Stop Losing Deals: Master Transaction Coordination with David Olds

Want to close more deals and stop tearing your hair out over paperwork? In this episode, real estate veteran David Olds spills the beans on transaction coordination. Learn why your rockstar salesperson shouldn't be doing data entry, how to spot the perfect TC personality, and why asking better questions upfront can save deals later. Whether you're doing 2 deals a month or 200, David's hard-earned wisdom will help you work smarter, not harder. Tune in for practical tips to streamline your business and boost your bottom line.

0:00 - Introduction and welcome
1:15 - What transaction coordinators do
3:30 - When to outsource vs. do in-house
6:45 - Hiring and training transaction coordinators
10:30 - Personality traits of good TCs
13:15 - Value of specialized roles in a business
16:00 - Impact of TCs on deal closings and team efficiency
19:30 - Asking better questions to save deals
22:45 - Importance of clear communication between departments
25:00 - Detailed seller information gathering
28:15 - Identifying and solving transaction problems
31:00 - Realizing the time savings of outsourcing TCs

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Transcript

  

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the collective clicks podcast. This is your host, Brandon Bateman. And today I'm joined by David Olds. David runs a virtual transaction coordinations company. He sees a tons of transactions, knows a ton about dispositions, has run a successful wholesaling company and many service businesses for real estate investors, and today we're going to talk all about transaction coordination, dispositions, where investors getting it wrong, and how do you keep on doing that boring hard work that's going to get you to success.

Hey David, welcome. Welcome everybody. If anybody doesn't know David, you definitely should. I  mean, there's a lot of people who run really impressive real estate businesses. Although I would, I would argue that probably none of them have the  transaction coordination of as many deals as David holds. So everybody's an expert at something like that's what this guy does all day, every day and transaction coordination, if you ask me, is probably the most boring part of this entire business.

You know, that's how I feel about PPC.  It's not that it's boring. It's just that I can't do it, you know? Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like you just took The thing that everybody hates. And then, and then you just decided to do a ton of it, which has never made a ton of sense to me, but  you're not the only one.

When I, when I announced it at the cartel summit with all the big wholesalers are like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. I'm like, yeah, I think it's going to work though. It's just because nobody wants to do it. Yeah. No one, no one else wants to have your business. So, so you'll, so that's the way to eliminate competition.

Make it undesirable enough. Yeah. Wow. But I think, I think there's a lot of merit to the fact that this is what you do all day every day is just live and breathe transaction coordination. So, I, I know you have some wisdom and get as much of that value as we possibly can for everybody listening to this.

How, I just out of curiosity, do you have any idea, like last year or within the last year, how many deals you guys have?  Yeah, last year was 2202 files.  Yeah, that's insane. So yeah, lots of deals, I mean, coming across, you know, 238 million in transactions. And I think we're on pace to  double that this year.

Like, we're almost at that number. We're almost right. Just under 200 million so far this year. So we're just, just handling a lot. We have a little over 800 and I know it's higher than this, but 850  files, active files that we're working right this minute.  That's insane.  I'm going to try to organize this the best way I can to suck as much wisdom out of you.

Like I said, as I possibly can. And to that point, I, maybe a good place to start, David is like,  explain what do you do? What, you know, what questions do people usually have? You can get started on that half and I've got a ton of questions for you, but I bet you probably have a better idea of what to share than I do.

But I will, I will put them broad. I love it. Yeah. So what we are, we're a transaction coordination company. So essentially what we do is from the moment you go under contract with your seller, you're going to send that contract to us and we will, we will take it from there and go all the way till closing, just waiting on  your, excuse me, your assignment contract or your selling contract, whatever you want to call it.

And then, you know, we'll. We'll do everything with the buyer. So like it's most condensed form. That's it. You know, we do, it's about a third of the business that nobody actually realizes isn't that is there until you get to it and have to start plugging through it. But, and we can definitely talk about like all of the obstacles, but it's, you know, collecting, you know, who are all the owners, who's on title, where are the dead people, who's the bankruptcy attorney, who's the foreclosure attorney, you know, what are all of the things that are going to keep it from closing?

Because ultimately what we do, you know, as. As wholesalers is we want to get in great leads, right? Those leads come in and then the more problems that we can solve, right? With our, with our seller, the deeper, the discount we can get, right? So if there is, you know, death, divorce and taxes and, you know, bad tenants and all of these things, you know, the more of those things we can solve, of course, the cheaper price we can get on the flip side, though, however, either we're going to buy this for ourselves and we want clear title, or we're going to sell this to an inbound, another investor.

Yeah. And we have to have clear title, right? So sometimes getting from all of the problems to the clear title, it can be, it can be a journey, right? It can be a chasm, like the, the grand Canyon. So, you know, that is the stuff that we do. And certainly you can 100 percent do it yourself, right? The same way you can go out and change your own oil.

However, is that the best use of your time? Is that as a business owner, is that the way that you can generate the most money for your business and for your team? No. You know, and in the case of changing your oil, like. You know, I don't do it. I would blow up my engine because I don't really know what I'm doing.

So chances are I'm going to screw up more than I fix. And also, you know, I'd get underneath the car and I'd get wedged under there like Winnie the Pooh. And you just see my legs kicking. Right? So it's not, it's not the thing that, that, you know, I want to do. And as you said in the intro that. That most people want.

Conversely for us, you know, like you, we hire people that are very, very specific personality types that really love this, this type of stuff, right? They love problem solving and spreadsheets and, you know, talking to title companies and working through all of that stuff. So, you know, we, we clearly understand we are different from the, you know, the, the investor or the wholesaler, right?

That's really me. That's like yappy people. We love doing deals. We get the adrenaline rush, but doing paperwork. No, it's terrible, right? That's the stuff that that's the reason why our bookkeepers and our accountants and our lawyers all hate us because we're terrible at those types of things, right? The detail oriented stuff.

So, so, yeah, kind of kind of that's what that's what we do.  Yeah, it's super cool. And  a few questions just based on what you said at the beginning there. So  I want to know your personal opinion, right? So, so I understand that you own an outsource transaction coordination company, right? So, so, uh, Maybe I'm, maybe I'm just begging for a certain answer, but I'm curious to hear from, from your standpoint, like  if we're comparing doing it in house to outsourcing like with a company like yours or maybe, maybe a different company, what In what circumstance, or at what point does it make sense to do it in house, in your opinion?

Or would you say it always makes sense to outsource it? No. Um, I think anything you do in life, you should do one or two yourself, right? Even if you have a rental property, right? You should go paint your own rental property once, you should change out a water heater once, because then you're going to have an appreciation of one, you know, what you do.

The effort that it actually takes. And you also make sure that you're not getting it taken advantage of there. You know, yes, we are the biggest transaction coordination company, but there are a lot of small people out there who will charge you, you know, like five times what we do. And then they get it because people, people don't, they don't understand.

Right. So no, I think it's always good to work through that, that process once or twice. But here's the analogy, right? Let's say you go home tonight and your wife's like, Hey, I really want some Italian food. You're like, great. We could go down to Olive Garden. Right. We'll go to Olive Garden. We can sit down, we can have our meal.

Right. That is outsourcing, right? You're essentially outsourcing somebody to, to, you know. Buy the groceries, get the menu, do the cook, clean up the dishes, do all of the things right now. Could you go make that at home? Yes. Would it be as good? Maybe,  maybe, I don't know, but you can also screw it up. You could, you could burn dinner and you know, that was the end of your night, but how much time is it going to take you?

Right. You're going to have to get the recipe. You're going to make a list. You're going to go to the grocery store. You're going to buy all the things. Hopefully you didn't forget it. You don't have to go back to the grocery store where, as opposed to outsourcing it for. You know, sometimes it's the same price or even cheaper.

You can just go sit down and have that meal. So that's kind of the way transactions works is it's no different. You know, what we do is special in the sense that we're very good at it. We're, we've seen after, you know, 4, 000 something files at this point over the years, like we can definitely see all the problems and solve them better than, than most people, but could you muddle your way through?

Sure. Like I did. But I can definitely tell you the story of losing deal after deal, because we didn't understand how to ask the right questions and, you know, find the right title companies and do all that kind of stuff. And then also, man, I just worked my ass off trying to do every single thing in my business.

Right. So, you know, if you're going to grow that, that's just an important thing. And it's not just transactions, right? When I grew, you know, I needed, I needed PPC. I needed to hire a property manager, you know, As business owners, and this is the this is the thing that I see most often,  you know, when I'm traveling to events or I'm speaking at reels or, you know, just talking to coaching clients is. 

You know, a lot of wholesalers, right? We're entrepreneurs. We've got that kind of hustle mindset and we have this little affliction that is like, you know, nobody can do it better than me. I have to do everything. You know, I'm the smartest person and we, you know, we kind of wear that like You know, as a badge of honor, right?

Control freak. And the reality is that's okay. If you want to do one, two, maybe three deals a month, you can, you can do that. Right. But you can't turn it into a business, you know, and I was speaking at a group Saturday and, you know, 300 people. And I said, who wants to be a hustler and who wants to run a business?

And, you know, every single hand goes up. Of course, that's what we want. Well, Sometimes making that jump means you have to, you know, give up a little bit of control and bring in, you know, somebody like you, who's the absolute dude. I was just in a meeting. We were talking about some people that we work with and your company came up and, you know, Brandon's company, the gold star leader of, you know, running PPC in the industry, right?

Same thing. I feel like that's. That's us for, you know, for transactions and operations. So, so yeah, so yeah. Should you do some yourself? Of course, but I think if you want to turn this into a business, you're going to need to bring in somebody that basically what outsourcing or hiring does is it just frees you up to spend the time in your business on the things that actually generate revenue, right? 

Long answer for that question.  No, which does make sense. And I guess when we talk about doing it in house, there's, there's two different levels to in house.  One is, should the entrepreneur be doing transaction coordination? I would argue like, you know, like you want to, you want to paint the walls on your rental like once to know how it works. 

And then probably again, like that's, if we're talking about like the matrix of like how much money does something make you and how much do you enjoy it as income producing versus just operational, like transaction coordination is kind of at the bottom of that list. Right. So, so there's, it's easy to delegate.

What about like having, like, I, I have many clients, maybe some of those clients are, are here that have in house  TCs. Sure. They hire. What about that compared to an outsource solution? Because you have circumstance, like. It's like having your private chef, right? We're not going to Olive Garden, but, you know, if you're going to have Olive Garden cater for your, your, your 500 people at some point and it's happening every day, at some point you just hire a chef.

So what's your opinion on that?  Yeah, we've, we have clients who've done it both ways, right? I've certainly had, you know, before. I think you've met Heather, my, my operations manager. She runs the whole company. She was my first like really good transactions coordinator that we hired in the company. But she wasn't the first one.

You know, I went through two or three before I got her and you know, here's the thing about,  yeah,  you know, hiring any position in your company,  let's say you want to go say, Hey, I want to run PPC in house and you're going to go, you know, hire somebody off the street that says they can do it. Can they do it?

Maybe, you know, maybe, maybe they can kind of muddle their way through Google and throw up an ad, but does that mean they're going to do it right? And I'm not saying the person can or can't, but these are the risks that you take. So if you want to hire in house, absolutely. That's how I started, you know, we wouldn't have this company if I didn't have a good team at house, but I had to churn through a little bit.

And also I had. Almost 20 years as an investor, I had the experience to train them because I used to do it myself. So, yeah, if you want to get your own person, you know, run your Indeed ads, hope people show up for the interview, run through the interview process, make them an offer. Hopefully they're still looking for a job, bring them in, train them.

And I would say, if you're not a chef. I don't know how you're going to train them to be a chef, right? So if you don't understand this business, you're going to rely on going out and trying to hire somebody who says they can do it, which  is okay. You know, the only thing worse than you doing it as the business owner would be hiring in somebody and you just blindly put your trust in them that they can, that they understand what they're doing.

Cause maybe they were a realtor, maybe they work, even work for a title company, right? And those are not going to be. 10 an hour people, by the way, those are going to be very, very expensive people. Even at a low, low end market like Chattanooga, they're 60, 000 plus people, right? So do you need a 60, 000 plus person if you're doing four deals a month?

Probably it's not the best way to do it, but you know, so the worst thing that can happen is you hire somebody in and you. Think  that they're getting your deals closed, but yet they come to you. Just like, you know, Gabriel here is saying, say, Hey, I have this deal and it's, and it fell apart, you know, well, maybe you went back to your coordinator and then the coordinator's like, yeah, there's just no way to close it, there's this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, and then, you know, you throw that contract away. 

And in reality was there. Well, I could tell you, you know, of all the files that die, at least 50 percent of them, we could have saved, you know, and the other 50 percent will give you the reason of, hey, you know, here's how we can close this. It just may take up, take a little bit longer. So, so yeah, you know, it's hit and miss, you know, most of the people who have an in house person, they actually probably do multiple roles, right?

They're going to get their mail. They're, you know, doing, doing some office stuff and trying to do transactions. And that will, that will work for a certain amount of time until you get, you know, too many deals, right? Or you start to get more complicated deals, which we all tend to do as investors. So, you know, does that person have the, have the understanding to, to solve those title problems, you know, because just because somebody was a realtor doesn't mean they understand anything about investor world, right?

We're a completely different place. I've hired people from title companies that have. Time as a processor or an underwriter, and we bring them in here and they're like, what in the world are you guys doing?  Like this is subject to installment method, notes, wholesale assignments, you know, wraps wholesale with a, with a note on the backside.

I mean, like what we do is kind of wacky, crazy stuff. It's not. It's just not normal, you know, so, you know, that's, can you hire somebody? Absolutely. I am not going to be here and tell you not to hire somebody, but do you want to go through the aggravation of hiring, training them and managing them? And then, you know, you go six months and then you realize this was the wrong person.

And how many, how much did that cost you? Right. Cause I'm a lot older than you, Brandon, I'm 53. I can tell you, you know, losing six months of a year. That's, that's a lot, right? We all have, you know, we all have things that we want to do over the course of the year, and I'm very, you know, particular about who I trust with my business to make sure that, you know, they're not holding you back.

They're actually helping me get to that spot.  Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I hear what you're saying because we would do the same thing in PPC. But you see these businesses that are hiring like their marketing manager to like do all this stuff and, and they're paying 60, 000 a year and it's like, well, for 60, 000 a year, could you find somebody who can do those things?

Yes. But they have to work in a company that has processes for those things. They're not going to be your first invent your processes. If you need somebody who's going to be top of your organization from, from a digital marketing level, like you're, you're probably paying a lot of money. You know, same, same deal for you.

So what's your, out of curiosity, David, these days, what's your success rate on these  success rate on what was it,  hiring TCs? Like you hire one, what's the chance that they did, or this was bad. I was pretty good. We're pretty good at, at this, at this point, we, you know, we personality Testament, we really only hire people from some, either real estate or some of the, you know, ancillary business around it, like collections or, you know, something like that.

Cause we want, when I bring somebody onto our team, we want to make sure they're, they're making the team better. So ours is pretty good. We, 10 out of 10, we might lose two, you know, some of them just can't handle the workload. And then some people just, they're like, Oh, this, it's just. Mainly it's the workload, right?

Because our, all of our TCs are handling anywhere from like the low end 60 to 80 files at a time. So we're, you know, we're pretty demanding of them. And if you're not, if you're not as organized as, as we require, then you just, you'll just fall behind far too quick, you know,  That, that totally makes sense.

I'm curious. So, so your stress rate at the beginning sounded like very, very bad. 30 percent from 30 percent for 80 percent success rate. You say there's a few things like you've hinted towards like people who are built for this, people who are detail oriented results based on personality assessments.

Like what,  like, let's get down to like the details of it. Like, what are the big things that you look forward to say? Like, this is person's going to be a great teacher.  Um, yeah, so for us, we hire a lot of people, a lot of insurance companies, like major insurance companies. Blue Cross Blue Shield, UNUM.  Here in Chattanooga.

So we love people that have done a lot of data processing and data entry. Right? Cause it means they're, they're good with sitting at the computer all day and doing, you know. Data entry, right? They're detail oriented. So they take good notes. Good with being on the phone. So we, we like those people, but they, they tend to need a little more training.

Like, we have to start with some basics of real estate with them. So that'll take a little bit longer. But, you know, once we get them up to speed and certified, you know, they'll, they'll last for a long time. You know, even with. Again, like hiring an ex realtor, you know, typically that's a failed realtor. So you've got somebody who, you know, may know something about real estate, but they failed in what they were doing.

So, you know, can we convert that person over and do they understand? Do they, you know, do they want to work the hours? Do they want to do all those things? So, yeah, man, it's a lot about personality type, you know, for me, Like I love to be surrounded by people like high energy, you know, talky people, you know, that are kind of fun to be around.

And that's not honestly, typically your transaction coordinators, you know, when we switched our business and we, we, before we shut our wholesale business off, I had a wholesale sales call centers, like, you know, Wolf of Wall Street in here, right? It was so loud and boisterous. And then TCs, I would come out of my office and it was like, just quiet because everybody's just.

Just pecking away and, you know, and working through problems. So, yeah, that's the biggest thing I would, I would say is personality. We want to make sure, you know, most investors were like, if you take a disc test, we're like DNI, you know, you want kind of more in that bottom left quadrant, kind of that accountant thinker brain, you know, process driven type person instead of personality.

Like personality is not what we. Sadly, what we look for in, in coordinators, all those some of them are wildly funny, you know, we're, we just, we just want people that, that like to put their nose down and grind.  Okay. Okay. That, that makes sense. So really consistent a little bit more, a little bit more reserved. 

Yeah. And  I'm just picturing like, yeah,  the personality assessment framework that we use is predictive index. Yeah. So then you're at least a little familiar with that. I'm picturing like, like a low B low.  So that that's like more reserved high C, so like really high consistency and then probably really high D, which would be precision, which I know it's similar to what you would have with fulfillment. 

Yeah. Yeah. They're cool with working alone. You know, I mean, we do have teams and, you know, we have a great culture and everything, but they're, they're, they're good with just sitting there all day and just kind of plugging away at stuff.  Yeah, which if you're listening to this and you're thinking that sounds absolutely horrible, it's probably because you're not that person, but I can tell you, I've hired some of those people and they love it.

And it does not make sense to me why, but that's 1 of the beauties of  leadership is there's, there's always somebody who likes it, no matter what it is.  Yeah, and there's, and there's a perfect spot for them, right? You know, here's what I explain to our team. We bring them in, I say, listen, you know, our clients, they're typically wholesalers.

They're very hustler driven mind, you know, hustler mindset. They are the, let's jump out of the plane and build a parachute on the way down. Right. That's us, right? That's the way as business owners were, were built and that like just appalls them. Right. You know, so they don't, they don't understand that. I say, however, you know, the reason that they need us and that they hire us is because We're that flip side of the coin, right?

We are the detail oriented. We will keep them out of trouble as best we can. Sometimes, you know, we'll make sure that their deals are organized and that they're, they're kind of working through a very systematic process and getting, getting to the, to the closing table. So, you know, if, when I had a dispo team and acquisitions team, I came out, I'm like, Hey, I need someone to do an Excel spreadsheet with a pivot table.

They'd look at me and go like. I don't even know what you're talking about, dude. I came out here right now. They'd be like three of them. Like, Oh yeah, I got you, man. I got, I got that. How, how quick can I do it for you? They just, it's just a different personality type. And you know, also, you know, I train my team.

I'm like, Hey, don't get frustrated with these clients because they are hard to get ahold of sometimes. This is true. They are right. And this is why, this is why they need us. And we're the, we're the perfect pairing for them.  Yeah, I'm curious to hear from you. So let's talk about the value that that let me tell you how I see TC.

But what you're telling me says, and maybe I need to see it a little bit different. So, so I want you to like, prove me wrong. I'm just going to do that. Right. So, so we picture like transaction, like a lot of people would call TC like a non Income generating activity. Yeah,  100%.  I agree. It's just, it's just got to  be, but we realize we  realize the income, but yeah, we don't, I don't sign your contract for you.

I don't sell your deal for you. We just get it closed.  Yeah, which, which makes sense.  That considered like all non income generating activities  usually hold some value of like income goes away if you don't do those things. Right. So, so still, despite being like that, like, you know, if you don't have TC, we're not going to close deals.

And some people that think that you see really, it's just cause it's like,  like a third of it's getting done by their acquisitions manager and a third of it's getting done by dispositions and a third of it's getting done by them. Which is probably not ideal, but yeah, help me understand like  the real tangible value ever with you or, you know, on their own people getting TC like, or maybe a good way to, to, to figure this out would be like  specific examples.

Like, do you have stories of deals? Yeah, so 1st off, when you, you know, let's, let's talk about, you said, you know, maybe your dispo person, your acquisitions person doing it, you know, here, here's the example that I'll give you if you owned the Chicago bulls in their heyday. And Michael Jordan is on your team.

You have hired Michael Jordan to do what? To be down there, being a shooter, blocking. I'm not the basketball guy, but, you know, picking and, and, you know, hitting three free throws, right? Whatever it is. You hired those people to do a very, very, very specific job. And they have a personality type, right?

Acquisitions just go a little bit different, right? Acquisitions may be a little more empathy, just go a little more. They like to, or they don't mind arguing with, with buyers. The last thing I want to do is take Michael Jordan and go, Hey, man. Hey, Michael.  No game on Tuesday. Would you mind going up to accounting and cutting some checks? 

Right. That's not the best use of what you hired that person to do. If you're doing Dispo, and that's where most of the time we see this happening. We see, you know, people like, yeah, my Dispo guy doing, doing transactions. I'm like, oh, okay, great. How's that? How's that working? Well, okay. Because here's the thing, my guy, Joe, let's say Joe's my Dispo guy.

And he sells, he assigns a contract or sells a contract. And then he has to stop everything that he's doing. Right. And especially if you're working nationwide, right now, he's in West Virginia, and he's like, oh, now I need to find a title company in West Virginia. He's literally going to Google it and just randomly pick somebody. 

Right. Or he's going to spend a bunch of time on Facebook, going into a Facebook group and asking. Those banana heads, like who they should use. And it's always the people who have no experience that are giving you all of the answers in those groups. And so now you're taking him away. So now Joe's got to call the title company and says, Hey, I've got this, you know, this wholesale deal or the sub to assignment or this novation deal.

And you're going to trust Joe to explain to the title company, what it is you're doing,  and I'm going to tell you how that goes, because we take these clients on all the time, or like, I can't get anybody to tell me a novation is not a scam. Well, because you're explaining it like in the worst possible way.

And then now. Joe's going to have to call, get all the paperwork. Oh, the title company is going to call him back. Hey, I need, I need a death certificate. I need to know who this person is. You're just pulling your guy off the, off the court. So then, you know, why are you not selling? Why is he not selling more deals?

Well, because he's not doing the thing you hired him to do. Right. So at the end of the week, you're going to go, Hey, Joe, you're supposed to sell three deals this week. And you only sold one. Oh, well, you know, Brandon, I was on the phone with the title company and, you know, I had to, I had to go call the seller back and start collecting documents and just doing all these things.

And then I had to figure out what a monumental title was. And  like,  that doesn't make any sense. It's better for you, the business owner to do it  than to have, you know, your acquisitions or dispositions, people doing it. And that was one thing, you know, when I ran a big nationwide wholesale company, sorry, the, you know, the one thing that is everybody in my company was Specialists, they were the best at what they did.

And you know, my job as the owner is to kind of block and tackle for those guys. Right. Get all the obstacles out of their way so that they can perform to their, you know, to the highest level. Cause I want them to perform. I want them to make a lot of money. Cause I tell them, Hey man, if you're making money, I'm making money.

So, you know, that's a, that's kind of a thing about, you know, scaling up.  Yeah. So what you say is actually pretty, at least part of that question.  Yeah, if I picture, like, what's the difference between good transaction coordination and bad transaction coordination, I picture The deal we would have lost that we don't lose.

But what I don't picture is that now my dispositions manager now has more time and more freedom, and then maybe they sell the deal for 5, 000 more, a deal that would have been sold anyways,  that's the value, right?  And then beyond that, then once that, that deal hits a snag, which likely it's going to do, because what do we do as investors, we go out and look You know, we look for problems.

So when, you know, when the title company comes back and goes, Hey, Joe, we can't close this deal. And Joe's like, Oh shit, that sucks.  Instead of, you know, knowing, Hey, here's, here's what I should ask. And kind of here's, here's where this, where this relates back to,  you know, when I was, when I was wholesaling. 

So, uh, you know, I started wholesaling full time, full time in 2009. So I'm here in Chattanooga and I go, I go to my title company and I'm bam. I dropped, dropped the contract on the attorney's desk. And dude, it was like. It felt like one to two out of three times. He's like, Oh, David, we can't close this one.

I'm like, why? Cause there's a dead person. You need to have them be probated. Oh, we can't close this one. It was a bought at a tax sale. Oh, we can't close. It was all these reasons why we couldn't close things. And eventually I got to call this guy. His name was Jeremy. I called him Dr. No, cause he was like my own personal bond villain.

Like every time I went in there, it was. You know, it felt like every time I couldn't close it. So, you know, back then it's like 10, 000, 12, 000, 8, 000. Right. I was just like tearing up these contracts until this one time. I remember I'd come from this older woman's house, you know, cause I was like belly to belly, like I actually visited houses back then and, you know, drop my contract on his desk and it's the same nonsense Davey.

And I'm like, dude, I can't go back to this lady and tell her we're not closing this. I just came from her living room. I told her we're going to get this closed. I was a little louder than that. And. Cussing a little bit because I was pissed and I'm like, dude, I like to stare at him for a minute. And he's just looking at me.

I'm like,  man, there's got to be something we can do. What would you do to close this? And he looks at me kind of funny and he's like,  well, man, I guess,  you know, if you get a death certificate and an obituary and these couple of things and get everybody to sign and this, these other two things, I guess I could get it done. 

And part of me is like, yeah, this is great. But the back of my brain's going, what about all these contracts that I've been thrown away for a year? Right. So this is where I talk about, you know, understanding the process and understanding one, how to ask better questions, because this was an investor friendly title company.

This was the most investor friendly title company in my entire city. Right. So that's just not the answer. Just go find an investor friendly title company. Cause one, our stuff is a real pain in the butt and the title companies don't really love working through our problems because.  We're, you know, it's a problem.

Typically, wholesalers are unresponsive. Takes them forever to get information. You know, we demand a lot of stuff from them. So, you know, with a coordinator, certainly Joe, your dispo guy, is not going to understand how to do that. Right? He's not, he's just going to be like, dejected, damn, another deal didn't close.

You know, I hate this job, you know, but you know, when you can outsource that to a TC one, I can keep Joe on point. I can keep him on the phone. I can keep him selling deals. I can hand this off to, to our TC, which I did. Heather was actually sitting right in this office where we're shooting now. And you know, she was just in here just banging away all day, getting these deals closed when she hit a wall, figuring out, you know, how we overcome that. 

And then all of a sudden, you know, more deals start closing.  You know, it starts closing like clockwork, so we're having a higher close rate. My deal, my deal, like you said, my assignment fees are going up because now my team, I can go out there and focus on sales and marketing with them. Right. So, you know, what it does, it just takes the pressure off, puts it where it should be.

And, you know, allowed, allowed my display team at the time to really flourish.  One of the things we had kind of, we had kind of talked about earlier, there are lots of  things that you can do kind of preemptively to, you know, to save these deals, right? Some of the things that we would do in our wholesale company, some of the things that we do, you know, on the side, but 1, you know, let's start with acquisitions, right?

Asking good questions, you know, understanding what the, what the sellers, you know, needs are. Asking good questions on the condition of the property, right? That's honestly the thing where we see the most deals die is, you know, the, our client, the wholesaler, it doesn't sell their deal, right? So if you don't sell your deal, all the trans, the greatest transaction work in the, in the world is not gonna, it's not going to get your deal closed.

So, you know, we're just here to prevent problems, but, you know, and when I say asking good questions, you know, I, a lot of times acquisitions people, they're so excited to just get someone who will sign a contract, you know, they don't say, you know, well, tell me about that kitchen, you know, Oh, the kitchen's fine.

Okay, so they don't budget for a kitchen remodel, but if they'd ask the better questions, like, Oh, yeah, it's old plywood cabinets and I've got a laminate countertop with that metal banding that goes around the side, you know, a la circa 1950, well, then, you know, you should have budgeted 20, 000 in there, maybe for a new kitchen.

So you're probably 20, 000 high. So that's why when you send it out to your buyers, it's not getting sold. Right? So asking good questions. Here's what's next. Right. Here's the next step. This that's that phrase you should be using every place in your business. Hey, Mr. Smith. Congratulations. We're under contract now.

Here's the next step. Somebody from our transactions team is going to reach out to you and start to collect some information, right? Here's the next step, Mr. Buyer. I'm going to send you a contract and also a link to pay your E. M. D. Right. So, you know, informing people of what the process is. And that's, you know, I was guilty of that too in the very beginning when I was a solo operator.

You know, you're trying to wear, you know, a thousand different hats, and it's very difficult to do everything and do it well. And, you know, again, once I figured out that I could outsource some of these things, or, you know, bring in somebody to help me. You know, that, that started to ease it up. And now, now I could be, you know, be a specialist of the things that really helped me.

So, you know, those are some basic things on acquisitions, you know, dispo same thing, you know, your dispositions team needs to understand the situation with the property, meaning, you know, if acquisitions knows that there was, You know, five dead people in the chain of title, then we need to probably put 90 or 120 days on this contract and give us time to close time to fix all those things.

But if you don't tell your dispo guy and they get a buyer on the first day and that buyer's like, I want to close in five days. And you're like, and he signs that contract or you sign that contract. But yet now we have. We have, you know, 120 days of title clearing and then, you know, a buyer who's expecting to close in five days, like those two things don't go together.

So, you know, good communication between, you know, between your different departments or whoever, whoever's doing that for you, you know, on the transaction side. You know, it's just asking good questions here. We have like a, a five page seller. We call it a seller doc where, you know, Brandon, as soon as you send your contract over to me, it's going to come over.

We're going to assign it to a title company and a coordinator. And maybe Claudia, Claudia is going to call it. Mrs. Smith. Hey, Mrs. Smith. I'm working with Brandon on your deal over here at one, two, three main street. Hey, Mrs. Smith. I'm going to be your contact from here all the way to closing. Cause I want you to get out, right?

Go, go sell your next deal or sell that deal. Go get your next deal, whatever you want to do. Mrs. Smith. I need to ask you some questions so that I can get you. Page just as quickly as possible, right? Because we always want to be dangling that carrot and then, you know, then we're in there. You know, just asking four pages worth of questions, you know, what's your forwarding address?

What's your social security number? You know, who else is on title? Who's on the deed? Are there any dead people? Are you in bankruptcy? Are you in foreclosure? Do you have tenants? If so, can we collect the lease? What's the security deposit? What's the, what's the rental amount? You know, is there an HOA?

What's their contact? You know, you know, just all of these questions that, uh, A really just a starting point. They're not the answer to the test. They're just this is where we should start looking for problems because that's what we do is transaction coordinators is. I need to identify all the problems, right?

And this is what makes us different from just a title company is if you just send this contract to the title company, they're going to send you back all the problems. And now you have to fix it. Like, somebody's got to fix it. Like, the title company is not going to do these things for you. And  everybody who's done enough deals really, really understands that.

But the thing that most people tell me, Brandon, after they've been with us for. Two or three months as, Oh my God,  I didn't realize how much time this was taking, right? I didn't realize how much, you know, I'm getting these questions one at a time from the title company. It's just stopping what I'm doing.

And then the other thing is I didn't realize that somebody else could do this for me. I just thought that I had to do it.  No, that totally makes sense. That's awesome.  All right. Thank you so much for your time and sharing so much of your wisdom and dealing with  all the questions, all the curiosities, David, you're awesome.

Thank you everybody.