Joplin Area Real Estate Investor Association

Maybe you’re someone who's completely comfortable asking complete strangers questions like, “How much do you owe on your house” or saying things like, “That’s crazy, you’ll never get that price”.

But if so, you’re unusual—most real estate entrepreneurs have a tough time telling other people that their properties are not worth what they think they’re worth. Whether it’s that you don’t want to argue with a seller who seems certain that his price is right, or whether it’s your fear that YOU’RE the one who’s wrong, or whether you don’t want to disappoint or offend complete strangers who’ve come to you for help, the fact is that you might just have a hard time choking out the fact that you need to pay less for a property than what the seller wants.

I’m the same way. The difference, though, is that I have over 2 decades of trial-and-error-based experience in talking to property owners of all descriptions. And because I’ve spoken to, oh, 20,000 or more sellers, I’ve had the opportunity to try a lot of phrases that get my point across without sounding confrontational, insulting the seller or his ugly house or iffy neighborhood, or asking questions that the seller might find invasive if stated too directly.

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Warning: This is the longest blog post I've ever written. At the same time, I think if you can read it all, you'll be glad you did.

Because there’s a dark secret that a lot of investors know, but that no one seems to talk about much. It’s a secret that every full-time investor eventually discovers for himself or pays the consequences.

So, I guess this “secret” isn’t, really a secret—in fact, it’s right in front of all of us, all the time. Look at any successful investor, and there it will be, staring you right in the face. Yet, you may have never noticed it on any conscious level.

Part of the reason you’ve never noticed it is that the real estate education industry tends to misdirect you, denying the truth of this phenomenon without coming right out and addressing it. Have you guessed it yet? No? then let me drag out “the reveal” a little longer with an example.

Let’s take 2 imaginary real estate entrepreneurs, Investor A and Investor B (well, OK, they’re not all that imaginary—they’re both based on people I know, and if you look around a little, you’ll see examples of both, too).

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In my 25+ years in the real estate business, I bet I've met more than 100,000 investors at all levels of knowledge and experience. Some have become amazingly successful, while others have lost steam or experienced dramatic failures.

During this time, I've noticed that there are certain characteristics that come with real estate investing success. As a matter of fact, that I have come to believe that I can predict with fair accuracy whether a particular investor will be successful. All I have to do is find out a little about their attitudes and actions, and I'll know what their chances of becoming successful are.

Before I outline the specific characteristics that I've found in successful investors, I’d like to define what I mean by "successful investor".

A successful investor is NOT the person who owns the most properties or does the most deals, or who has the most zeros in his net worth.

A successful investor is simply a person who knows what he wants - financially, personally, and in terms of what he wants to contribute to the world - and successfully uses real estate investing as a way to get those things. For a successful real estate investor, real estate is a means to an end, not an end u
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An interesting thing happens when people become successful real estate investors: like any true convert, they start to want to proselytize. And one of the primary characteristics of any good missionary is the desire to emphasize the good and de-emphasize the downsides of one’s religion.

Have you ever noticed that most successful investors remember their early years in real estate as “not that hard”, or “scary, but doable”? Yet if you ask a new investor who’s in the midst of trying to find his first few deals, he’ll more than likely describe this time as “terrifying”, “overwhelming” or “nearly impossible”.

Remember, dear readers, that your mentors and colleagues are (for the most part) not deceiving you intentionally unless they’re trying to sell you something. It’s just that they want you to succeed as they’ve succeeded, and that, now that doing deals is second nature, they’ve honestly forgotten a lot of what it was like to struggle in the early years. You may have been guilty of this yourself: I know I’ve been. But unlike most of you, I have a forum from
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One of the profound things in the real estate business—so profound that it takes DECADES to learn—is that you’re always a beginner. And the way that you handle your successive begginerhoods has a huge effect on how successful you become, and how quickly. I’ve been a beginner—like a full-on, I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing—at least 6 different times since I started in real estate. I was a beginner when I started buying properties.

I was a beginner again when I started wholesaling properties, and when I decided to buy apartment buildings, and when I decided to hire a staff and create systems for my business, and when I got serious about IRA investing. I’m, right this second, a beginner at AirBnB ownership.

My biggest mistake in 4 of the 6 beginnerhoods I just mentioned was the same: I let ego and overconfidence and introversion get in the way of my learning process. 

There’s a concept in Zen Buddhism called Shoshin, or “Beginner’s Mind”. It describes a state of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconception about the right way to approach a new idea or experience.  

I didn’t have that.

Instead, I was VERY interested—embarrassingly interested, in retrospect—in letting the people around me know that I knew a LOT. That I was SMART. That I was SUCCESSFUL. 

Yes, even before I’d done any deals on my own. An
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       The differences between what I’m SEEING as I research the data for our upcoming market update series and what I’m HEARING from buyers, sellers, and colleagues is kind of stunning.

       For instance, all the data I can find says that foreclosures are only back to their 2020 levels—but I’m seeing in my own seller calls and hearing from others that there’s been a HUGE increase in the number of sellers who are WAY more behind than we’ve seen in a decade, and who aren’t qualifying for modifications, and who in fact are sort of being abused by their lenders in the sense that when they ask for payoffs or reinstatement numbers, they’re not getting them.

       The data sources say that properties are selling faster than ever, but I’m hearing from retailers that the days on market (to an accepted offer) has doubled, and that the number of accepted offers that ‘fall out of escrow’ has increased a lot, and that properties that are priced too high don’t get offers anymore, and that smart retailers are being way more conservative in how they’re buying and how they’re pricing their finished deals.

       The differences between what I’m SEEING as I research the data for our upcoming market update series and what I’m HEARING from buyers, sellers, and colleagues is kind of stunning.

       For instance, all the data I can find says that foreclosures are only back to their 2020 levels—but I’m seeing in my own seller calls and hearing from others that there’s been a HUGE increase in the number of sellers who are WAY more behind than we’ve seen in a decade, and who aren’t qualifying for modifications, and who in fact are sort of being abused by their lenders in the sense that when they ask for payoffs or reinstatement numbers, they’re not getting them.

       The data sources say that properties are selling faster than ever, but I’m hearing from retailers that the days on market (to an accepted offer) has doubled, and that the number of accepted offers that ‘fall out of escrow’ has increased a lot, and that properties that are priced too high don’t get offers anymore, and that smart retailers are being way more conservative in how they’re buying and how they’re pricing their finished deals.

          It seems like every new Wholesale School student immediately stumbles upon a landlord who wants to sell ALL of his properties, then wants to know how to tackle a package of 4, or 9, or 37 single family homes all at once. And they're already rented, and the don't need any work, and the new wholesaler is excited because this looks like a deal that could make tens of thousands of dollars all in one fell swoop.

          These deals are problematic for a number of reasons:

1. I rarely see one where the landlord isn't asking more-than-market for the properties. He's willing to sell, but isn't really anxious to sell
2. It's basically never the case that the houses don't need work. Yes, I KNOW there's someone living in them. That doesn't mean that the roofs aren't 22 years old, or that the furnaces work consistently, or that they won't need a $5,000 turnover when that tenant inevitably moves out.
3. Each property has to be evaluated separately, which is a LOT of evaluation for a deal that's unlikely to come together.
4. Coordinating a single buyer to buy a whole package of non-turnkey properties, especially if they're in different parts of t
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        It seems like every new Wholesale School student immediately stumbles upon a landlord who wants to sell ALL of his properties, then wants to know how to tackle a package of 4, or 9, or 37 single family homes all at once. And they're already rented, and the don't need any work, and the new wholesaler is excited because this looks like a deal that could make tens of thousands of dollars all in one fell swoop.

        These deals are problematic for a number of reasons:

1. I rarely see one where the landlord isn't asking more-than-market for the properties. He's willing to sell, but isn't really anxious to sell
2. It's basically never the case that the houses don't need work. Yes, I KNOW there's someone living in them. That doesn't mean that the roofs aren't 22 years old, or that the furnaces work consistently, or that they won't need a $5,000 turnover when that tenant inevitably moves out.
3. Each property has to be evaluated separately, which is a LOT of evaluation for a deal that's unlikely to come together.
4. Coordinating a single buyer to buy a whole package of non-turnkey properties, especially if they're in different parts of the city, isn't
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            Go to any real estate association anywhere in the country, and you’ll meet endless excited folks who are sure that their futures—and fortunes—lie in wholesaling houses. Go back 6 months later, and you’ll find that 90% of those folks have never successfully closed a deal. In most cases, this isn’t due to “inactivity” or “fear” or any of the usual excuses. Many of these folks have actually tried and failed, to make a go of it. In my experience, there are 3 main reasons for this:

1. They don’t understand WHY wholesalers make money. They understand, at least in a basic sense, HOW it happens: you put a deal under contract, and you find someone who wants to pay more than you did, and that “more” is your profit.

But they don’t understand something very basic: that buyers don’t just write a check because the deal is available, or cheap, or even because it’s cheaper than other properties that might be for sale in the same area.

Buyers for wholesale deals are real estate investors, right? So, in order to be interested in a deal, the deal can’t just “make money”; it has to make ENOUGH money to p
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