.png)
The Titanium Vault hosted by RJ Bates III
RJ Bates III, affectionately referred to as the Viking Wizard by his students, started his real estate investing career in 2014 after attending a real estate education program that put him $65,000 in debt. RJ contracted his first deal he found on the MLS and wholesaled it for a $7,500 assignment fee. That was the end of his former life and the beginning of his venture into becoming a real estate investor. Since that moment, RJ has become an influential figurehead in the real estate investing industry. He has successfully purchased and sold over 2,000 properties all across the USA including wholesale deals, rehabs, rentals, owner finances and short term rentals. One of his passions is being the host of The Titanium Vault Podcast where he interviews the top real estate investors. He has won back to back Closers Olympics earning him the reputation as the King Closer! Finally, RJ and Cassi DeHaas, his partner, have started their education platform called Titanium University.
The Titanium Vault hosted by RJ Bates III
Can You Really Wholesale Real Estate In Maryland?
Want to work directly with me to close more deals? Go Here: https://www.titaniumu.com
Want the Closer’s Formula sales process I’ve used to close 2,000+ deals (FREE) Go Here: https://www.kingclosersformula.com/close
If you’re new to my channel my name is RJ Bates III. Myself and my partner Cassi DeHaas are the founders of Titanium Investments.
We are nationwide virtual wholesalers and on this channel we share EVERYTHING that we do inside our business. So if you’re looking to close more deals - at higher assignments - anywhere in the country… You’re in the right place.
Who is Titanium Investments and What Have We Accomplished?
Over 10 years in the real estate investing business
Closed deals in all 50 states
Owned rentals in 12 states
Flipped houses in 11 states
Closed on over 2,000 properties
125 contracts in 50 days (all live on YouTube)
Back to back Closers Olympics Champion
Trained thousands of wholesalers to close more deals
_________________________________
With over 2,000 Videos, this is the #1 channel on YouTube for all things Virtual Wholesaling. SUBSCRIBE NOW! https://www.youtube.com/@RJBatesIII
_________________________________
RESOURCES FOR YOU:
If you want my team and I to walk you through how to build or scale your virtual wholesaling business from A to Z, click here to learn more about Titanium University: https://www.titaniumu.com
(FREE) If you want to learn how to close deals just like me, The King Closer, then download the free King Closer Formula PDF: https://www.kingclosersformula.com/close
(FREE) Join our exclusive FB group community for real estate investors and wholesalers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/titaniumvault/
(FREE) Click here to grab our Titanium fleet free PDF & training: Our battle tested strategies and tools that we actually use… and are proven to work: https://www.kingclosersformula.com/fleet
Grab the King Closer Blueprint: My Step by Step Sales Process for closing over 2,000 deals (Only $37): https://www.kingclosersformula.com/kcblueprint
Grab Titanium Profits: Our exact system we use to comp and underwrite deals in only 4 minutes. (Only $99) https://www.kingclosersformula.com/titaniumprofits
Want to know what the best markets to wholesale in are? Grab my breakdown of all 50 states here: https://www.titaniumu.com/markets
Welcome back to Wholesaling Around the World the Maryland edition, and today I'm going to be giving my takeaways on how I feel about virtually wholesaling inside of the state of Maryland. Man, you want to talk about one of the strangest places to wholesale in. That's Maryland. I mean, it is just a weird state, especially just from someone that has not spent a lot of time. I think I've visited Maryland once in my life. It's just a unique place. Comes in ranking 18th in population, with just north of 6 million people inside the state, with just north of 6 million people inside the state. Maybe part of the reason why it's weird places is because 10% of the population is shoved into its one major metro city, baltimore. It's also surrounded by Washington DC right, I'm not including Washington DC inside of this. I consider that its own market and its own needs to understand how to wholesale there. So we're just talking about the state of Maryland. It's a weird place and just like you shove 10% of your population inside of Baltimore, you shove the houses inside of Baltimore in that city. I mean, it's one of the few, the few places in the United States that has row houses, making it very unique when it comes to comping and underwriting right.
Speaker 1:I think the city of Baltimore has to be one of the top five most difficult cities to comp and underwrite in. And you know, you hear this all the time you start talking to comp and underwrite in. And you know, you hear this all the time you start talking to people and it's like, oh, it's street by street and man the values can really change. That is absolutely a fact in the city of Baltimore okay, probably more so than anywhere. The only thing that I can really see that is comparable to it is Philadelphia. But Baltimore is just so unique and it very much feels like a blend between, like some of the low, low price point major edge metro areas like the Birmingham's and the Kansas cities and St Louis and Detroit's, the ones that we talk about all the time.
Speaker 1:When you have to pay attention to those current market value, as is comps right, your competition, that's on the market. That's absolutely the case inside of most of baltimore, but you also have higher price point properties in balt, which is rare for some of these markets. So you have the blend of both higher price points, lower price points, cashflow and flips, paying attention to row houses as well as normal single family, and then you have duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes. It gives you a blend of a little bit of everything. And when it comes to calming and underwriting, I am telling you, distance-wise, you have to narrow down as much as you possibly can, and you have to be paying attention to any massive changes in the neighborhood. And it can literally be hey, two blocks away, the price point is double what your property is.
Speaker 1:And that is what makes Maryland so difficult, because, realistically, the city that you want to be getting deals in is Baltimore. Right, I'm not saying it's the only place. We've done deals in all the different parts of the state of Maryland, but Baltimore is the city right. It's the major metro city in the state of Maryland, and so the majority of your leads are going to come in there. That's where the majority of end buyers are going to be, and so, from a comping and underwriting perspective, you have to pay attention to where your end buyers are buying, and so it is imperative that when you get in and you start analyzing a deal, you try to find that blueprint property as close and as comparable as possible to your property. I would say, out of all the cities out there in the United States, baltimore is the one that will take me the longest to underwrite a deal correctly, okay, and that is saying something, because I don't normally harp on this as much as I do here in Philadelphia, but it is absolutely a very unique market.
Speaker 1:Now, when you move outside of Baltimore, I want to go to the East side of Maryland, uh, where it runs along the side of Delaware and it goes down into the Atlantic ocean there, uh, that is so an area where there is motivation from sellers. Dispositions, from my experience, is going to be a little bit harder. Looking at our map here, where we've done deals, we've done deals in Princess and we've done deals in, I guess that's, nanticoke I think that's how you say that, funny enough, I don't even know how to say city, but we disvoted a deal there. We've done deals at Cambridge, I think we've had some down even further south, but that area dispositions is just a little bit harder, is what I've seen. Okay, now moving back up to where Baltimore is. Of course we've done deals in Annapolis. To where Baltimore is, of course we've done deals in Annapolis, towson, sykesville and all of those surrounding areas to Baltimore, and then moving to the west side of the state, the majority of the deals that we've done have been in the northern part of the state Hagerstown, cumberland, frostburg. Those are areas. What I will say there is we've done a lot of small multifamily deals there because of the cash flow and so we could tap in to some buy and hold investors that maybe aren't local to that market but they're definitely open to buying because of the cash flow.
Speaker 1:I will say comping and underwriting outside of Baltimore is normally more easy. You're not running into as many row houses and you are coming across more of that small multifamily where it's easy to see the values because there are comparable quadplexes, triplexes, duplexes and as well as just the cash flow of pay attention to where your end buyers buy. Overall, on the acquisition side, what I feel about Maryland is it's kind of middle of the road. Right, you're going to get a lot more motivation inside the city of Baltimore than you are in kind of the more rural areas, which is normally the opposite. But inside of Baltimore I do feel like there is a level of highly distressed properties. I feel like I come across more physically distressed elements of motivation than I do financially and then the sellers got to know like, yeah, this property is so physically distressed. I know I can't get much for it, but what I run into is that the value is just not there on some properties, like there's areas inside of Baltimore that you just can't make the numbers pencil out.
Speaker 1:Dispositions of Baltimore I've always felt is pretty strong. You will get your teeth kicked in by the local end buyers that really know that If you don't comp and underwrite correctly they're going to be like hey, you must not be from around here. This is one of those markets that you're going to get when you move outside acquisitions. I feel like the dispositions is great, plausible, right, it just takes a little bit more time. And so when you the further away from Baltimore and Washington DC that you get, the more time it's going to take you, unless you have established relationships. If you're kind of just blindly trying to dispose and build those relationships, plan on it taking more time.
Speaker 1:Acquisitions again middle of the road, overall. Taken more time. Acquisitions again middle of the road overall. That's kind of how I feel about Maryland. It ranks as the 18th most populated state but it's the fifth most densely populated state, so it is very heavily populated for the size of the state, but really from a virtual wholesaling perspective, unless you have connections to Maryland. I've got to put it in the middle of the road. I'm moving it more closer to like 25th to 30th.
Speaker 1:Overall, I never really look at Maryland and go. That's an area where we're going to have consistent deal flow, right, and Ohio, missouri, michigan, those are states where, hey, we have no connections to it but we are going to have consistent deal flow there. I don't feel that way about Maryland. However, if you are able to get a deal there in Maryland, it's probably going to be a little bit higher of an assignment fee, and that's something that you normally see more on the West side of the United States, right? The Oregon's, washington's, california's, nevada's, whatnot. That's where you see, like, hey, this acquisition is a little bit harder but higher assignment fee, kind of what you see in Maryland. It's comparable there where, instead of it being a 10 to $15,000, it's very common to get a 20 to $30,000 assignment fee inside the state of Maryland.
Speaker 1:So to the newer virtual wholesalers that are looking to expand the markets, I probably wouldn't suggest Maryland unless you have a known in-buyer or some sort of market knowledge, right, if you used to live in Baltimore or you have family there, you have boots on the ground, then, yeah, it would be a good market for you to go to, and I have actually been doing deals in Maryland going all the way back to 2016. So we've been doing deals there for nine years. Baltimore actually happened to be one of the first virtual cities that I decided to expand outside of the state of Texas. That was Fort Worth to begin with. Then we went to San Antonio, austin, houston. Then, when we decided to move outside the state of Texas, I chose Tulsa, phoenix, baltimore and Seattle and Portland.
Speaker 1:Baltimore ended up being the most difficult out of all of those to get deals initially and now, looking at it, I see that we were just making mistakes on the comping and underwriting side of things. It took time for us to develop that skill set. So if you do get leads say you're running nationwide PPL leads and you get something inside of Maryland brace yourself, take your time, really narrow down the distance and making sure that whatever you're comparing your property to, the comp is like and kind Row house needs to be to a row house. Single family cannot use row houses. Don't use any duplexes, triplexes or anything like that. You have to find those like a kind and specifically going back to the row houses, because you're going to see a lot of those, especially in comparison to somewhere else like Texas, where we don't have those really, or Florida. Pay attention to the fact that you really want your comparable to be on the same building. That's what makes it a super powerful blueprint comp. Otherwise, you're probably going to be struggling on the disposition side. That's my take on Maryland.
Speaker 1:For those of you that are currently wholesaling inside the state of Maryland, let me know, did I do a good job? Do you agree? Do you disagree? And to the person who has been commenting saying, hey, I'm looking for that Maryland breakdown, I'm struggling to close the deal, here's what I'll tell you. If you're talking to a seller inside of Maryland and you're struggling to close it, it's no different than talking to a seller anywhere else. Determine what their motivation is and solve their problem, and if you can't do that, then you're not the right fit for them. Someone else needs to solve their problem, point them in the right direction and move on to the next lead.
Speaker 1:If you're talking about closing a deal from a disposition side, it's inside the city of Baltimore. There's absolutely a plentiful amount of investors there. If it's rural and it's outside of the city of Baltimore. That's to be expected. Utilize the softwares that exist nowadays, like InvestorLift, investorbase, dealspeed. Find those end buyers, create a relationship, move your deal. All right, guys, show me some love, like today's video. Let me know, did I nail Maryland or do I not know what I'm talking about? We'll see you, guys, tomorrow.