
Marc Zander is a Forever Cash student who lives in Germany – in this episode, he chats to Jack Bosch about how he set up his own land flipping business from outside the USA. Marc has figured out how to set up all of his administrative processes so that he can operate within the USA without ever having to leave his own country! This episode is perfect for non-US citizens who want to live the Forever Cash lifestyle and aren’t sure how to do it.
Listen and enjoy:
What’s inside:
- Find out how Marc Zander runs a US-based land flipping business from Germany
- Discover how to set up your business to operate outside your country
- Learn how to start your path towards financial freedom no matter where you are
Mentioned in this episode
- Subscribe and rate our podcast at: http://www.Jackbosch.com/podcast
- Follow Jack Bosch on Facebook to get the latest updates: http://www.facebook.com/jack.bosch
- Learn how to flip land for pennies on the dollar: http://www.landprofitgenerator.com
- Turbo charge your land flipping business with The Investment Dominator: https://www.investmentdominator.com/
Tweetables:
Transcription:
Male 1: Welcome to The Forever Cash Life Real Estate Investing Podcast, with your hosts, Jack and Michelle Bosch. Together let’s uncover the secrets to building true wealth through real estate, and living a purpose-driven life.
Jack: All right, hello, everyone. This is Jack again, and my guest today is Mark [inaudible 00:01:01], or in English Mark [inaudible 00:01:03]. Hi, Mark, how are you?
Mark: I’m great. How are you, Jack?
Jack: I’m doing excellent. Mark speaks excellent, excellent German…English anyway, German, too, but English. Mark, why is your English so good?
Mark: I lived in the States for two years and I studied English. I majored in English. By profession I would be an English teacher here, but I always say I was lucky enough to not go into high school teaching and did my [crosstalk 00:01:35].
Jack: Yeah, I can understand that. My dad has been a middle school teacher or a high school teacher for 41 years before he retired, and it is hard to do this, to work with the kids, and so on. As cute as they are when they’re little, they turn quite different when they’re in their puberty, right?
Mark: It’s what it is.
Jack: Yes, it is what it is. Well, Mark, first of all, I already said it in the introduction. You are doing deals from Germany. You live in which city, I think, in Augsburg, Germany, which is…where is that? That’s about an hour away from Munich, right?
Mark: That’s what I always say. Most people in Munich know Oktoberfest, so I’m around the corner.
Jack: Right. As a matter of fact, we only…my hometown and his hometown is probably only a two-hour, two-and-a-half-hour drive from each other. I’m from [inaudible 00:02:25]. He’s from Augsburg. It’s not that far away from each other. So both from South Germany. So how did you come across our Land Profit Generator Investing method?
Mark: Well, at first I didn’t. I came across an article that you wrote in…I should have the book somewhere here. It’s this…
Jack: Oh yeah, the [inaudible 00:02:50] book?
Mark: Correct, [inaudible 00:02:53]. And then I was reading through all the articles and I was always looking to…because, you know, we probably all have read Robert Kiyosaki, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” and that was definitely what got me started about financial independence. I already had my little company which I’m struggling to get profitable here importing goods from China and selling on Amazon. And comparing to land flipping, it’s a whole other universe. You need to know much more. You need to be after it so much more and put more effort in it. Anyhow, I read your article.
Jack: Which one, the importing you need to put much effort in?
Mark: Importing, Amazon business, that’s wholesaling goods, basically. I was still looking out left and right, what can I do? And I also trade at the stock market. But you’re not really getting, at least with the strategies I’m trading, you’re not getting rich quick, you know? You get 10% or 20% of what you have, but if you have nothing then 10%, 20% of nothing is nothing. And I had a little bit, but it’s not that I was rich already made, or something. So I read your article, Googled you, found the Land Profit Generator, and then I [inaudible 00:04:19] that. Because I was intrigued by the idea of doing deals in the States, and since I know English I wasn’t afraid of that. Of course there was a bunch of terminology that was still missing, but you learn as you go.
Jack: Very good. The book you’re referring to is basically called, The System, Immobilie…Real Estate, “The System Real Estate,” which is a German book, “Das System Immobilie.” So if somebody’s listening to this in German, go look for the book, “Das System Immobilie.” You can get it on Amazon and in bookstores in Germany. And it’s a grouping of, like, 20-something authors, real estate investors that each wrote an article, were asked to write an article. And since I know the guy that put it together, Thomas Knedel, he asked me to write one of these articles and talk about our Forever Cash strategy, really what this podcast is about. But land flipping, and turning in money, and rolling it into passive, more passive cash-flow streams over time, and now we’re doing also apartment complexes. And this entire layout was there over just, like, 15 pages. And that stirred your interest, very good. So yes, because you have another business that requires much more work.
So very cool. So then you came across this and then you got in contact with us. You got our program, you got started. You got enrolled in our mentorship program [inaudible 00:05:42]. And so tell us what happened since then.
Mark: Well, of course a lot happened. I started off with LPG coaching, and then for me it was…at first it was the task was to establish a system for me to operate in the States, because obviously I can’t even receive phone calls. Like, nobody is gonna call a German land line number. So I was looking and I basically ended up really inexpensively getting what looks like an American land line number but really it’s a voice over IP number, but it’s my number and people can call me. And then the next thing was getting a post office box. That’s a little bit harder, I guess, from when you were in the States you had to go to the embassy, you had to sign documents, and that stuff there. Get some notarized, and we do notarize things differently than people in the States, so you had to go to the embassy, but you did that. And it took me around about two months to set the whole system up, did the call center.
Jack: So to say, just [inaudible 00:06:59] for those, if you’re listening here, those who are listening, when we do our methods we use direct mail. So basically we get a list that you can do online from anywhere, a list from people that own land. We then send them out the letter. While we’re sending them out the letter…you can’t send the letter from Germany. You can, but it’s very expensive and it looks really different, and it’s gonna be taking an extra week to arrive there. Actually it should be an interesting test to do this to see how your opening rates would be. Because if there’s all of a sudden an international stamp on there you might get huge opening rates.
But anyway, so it might be worth a try [inaudible 00:07:35] worth a try. It might cost more but you might get so much more responses. Who knows? But then the thing is, on the letter there’s a phone number that people should call you back on. So the first challenge you had was setting up the phone number, so you obviously did that. The second challenge was when people call back, they do call you but there’s a time difference. Germany and the United States…from California to Germany it’s nine hours’ time difference.
So 3:00 in the afternoon in California, it’s midnight in Germany. So when you send the letter to somebody in California they get the letter and they come home at 5:30 in the afternoon from work, they go pick up the mail, they call you at 6. Well, it’s 3 in the morning in Germany, so how did you hand that, with a call center I assume, right?
Mark: Correct. To set up that was rather easy, and you program. You had also, like, scripts of, you know, something you could give the call center agent, what questions they could ask. I think by then I had also invested in your software.
Jack: Investment Dominator?
Mark: Correct. And I’ve now linked the call center up to the Investment Dominator, so their agents type everything in there. And we had some struggles but now, I guess, we’re there where they’re pretty good at filling that all out themselves so I don’t have to go and copy it all by myself and do that extra work.
Jack: Wonderful. That’s great news. So you set the phone number up such that they call directly to call centers. Our American students do the exact same thing. The next part is, what was the part with the PO Box? So now when you send somebody a letter, an offer in the mail, again, you can use the call center again. You can use a mailing house for that again, or send them international. But then when they accept an offer they sent that into…they need to send it somewhere, right? So what you had to set up is basically a virtual mailbox, right?
Mark: Correct.
Jack: And in order to do that, what they’re…there’s many services out there, but is there anything different? Do you have to have an American credit card to set them up, or can you just call them and say, like, “Hey, I want a virtual mailbox and here’s my credit card number,” and it’s, like, X amount of dollars a month?
Mark: Well, at the moment I have a [inaudible 00:10:13] credit card so I’m not sure how it would be with a German credit card, but I assume it would work. Basically this whole system, still up to the day, I still don’t have a bank account in the States because that’s a rather hard thing to get even when you were living in the States.
Jack: [inaudible 00:10:32]
Mark: I’m actually talking about lawyers to [inaudible 00:10:35] company and all that, and they charged me a ridiculous amount of money for all that. But right now I’m solely operating on my credit card. So except, of course, when I’m buying properties or when I’m selling them, then I wire the money. But for my system, for the call center, for my voice over IP numbers, for everything that I initially bought to get started, also for sending out mass mailings, I still use my credit card today.
Jack: Right. Now it’s not super expensive to do this, but it’s necessary that you have a credit card, yes. Because the call center charges it, the phone number company charges it, and the mailbox company. Now if you’re in the United States you don’t need many of these things. We have students that send the letters out on their own kitchen table, right? They prepare it on the kitchen table. They then drop them off in the mail. They have the phone calls go to their own cell phone. And then they send out the offers and they use their own home address as a address for the acceptance [inaudible 00:11:45].
But this, what we’re talking about right now is how to set this up virtually. So setting it up virtually costs just a few dollars more, but therefore, you can literally be in Germany and do deals in the United States. So now you get the virtual mailbox, and then the closing out of these [inaudible 00:12:01] title company and you just need to wire money and [inaudible 00:12:04]. So you’re doing deals from Germany and you don’t even have a bank account in the United States yet. Isn’t that cool? I love this.
Mark: Well, one tricky thing is because this one county, when I did my…I got a couple of properties that I either bought or still have on a contract, and this one county, they don’t tell you anything in the due diligence process. So when I get the offer accepted I would call the county and say, “Hey, I got this list of questions that I need to ask you. Do you have utilities there? Do you have road access [inaudible 00:12:38],” or whatnot? And they wouldn’t tell me anything. They said, “Okay, well, Mr. [inaudible 00:12:43], you can apply. Here’s the form, we’ll send you an email, and pay us 25 bucks.”
Well, I did all that, and I actually appreciate what they do to me because I got something in writing, and it’s very thorough what they do for me, the research they do for me on the lots. However, this one lot was unincorporated, didn’t belong to the county anymore but the city. It was incorporated, it belonged to a city so they weren’t…they couldn’t do this for me anymore. So they sent to my PO Box, they sent a check. And so I now got this check of, I think it was $25, sitting in my mailbox. Can’t cash it. It’s not worth sending it here, because that costs a lot more than the $25, and it’s just ridiculous. So I’m just writing that off and say, “Hey, next time.”
Jack: Yeah, [inaudible 00:13:40] what I’m hearing you say is there’s a little bit sometimes…you gotta plan things properly. There’s some challenges in there. Or ideally perhaps you have to have somebody. What would probably be the best help is to have somebody [inaudible 00:13:54] trust that you could send a check like that to that then deposit it for you and sent it back to you. So perhaps then $125 is not even worth it. I mean, if that would be a $2,000 check you could ask an attorney to do it for you, right? You can ask an attorney, “Hey, can I have that check sent to you?” Or you can ask the PO Box company just mail it directly to you to Germany. It takes an extra week, they might charge $20 to do this or so, or $10 to do this but then you have your check. Very interesting.
But so far we have accomplished setting up a phone number, setting up the call center, setting up a mailing house, and setting up a mailbox. So you really can do the entire acquisition process remotely from anywhere in the world. And so now when you get a deal accepted and it comes there, what do you do? You print it out because it gets to your virtual mailbox. You ask them to open that envelope. You see it and you can literally print it out in German, right?
Mark: Correct. When I send out offers…so now I got deals accepted, but before then when I sent out the offers, I have people here in Germany. Because in your Facebook Group there’s also some Germans. And sometimes you see by the name, “Okay, they gotta be German.” And so I clicked on them and saw, “Oh yeah, they’re German.” And then, you know, I befriended them on Facebook, wrote them a message, or some actually came back to me and befriended me when you linked me in this one post, and all of a sudden my account exploded. But it’s okay. It was nice connecting with people.
And there are some Germans that actually send written contracts with their signature out by FedEx, or UPS, and they spend $20, $25, $30 a letter for a contract. And we know a lot of contracts don’t get accepted. It’s the big numbers we’re talking about so you don’t wanna spend so much money on a letter. So what I did is when I came to Phoenix for a Fastlane Workshop with you guys, and the Premier Coaching, my coach Jeff was like, “Hey, I’m working with this post office owner.” And we were talking about…because I had made a stamp with my signature, and I sent that to a friend in the States.
But unfortunately her boyfriend hates me. She was very insufficient, undisciplined…I don’t know how to say that. She wasn’t really good and faithful in getting the work done, and of course, I was always asking favors of her so that was kind of a bad position to be in to frequently ask favors of a friend. So I got connected to this post office manager and he’s happily sending out letters for me and stamping them for me with my signature so it looks like I’ve signed it and it’s being mailed out from the States. So the time that it gets to the people that are asking for offers is just reduced a lot. Of course, I gotta have a big amount of faith in this manager that he doesn’t run off with my signature and buys himself a Porsche and I gotta pay it. But I do have that since he was recommended for me by Jeff, and I trust Jeff with that.
Jack: Jeff is your mentor in the coaching program [inaudible 00:17:35]. So let me jump in here for a moment because there’s a better way. And I will let Jeff know [inaudible 00:17:42] I didn’t know he didn’t know that. But there’s even a better way that we came across. Another one, I have a couple of German coaching students myself that I mentor personally, and what they do is, very simply, the same mailing house that you use to send out the letters can also send out your offers. The minimum that they do is they charge for a minimum of 50 documents.
So even if you only have 10 offers to make, you have to pay for 50 pages, but it’s still cheaper than FedEx, and it’s still cheaper. So what you do is you send out 1,000 letters, you get 100 phone calls, or 50 phone calls, or 80 [inaudible 00:18:22]. Let’s say you get 80 phone calls. You make 80 offers. You just sent those 80 offers to the mailing house and they send them out for you for, like, $1.50 a piece. And then now comes the question, do you sign them or you do not sign them? So you don’t even have to sign them. We send our offers out unsigned. We have the seller sign them, and when they come back we sign them.
So therefore, there’s no need for you to have your signature anywhere. So we made this little interview into a little coaching session, which is actually very cool. So there’s a way for you to not have to give out your signature, to make that completely simple. Have that guy return it to you and destroy it. Use the same mailing house out there and just simply find, or find, or have that same guy just mail out the offers for you without any signatures. And when the seller signs it, they send it back through a virtual mailbox. They open it, you print it out [inaudible 00:19:25], and you just sign it right there. And now you have a signed contract that you then email to the seller. So now the seller has a copy, you have a copy, everything is done and nobody has your signature. Does that make sense?
Mark: Yeah, it does.
Jack: All right, so that would be a simpler way to do this, and particularly using the mailing house to send your offers is a very inexpensive and a very quick way to do this, too. So that’s something that has been very successful for another set of German students that are doing the exact same thing. They did everything else the same day. They set up the call center, they set up the phone number, they set up the mailing house. They set up the call center [inaudible 00:20:05] the address and information right into our software into the Investment Dominator. And now the only thing that they’ve done different, in order to get their offers out they’re not using FedEx and not having to find some person. Because that is always, like, that person could decide to quit on you tomorrow, right?
You wanna have a system that is scalable that it gets repeatable. So what they’re doing is they’re just waiting until they have at least 20, 30 offers to make, which usually is very quickly. It’s almost like every two weeks they’re making that many offers. And then they just send them out and they send them out to the mailing house, and the mailing house sends them out for them. Is that cool?
Mark: That’s very cool.
Jack: All right, wonderful. Great. So with that, you’ve done it, so it has already led to a deal, right? You’ve done one deal already and there’s a couple of deals that didn’t work out. Let’s talk about those. Tell us about the deal that didn’t work out.
Mark: Well, maybe because you were also asking about how this whole coaching went, and at some point with the LPG I was hitting a roadblock. And really that’s when I decided, okay, to get involved with the Premier Coaching program. Because I felt like, “Hey, I’m not getting anywhere.” And when I look in these Facebook Groups and I see all those…it doesn’t matter which nationality they are, Americans or foreigners, they always struggle with something. And most of the time it’s themselves.
You talked about mindsets of people in one of your podcasts, and I see a lot of that, and that’s a big thing for me, too. But for me, it was the selling side, and that’s the big thing that helped me in the Premier Coaching. And that’s when I actually closed that first deal, not only getting the property but also being able to sell it. Because there are some struggles with Craigslist, for example. Because you can’t use this voice over IP number on Craigslist because they somehow detect that, and they wanna have a true American phone number. And I tried to get one and I would have to sign up for a contract. Didn’t want that, wanted to get a prepay card. That wouldn’t work.
So again, I pay someone to post that for me online, but that all came out of the Premier Coaching, and that might be different for a lot of people. Anyhow, my first deal, like you asked, that was actually in Washington state. And I never bought that property at first because I was still suspicious. I didn’t trust. I didn’t have faith in the program. I was like, “Hey, on the one hand I believe in it. On the other hand, I haven’t seen it work yet.” So I was like…it was $5,000 or so to buy it. And I evaluated it for about $30,000 and I was like…
Jack: Oh, very nice.
Mark: I was like, “Okay, what do you offer it for?” I came up with $15,000, and then all of a sudden all hell broke loose. Calls, I had two people calling me and they were like, “Hey, where are you? I want to give you cash. I want this piece of land.” The other one said, “I’ll take it,” but he was actually the first one, and, “I got it cash. I’m buying it.” I had eight more people inquiring about the property jumping at me. And I was getting nervous and I was like, “Great. What do I do now,” rewatching some video tutorial from the Land Profit Generator. I was like, “Okay, okay.” So we went ahead and closed. I sent this guy the buying contract. Had to decline a whole lot of people, realized, “Okay, I could’ve asked more, a couple of thousand more off that property,” just like you with your $4,000 deal [inaudible 00:24:27] you described.
But again, I said, “Hey, I’m making a lot of money out of nothing.” Not quite nothing, but, you know, it was some work. But hey, I’m making this money so I’m glad for it, and I still am. And it took quite a while, I think about a month or one and a half to actually then flip it. Because in the buying process there were some obstacles, so that took longer. The seller, they had some problems, and the buyer on the other hand, he was really obnoxiously impatient with me and was calling me, pushing, and pushing. And I understand that because he got a very good deal. So yeah, that was the first deal and made me really happy.
Jack: Wonderful. That’s exciting. So what it goes to show is, so you made that deal. You did that deal in the double closing, or did you actually buy the property?
Mark: It was a double closing.
Jack: So you did this deal, made how much?
Mark: It was about $10,000 profit.
Jack: Ten thousand dollar profit, you did that without using any of your own money other than, of course, [inaudible 00:25:40].
Mark: Correct.
Jack: Wonderful. From Germany, without having seen the property?
Mark: Correct.
Jack: With, like, 10 people knocking on your door wanting more properties?
Mark: Correct, and two wanting to come by me, offering me cash in my post box office.
Jack: Yeah, they wanted to basically come with a cashier’s check with money and just pay for it right there.
Mark: I was in Michigan. So I told them, “Please, guys, don’t come. I’m in Michigan, I lied,” is what I always tell them.
Jack: Yeah. So the [inaudible 00:26:12]. I don’t blame you for saying, “I didn’t trust the system yet.” Because, I mean, there are so many gurus out there talking about, “This is this, this is this,” blah, blah, blah. I mean, it’s very normal that you don’t just believe everything you hear. But I’m glad you took action. I’m glad you followed the steps. I’m glad you took action on the mentoring program because it apparently made the difference. And then you jumped in and you were able to get this deal done. That is super exciting, and that, by the way, has just happened fairly recently.
So since then a couple of deals have also [inaudible 00:26:43]. But before we go into the other deals, that one of them actually has fallen apart because it’s kind of a lesson learned. We talked before we, kind of, jumped on the show here. We talked a little bit about that deal, so I wanna make sure I talk about that. And the other part I wanted to mention is, since then, how is your confidence in the system now?
Mark: It’s much bigger, of course, you know?
Jack: Of course, right.
Mark: It’s one thing to hear it from you and the other thing to experience it yourself, and I totally understand if somebody’s [crosstalk 00:27:13].
Jack: Now the second question is, in that area where you’ve got so many people jumping onto you, have you looked for more properties since then?
Mark: I actually didn’t.
Jack: That’s the number one thing you wanna do here. Next coaching lesson here, that’s the number one thing you wanna do right now. Because if you have eight people that jumped on this deal that you have to say no to, they’re ready to buy a property from you tomorrow when you find one. So go right back into the same area. See if you made offers to similar properties that they didn’t accept, and see if you can double the offer on those. Because we only offer $3,000, $4,000 on these properties, can you offer $7,000 or $8,000 and still sell it to someone for $15,000 or $20,000 again? [inaudible 00:27:53], right? So go, and then you have an area. You discovered an area where there’s lots of buyers. And when you find properties they take them immediately off your hands. So make that the focus of where you go, and go right back there and find some more deals.
Mark: You know why I actually changed the county? It’s because it was in Washington state with nine hours’ time difference. So I now went to the East Coast because I just figured, “Hey, that’s easier for me to work.”
Jack: Okay. Either way it works.
Mark: I’d probably do both. Since you just said that I’m like, “Why would I let this go?”
Jack: Go back, and even look up the offers that you have made four months ago, or three months ago, and go back to them. Because here’s the reality of land flipping. Nobody else has made them offers since then. So you made an offer but then they didn’t accept it, but if you go in three, four months later now and make another set of offers, then there’s a good chance they will still accept one or two of them.
Mark: There was actually…you know, I didn’t make then so many offers, and that’s one lesson that came out of the Premier Coaching and out of the Fastlane Workshop that was everybody that was requesting an offer gets one. And if you’re sending them $50 offers, where I had already made the decision for them, nobody is gonna sell it for $50 or $300. Yes, they will, and that’s something that I didn’t do. So I had about 20, and I didn’t mail out that much. It was probably just 1,000 letters, and I had 20 offer requests and I mailed out, what, 2, 3 actual offers?
Jack: Okay, go back and mail to the other ones. Yes. That’s a common mistake that at the beginning that you think, “Oh, nobody’s gonna accept that.” But by saying that, as you just said, you’re deciding for them. Don’t let them, don’t do that. Let them decide for themselves. Spend the $1 or whatever it is on the envelope or the offer and have them make the decision.
Mark: Right. I had one guy called one of the call center agents and said he wanted $12,000 for the property, offered him $300 and he signed it. And you know, you never know.
Jack: I love this. We’re running a little bit out of time, but just quickly, shortly, what happened in the deal that didn’t go through? You [inaudible 00:30:32] there was some that you got a deal accepted. You had a buyer lined up right away, but then the deal didn’t go through because you couldn’t buy the property. Tell us about that a little bit, because that sometimes happens. Sometimes there is the case that you get a property so cheap because it has other issues with it. So that’s why, but tell us the deal. Tell us about that.
Mark: Well, there’s actually two cases right now that I had to let go. The one, this gentleman had a lot of liens on it, and it wasn’t just back taxes from the county, it was other mortgages, whatnot that he had on it. And my title attorney I was working with, or I’m still working with him, said, “Mark, this is just gonna be a whole lot of work to get this sorted out.” And he would’ve had to ask more money for his services and finding the actual people that he owed money, that I figured, “Okay, it’s just $1,000, $2,000 in this deal. So I’m not gonna make it.” So I let that go. And the other one is actually…I still regret this a little bit. It’s just $1,000 profit deal, and I still wanted to pick it up, flip it. If there’s $1,000 lying on the street, would you bend down and pick it up? Yes, I would.
Jack: Of course.
Mark: So I wanted to do that. And I even had the new buyer lined up already. He said, “Man, I’m gonna take this in this area of Florida, that’s Florida.” And it’s weird because there’s, like, people buying land that is not gonna be developed, and it wasn’t in 30 years and it might not be in the next 30 years. But this gentleman wanted to buy this, and I told him, “Hey, you can’t build on it.” He said, “Can I park an RV on there and camp there?” He said, “Yes.” “You want it, take it.” I said, “Great.” And then I tried calling this other gentleman and that was my mistake. I had yet not bought this piece of land because I was suspicious of it because of it’s unbuildability, if that’s a word.
Jack: You just made it a word. Two Germans just make up new English words, there we go.
Mark: Tell Merriam-Webster. Anyhow, so I tried calling the seller again, or again, I’ve never spoken to him. I’ve just received the written contract from him, because I don’t really…I’m not that good in keeping in touch with the actual sellers, which I should get better at.
Jack: You should, yes.
Mark: So I never reached him. Once he called me back, I couldn’t pick up the phone and then I couldn’t reach him again. So I was just leaving messages on his voicemail. I was sending emails and in the end I was drafting this [inaudible 00:33:29] for him to sell me the property and I literally spoke on his voicemail telling him, you know, “Dear whatnot, I’d like to give you money, but I need your wiring instructions.” And he wouldn’t get back to me, and I [crosstalk 00:33:52].
Jack: [crosstalk 00:33:52] yeah, so that just happens rarely, but the lesson learned here more than anything is that, when you have a deal that is…in this case I’m with you because if it’s not buildable you don’t wanna put your good money into the property before you have a buyer. But the lesson learned is that if you use a title company, you have them do the title search right away. Have them get in contact. Have them plan [inaudible 00:34:14] move forward with everything. But even if you don’t, stay in contact with the seller, get the same letters, get multiple ways of getting ahold of him. But then the main thing is, like, make sure you can buy the property very quickly.
So before, what we do when we buy a property or when we get a deal on a contract, the first thing we do is we pass it onto a title company. Or if we do the closing ourselves, we do a title search. Either way, the title search happens within the first week of us having a contract. We do that so that we know if it’s even worth spending the time on selling the property. Because if that property can’t be built, if that property can’t be done anything with, or if it has $10,000 more liens than we thought it has, then it destroys the value of the property or the margin, then we don’t even wanna go and build a listing for it. You don’t even wanna go start looking for a buyer.
So the lesson learned is, do the research up front and stay in contact with your sellers so that you build that good relationship so that they will pick up the phone, they will work with you and then you can get those deals through. But that’s why I wanted to mention it, because it’s another quick, kind of, little lesson learned, a little coaching opportunity here for both for you, you already know that, but for everyone listening that perhaps is already doing this and dabbling with this, and then working this. Make sure you’re in contact with that seller and make sure you find out if the property has a title that you can actually…that’s marketable, that you can actually pass it onto somebody else.
Because those things do destroy some deals, and you’d rather know early on than later on after you spend all this [inaudible 00:35:49] and you have a buyer that’s ready to buy. And you have the money right in front of you and you can’t get it because you can’t get the property or the seller doesn’t answer, right? So, wonderful. Mark, thank you very much for the call. With that, I think we’re gonna close it out. It was awesome. Thank you very much. It’s already late, kind of, evening in Germany, so thanks a lot. We’re excited to follow your success. We’re excited about the deal you have done. I know you have several more in the contract right now, right?
Mark: Mm-hmm, correct, 13 right now.
Jack: Thirteen other contracts, so that’s exciting. So work on those on the selling parts, stay in contact with your seller, do the title searches. Make sure you do those things and they’ll sell in no time. So with that, everyone, thank you very much for watching this episode. If you’re on YouTube, make sure you put the thumbs up. Make sure you share it with other people. Get the share list, put it over on YouTube and Facebook. Share it with other people. If you are listening to this on iTunes, make sure you give us five stars, and not only five-star review, put in the [inaudible 00:36:54]. Give us a little [inaudible 00:36:57] feedback on it, ideally five-star feedback. With that, thank you very much, and thank you, Mark.
Male 1: Enjoyed this episode? Then make sure you like, subscribe, and post your comments and questions below the video. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.