Wholesaling Fix & Flip Formula with Jamil Damji

Jamil: I like wholesalers flipper mix, because I consider myself a wholesaler first, but I do cherry pick my fix and flip deals through my wholesale company. I’m a wholesaler, fix and flipper, problem solver extraordinaire.

Toby: Yes. His name is Jamil Damji and I met Jamil through a supergroup that I get to go to and I’m not going to get to talk to once a year, really neat group. All you guys are—are we allowed to talk about your super-group?

Jamil: Yeah. Let’s talk about it.

Toby: It’s all wholesalers. They’re all killing it. They’re all 7-figure plus wholesalers, which people always scratch their head and go, what the heck is wholesaling, number one and then they go, how do you make seven figures wholesaling? Voila, that’s why we bring guys like Jamil on. How did you get into it?

Jamil: I got into it by accident, Toby. Let’s rewind to 2002 when I got into the business. I had no real estate background. In fact, I was supposed to be a doctor. I’m east-Indian. My parents were like, you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer or engineer. I had three options, choose one. I was going to be a doctor. I got a degree in physiology. One day, I just snapped. I said to my mom and dad, I can’t do this. I don’t want to be a doctor. I can’t stand the sight of blood. I only want to be a physician for the money and I don’t think that’s the right reason to be a doctor. I’m not going to do this.

I left. I went into entrepreneurship, broke their heart for a little while, that’s fine. They’re happy now.

Toby: Yeah. I know they’re happy. They’re like, come over here and fix my house.

Jamil: Yeah, or hey, pay this bill. The fun part of being an entrepreneur is you don’t know what’s coming. You don’t know what life’s going to look like. Here I am in 2002, I’m in a media company. My job is cold calling business owners, convincing them that there’s this thing called the internet that’s going to change the way we do business. People aren’t buying it. I’m literally calling business owners out of the yellow pages to convince them to purchase a website from us.

Back then, we would charge $600 for a 5-page simple website, home, about us, contact information, gallery and something else, list of products and services. We would charge $600 for it, but ultimately it cost me $700 to make one of those $600 websites that I sold. I had to lose $100 every time I made a sale. Not very smart. But really, really the best way to start an entrepreneurial journey. It’s just not really knowing much, just bootstrapping it.

Anyhow, I’m walking by my business partner’s office and he’s having a conversation with his dad. They’re talking about a real estate deal they’re in where they’re making $160,000 on this project. For a guy who’s losing $100 every time he makes a sale, I listened. I interjected myself into the conversation and I asked what are you guys talking about? How can I get involved in it? Very quickly they said, you can’t. You have no money. You have no experience. You have no license. There’s no way for you to do this. Stop listening to us and go back to losing money in a call center.

I don’t take that as a firm no. I hear that they’re looking for more of these building lots. They’re griping about how they can’t find enough of these building lots. I asked what that’s about. They say, we need these old bungalows that are on 50×120 foot lots, zoned R2 that we can demolish and put up these new duplexes on. If you can help us find those, there’s a place for you to make some money. I have an in. The next day, I’m walking my dog. I live in a neighborhood where this development is happening. These little bungalows on 50 foot lots are all around me.

I’m walking my dog down the street where there’s a rental that I’d actually tried to rent three months before, but I couldn’t afford. It was $200 a month out of my budget. That’s where I am in life. $200 makes or breaks where I live.

Toby: I remember those days.

Jamil: I called the number and I asked the lady if she’s interested in possibly selling instead of renting. It’s been available for 3 months. She’s been unsuccessful renting the property. Possibly, she might want to sell it and she said yeah, for the right price. I asked what that was. She said $350,000. I rushed back to the office. I talked to my partner and I asked what his dad would pay for this house. He said, $400,000. Now I have a $50,000 problem. I have no money. I can’t buy this house but they’ll pay $400,000 for it. What do I do? I do what I know what to do and I get into the yellow pages and I start calling lawyers.

I called all the way down. I called every single—and I can’t get a hold of anybody, their secretaries are blocking me right off—you know how it is, Toby. You know it is.

Toby: No idea what you’re talking about.

Jamil: I couldn’t get you on the phone if I wanted to. I’d have to go through several layers of filtration before I get to even be on this podcast. With that said, you’re busy, and as are all attorneys. This guy is so fresh out of law school, he doesn’t have a secretary yet. He answers his own phone.

Toby: That’s perfect.

Jamil: I got all the way to S, His last name was Steed, David Steed. I’ll never forget you David Steed, because you picked up the phone. He told me exactly what I needed to do. In Canada, we call this transaction a skip transfer. He explains to me that I need two contracts. One where I purchase the property, where I’m the buyer. He said it’s really important that you write your name in as your name and/or nominee. Then you need a second contract where you’re the seller and you’re going to sell it to that person that’s willing to pay you $400,000.

I’m going to email you both contracts right now. What you do is get these spelled out and bring them to me. In a few weeks, once we do all of the conveyance, I’ll have a check for you. That was it. That’s exactly what I did. I did get a $48,000 check when it was all said and done. It took us $2000 in fees. I’m sitting there looking at this thinking what am I doing? This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I thought I invented wholesaling at that time, Toby. Because there was nobody teaching it.

The internet was brand new. I haven’t watched any of the infomercials on TV because I’m in Canada and Ron LeGrand is not advertising in Canada. Here, I think I invent this amazing business model and I go all in. I quit the media company and I spent the rest of my days scouring the classifieds looking for rentals. I continued doing this over and over again and I amassed a small fortune.

Toby: Was this in Canada?

Jamil: Yeah.

Toby: Where in Canada?

Jamil: Calgary, Alberta.

Toby: Wow.

Jamil: Yeah. I identified this thing. These developers are working. They need the raw material. They need the product. They need the broken house or they need the broken apartment building. I’m watching all these condo conversions happen and I think if it worked for a single family house, it’s going to work for an apartment building too. I started driving up and down the streets looking for hand-written for rent signs on apartment buildings. I start contracting and flipping these apartment buildings making $100,000 a pop.

I’m so over my head in this situation. I’m making a tremendous amount of money, a young guy, so I’m not saving it right. I’m doing all the wrong things.

Toby: Canada hits you pretty hard on those, too.

Jamil: 50% tax. That’s 50% tax, the other 50% went to cars and girlfriends. I mean, it was all gone and again I’m 22, 23 years old. I deserved it. I deserved to lose it all, it’s what it is. The financial crisis happens and actually, how I end up really losing my shirt at that time, Toby, was I decided I didn’t want to be this deal-finder or middle man anymore. Because I didn’t even know the term wholesaler that existed. I wanted to be more than the middle man. I wanted to be the developer.

The next four projects, the next four buildings that I found, I actually took all the cash that I had been saving and I put them down as down payment.

Toby: Oh boy.

Jamil: I had my mom and dad come and cosign construction loans for me. 2008 takes place and the bank was pre-qualifying. Basically they give me a construction loan by pre-qualifying presales. When the lending criteria all changed, they called us up and said, you know those presales that we used to pre-qualify you for this construction loan that you’re in already? We need to reevaluate all those, because our lending criteria has changed. Since these are actually funded mortgages, we have every right to do that.

Now, we know that your construction loan is based off these presales but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what the pre-qualification looks like now. All of those sales got denied. All those pre-quals that they gave us, all the approvals were no longer approved.

Toby: What did they do then? They just foreclosed on you?

Jamil: They foreclosed on all of them and then they came and took our primary residences. They took everything, Toby. The aftermath of that was me, my mother and father, sister, her husband, our 150 pound dog, my niece and our cat all moved into a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment.

Toby: You’re kidding. In Calgary?

Jamil: Yeah.

Toby: Wow. What year was that?

Jamil: That was 2008.

Toby: Right. That’s just […], then you just smoked it from there on. What did you do?

Jamil: For a few years, I hated real estate. I was really burnt out and I didn’t know how I caused that. I didn’t feel like it was my fault. I was obviously in a victim mentality. It’s always your fault. I learned that as an adult now. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s always your fault. You got to plan. You got to prepare. You got to strategize and you got to take care of yourself and your family. If you put yourself in a situation where you can get hurt, it’s your fault. It doesn’t matter what happens, it’s your fault. But at the time, I’m playing in a victim mentality and I decided I just needed a break so I moved. I left Calgary and I moved to Los Angeles to become a standup comedian.

Toby: You’re kidding.

Jamil: I’m not.

Toby: Are you pretty funny?

Jamil: I mean I could tell some jokes. But I’m not on here talking about comedy, am I? I’m here talking about real estate.

Toby: I know, but I’m trying to think of it like when I’m looking over at you, like I’m talking during the day. You’re stoic. I did not in a million years say, it’s a comic.

Jamil: I’ll send you some stuff, Toby. You’ll be surprised.

Toby: I love it. I’m just kidding on you.

Jamil: I spent a few years in comedy. I had a good time, but my focus is always on real estate. I’m in LA, it’s expensive to live there. I’m looking at Phoenix and I can see that I can buy and this is in 2010-ish. I can buy a condo in Phoenix for $25,000 that was once worth $350,000. It rents for $800 a month. When I saw that I thought, there’s no Ponzi scheme on the planet that’ll give you that return.

Toby: You just had to have cash.

Jamil: Just had to have access to cash. Luckily, I have this amazing sister who was helping fund my shenanigans in Los Angeles and let me take a break. She was actually in Canada working on some sober living projects and she was sending me money. We were using some funds to buy some deals in Phoenix. Now, in this time in 2010, 2011, short sales were the king. That’s how we were acquiring property. The way short sales would work is you’d write 30 offers and 3 would get accepted.

You’re always writing offers. You’re always putting out feelers, putting out opportunities, just seeing what sticks. That’s just the way it is. We get to this point where there’s two houses that a bank approves for a short sale, no deed restriction either. But I can’t fund it because I’m out of money. I do what I know. I write an ad. I go into Craigslist and I write an ad for these two houses. I say I have these two under contract. I’m willing to sell the contract. They’re short sales. There’s no deed restriction and there’s no—I’m allowed to convey thi, I close at escrow. There’s nothing stopping me from selling this immediately on double escrow.

I added $10,000 to each one. 15 minutes later I got a call from somebody who walked by and said, I’ll take deals from you. I’ll take them both. In 15 minutes, Toby, I made $18,000 after closing costs. I’m thinking to myself what the heck am I doing here in LA telling bad jokes?

Toby: Having fun?

Jamil: Having fun, licking my wounds, but I knew—I was engaged to get married at that time too. I’m looking at this, I’m thinking I’m about to start a family. I got to do what I know and I packed up my bags on December 12, 2012, that’s my birthday 12/12/12 and I drove from LA to Phoenix. I never looked back. I get to Phoenix and we start KeyGlee, this nationally franchised wholesale operation which is now operating in almost 180 markets. It’s been wild.

Toby: Tell me about that. Actually, let me stop you real quick because wholesaling, if somebody’s not familiar, how would you describe wholesaling to the newbie or somebody who’s never heard that term before?

Jamil: Wholesalers sell potential. We sell potential. What do I mean by that? A lot of people look at wholesaling and they’ll say you’re buying something too cheap or you’re stealing equity. You’re ripping people off. No, you’re not. I only buy houses that need a tremendous amount of work. I buy quarter houses, probate situations, a lot of deferred maintenance, code violations, bankruptcies. Houses that are just completely destroyed, not up kept. They need everything. Those are the houses I’m looking at. Those are the ones I buy. I actually will pay 100% of the as is value for that house. 

There’s two types of value when you’re looking at a property. There’s the as is value and there’s the after repair value. Sometimes I like to call that after risk value. You see, you have to take some financial risk. You have to repair this property before new equity is realized. What we do as wholesalers is we look for that potential. We look at the house and say, hey, this junker house right now, if we dressed it up and fixed it up and got it all pretty, it has the potential of selling for this much.

What I do as a wholesaler is I say if I can buy it here and the potential is here, I’m going to sell this much of it for a fee. I sell a portion of the potential of that project and somebody else would go in and go vertical on it and fix it up and make money on it, but I make a little bit for selling the contract. Selling the opportunity, selling the potential, that’s all I do.

Toby: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard everybody like, you can’t do that or that’s horrible or you’re taking advantage of somebody. What would you say with those folks?

Jamil: I don’t buy that because the homeowners that I’m talking to, they don’t have other solutions. There’s no finance buyer that could buy that house. No bank would lend on this property. Only a cash transaction could take place. Yes, this house could be worth $175,000 or $200,000 fixed up, but they don’t have the money to get it there. They don’t have the capacity to take that risk.

What happens if I spend $50,000 fixing this house up and the market turns on me? There could be so many things that could go wrong. I’m taking a risk. I don’t think I’m taking advantage of anybody. In fact, what I’m bringing to the table is a solution. I’m bringing liquidity to a situation where a seller wouldn’t have an opportunity to sell that property to anybody else but in a cash transaction.

Toby: Yeah, or they get beat up in a marketplace if they try to list it plus they give commission to somebody. Yeah, you’re just going in there and you’re cutting through all the layers and saying here’s the cash price and then you’re selling the opportunity like you said. You’re selling that contract to somebody else. Either you’re double closing—do you do more double closes or do you do a lot of single closes now?

Jamil: I do mainly assignments. Our typical deal profit is around $10,000. I have no shame for that. I don’t care if a seller sees that I made $10,000 to put the pieces together. I don’t care if a buyer sees that I made $10,000 to put the pieces together. Everybody values my situation in the deal.

Toby: You have that. Now, people understand. You’re going and you’re putting things under contract selling the rights underneath the contract, which just seems smart to me. Realtors don’t do that, not a slight on realtors. Sometimes they say, you’re supposed to be a realtor. No, a realtor can’t put an offer on your house. Some of them say, I’ll buy your house if I can’t sell it. Here is where you’re actually buying. You’re doing it in reverse order. I’m going to buy then I’m going to sell it, I’ll make that little bit. 

Now, you said you’re in 180 markets with your franchise. Tell me a little bit about that.

Jamil: We’re currently operating in 60 but we have a commitment from a private equity company to roll out into 180 markets by the end of 2021. They came in and purchased a large number of franchise units from us and they’re rolling out 10 units at a time. We’re operating at 60 right now. We’ll be at 180 by the end of the year. We franchised the wholesale company which has never really happened. HomeVestors is one franchise. I don’t necessarily call them a wholesale company, but possibly because of the We Buy Ugly Houses.

They’re an example of it, but truly what we are is a marketplace. We’re an exchange. See, what I saw in the market was that a lot of wholesalers were going out and wildcatting these properties. They were learning from educators how to identify a situation where a cash offer was appropriate, but what they weren’t learning was how to dispose of that contract once they got it. When you do that, I think that’s wrong. I think that when you cancel it, when you make a promise to a seller to buy their property and you now allow them to go make plans in their life and welcome a moving truck and just get on with things, and then you don’t actually follow through with the promise you made, I think that’s terrible.

I think that’s a totally terrible way to do business and it happens a lot in wholesaling because wholesale attracts a hustler. It’s the entry level to real estate because you don’t require cash or credit to do it. Because it attracts that demographic-a-person, a lot of people come to it like bees to honey. It’s just, a lot of people flock to it. We have this situation where there’s all these wildcatters, whatever you want to call them out there talking to sellers, getting deals locked up but then they don’t know what to do with that. My company, KeyGlee, what we specialize in is bringing to the market or bringing the buyers and those wholesalers together in one organized place. 

Our core competency is building cash buyer lists. That’s what we’ve done all across the country and that’s what we continue to do.

Toby: When you sell to a cash buyer, you’re probably selling to flippers, I’m assuming.

Jamil: Flippers buying whole renters, that’s mainly the two demographics of buyers that we have.

Toby: How does somebody get on that list?

Jamil: Reach out to me. Reach out to me on Instagram, @jdamji on Instagram. Tell me what market you’re in and introduce yourself and we’ll add you to our buyers list. We sell on average. Just in my corporate Phoenix store, we do anywhere between 80-100 houses a month there, but every one of my franchises is doing 50, 20, 30 deals a month. We’ve got access to deals that you would never see. You have no idea that these opportunities are available and look at the market right now. You can’t buy houses on the retail market right now yet I still have inventory available every day. Anyone out there that can’t find stuff, you’re looking in the wrong place. Come to me.

Toby: Yeah, I know. It’s pretty wild right now. I tell people, if you’re looking at—this is no different. Your story you were telling me about what 2008 was like or before 2008 where you’re putting in 30, 40 offers to get two or three. That’s what we have lived here in Vegas after 2008. It was just brutal and then the private equity companies come in and just starts buying up everything at 20% over. We’re experiencing that now again where people are paying right now in 2021, the length of time on the market for about eight days. We’ve had to tweet the client an inventory and people are paying cash in 20% to 25% over an estimate.

If you’re looking at the MLS, you’ve already lost. You have to go find deals. There are still good deals. It’s just, it’s not dressed up and pretty like it’s already free to move into. You’re probably going to be buying somebody else’s problem, that you’re going to end up having to spit on and clean up a little to make it look good then you can go ahead and then those folks can go ahead and sell it. It’s a monster market. You guys are got to be killing it right now.

Jamil: We are. I’m extremely happy with the success that we’ve had. We’re able to just bring so many solutions to everybody. We’re bringing solutions to homeowners. We’re bringing solutions to wholesalers. We’re bringing solutions to cash investors, buy and hold investors, rehabbers. I mean, so many people are eating off of these deals. It’s fantastic.

Toby: How does somebody, a new person, if somebody’s walking in and saying, I don’t have any money—it’s you in 2002 and you walk in, what do you say to that person? How do they get involved?

Jamil: You can absolutely get involved with no cash, no credit. All you need is consistency and hustle. Look, I got all of my first deals and I continue to get deals today calling tired landlords, going through the probate lists, communicating with probates, making relationships with probate attorneys, having them send me those leads, realtor leads. Oh my gosh, guys, let me tell you something about agents. Agents are amazing. They’re amazing but they don’t want these junky houses because they’re not financeable.

When a high power agent wearing Jimmy Choo shoes walks into a junker house where there are feces all over the floor, do you think that that agent is at all interested in that listing? No. It’s not at the price point they want. They know it’s not financeable on the retail market. They need a cash solution. Why aren’t you networking with these agents to be the cash solution for those deals? A good majority of my deals come from realtors. Another good portion of my deals come from wholesalers.

Toby: Do you list with those same realtors? If a realtor brought you a bunch of junkers and said you clean it up, are you going to give the listing to that realtor or you’re just going to sell it off.

Jamil: If I do go vertical on that deal, I would consider using that listing agent. What I’ve given a lot of listing agents as a better perk, is why wait for the carrot when I’m going to give you the pie now? I’ll actually split my assignment fee with that agent and they get that on top of their commission. I incentivize these realtors to always think of me, always think of me.

Toby: That’s smart. You said wholesaling and again that’s just going and putting it under contract and selling it off to somebody else who needs it. Now, are you ever worried about us going back to a situation like in 2008 where we have a financial bubble burst, and all of a sudden it’s anarchy and the values are dropping, and I can’t see that happening with the numbers that I’ve seen. Let’s just say that, are you ever worried about that happening?

Jamil: Here are the indicators that tell me that a repeat is not necessarily on the horizon. Course and correction can take place, but this is why I think a repeat is not on the horizon. A, our lending criteria is way stronger than it was back then. You’re not getting these fictitious loans. Those were fictitious loans. Those were fictitious borrowers at some points. This wasn’t real, it wasn’t real paper. The lending qualifications are way harder now. Second, we are printing so much money right now. We are printing so much money that inflation is a true fear. Why do you think these private equity companies are parking their money in housing?

Toby: You’re smart.

Jamil: They’re edging cash flow and inflation. That’s going to provide them a much better return than anything else that they could put their money in at this point.

Toby: You combat inflation by lowering interest rates. How long are you going to be able to keep them down to, what is it, 0-25 basis points, which makes it really cheap to go buy the houses which drives the price up because you have so much demand for them. It’s the same thing that’s going on over and over. It’d be interesting to see whether the inflation stuff actually comes around other than you’re going to see housing costs get driven up. Room cost, my God, would triple during the pandemic.

Jamil: It’s still high. It’s still way higher than it was. I mean, it’s going to cost so much more money for a new construction house to get built. That’s a problem and that’s going to have more upward pressure on housing. In addition to that, I believe we’re in an artificial market right now with the amount of private equity in the space. We aren’t seeing natural market cycles.

As new inventory pops on to the market, who’s coming in and gobbling all that up? Private equity for the most part. Do you think they’re going to allow housing prices to depress when they’re holding such a large position in it? Not a chance.

Toby: Do you know how much they’re holding? As we see that, I’m a buy and holder and I see these guys come into markets. They were in my market in Vegas and drove the price like crazy. Do you have an idea if you’re seeing any of that or you’re just seeing it because you’re selling them off?

Jamil: I’m seeing it because I’m selling it off but it’s hundreds of billions of dollars, Toby. I mean, I don’t have an exact number but it’s a massive amount of inventory. They’re not going to allow that to depress. It’s not until I start seeing private equity leave the market that I start worrying about a collapse.

Toby: Yeah. Even with a collapse, wholesaling is still fun, that you’re still looking for the deals. I just know because we were buying throughout the last one and you just can find enough deals. I was like you, we’re going to the short sellers, you’re trying to buy stuff and all these agents had pocket listings and they were going around. Let’s see if we can do a short sale, they’d find out and then they would list it and immediately would go under the contract. It’s so tough to get stuff. 

Do you teach people how to go out and locate the houses too? Is that something that you do?

Jamil: Absolutely. I give a ton of information away on my YouTube channel. If you want to learn how to do this and you don’t have money to get a mentor or pay for coaching, go check out my YouTube channel. Everything you need to know is there. It’s Jamil Damji on YouTube. 

If you watch me, you love me and you want to learn and you actually need coaching, you need mentorship, I’m also a mentor. You can check on my mentorship program, it’s AstroFlipping. I make really funny ads. It’s where I’ve tied my comedy career into what I do now. I love what I do, Toby. I love what I do. I love helping people. The impact that I’m able to make in people’s lives over the last five years has just changed me. It changed me as a man.

Toby: Pretty well. I went to your YouTube channel. All I know is that I saw you running around without them shirt, lifting weights while you’re on the phone talking to people and do and do and it was creeping me out. I’m not lying.

Jamil: It’s almost funny because my friends always say he’s going to find a reason to take his shirt off. For those of you that are listening to this right now, I’m not really well built. I’m not a guy that should be taking the shirt off all the time but I had fun with it.

Toby: You can lie. Check out my guns, I’ll need a license for both. Yeah, no, it’s so much fun. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing with everybody. We just need to talk to people that are doers instead of just talkers and it’s really cool. We will put all your information. We’ll post it. Go to Jamil Damji on YouTube. You can pop to that. We’ll put that link in there. Anywhere else you’d want them to go?

Jamil: Yeah, check me out on IG. If you have any questions and need some support, help, whatever it is, @jdamji. I’d love to work with you. 

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