren’t going to pay rent any longer because they’ve been told they don’t have to. They’re out of work. All of the fear in the hysterics that are going on that are created by the media to some extent, just the news in general because they want to make money, that trickles down. Then you step in and you’re showing real estate investors how to get into deals without having to use your own money. How does that happen?

Chris: Yeah. Just to preempt this, that came from my coming out of the last curveball market which was the only crash. I had my credit down the toilet and I had no money. This whole thing was engineered because of that. Quite frankly, no one can say they knew what was going to happen, but I did engineer it with the storms I call it in mind to be recession-resistant. I won’t say proof—that’s crazy—but lease resistant.

We do three different things, but to our discussion, earlier the two that are really relevant to this conversation with sellers that are in need because somehow they just want to deal is the lease-purchase vehicle or the purchasing subject to existing financing, either one of those helps people that are worried about that debt.

Clint: All right. There are going to be people listening and when you say lease-purchase or subject to existing financing, they have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you could explain what each of those terms means.

Chris: Yeah. Let’s go lease-purchase because that’s for a new person. Our agreements anyway are built-in and you’ll appreciate this with a $10 deposit because it’s just a lease with a purchase attached to it. Here’s how we do it. Let me give an example. Let’s give the seller the benefit of the doubt and say that they have a house and we agree it’s worth $300,000 and they have a debt of $250,000. So, they do have some equity because it’s all different scenarios we could use. 

In that scenario, we say this to the seller. We say, okay, Mr. Seller, upon installing our buyer (we put rent on people in these homes) we will make the mortgage payments on your behalf. We will take care of all maintenance, repairs, et cetera. You will do nothing. And then on or before the end of the term, we will do two things. We’ll pay you your $50,000 that we just agreed you had equity in the property, even though you haven’t been able to sell on the open market, perhaps, and we’ll pay off your loan. 

The loan of $250,000 is not $250,000 anymore at the end in which is one of three ways we benefit, but for them all—they care about if they’re in that situation that we alluded to earlier—they got debt relief and they know with certainty, they’ve locked in their equity, and released any debt and responsibilities to the home. That’s the lease-purchase if you want to pick that apart a little bit to dive deeper.

Clint: People might be sitting back and thinking, why would a seller want to lease their home to you under this scenario? What’s going to motivate someone to just say yeah, take my house?

Chris: Everyone asks that and this is good, bad, and otherwise market. Usually, it’s a number of different things and in no particular order, it’s either debt relief (as you and I just said) and they don’t have another way to do this especially now. Or they’re carrying two homes and just want closure before, preempting any potential problems. Or they were a big source for us as expired listings.

Let’s say the same scenario was already in the market. They tried three times with a realtor. This happens all the time with us. It’s a big source for us. They come to us and they say it didn’t sell but I had this equity. I thought I had this equity. If once we give them market value when we get a long enough term to allow some principal pay down in some market tweaks, we’re good with it.

There are a whole bunch of reasons people do it. The only way it doesn’t work in my script to you as a seller is if I got you your price, can you wait on the equity if you have equity? The only way it doesn’t is if they say, no, no, no, no I got to buy my next house and my kids and I have to move. That’s the only scenario. Every other scenario we can structure a deal.

Clint: I think I’m hearing and I think the people listening should be hearing this as well is that there are sellers out there now that maybe they lost their job. They’re in fear that they may not have stability in the workforce any longer so they want to get out from underneath that debt load that they have. They have a couple of cars because when things are great people tend to acquire a lot more debt. Things contract, you get nervous about that.

You become then a lifeline for them because the lenders don’t want to work with them. You probably saw that in 2008, 2009 lenders going after people and foreclosing on their properties for missing payments.

Chris: Yeah, no question. Just for the audience to know—I don’t want to paint the picture—you and I are just on this one little topic here. There are before COVID and now pull any, like a third of the properties in the United States to be more direct, that are debt-free. This isn’t the scenario. We’re just dissecting this one scenario where yes, we can help a whole bunch of people, and yes, more than ever, they don’t know there’s an answer. They really don’t.

It’s a survey done by the Edelman group. You may have even seen it; that is already out. They’re very reputable and it says, more than ever people need an expert, a guide, they need help, and they just don’t know that there’s an answer and you have it once you notice.

Clint: I’ve heard some people before say that when you approach someone in a distressed situation, you’re stealing their equity from them or you’re taking their house. What do you say to that?

Chris: This came up last night in a large workshop. There were like 150 people on it, and the woman said almost those exact words. Well, I don’t know if I feel good about that. I said, look. We’re not wholesalers, we’re not flippers, we’re not offering 60¢–70¢ on the dollar. You notice in that scenario we’re giving them (if they have any) the equity that they would have got if they sold full price in a good market. They didn’t get it.

As long as they can go out long enough in the term, we’re giving them their price. That’s the key with these terms deals; I call them terms deals. We’re giving these guys their price. There is no healthier way to structure a deal whereby the seller, also the investor (or you once you earn it) and the buyer putting the home. It’s a three-way win-win. It couldn’t be healthier and that’s in any market. This is not just because of what’s going on right now.

Clint: Exactly. I heard at one time someone said, your price, my terms, my price, your terms, and that’s fair in a negotiation to come up to someone and offer them that type of scenario, but I also think that for those individuals that hear that and still are reluctant, remember, if that person has lost their job, they can’t make those mortgage payments, and they don’t see a path forward for themselves, what is going to be the ripple effect of having a foreclosure on your credit, right?

Chris: I couldn’t agree more.

Clint: You have to think about what you’re doing for them. We got the lease option, and then you talk about this ‘subject to.’ That’s what I think is a really interesting way of buying property back in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. I saw a lot of investors (and they’re still doing today) making money at it, but a lot of people don’t hear about it because when the market’s really hot, it’s always about flipping. People like you fly under the radar screen picking up all these great deals and building your portfolios. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you’ve done that?

Chris: Yup. I want to just draw attention because it didn’t come up yet. I just scribbled this down when we talk about flippers and wholesalers. As you know I have them all in my podcasts. A lot of them are my friends, so I’m not stepping on any toes when I say what I’m going to say here. Those niches are one check deals. You get wholesale, you get a flip, and you build a house. It’s okay. It might be a good check but it’s one check and you got to go do that again. To me, that feels a good job. 

When you’re talking about these deals, we’re talking about creating three different paydays on these deals that are quite lucrative, like now money, overtime money, and end-of-the-road money. We can go back to that later, but the subject to, just in financing is an interesting segue because we have taken a lot of our lease-purchase deals where the seller perhaps wasn’t as comfortable giving up the deed which is why they did the lease-purchase, or the investor wasn’t as comfortable asking for the deed, so they started as a lease-purchase.

 Once they get the warm and fuzzies, they have credibility, they see that you’re paying the payment every month, and that goes on for 9 or 12 months, we’re converting a lot of those to subject to. What that means is, we buy the property day one or later down the road as I just alluded in the existing financing. That’s why the words ‘subject to’ stays in the seller’s name, so 50 or 60 properties we carry at any one time, none of them are maintaining because they’re all buyers and they’re not tenants. All of them are not in our name. They’re always in someone else’s name for loans. When you say subject to existing financing, we are buying that property instead of new money coming to the table. The settlement statement shows the existing loan staying in place.

Clint: I’ve talked to so many investors and when you use that term you tell them, hey, the loan stays in their name. They don’t understand how you can sell a property without paying off the underlying mortgage. I think no, no, you can’t do that. Can you speak to that? You’ve been doing it.

Chris: You’ll appreciate this as an attorney. In 2012, we went to what I call then the junior attorneys now done all our deals (hundreds), but he wasn’t sure how these work. He wasn’t sure the due-on-sale clause was going to affect, and he wasn’t sure if the local banks we’re going to be upset with him. It’s like the best-known firm in the area. He went to the senior partner who happens to be a friend of mine—we’ve done deals together—and asked for his advice.

The senior partner said, look, I’ve researched this every which way you can. This is a contractual thing. It’s not a legal thing. Is there a due-on-sale clause on every loan you can look up to? Sure. Are banks in the business of taking property if you’re paying on them? Not to my experience. Maybe you’ll be the first one out there listening but I haven’t had a loan call because we pay the bill. It’s been our experience that: (a) they can sell it; that has nothing to do with the loan, and (b) if you make the payments in a timely manner, perhaps you shouldn’t have any problems. We have not in hundreds and hundreds of deals.

Clint: There are so many attorneys out there that do not understand the due-on-sale clause. So many people throw that up, well, I talked to my attorney and he said there’s a due-on-sale clause, and this doesn’t work and you can’t move the property because the bank could enforce this. I often tell people I said, remember the word that he used, could. Didn’t say that they are and said you will. I’ve been working with real estate investors for over 20 years and we set up structures that violate the due-on-sale clause all the time, and the bank doesn’t care as long as you’re paying on the mortgage.

They are satisfied because they’re in the business of loaning money not owning property. That’s the key. You go to closing then you take over the property. The property transfers to your name, correct?

Chris: Yeah. All the […] trust.

Clint: All right. So you got this property, and then there’s a mortgage on there that you’re not responsible for, that the seller they’re responsible. Maybe they’re going off, they’re doing something else right now and you’re going to pay that mortgage for them. How do you pay that mortgage? I know that’s going to be a concern. I don’t want to take on more debt. I guess I’m really not because it’s not my debt, but I told someone I would do it for him. How do you get money to do that?

Chris: Two answers to that. When you’re brand new (you would make agreements to set up this way) you would make all of your deals lease-purchase, subject to, the owner financings that we do. Contingent upon you finding your (in our case) tenant-buyer. These are buyers—now more than ever—that need time for qualifying enhancement for credit, seasoning for loans, whatever it might be, they need time. We’re placing them in the property. Until such time we find and vet them, we’re not taking over that payment on most of the deals, especially when you’re new. You don’t take that on.

Now, further down the road—I’ll give an example here—is there the possibility because you have (what I alluded to earlier) three paydays every time you do a transaction this way. Can you then take some of those profits and get more aggressive with your purchases with people that need your help? Yes. Zack, who you just met a little while ago […], who had no experience five years ago (now buys hundreds of homes for us) went to a couple. The couple called us, but they were getting divorced. They were three months behind on their payment—that’s a stressful situation; this is pre-COVID—and had credit cards built up that they had fixed up the house with and didn’t know how they’re going to pay it.

Zack structured a subject to purchase and installment every six months towards the husband because they’re splitting up credit card debt. That was a big win for the wife, a big win for the husband, even though they had to give up their home because they were about to lose the house, which (as you know) would affect them who knows how many years. 

Now, they probably had three dings in their credit, and now we’ve been paying the mortgage ever since and caught up the arrears. Cost seg is $4000. Not a huge deal, but will a new investor do that? No. You’d make it contingent upon finding a buyer. There are always ways to pivot.

Clint: I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about subject to’s and what really struck a chord with me is that when I heard you speak about that strategy, on that back-end of finding the buyer ahead of time, the tenant-buyer that you’re bringing in. It’s just like a light went off. I thought, wow, I never thought of it that way because now you’d bring somebody in. They couldn’t qualify for that property with a lender because of their credit score but they have the income to pay it, so you’re putting them into the property and they’re going to have a sense of ownership. They’re going to be a much better tenant or individual in there than just a standard renter.

Chris: Let me give you the metrics on this. You’re going to love it then these around numbers because I know the deal pretty well. We just got done three or four months ago. That house they owed with the credit card debt about $355,000. The house was owned by a realtor and they just ran out of runway, frankly, because they needed debt relief, but it’s worth all day long without premiums $425,000–$430,000. 

We put that on the market as we were drafting up the agreements with these people because we knew that we had to move quickly for them. We weren’t going to make it contingent upon, but what happens a lot of the time even if you know the property well, we put it on. We found a tenant-buyer. They put $41,000 down on a rent-to-own property. That’s a little under 10%, we’re at $430,000. Did we care that we had to pay $4000 in arrears? No. Gladly we did it. There are ways to structure these to pull out lots of profit. Do the math on that.

The house was, we’re taking over $355,000. We’re going to have principal pay down. There’s no end date on a subject too. You own it and we sold it for $430,000 on a rent-to-own, we got the principal pay down the monthly spread and the upfront money. That’s a cool business model.

Clint: Yeah. If people don’t understand that, they’re really missing the secret sauce here and how this all comes together. I see something similar with rental properties to try to determine if we’re buying a house whether or not we could get the rent out of the property that we wanted. I would list it on Craigslist, even though I didn’t own. I said I have a property for rent and then I would see how many calls I got from it.

I’ve only got two calls. That’s not going to work for me. I would move forward with it, but there is a lot to this as far as putting these deals together. What you’re getting into the part of what I heard you say is the psychology as well, but you’re working with these sellers who are in distress situations. Many times people get into that type of situation, and their judgment becomes clouded. They can’t see the benefit, the offer that’s right in front of them, that’s going to help them. You got to find other ways to find those pressure points to get them to move to say yes. That’s not something that’s easily learned. You just don’t know that. That comes from experience, I guess is what I’m saying.

Chris: Yeah, deal structuring is neat. My wife and I had just talked with this last night, coincidentally. People say, well, how are you going to do this? I go, well, until these deals get boring, I’m sticking around because I’m having fun, but after 29½ years, I’ll tell you, there’s always a new thing coming at you. It could be a problem or a win, but these don’t get boring.

Clint: It’s like a math problem, asset protection. If it’s just the same standard cookie-cutter approach for everyone, I would be bored to death, but it’s because people are unique in their situations, it keeps things interesting.

Chris: I was just going to say your stuff is very similar. Absolutely.

Clint: Absolutely. That’s a key to making any business a success. You’ve been doing this now for 20 years?

Chris: Twenty-nine years actually—thank you for the reminder—but terms deals, post-2008 crash, it was a nightmare for me for four years, February 2008 to February 2012, and then I finally had my legs and said, okay, I’m going to do this but I’m going to have some new rules around this thing. That’s how we structured the terms deal, so it’s been that way since.

Clint: You’ve then developed a system to put all these deals together. The note should be a lease option or if it should be a subject to. Are there other strategies that you also work with?

Chris: Yeah. Owner financing but very niched on free and clear property. You and I have been talking about COVID indirectly and directly, but there is still a third of the properties (as I said earlier) that are debt-free in the United States, roughly speaking. Those are great people right now to structure deals with because they want it for estate planning or for tax reasons planning. They will take their money over time.

We bought our building 1½ years ago; that was debt-free. The guy was a real estate investor, very intelligent, very savvy, and insistent no […] until 20 years. In the agreement, he wants owner financing. He wants it over time. Those are great deals to make and those are plentiful right now, too.

Clint: I imagine if people get displaced and they have to move to a different area in the country for work, there’s another opportunity for you to come in and buy that house. They’re not selling. They’re just sitting on the market. I don’t know what it’s going to be seven months from now, with the average time on market is going to be for homes, but there are opportunities there. Do you actually teach a course on this?

Chris: Yeah. We have an online course. We call it smart real estate coach academy. What I’ll say is this—I think you and I talked about this a month ago—our course is not like, okay, go take the course, good luck, and you get it. Our course is like a resource center. We’re updating it. We painstakingly update this thing. Whenever we think there’s a tweak, for example, what we just went through with COVID, two new videos had to be installed and agreement had to be changed on of the forums. We’re constantly changing it, so even people that are doing deals and using it as a resource center, constantly evolving, living, breathing thing, it does teach. It rips apart how to start the business, how to lead gen, how to then work inside of each one of these buckets you and I are talking about, the subject to, and the lease-purchase. It’s A through Z, literally.

Clint: So many people attend courses, they get paperwork, and they’ll send it to me to review. I don’t look at it. The first thing sometimes I’ll notice, I’ll see the font that was used and I’ll call them up and say, I don’t think they make that font anymore. That just tells you how old these documents are and they’re probably out of date.

The person you’re working with is not staying up on it. Things change and that’s what’s so important when it comes to real estate investing is that you need to always be at the forefront of that. What I like about what you’re doing is that you’re in the business, so you see it. Your clients bring the challenges to you, and then you’re like, all right, we need to move. We need to make a change here so we can address that, so then everyone else can benefit from that. That’s great.

Chris: That’s what we do.

Clint: If somebody wanted to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do that?

Chris: They can just go to smartrealestatecoach.com, but what you and I will do is we’ll work on it after the show. We’ll put a link in there to give them some bonuses just for hearing us on the show. All they got to do is put in a little survey. We’ll give them that they heard on the show. We’ll give them some bonuses and we’ll give them a special price.

Clint: That’d be great. I would encourage anyone that’s listening in if this is an area that you’re considering getting into, if you’re a real estate investor course because you’re listening in, you need to know this stuff. More importantly, know how it applies to your area and how to put the deals together because you brought up this COVID thing that I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to because it’s part of your secret sauce there, but what was it that made you want to change?

Chris: Change with which piece?

Clint: You say with the COVID that you had to make a change.

Chris: The main thing is this. This is a key strategy. It’s the biggest change that you should be paying attention to now with terms deals is the length of the term. We were talking like it was just a normal process with all our students and they’re all over North America, mostly the US. We were talking a three-year mark was pretty standard lease-purchase. Now. because of the uncertainty of the market on our end and because the sellers really frankly don’t have a ton of options, we’re talking 5-, 7-, and 10-year deals now.

When I go to sleep at night, if I get a 10-year deal, whether it’s lease-purchase or owner financing, I’m sleeping a heck of a lot better with any market fluctuations. I don’t want to say I don’t care but I don’t care what the market does, I really don’t. I’m not too concerned about it as long as I had the right terms. That was the main piece right there.

Clint: Wow. It’s evaluating the market and then making the changes to your agreements so they’re always up to date. The thing is that I hope the listeners appreciate the fact that this is technical. You need to understand how to put these deals together. You just don’t go knock on someone’s door and just start blabbering about, hey, I want to buy your house. There’s a system to it that you’ve developed. That’s how you found success.

I hope that the listeners take advantage of that, grab those bonus items that will be in the show notes there for them, and get educated. To wrap it up, what do you do to stay on top of the market news or newspapers? What does it look like in the day for you?

Chris: To stay on top of (I wish I could give you this secret economical forecast and things) our fingers are on the pulse because of two things. We’re doing deals—myself, my sons Zack and Nick—literally every week. We call them associates. They’re students who have decided to lock arms with us and not just go through a course but say, hey, I want you in my court. I want you on my shoulders. I want you calling my sellers with me and my buyers, and I want you in my deals.

We call them associates and we’ve got about 85 of those around the United States right now. Every week, we’re hearing on the associate private call, what the heck is going on in the market. There’s no better gauge. You get 85+ people. Let’s just call 100 people doing deals. You just listen to the call. You got a grip on the market instantly.

Clint: And what you just said—it’s not like your accent gives it away where you’re located—was a key point because some people might think, well, if I’m not in the northeast, then this isn’t working out for me. Now they’re all over the country and that these deals will be put together. I hope they take advantage of it. With that are there any last pieces of information you want to leave?

Chris: The thing is don’t let this market intimidate you. I don’t care what niche you’re in. I don’t care if in the legal field. Don’t let this market intimidate you. Clint and I are two people. There are a whole bunch of other people that are positively working and helping a whole bunch of people in this market. Yes, there are profits there, but the fact is you’re affecting generations. You help one family, you just made a generational deal, so that’s pretty positive. Call them and do it.

Clint: Absolutely. All right, everyone. Thanks for joining in for this week’s podcast. Be well, be safe, and remember, this is an opportunity for you. Don’t let this time pass you by because it’s like everything when it comes to investing. We always tend to look back and say if I would have, should have, could have, where would I be today? This is your opportunity to go out there and start building your real estate dreams. With that, take care, everyone. Thank you, Chris, for being on the show and I wish you the very best.

Chris: Thanks, buddy.

Clint: All right. Bye-bye.