The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever!

Jay Conner - Masterclass on Flipping Profits and Harnessing Private Money in Real Estate - Fan Fav

• Dwan Bent-Twyford • Season 4 • Episode 352

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Unlock the secrets of real estate success with Jay Connery, an investment virtuoso from eastern North Carolina, as he recounts his entrancing ascent from single-family home ventures to racking up an outstanding $67,000 average profit per house flip. Alongside his partner in both life and business, Carol Joy, Jay doesn't just crunch numbers—he instills in listeners the mindset necessary to enter the millionaire's echelon. Their coaching business, a beacon of knowledge, guides budding investors to navigate the waters of private funding, circumventing traditional banks. Plus, Jay's benevolent offer to share his book "Where to Get the Money Now" promises a wealth of resources for those ready to take the plunge into property investments.

This episode isn't just a treasure chest of financial strategies—it's a blueprint for transforming lives. Learn how deploying bird dogs can not only yield lucrative off-market property leads but also provide a supplemental income for retirees or single parents. Our candid dialogue traverses the pivotal role of private money in various facets of the real estate world, from simplifying short sales to streamlining rehabs, all rounded off with a behind-the-scenes peek at the raw, unedited moments of podcasting. Stay tuned as Jay and I seamlessly pivot through the technical hiccups, reinforcing the narrative of relentless ambition and the unquenchable thirst for success in the real estate game.

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Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Hey everybody, welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm so excited today to bring you another episode inside the minds of today's millionaires. So, as you all know, when I interview all these great people, we ask us a whole lot of questions, but I still want to try to find out what's happening in that crazy mind that they have. I have a super crazy mind for you today. I have a super crazy mind for you today. I have my buddy, Jay Conner, with us today, and so we're going to get inside and see what's happening. And, as you all know, the point of this session is not to ask all the standard questions that everybody asks, but to actually find out why someone like Jay can go from here to here and what's in his mind that helps him do that, and how you can also maybe take some of those tips and make them actionable tips for yourself, and you can do the same thing too. So we're more interested in what's in his head than what he's doing. So, jay, welcome to the show today.

Jay Conner:

Well, hello there, Dwan. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I don't know You'll feel. Say that at the end of the interview. I asked a lot of crazy questions.

Jay Conner:

Well, I like crazy questions from my crazy brain.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh, that's right. That's right, that's right. You and I are a good fit for that. But I do like to start off. I like you to tell everybody where you, who you are and where you're at just where you're at today and then we all backtrack and find out how you got here. So tell us who you are, kind of, where you're at, what you do and give us how to get a hold of you right off the bat, and we're going to find out the path that you took.

Jay Conner:

Awesome. So I live here in eastern North Carolina. I was born and raised here in eastern North Carolina and we're in a little teeny tiny town. My wife, Carol Joy, is from Texas. In fact, we just got back last night from Texas visiting with her family. She's got a really big family out in Texas, like everything's big in Texas. And so, anyway, way back in 2003 is when we started, when Carol Joy and I started investing in single family houses, and so today so I won't give you the backstory now, but today we have two businesses. We are flippers, like those HGTV people, so we buy them, fix them up and we flip them. We hold some as well on rent to own, but by and large, we buy them, fix them up and flip them. Our average profits right now are $67,000 per deal, per transaction, and that's with a median price point of only $225,000. Now we're in a small market. Our market is only 40,000 people, only 40,000 people that we are marketing to to buy their houses, and we only do two to three deals a month. But multiply two or three times $67,000 per month and those numbers work out okay. So that's our buying the seven house business and then our other business.

Jay Conner:

In 2011,. We started coaching and training other real estate investors on how to get funding for their deals without relying on banks, mortgage companies, any kind of traditional lenders. And so we do the houses. We do single family houses. Now I've done commercial deals as well. We developed a shopping center from the ground up and that's free and clear today, printing money every month, but that's not our main wheelhouse as far as what we spend our time in. So I'm known as the Private Money Authority because I use a lot of private money. We've got today 46 individuals private lenders that fund our deals, and I also coach and train other real estate investors on how to get all the money in the world they would ever need to never miss out on a deal.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Right, and that is I love all of your whole. It tells how to get a hold of you.

Jay Conner:

Oh yeah, so how do you get a hold of?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

me, how do we even give us the name of your podcast?

Jay Conner:

Sure, so the name of my podcast is Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner and I'm an ER, by the way C-O-N-N-E-R. Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner, and so that's the podcast. How to Get a Hold of Me and Just to Take Advantage of my Free Gift, which is when to Get the Money Now. My book, where to Get the Money Now book Now. You can spend 20 bucks on Amazon and get it, but you get it for me for free. Now. Dwana will be totally transparent. I am going to ask him to spend a couple of bucks to cover postage and shipping, right, I think? But anyway, the website to get my book when to Get the Money Now. In fact, this was just released and first day made an Amazon bestseller how and where to get money for your real estate deals without relying on traditional or hard money lenders. So this has got nothing to do with hard money. The website to get the free book is wwwjayconnercom. F-r-e-e-b-o-o-k. Jayconnercom Forward slash free book.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

All right, I love it. I love it. So, and the thing I'm really excited about having you on today is I find you know I've been teaching real estate for a million years and one of the things that people still started to get stuff on is where to get the money. So I'm excited to talk about the, the private money, and also, you know who doesn't want to talk about making $67,000 on every single deal that you do. That's awesome. And so we like to start off having drinks with Dwan and we are having Look, I love your cup. I just have my Florida cup here. I'm having tea.

Jay Conner:

This is my superhero cup and, of course, dwan is here as one of my superheroes. So my superhero cup, and inside I love hot.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Jasmine green tea. Well cheers you, honey. Thank you for being on my show today.

Jay Conner:

Cheers to you. It's like it nourishes my soul.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I know I feel that way too. All y'all have your cheers with us. Hmm, I'm tea. It's makes me happy and we just take a deep breath and be sure to just shake off all the things we have going on so that everybody can set your mind and open your mind to learning and listening and picking up some really great tips from Mr J Connor with an ER. I Like that. That's funny, so, um, so I actually do want to talk about about your deals there for a second. So you guys are averaging $67,000 a deal and I know you are in a real small market. So could you tell people Like, maybe two tips Someone could do if they live in a small market? Because you know, I know you hear the same thing. You know I love such a small market. I don't think I could be an investor. It won't work. My markets too small. I hear that. I know you have to hear that all the time.

Jay Conner:

Exactly.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I think you're really valid point for people because they don't see the math, but you clearly do. So how do you see the math?

Jay Conner:

Sure. So, first of all, I do not rely on just one source of leads. Right.

Jay Conner:

Uh-huh so in a small market, like you know, I've got my favorite ways to find motivated sellers and, of course, in today's market I don't care if you're in a small market or a big market you can't be relying on the multiple listing service because there's no inventory. So you know, 90 plus percent of all of our deals are coming from what we call off market houses. These are houses that are not in multiple listing service. So my favorite ways in this small market to get consistent lead flow and of course, there we go, dwan. If we don't have consistent lead flow Coming in every day, we don't have a business.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, that that is the thing. It's a matter Consistency people. I feel like people still kind of have the mindset Well, I found a deal, so may work this deal, and then when it's done, I'm gonna look for another one. Instead of I need to look as part of my everyday life. I'm looking for leads and lead sources, because you can't just do that's how you end up failing. I think just doing one and sitting back for a minute getting that check and going like woo. Then you do one one and the next thing you know you're doing like two deals a year and you just sort of kept your leads going. You could have done 15 or 20 deals in a year.

Jay Conner:

Exactly so. My top favorite ways in a small market at least in my small market to get consistent D flow are the following. Okay, I'm going to all these down too so.

Jay Conner:

Sure Number one is vacant houses or properties that appear to be vacant. Vacant houses are some of the best leads and the most profitable leads. When it comes to vacant houses, what I've learned, juan, just like you, over the years the harder it is to find the seller or owner of that property, the more profitable and the more likely it is that you're going to do business with the owner of that property.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I agree.

Jay Conner:

So vacant houses. So how do I get these vacant houses? Well, I do not recommend relying on a list from a broker. Can you rent or buy a list from a broker and it says vacant houses? Yes, you can, and, of course, and I don't recommend it but what they're doing is they're pulling a list from the United States Postal Service of what they call undeliverable mail, right, so it's like the Post Office has a list of vacant houses, but are they really vacant? Well, the best way to know is to be actually having eyes, looking at these properties and driving around. So how do I get consistent vacant house deal flow coming in From my loyal bird dogs?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Wow, nice Bird dogs.

Jay Conner:

I mean this is nothing new. I mean it's like my first real estate seminar I went to. Yeah, they taught me. You know, one trainer called it the ant farm, the ant farm. I love that. You have ants that are farming your area all the time.

Jay Conner:

Most people call them bird dogs, so we don't leave it to our bird dogs own devices. And you know, oh, they see, they see a vacant house and they send it in. So we have bird dogs that have time, have schedules to drive our target area and they hit. They hit every street, every street in our 40,000 people area every month. And here's why because a property that's not vacant today could be vacant next week. Yeah, they can in three weeks and particularly in the spring, through the fall, when the grass is growing right, it's going to be pretty quick maybe to identify a potential vacant property.

Jay Conner:

Now these same bird dogs also send us pictures of for sale by owner signs like FISBO signs in the, in the, in the front of the yards. But we all know most of those FISBO signs in today's market is wanting full retail or retail, and the only reason they got the sign on the yard is because they're trying to save a real trophy, which in today's market they might can. So his both signs are secondary, but truly, what appears to be a vacant house is like gold you were saying.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So let's just park on that just for a second Now. I like the fact that you have people physically driving, because you know, we know people all the time. They, they, they get served foreclosure papers and a lot of people mistakenly think that means that they've already lost their house, so they'll just move out over the weekend, and they don't understand that the bank is just serving them. Notice that the foreclosure process has started. And so a lot of people say they don't have the house to bake and you can't find the people looking for vacant deals at the dead end. And I'm with you. I don't think so.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I have talked to many, many, many homeowners that are like oh, the bank sent me papers and said that you know I was going, my light just went out right there. Hang on a second, you're going to have the full light on my face. And I've had a lot of people that were like, oh, I got the notification, you know that I was in foreclosure, and they thought that meant their house was gone. Yeah, they have months to go and they've just yeah, they do. I call it a midnight move. You know, when they take off, like a Sunday night or a Friday night midnight. They just move all their stuff out and they're gone. So you pay someone to drive the areas and look for the vacant houses. I think that's a really good tip, because I don't think most people do that. They mail postcards and see what comes back.

Jay Conner:

No, I mean. So they're driving, they're sending us the leads in. So how do we get the leads? So they're actually taking a picture of the house.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah.

Jay Conner:

They're sending us the physical address. Now, what do we do next? How do we get up with these people to actually find out if you know the house is vacant and they want to sell? So the first thing we do is we pull the public record tax information and the first thing we look to see is well, are the tax bills going being mailed to that same property, or are the tax bill being mailed to a different address? Right, it really doesn't matter. I mean, you can have a hot, hot lead and the tax bills are being mailed to that property and they've, you know, left town or otherwise. If it's being mailed to another property address, that's already giving me a motivational signal that it's not only a vacant house but it's also an absentee owner, right, that lives elsewhere. So now I've got two layers already of possible motivation. Let me go back for a moment, duane, to how we compensate these people.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, yeah. And I also want to add, don't forget, I want to also add for someone that does live, like, in a giant area, like I'm in West Palm Beach at my Florida house right now Palm Beach County is giant. How does someone that lives in a giant area Do they also have someone driving Like I'd like to see how that translates to a bigger area, but I really love the fact that you have someone just literally out there using their eyeballs. People just don't. People don't want to do that anymore. They just want to email and post hard and try to find people on, you know, Facebook, and people don't want to like be in the field, and I really feel like that's where the action is at.

Jay Conner:

Well, my lens, I mean that's for us for so much. If you're experienced Dwan is over the years is actually being in the field and talking to people.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's what I just feel like that people that don't do that or take advantage of that aspect miss a lot. Yeah, because plus it's fun to get out.

Jay Conner:

Okay, let's go ahead, I pay them $10. Now that sounds like a lot of money, but it's not $10 a lead. So $10 for a picture, for an address and my lands. All I need is 15 of them on average to buy a house. 15 on average, Awesome 15 vacant houses. Who in the world would invest $150? Exactly To make a possible?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

picture. They send it to you. You give them 10 bucks for that photo.

Jay Conner:

Yep, and they find it In addition, and we settle up once a week, so we pay them once a week and that's no money for them. I mean that pays for their gas, right? Where they're looking to make the money is on the houses that we buy. So I pay a straight. I don't care it's a $50,000 house or a $200,000 house. I pay a straight $1,000 for every house that I buy to the bird dog. So you know, with the number of volume that I'm doing, I mean my bird dogs are not gonna make a living off of the bird dog fees that I pay them. They all have. I mean, they all have their own income. But that's some nice bonus money, right.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

It's a lot and you know, for someone maybe that's retired and bored or at home and they just they wanna get out and do something. Gosh, what a great thing for somebody.

Jay Conner:

Absolutely. Now I will tell you, I learned the hard way. Oops, my battery's running low.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's all right.

Jay Conner:

I gotta plug my laptop back in. That's all right, you know it's funny.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I did that last week. I was recording along. I started hearing this sound and I was like oh, that's my battery.

Jay Conner:

Yeah, actually I had plugged in. Let me see if that did.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's all right. This is why we love to do live. You know, we know what's gonna happen.

Jay Conner:

Oh, let's see here, or a lot of real estate podcasts ever. So for some strange reason, my plug is not wanting to work, so I apologize.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

No, it's not a worry at all. So I'm just gonna keep talking about how awesome your deal is there. And you know, when I was in the business of using bird dogs on the regular, I found out that it was really something that a lot of retired people like to do. You know it's extra money. Get some out of the house. It's a fun thing for them to do. You know single moms you know I get now putting their kids in the car with them and go bird dog queue for a couple of hours. So I love the fact that you give them a thousand bucks every deal and they get $10 for every lead. I mean shoot.

Jay Conner:

Yeah, and, as I say, and I'm just gonna talk while I'm buying another plug for this laptop, all right, but you know another thing that, like I said, I learned the hard way to not advertise for these bird dog people.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yes.

Jay Conner:

On the internet.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh my gosh, everybody on their brother will reach out to you, right? Oh, it's crazy so you can field those calls.

Jay Conner:

Yeah, all of our bird dogs.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

See, folks, this is why fun is live, because you never know what's gonna happen. Jay just got bounced out, so will he come back in If he doesn't? This will be one of my shorter interviews, but I'm still gonna make it count because I don't do re-dos, so this will just be fun. But Jay is a really great guy. I have known him for gosh. I don't even know, I don't even know what he's doing Gosh, I don't even know. 20 years, maybe, even maybe even a little bit longer than that. Really, it was super, super, super long time and he's amazing. But what I really love is that he teaches you how to raise private money.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And for a lot of investors that are looking to do the houses and do the rehabs and do things like that, they don't know where to get the money. Or they find a house like maybe you get a short sale and you get that short sale done and you need to close on it, because you need to sell it and you need some private money to be able to close that deal. So maybe you need private money to close that deal. And that is where a person like Jay is. He's gonna be calling me on my phone here and I'm gonna say listen, we're gonna keep recording dude. Ah, I just let him just come on back in here. So that is another great thing about the private money it helps you with your short sales. Definitely, if you want to be a rehabber, you want to close on a house and rehab it. Private money is a good thing. Sometimes I've even used private money to close on some of my rentals. I close on the rental and I use the private money until I can get the property refinanced. There are a lot of benefits of working with someone on private money.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

He is the private money authority. I mean, the whole time I've known him I think he said 2011 is when they started that that I remember, even before this 11, yeah, I remember, even before, that he was always, always being able to raise private money. Just all the time, it's never, never turned around. I had some way to get a hold of private money, and so I'm happy that he has not become the private money authority. So, and Jay's a good guy, I just love his, I love his southern accent, I love his mild manner and I don't even know if he's going to come back on right now. Hold on, is he coming back on? Hmm, oh, hang on, we're still recording. All right, where's my man? He's not coming back on just yet, all right. So I do love the off-market leads bacon houses.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I know that most people email postcards to bacon houses. Almost every investor I've ever met said oh yeah, I've got postcards, and if the person put in a change of address then the postcard will get forwarded. But if they did not put in a change of address, the postcard does not get forwarded and you can get it back. So if you do make the decision at some point that you're going to mail postcards, always make sure you have the homeowner's name and then underneath that have the words or current resident. So if you have a postcard coming to me and it's like address to Juan Bent Twyford and I don't live there anymore, you're going to get the postcard back. But if you're really trying to reach me or you're like, hey, I just really want to reach anybody because I'm trying to do deals, then what you can do is put like Juan Bent Twyford or current resident, and by putting or current resident, then the postcard will stay at the house, because I have had hundreds, hundreds of deals, hundreds of deals where I send a postcard out with the person's name or current resident, and the person that called me was like, hey, that person's right here, but I got your postcard. I need help. I'm like, hey, no worries, let's see what we can get, what we can do. So I like the fact that when I do do and we call that farming I was saying he was talking about ant farm we call that farming.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So when I'm doing farming I buy a zip code and I, specifically when you're buying a zip code, you got to remember, you got to make sure, if you're going to buy mailing lists, that you get what it is you're looking for, like just single family homes. Because you just say, hey, give me every address and this zip code, you'll get vacant land. You'll get every address. Like you have a strip mall, you'll get everything. So you have to ask specifically for what you're looking for. For us it's usually single family homes. That's how you might buy a zip code and ask for single family homes only and then mail to those people and then, if you buy, like a list of 5,000 people, then one of the months you mail 1,000 postcards to the person or current resident, and then the next month same thing, the next thousand, and you just keep doing it that way.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And then what happens is people will get your postcard and a lot of people will hang on to it. They'll hang on to it and they'll be like, hey, you know, I got this postcard and my postcard says you know, unwind property question mark going through foreclosure, question mark, job transfer, question mark, divorce question mark. You do inherit a property that you don't know what to do with, question mark. So my postcards have like a word and a question mark and it says that we offer solutions for your property problems. We offer solutions for your property problems. So many people, especially over the years, I met so many people like, hey, my husband and I weren't gonna learn that good, and we were like, possibly gonna go through a divorce. And I got your postcard and I hung on to it and they kept it because or the men too, even the men too, have kept it, because it's got all kinds of different options, not just, hey, we buy houses, cash and so. So I love that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So you know what I'm gonna do here. Jay's not back on here. I'm gonna try to call him and get him back and finish recording and then I'm gonna have my podcast team put these two calls together. I could do it over from scratch, but you know, honestly, have to punish just doing like what we're doing right now and letting things happen. This is what the real world is. If we were on a live call right now, this is exactly what would be happening. So I am not you all know I am not a fan of editing and getting rid of every um and on, because this is not real. This is not real and we like to keep it real over here.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I'm going to go ahead and try to jump back over and find Jay. I keep seeing my screen flash and waiting for him to come back in, but it's been a minute, so let me all right, I'm gonna bounce over and try to find him, I'm gonna come back and we're gonna splice these two together and if it's a really a super bad train wreck, then I'll just record him from the beginning. But he gave us, like, so many good ideas. I wrote down so many great notes already. I don't want to lose the vibe that we have going on. Of course, he could be a little bit frazzled right now because this just happened. So I'm really good at rolling with the punches. I don't care, I just keep going. All right, guys, I'm gonna bounce out for a second. Let's see what happens here.