The Property Perspective
From hidden gems to billion-dollar deals, this is The Property Perspective - where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss, and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate.
The Property Perspective
David Olds on Overcoming Fear and Mastering Wholesaling
Real estate veteran David Olds joins us to share his remarkable journey from retail management to becoming a prominent figure in the real estate and title industry with Easy REI Closings. David's story is one of transformation, as he navigates the complexities of the real estate landscape, driven by his unique background in criminal justice and retail management. Our conversation touches on the importance of outsourcing, structure, and organization, emphasizing how treating wholesaling as a structured business can lead to success. With over two decades of experience, David offers invaluable insights into adapting strategies and streamlining operations for growth.
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00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
Real estate investors. Are you drowning in paperwork instead of closing deals? Preston Zeller and David Olds reveal the number one mistake keeping you stuck and how to scale from two to three deals a month to six to seven without the headache. From hidden gems to billion dollar deals. This is the Property Perspective, where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value, others miss and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate. Now here are your hosts.
00:27 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So I know you through. I think we met at an InvestorFuel event. Investorfuel, yeah, and I had an impromptu speaking slot there.
00:36 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah.
00:36 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I know you were exhibiting there, but I know we're in family mastermind together.
00:40 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.
00:41 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So and you started Easy REI Closings. How long ago now.
00:46 - David Olds (Guest)
Boy. I guess it's been about three and a half, maybe four years ago, from when we kind of first had that idea of you know, the crazy idea of let's help investors across the country do their transactions and closings. And some of my very best friends said that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of, because it's the worst part of our business. It's an unsexy business, it's not sexy at all, but it is where you get paid.
01:05 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, well, and it's interesting how many businesses there are like that. It's actually like I see more and more of that Like go buy a CPA firm, go buy an ATM route, go buy some of this stuff. That's like it's necessary to make the world go round. It's just not cutting it, yeah.
01:25 - David Olds (Guest)
And our industry has changed so much. You know I've been doing this for 22 years, which is a ridiculous amount of time, but you know where we're at today. Right, I don't have to have an in-house marketing person to just pull lists and everything all day. Right, to go buy data and, you know, subscribe to 14 different services. Right, I have batch um that you know. You can have an outsourced um cfo david. You know dav, david Richter's company, simple CFO you can outsource to us. So the industry has changed in that I don't have to be this big, massive company but I can still have access to the absolute best resources on the planet to help grow my business.
01:57 - Preston Zeller (Host)
We'll get into easy REI closings. So you said you've been in this industry for 20 years. Do you mean in title or just in real estate? No, in real estate.
02:05 - David Olds (Guest)
In real estate, yeah, I'm a little bit new to the title side. I mean, I'm obviously an investor and closed a ton of deals over 1,600 deals but being on the other side of the curtain is a different view. So what were you doing before real estate, way before real estate? Well, actually I went to UMass. I have a degree in criminal justice. Oh, wow, right, yeah, that's, that's interesting, right, like I wanted to be a, you know, maybe a police officer, fbi, and then I realized I was not doing any obstacle courses and climbing any 14 foot wooden walls. Right, I realized that wasn't what I was going to do and also so, anyways, working my way through college, I worked in retail stores and what was interesting is I became a retail store manager, assistant manager just before I turned 18. And I could make the same money doing that as I could being shot at. So I took a little bit different route and worked in retail.
02:52
When I was up in Boston, my dad actually worked in technology and he transferred to Florida in like 93. So I came down there, started working fortuitously for this hardware company. A big chain in Florida had 170 stores Scotty's Hardware Stores and that was sort of what got me a little bit into the home renovation, real estate, that kind of stuff. And then you know I read Rich Dad, poor Dad, and that kind of kicks it off. We've all heard that story a million times and that's how I got into real estate.
03:20 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So I'm curious, the criminal justice side of it, I mean, yes, there is like the field aspect of it, and movies and TV certainly portray that whole thing in a certain way, but there's a way you think right that attracted you to that. Like what is that?
03:37 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah, I definitely think problem solving and a lot of it was really loss prevention, which, you know, keeping what you've got. And I do joke and tell people that the only time I've ever used my degree was when dealing with some of my tenants and some of their craziness. But, yeah, I think there's some that comes from that. I think working in a, you know, for a corporation, you know a corporate job, being a store manager of a $10, $15 million store, you certainly you have to have procedures and processes, and some of those things definitely gave us a leg up in the business.
04:11
I think there are a lot of people who find great success as wholesalers, but if they don't have the background to actually structure it as a business, they can just struggle right, you know, making sure that their finances and things are in order, because ultimately and this happened to us too, in the very beginning, we actually, you know, we started investing in Florida, then we moved to Chattanooga in 2009, which is also the best time to be in real estate, which actually turned out for us to be amazing. But yeah, we were out there. Just, you know, we're buying and selling and getting rentals and we're just doing all these things. It's like riding in a wagon down a hill, right, just arms and legs, just just out there making a lot of money. But at some point we had to go oh my God, we have a real business right. We need to get some accountants and start to do, put some structure behind what we're doing. Um. So yeah, I think a lot of that kind of came together and and helped us have some longevity in the business right.
04:58 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And that you know, do wholesaling and kind of at scale. You know where we built up a couple of big businesses doing it and you know real estate's one of those. Uh, I think interesting for professions where people, uh, they're usually like in the gravitational pull of real estate for some time before they're like yeah, okay I can do this?
05:18
yeah, that's my main thing. Like, what did that process look like for you, because that's a lot of our listeners? Are those people? Yeah, like, what did that process look like for you, because that's a lot of our listeners? Are those people? Yeah, right, what did that process look like for you?
05:29 - David Olds (Guest)
yeah. So for me, even going all the way back to growing up my dad he was a ex-military guy. He was a very hands-on fix-it guy like he he was actually great at some stuff that I'm not like mechanics, like building, building engines and rebuilding stuff. Right, that's clearly not what I'm good at. The only thing I know about changing my oil is Jiffy Lube and where the dealership is at.
05:51
We did some additions on the house and as a kid I was whatever it is slave labor. As a child I liked carrying the two-by-fours. I was a big kid so I could carry drywall and all that. Hated every second of it. We lived in New England, this big acre corner lot lots of trees. I spent my whole fall just raking the grass. It was terrible. Didn't want to do any of it. Preston, I said when I grow up I'm going to have a condo and I'm not going to make my kids do any of this stuff. And you know you end up becoming your parents, of course. Yeah, so you know I did have that experience growing up and then I went to work for the hardware store and became a store manager and we had contractor sales. So I was out at job sites. So I sort of just was kind of always adjacent, like you said, to that part of the business. You know, in the old days, the old days before HGTV, we had like this old house.
06:41 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, I remember that show.
06:42 - David Olds (Guest)
That's actually a Boston show and I remember watching that with my dad and I'm like, oh, that's fascinating, right, that ability to buy something and see it in your brain and create this, you know this plan, and then see it come to fruition, and now you have this beautiful property. So I was always interested in that. I even remember driving around Delray Beach, Florida, with my dad and be like, oh, that house could be really nice.
07:03
So there was always that, I think you're right, that little kernel in the back of my brain. And then, when I got married, my wife and I bought our first house. And what do we do? I did the exact same thing that my dad did, right, we're like tear up this pink carpet and let's put some laminate flooring down and take out the sliding glass door. We're going to put in a French door and I'm going to adjust the cabinets, put up some crown, and you know, do all of those things. And you know, I remember buying that house for like ninety-seven thousand and two years later selling it for one hundred and fifty. Right, and going to that closing, my realtor says, hey, you know, you don't have to pay taxes on this, on the gain here. You know what you're going to make. And I'm like, what? What she's like, yeah, dummy, it's homesteaded, it's because you've lived in it. And I'm like, oh my God, that's fantastic. I'm like we need to do this again. So we did do it again. And then you know, that next property was what happened for me, as I was in the airport waiting on uh on our kids to come in on a flight, and I was at the bookstore, literally just, you know, leaning on a counter just picking up books, going huh, and picked up Rich Dad, poor Dad like it's the most cliche thing ever arbitrarily literally as random as it could
08:07
possibly be, and it's an easy read, right? It's entertaining what year?
08:10 - Preston Zeller (Host)
what year is this?
08:11 - David Olds (Guest)
this is probably man oh, four maybe oh five, so.
08:16 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So that had been out a while at that point. Oh, yeah, yeah.
08:19 - David Olds (Guest)
Like I wasn't the first person to ever read it and that you know, I always tell people I'm not the smartest person, I'm not, but I'm pretty good at following directions and I am coachable. So at the back of the book, Kiyosaki says hey, you know, if you, you know he talks because he talks about making money in oil and gas and all the different stocks. He said, if you want to be in real estate, you need to go find a real estate group and become a part of that, which is what we talk about. Surround yourself with five people, you'll become the average of them five. So yeah, that's how I did it. I had this big computer, big monitor and web crawler, because Google wasn't out then.
08:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I'm like real estate group O' Recyclercom, yeah Something.
08:54 - David Olds (Guest)
Right and yeah, back with LimeWire and all that stuff, and that's how I found a real estate group and I, you know, was it an RIA?
09:03 - Preston Zeller (Host)
It was a RIA.
09:04 - David Olds (Guest)
It was Central Florida Real Estate Investors Association, so CFRI, and they're still there, they're still available, but I didn't realize they were the fifth or third biggest one in the country. So here's what happened. So I read the book and I'm like, okay, great, we're going to go down and we're going to go to this RIA Me. I leave work and tell my wife I'm like, oh, I'm going down there, I'm going to go do this thing, okay. So I drive all the way down there was like 30 minutes and I feel like a lot of people can relate to this. There's cars everywhere. This place is packed. Like 300, 400 people would show up for these meetings.
09:35
This was like the golden age of Ria's. And I'm looking at all these cars and it's like we buy houses, the magnets, car wraps, all this stuff. Right, we buy houses, hard money, soft money, convert your 401K, like all of these cars. Like I buy houses, and the more I drove through the parking lot looking for a place, the more scared I got, the more nervous I got. And I'm driving through looking for a parking lot, a parking spot, and I drive out. The other side Never went, never went. And I got home and, like you know, I say I count on one hand the number of times I told my wife when I was married like not the truth. She's like how'd it go?
10:10
I'm like couldn't find it, Couldn't find it, couldn't find it, I lied because I went home and I was, I was ashamed and I'm, and the whole way home, I'm pissed. I'm pissed because this was the thing I wanted to do.
10:22 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I don't like to fail. She read your face.
10:28 - David Olds (Guest)
She's like oh yeah, but I was so mad because I read the book and the book made sense and I believed in what it said and this is this was to do. So I remember I didn't go. I didn't, it was july. I didn't go in august. I do remember I went september because that's when my birthday is. So I went down like the whole time dude, I'm white knuckled I'm like I'm going in, there's nothing gonna stop me like kicking the door dude, I was.
10:49
Yeah, I got like I slammed that thing in park, hopped out of the car, closed the door, walked over, paid my 20 to go in and, uh, you know, in that decision, literally that decision, that day, like 100 change the trajectory of my life. You know, I mean a little bit, obviously a little slow at first, but, you know, because I was willing to do that and invest in myself and go get some education and be around people who are actually doing the business. Um, you know, now I'm a real estate investor and I made so much money and had a life that's just absolutely incredible. Like I like that. I tell people I probably don't even deserve, but it all came from, you know, taking that first step.
11:25
You know that first step wasn't now I'm a millionaire, it's fantastic. That first step was hey, let me get some education, let me figure out what I'm doing here, let me go out and try something. Right, you got to take some action. Right, you got to get the list. You got to pick up the phone. You got to send some postcards, you get a text, you got to call, you got to do those things and that that part's hard. But but I remember, you know that that first day the whole thing, crystal, we could talk for two hours about that first meeting.
11:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I remember just about every single thing about it. Well, you know, after that first time you passed up I'm a failure, labeled yourself as that and just been like, carried that around with you, which a lot of people do, right, they just like recount the moment that they gave up for the rest of their life and you're like, ok, that's. You know that sucks to be like that, but you know it's not, it's not an inspiring story. You, you know that sucks a to be like that, but B, you know it's not, it's not an inspiring story.
12:18
You were your kids or anyone else, but then you know it's also interesting. You talked about, uh, your dad, you know how many you do all this like really kind of boring manual. Yeah, it was terrible, but, uh, you know, what I see in there is that you it actually planted some interesting seeds of like you being able to do all the stuff. That isn't fun, because you know that there's like some reward at the end of it, and so you know I, okay, so you get into what. What you're this is like, oh, uh, five or six, again three, four somewhere okay.
12:48
So this is like postcom. You know, burst, we're kind of ramping up to another. You know janky economic situation in 0708. Yeah, you like I'm curious at what point you go to this first ria and you realize like it's um, it's really a lot.
13:06 - David Olds (Guest)
There's a lot more nuance and effort that goes into it than maybe people had portrayed at that time like, oh yeah um, so it was a different time that it is now right, you know, now there's this, there's social media, we're all, we're all on our phones continuously. Yeah, um, which is great right on the aspirational side. It's fantastic right to see the rolexes and lambos and you know, and the checks and all that stuff. Right, it's cool. Um, the one thing you don't see is the bad days.
13:33
That's one thing that that you know, man, it it's, it's. It's really difficult for people because there are going to be tough days. There are, you know they're. You know initially not, you know not every deal is going to be fantastic, right, you're going to sometimes you're going to lose money, you're going to take some, you're going to take some losses, and those those things you need to live, learn from it so that you can continue to fight on.
13:53
But yeah, I think for me, as far as learning, I made sure that I just absorbed as much as I could and I got to tell you I don't think there was a better place that I could have been at the time that RIA, literally there was a meeting every single night.
14:08
Right, the one county would have a meeting, or it would be the landlord meetup or the junkers to jewel, which is kind of like the wholesalers group, or, you know, the rehabbers or the land development, like they had so much education going on that, uh, you could really get as much in the weeds into any of them as you really wanted. Um, and then the first major thing I did is I just hired a coach. I got into this small, small group mentoring. That was maybe like eight or twelve weeks, something like that, I can't remember. The guy's name was john, something or other and uh, yeah, I remember we just there was maybe eight of us and we just met like at like a denny's or some some ridiculous thing. We met every single week and just the he taught subject two. That was the first thing that we learned and he, you know, just really broke all of that down for us, all the contracts and stuff which subject two became probably phenomenally helpful right after 08.
14:55
The interesting thing was Preston. If we go back in time and I've talked to Eddie Speed, you know all the big guys who were speaking on those stages. Then you go back and the one thing that they talked about the most was pre-foreclosures. There were pre-foreclosures, so there was companies like Foreclosure Daily and all the people that preceded Batch right, and it was so much harder to use. My God, people now have such an easy time with you guys. The way that you do data, it's amazing, but anyways.
15:24
So the big thing that everybody was teaching was pre-foreclosures. Well, nobody had the forethought to go. What's going to happen when the bank takes all these properties? Not a single person, like nobody, saw that crash coming. No-transcript what I mean, but it just never, except michael burry. Yeah, right, yeah, but the rest of us were freaking clueless and at that time I was an outside salesman for a lumber company and like we could see, like you could see, the train coming at you, but you know, it was like I did my glasses on. I couldn't tell how far away it was, I couldn't tell what kind of problems there was going to be until boom, you know, until it literally crashed.
16:03 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, and you know oh, 708 happens, which um, which I? I actually don't think until really like, 22, 23, 24, like, unless you had gone through that period, I think that was the first time this past couple years where it was really like oh, crap, like a big oh and in this was nothing.
16:23 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah, this like it was a joke. Yeah, like, if you think what you went through in 21, 22, whatever that, that was a crash, no like. And people who were around like when I doing this and now I'm like that old guy, I'm the old guy in the rocking chair on the porch, this was a joke, it was a blip. So let me tell you how fast it happened back then. So I knew again in our business in real estate and selling to large track builders as a building, you know, building material salesman, whatever, like you could see, like the track builders, pulte, meritage, all these people they were starting to slow down. They were going. And you know, our houses all have granite. Well, now they've got laminate. It was just a lot of downgrade to try to keep ahead of the sales. So again we saw that something, there was some slowdown happening. Nobody had any idea what was going to happen, but we we had already determined that we were going to move to chattanooga and do some stuff there. So I bought by this last house in florida. It was a probate deal. I ask you if you guys think this show of hands, who thinks this is a good deal? Um deltona, florida, 742 trafalgar street, if anybody really wants to look it up. But uh, three bedroom, two bath brick house, ranch style left hand garage. So I buy this house. Some, you know anyways, like 97, 99 000, something like that breast in one block over two blocks down. An identical house had just sold for 214. Oh, I'm at 97, does anybody not think? Does anybody not think that was a deal? No, that's, that's a deal. That's right by every metric. That's a deal. That's right by every metric. That's a deal. So bought it in like July.
17:58
Back then I was much skinnier, had a lot more energy, so I was doing all the rehab right, I'm laying tile. You know, I remember building box, my own cabinets out of the box and I created, built the laminate counter, like I did everything, scraped the popcorn, did the stuff, my dad helped me, my stuff, my dad helped me, my brother helped me some. So finished up this house in probably early November and knew that next year I was already relocating to Chattanooga. My brother had come up and he was buying some properties. So I've told my boss I'm leaving. Everything is happening, so call the realtor.
18:31 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So you're at the builder now at this point, yeah, yeah yeah.
18:33 - David Olds (Guest)
So I'm like I'm going I'm gonna sell this last house, I'm gonna make a hundred grand boom and we're out of town and we're going to chattanooga, we're gonna go buy apartment complexes. So so I call my realtor. Name was shana and I'm like, hey, shana, I got the property done. She's like you know, let's just wait till january because it's the holidays. You don't want a bunch of days on market where stuff's not going to sell. I'm like that makes sense again, common sense. Okay, cool, we got this so cool. So she comes over like january 2nd or 3rd, and uh, she walks through and she's like this looks really good. I'm like I know, she's like you did a good job. I'm like I know because, even though I'm seven years in or whatever, I'm still a new investor right. And uh, I'm like, yeah, of course you know, it's just another house that we remodeled. And uh, because I was living in this one, because it was going to be my last before we left town.
19:19
So I'm like we sit down. I'm like what can we sell this thing for? Right, because I'm I'm pumped up. Right, I got this beautiful house. She's told me it's good. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna be good. Deltona is a hot area at the time. She's like well, so this is january of 09, just to put it in perspective for you. So this is how you don't know, your world is crumbled she says so again, there's no google, there's no facebook, none of that so it's a notebook.
19:45 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right caught this comp that she has, she goes it from yeah, she goes.
19:50 - David Olds (Guest)
Uh, I said what can we sell it for? I want to kind of sell it quick. I want to get get out of here. You know I'm okay to leave five or 10 grand on the table. She goes well, yeah, like, maybe like 147. Oh, no, I'm like Shana, one block over, two blocks down, 214. Like I'm good with like 199. Yeah, she's like yeah, no, I'm like what do you mean? What do you mean that? What do you mean? She's like I said you told me 214.
20:19
She goes yeah, that was six months ago, like six months ago, that's 25. What are you talking about? She's like, yeah, she goes, this one over here sold this one, sold this one, sold this one. And she starts showing me the pictures. I'm like, yeah, but those are foreclosures. My house is fully remodeled, like I'm ready to go put a family right in here. I'm like that, like the people left clothes on the floor. Like, yeah, it sold for one 10, of course, but but this was what happened Boom, the bank dumped those properties.
20:47
They started dumping them probably even before I bought this house, just the sales weren't hitting. The sales always lag behind just a little bit. So I'm like absolutely, not Absolutely. You know I'm so arrogant, right, because all I've done for five, six years is just sell properties and make a ton of money. When really we look back on it, we can see that things were starting to slow down, which, anyways, time will always tell you those things.
21:09
So I'm like so, I'm like, absolutely not. She's like well, this is what it is. She's like what do you want to do? Because she was a listing broker, right? She just wants her sign in the front yard, she's out, she doesn't care. So I think I'm the most magnanimous SOB that's ever walked the face of the earth and I'm like okay, I'll do it for. Like I think it was like 159. Like, just sell it for 159. I'll just go Right, I'll be fine. She's like OK, ok, so sign here. Closes her book, takes her sign, puts it in the yard and she's out. So this is January Reston, not one call. Yeah, I'm 40 grand, 20% under what I thought, more than 20% under where I thought I was Not a call for the first month and how much did you have into it on top of that?
21:54
um, yeah, probably 15 to 20 okay you know, luckily, you know, I did all a lot of the rehab. My dad, like I said, my dad helped, my ex-wife was there, but uh, yeah, so nothing like, not not even like an inquiry, so you know, and I'm not a pain in the butt. So, february I'm like, hey. So, like, what are we doing? Like geez, do you think if I went to 149, that gets me pretty close to what you're thinking. She's like, uh, let me look. No, you probably need to be at 139 now. Like it's 10 grand, it's dropped again. I'm like, absolutely not, like I can't do that. So I'm like, oh, let's go, let's go to 147. I'm sure that will do it, because that's what you told me 30 days ago. So now we go another month and it's like a couple of clicks, maybe a call, but still no showings.
22:42
And at the time I got two teenage boys where I don't know if you have kids, but we were keeping the house clean every single day and that was a whole struggle too. So tensions are getting a little hot around the property. So then the third month comes along. I'm like, holy Shana, what are we doing? Yeah, she's like, well, I'm like you really think $139,000, is it? And what do you think she said? She said drop again, drop again.
23:04
The market was in just a free fall, yeah. Yeah, she's like I don't know man, maybe like $129,000, if you like, you're just getting slapped around and I'm like let's do 142, 142.5, something like that. And we went another month like a couple of showings, no offers, like I've never experienced that in my life Similar to some new people today had never experienced that but it just kept dropping. So finally, I'm like nope, like I got to take control here. I need to figure something out. And because I had been to all the Ria's and the meetups and the weekend boot camps and just all the things, I'm like I remember there was this guy talked about sell your house in seven days. That's a book, so how to sell your house in seven days. I went out, I got a bunch of blank bandit signs and I hand wrote um, you know, uh, three, two deltona, uh 5k down, call this number.
23:53
So I put a ton of signs out. Because now, like I had told my company I was leaving, I had transferred all of my my customer accounts over to another salesman. Like I was at 84 lumber, like they they'd even arranged to like for me to come up to chattanooga and talk to the manager there to maybe get transferred. So, like I had to, I had to figure something out. So, um, I went out and I found somebody who would give me a lease option. I think I was making like $8 a month Because everything, again, everything is so gone, so down so far. So, literally we left town, even though I had a great job and had wholesale or not wholesale, I never wholesale everything was a rehab back then. All that money was gone. Nobody saved that money. So this is how I tell people when they talk about this crash whatever we just had Back then, it was like I want you to think of a hill and it's all asphalt and I was the fat kid chasing the golf ball that's bouncing down the hill, right, you can't run fast enough to get ahead of that price, right?
24:53
So every month it's dropping another 10. Like you can't price drop fast, you have to make that first price drop so severe that you do get ahead of it. Otherwise you're chasing it $10,000 at a time all the way to the bottom, and that's what it was like in 2009. That is not what anybody experienced a couple of years ago. You know, maybe in some of the super high fluctuating like high-end coastal communities, maybe there was a little bit of that, but yeah, it was brutal I was a while.
25:20 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You know it's funny, I was selling a home in the austin area. Yeah, right around that, that's a boomer. Yeah, that was definitely one of the markets that got just kind of kind of slapped around a bit, but bounce, it's bounced back pretty good, right, it has, yeah, but in certain parts it was just like you know, wherever it appreciated, like in just otherworldly amounts. Yeah, I think you saw more correction. Yeah, um, afterwards, but, yeah, yeah, definitely not like. Yeah, hey, the entire mortgage industry just got called yeah, and it was.
25:53 - David Olds (Guest)
It's such a different time in that you know, back then, I mean, you've seen them, seen them, strippers are buying houses, right. Ridiculous People are just buying putting 500 bucks down and just locking up all these properties. So it was a false bubble. Right, we didn't have a bubble problem. There was COVID and there was all those.
26:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Oh yeah, and in 22.
26:13 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah, like in 22, the situation was so much different and, because of all the things that happened in 7, 8, 9, 10, we have a housing shortage. We don't have enough houses for all the people that want to buy. So that's why I say there is no shortage. We don't have a crash coming. We are 4 million housing units short in this country.
26:31 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right, and that for sure a key, key differentiator between then and now. Right, we're in the lock-in effect and probably will be, for what did they say? Until it gets to about like the fives?
26:47 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's the best we're hoping for. Everybody that I talk to. High fives, yeah, which historically is a very low rate. Yeah, true, you know, we're all spoiled at 3% and 4%. Those days are not coming back, Unless there's some. They just print gazillion dollars. We're not going back to 3%.
27:03 - Preston Zeller (Host)
We'll have other problems.
27:04 - David Olds (Guest)
Well, yeah, they had to raise interest rates because we were just going to run the. It was so hot, we were going to run into the wall. They had to bring the economy in for a little bit of a landing. But no, if you go back I think 50 years the average interest rate is 7.7%.
27:19 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, and I remember reading this, like years ago, where it was, someone had made the assertion that if we ever went back to that historical average, that we'd see, like housing, totally collapse, which obviously doesn't happen because it basically did. Yeah.
27:35 - David Olds (Guest)
You know you look at you know you talk about the lock-in effect. That is true. Some of the frivolous moving to, you know I want the house with the pool, like some of that probably doesn't happen, but life is happening to people, right? Oh yeah, death, divorce, you know, not taxes, but job transfer, like people have to move, like there's still yeah, they have to move. And because we have so many people pent up that don't have a place to live, they're always looking for stuff. That's what keeps the price up. So until something happens, either we solve that problem or people just decide they like living in mom's basement. There's just always pressure on the market that's going to keep it rising.
28:13 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right and not everyone can keep both houses. I want to go right before you decide to go into our easy RAI closings. I'm just curious what strategy have you employed the most of in single family?
28:30 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah. So it's changed a lot, and everything I like to say your strategy is going to depend on do you have time or money? Which one do you have more of? So when we came to Chattanooga, I had literally $5,000. Like that was it. It was me, you know, my wife, two boys, three fat dogs and my brother was there. We were all living in one house so we we had to bootstrap it Right.
28:50
Obviously there was not batch. God. I wish you guys had been around the beginning. I had no money but I had time, so I spent every day from the moment I got up, put my feet on the floor. I was real estate, so we were out driving for dollars and, like the kids would jump out of the back of the Jeep, run up and put a Post-it note on the door, we were putting out bandit signs. We were just doing everything we could, you know, at a guerrilla kind of level, to find people who wanted to sell. Like we're putting those little pieces are, you know, paper printed off signs with the little tabs on the bottom, and laundry mats.
29:23
Like we're doing everything we can to um to find deals and we were very successful doing that because we were incredibly focused. Every Friday night it was a hundred bandit signs. We buy houses. The cities do not love that, but sometimes you know it was them or me, right? Did you ever get in trouble? Oh, yes, oh, I've been to court, paid some fines. I get whole podcasts we do on that too. But yeah, no, the city hated it, but you know we did it. We were very committed and that is the difference between people who find success and don't is do you? Do you have something, a process, whatever your process is, whatever that strategy is going to be, you know, and just sticking to it and being very, very consistent.
30:01
So it started out with with bandit signs, driving for dollars. So literally, you know, I would go out and drive for dollars and come back with a hundred or 150 addresses. My wife would be there and she had to go. This is again before batch was around. She's literally going on the property appraiser's website, cutting and pasting and putting it into an Excel spreadsheet so that we could send it off, and if we had money to mail postcards or we were doing handwritten yellow letters. We even were doing handwritten postcards at one point. It was crazy. So we did that until we had enough money to start doing some marketing. And then it turned into direct mail because you know, we had spent two years driving the whole city so we had a great list of vacant properties and we just mailed them every four to six, maybe eight weeks. Whenever we had money, we were constantly mailing them and putting out bandit signs. So you know, we were doing that.
30:48
And then got into Wholesaling Inc and TTP baby Brent Daniels Talk to people. So we joined his coaching program and we actually opened up. I got another partner that came in. We opened up a call center, so we were doing outbound calling. And then we did let's see what did we move into. Then we were doing texting back when texting was all the rage, we were doing 70,000 texts yeah, 70,000 texts a week.
31:13
We were probably those people that caused some of the problem, because we don't do anything halfway. You know, if we're going to do it, we're doing it all massive imperfect action, as tom crowell says. So, yeah, so we did that, um, and then let's see what was next. And then the final you know thing for us, that we moved into ppc. You know that was that was it. And then we're just very strategic with direct mail and anything like that. So, yeah, ppc was it. And over that time we we went from being just in Chattanooga, right, and then we started expanding into some other markets, learning all the ways to lose money, all the ways not to do it, and then we sort of figured that out and I think at one point we had PPC going in like 108 markets and you're mainly wholesaling. This was all so when we were local and I was doing acquisitions, my brother was doing acquisitions, we were looking at properties and we were buying a lot. We bought a lot of properties with owner financing.
32:06 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You were just buying hold.
32:07 - David Olds (Guest)
Then, yeah, I wish I'd done more. We had over 100 rentals at one point, almost every single one on owner financing. Wow, yeah, and you know we were looking at that strategy was important to us and kind of to go back real quick. So, you know, we're sending out direct mail, we're sending or doing the band at times. We're doing all these things and I would, you know, preston, I'd come to your house and I'd see you. And again, 8, 9, 10, right, hey, man, you know I'd love to buy your property Qualifies for cash off for all these things. Hey, you're like, oh geez, man, I'd really love to do that, but I owe 100. And again, I wish I had been smart enough to buy every single one of them sub two.
32:43
But it was a different time. We didn't know, you didn't know, you didn't know that the market was going to go 5x up. Sure, yeah, and also sub two I'm looking at can I float these mortgages? Can I rent them quick enough? There was some of that. So one of the things that that I remembered again, way back from when I was going to these RIAs and getting that education was like you know what? Hmm, I need a different strategy and I ask you this you might know Do you know what the percentage of properties in the United States are that are owned free and clear? Come on, you work at Batch. We're here at the headquarters.
33:19 - Preston Zeller (Host)
We're at the data headquarters. I know I've looked at this on a really localized level, but I'm going to say I don't know 30% 40%, 40.
33:26 - David Olds (Guest)
40 is the number, good job. First American says it's anywhere between 38% and 42%. So here's the thought I had. I'm like so I'm tired of going out to these properties and even if you liked me, you couldn't take my offer of 80. Right, because you owed hundreds. I'm like, well, this is dumb. Why don't I just send my direct mail, like I'm still driving for dollars, but let's just send my direct mail to people who are free and clear, right, you don't have to love my offer, but at least you could take it. You know what I mean. So got really good at presenting that cash offer, and you presenting that cash offer, and you're like, oh geez, I can't take it, for whatever reason, right. And then, uh, right, hmm, geez, now what? So if we just step outside of that, the best closers in our country are Jay Bates, right? You know the best closers? Maybe one out of 10. Well, that's cool. One out of 10 is an awesome number, but what are you doing with the other nine?
34:16 - Hope (Announcement)
So this is kind of my thought process.
34:18 - David Olds (Guest)
So great I make you that offer. You can't take it. I already know before I go over there, because I can look it up, that you don't have a mortgage. I'm like, hmm, man, preston man, I really like to buy these things cash. It's just easier. Hmm, think about it. Let me ask you a question, question do you need all the money at once? And I say yes or no, but it gives me a second bite at the apple and you'd be shocked at how many people will go back. No, yeah, no, I don't like you think in your mind they all want the money, but they don't.
34:56 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, they want to probably not pay taxes yeah.
34:59 - David Olds (Guest)
So you know, when I was going to these properties to do a walkthrough, where I knew it was a free and clear property, like I am seeding the whole conversation at the beginning I'm like oh, preston, so you're a landlord, how'd you get into landlording? Do you love it? You know I'm asking questions that I know the answer to. Right. What do you love about being a landlord man? I'm really getting into this, trying to buy a lot of properties. What does everybody say? Cash flow, right, oh cool. Tell me this. What's the worst thing, the biggest struggle with tenants, dealing with tenants and the repairs?
35:26 - Hope (Announcement)
and taxes and all that and on time.
35:28 - David Olds (Guest)
So I know all the answers. Right, I know what the pain points are going to be. So when you say no, I really don't. I'm like you know, man, wouldn't it be get that monthly cash flow and not have to deal with the tenants? I'm just walking them, you know it's a yes, it's a yes from there. So, anyways, so just got really good at that.
35:43
And then once we scaled up, though, you know, once we had a large team in the office and a, you know, a big staff, then it got to like we just were on the high-speed wholesale game. You know, very difficult to train those people to, you know, make a cash offer, then sub to, you know, novation Owner, fine, you know, it just gets very, you know. So we one thing the reason we were successful at Nationwide Property Liquiders and did a lot of business and we're one of the biggest wholesalers in the country is we were just very focused. We were bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. You know that's we didn't. We weren't trying a great way to run your business. But if you're gonna have a large scale of business, that's tougher.
36:22 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, which people underestimate the value of focus. So let's talk about easy REI closings. So your years of experience in real estate and being an investor, you're now providing a way for real estate investors to go through the basically the title process right, yeah, all of it Title clearing process a lot easier. So walk us through. You know basically what you guys do, but then, like you know, I think, some high level tips for like what investors should be looking out for.
36:56 - David Olds (Guest)
Yeah, well, the reason that it came about I was doing some coaching, mainly on the disposition side of the business, with the investor lift and the cartel bosses and all that stuff and sort of the back half of that business. It's yeah, let's talk about how to get your property sold. But a lot of people came to me because we had expertise in getting the deal closed. Because I was an investor Like, how do we solve some of these title problems? Right, like people would call me and be like, hey, I've got this. Like this is what they're telling me. I'm like, oh, that's crap, you need to go back and tell them how to do this. Right, because we just learned after doing 1600 deals how to ask better questions. So so we realized there was a gap in the marketplace. First, nobody was really teaching how to dispo, but nobody was helping investors get their deal actually closed. You know the gurus, the coaches, the everything out there was, oh, just go find a local investor friendly title company and you're good, right, like that's the extent of the information. And I can tell you that does not always work. It like it almost rarely works without you having to put a ton of time into it. So then, you know, looking at my own business, even though I had a partner who handled acquisitions and I was doing the dispo, like an inordinate amount of my time was spent on the phone with title companies and you know, especially nationwide right Now I'm in West Virginia I need a title company that'll do a sub, two or whatever. Right, I've got to find these title companies that will do what I want them to do, because not every title company is created equal. Right, some of them just want to deal with realtors because it's easy, easy, repetitive business. You know, investors, we are the worst business for a title company where it's very risky. It's a title, is an insurance game, so anyways.
38:24
So I realized that there was a gap in the marketplace, that nobody was helping people. We had COVID happen, you know. We had some people, some of my friends like hey, you've still got some TCs, heather was leading that department. Hey, can you guys help us do some of this stuff or at least point us in the right direction? So, yeah, so that was kind of where the idea came from and yeah, so our goal ultimately with you know, investors and wholesalers across the country, is I want to take all that paperwork off your plate, right.
38:53
To give it like a sports analogy, I was going to say Tom Brady or somebody more current, patrick Mahomes, but the two probably most hated quarterbacks in history right, but whoever your guy is, your LeBron James another hated guy right, I want that guy out on the field. Right, I want them doing the thing, playing the game, not sitting on the sideline trying to figure out who's cutting checks this weekend for the janitors in the stadium. Right, and that's what I saw was happening, even with me is I was spending time on the sidelines doing paperwork instead of training my team or talking to more sellers or talking to more buyers. So if we can take all of that off your plate, right, and give you that 30% of your time back that you're spending doing something that you don't like to do, right, I don't know one wholesaler, because we're all very yappy A personality people who loves doing paperwork.
39:37
Right, it's a grind. It feels like you're walking through quicksand. It's death by a thousand paper cuts. You're dealing with people who don't want to help you most of the time. So if I can take all of that off your plate now, what do you do Now?
39:47
This is how you're getting from two, three deals a month to five, six, seven, right, Because now you're taking that time and investing it back into your business, into doing the things that actually move the needle getting more contracts right. They can go get more data, that you know all of those things right. So now, this is why we see our clients. Their growth is so rapid, right, and we're seeing that year over year, our clients this year are closing more deals on average the way we average it out than they were a year ago. Right, it's almost one more deal per month across hundreds of clients.
40:17
So, yeah, so that's our goal. That's it At the end of the day. We are absolutely the best in the country at what we do and we've done geez, what is it? Half a billion dollars in closings for clients. Last year we handled 7,000 files. So we do a lot for some of the biggest investors in the country, and the reason they trust us is because we have that experience. There's nobody that knows more about Tidal really than us. So that's it in a nutshell. I want to give you back your time. I want to help you grow your business. I want to get you focused on the things that matter. As Brent Daniels says, go out there and talk to people, get those deals.
40:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you putting that down. I mean, what would you say is the kind of, as we wrap this up, what is the biggest mistake you?
41:05 - David Olds (Guest)
see new investors doing when it comes to the title process. Yeah, a couple of things Trusting, just randomly picking some title company, or because their realtor said, use this title company. Or they went to a Facebook group and asked who's a good title company and typically the only people answering in those Facebook groups are the people not doing business. So, on the title side, not keeping control of their deal. If you've got a realtor involved, my goodness, letting that realtor pick the title company is the worst, because what we do is a little bit different right and somebody that's just focused on the retail side of the business are not.
41:35
They don't understand what we're doing or letting your buyer choose the title company. But um, here's an interesting statistic for you 50 of all the deals in the United States, on average, will not close 50% right.
41:49 - Preston Zeller (Host)
So that means you mean on and off market, just whatever goes to escrow.
41:53 - David Olds (Guest)
Yes, yeah, actually, there are some states where it's 60. First American they told us in the state of Florida, 60% of deals that escrow is open. It will never close. So two big reasons why that is so. You talk about the biggest mistake. Two reasons One it's going to be we have title problems.
42:10
Because, as investors, what do we do? Right, we come to batch and I'm like we're going to list, stack, right, we're going to go find people with pain and then our job as an investor is to solve that pain. And the more pain we can solve, the deeper price Right. So, death, divorce, taxes, bad tenant, job transfer, whatever those things are right. And this is what you guys are the most amazing at right Is, let's stack all those problems. But when I want to go sell right to my end buyer, what do I say?
42:35
We all say the same thing Mr Buyer clear title, proration of taxes, we're going to get this thing closed. But we have to clear all those issues, right. So the more problems that we search, liens and foreclosures and bankruptcy and all like. Somebody has to figure that out, and nobody that I know read Rich Dad, poor Dad, and said I want to learn to be a title abstractor. All right, it's going to be great, so, so anyway. So 50 percent of the deals don't close because of that. The other 50 are they're just price drunk. Yeah Right, they're price drunk. They don't understand how to comp. They're not on there looking up. You know what cash buyers are paying. So that's something that we see a lot in new investors is they get very optimistic and very excited and the seller wants $80,000 and one sold down the road sold for $92,000. So $80,000 seems like the number.
43:18 - Preston Zeller (Host)
An apples to apples comp yeah. We're not testing them yeah.
43:22 - David Olds (Guest)
So place where we can make the biggest difference and we try to work with our clients and, you know, bring in people to help them with comping and stuff, so that you know our people are closing at a far higher rate yeah, so yeah, cool.
43:33 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, I appreciate your time and just sharing your background yeah, man, it's fun it's been a good conversation, yeah thanks for listening to today's podcast.
43:41 - Hope (Announcement)
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