Owning a home is the dream of every family. But the reality is that some people cannot secure the funding needed to purchase a house. This is where a different kind of real estate investor steps in. For some like our guest, Siloh Moses, the role of a real estate investor extends far beyond just making profits. Siloh is an Ambassador at Equity & Help where he guides philantroinvestors to grow their capital while helping others.
As a real estate investor, Siloh’s favorite strategy is buying real estate owned (REO) single-family homes in bulk. Big institutions usually come to them, then they are able to negotiate the terms and buy the deals that are attractive to them.
They get upwards of 5,000 properties sent to them every week. From that, they would pick the top 100 that appealed to them. Around 30 would be bought by them while 60-70 would be offered to their investors.
Siloh works to serve the subset of people whose income doesn’t allow them to become a homeowner. These are the people whose credit score or income doesn’t allow them to qualify for a traditional loan.
Equity & Help helps those families by giving them the opportunity to buy a house. By buying the vacant homes in bulk, they are able to get a discount. Their investors buy no less than 5 properties at a time and in cash. Then later sell them to the various families without homes.
They also have a team of real estate professionals who do everything from the home inspection to the sale of the property.
It’s key to buy the properties in bulk so that they can get them for so cheap. Equity & Help buys the properties from the banks for around $20,000 each. Their investors buy them for around $45,000, and later sell them to the families for $85,000. Terms have to be really strict, has to be in the suburbs, 30 mins outside of any major city or state
There is no mortgage involved. The company doesn’t take a cut as the family pays directly to the investor. Terms have to be really strict though, and most homes they look for should be in the suburbs, around 30 minutes outside of any major city or state.
To become an investor at Equity & Help, there is a qualification process. The company wants to make sure that you would be a great fit for them and that they would be a great fit for you.
Their goal is to help 10,000 families become homeowners by 2025. Since it’s expected that at times some of the families might fall behind their payments, it’s important to have a philosophical mindset in place instead of thinking only about profits.
As they only sell in bulk, investors should be ready to invest a minimum of $150,000.
Siloh’s motivation for helping families own homes come from experiencing homelessness himself. He used to live from paycheck to paycheck, working a typical 9-5 desk job earning $40,000 a year and trying to raise his baby son.
Things got worse as he started falling behind his bills and found himself laid off from his job. Apparently, his employer back then couldn’t afford to pay him anymore and offered a severance package, which they failed to pay him as a week later, the company building got locked up. The company hasn’t paid their building rent as well and the owners just ran off.
While trying to explain his situation to his landlord, Siloh was given a deadline to come up with the rent or face eviction. He sold everything he could but came up with only $900, $300 short of the $1,200 he needed.
Siloh’s landlord evicted him and his baby. So Siloh gave his girlfriend the baby, the $900 he had, and his car. She then went back to her parents.
For the next 7 months, Siloh lived under a crevice of his old office and hanged out at a nearby 7-11. Every day, for 6-7 hours, he would grab the change that fell out of the pockets of rich people coming to the convenience store.
One day, a person who often came by, Eric started talking to him, giving him food, and motivating him that things will get better. Then he offered Siloh a key to his abandoned, vacant office. It was small but Siloh took it.
Then Siloh started sending out job applications, went to 36 job interviews before he got hired for a commission-only sales job. For Siloh, it wasn’t the job he needed, all he needed was an opportunity.
In 90 days, he saved enough to rent a room in another person’s job then he just started building.
Siloh got into real estate because he wanted to help people. He didn’t want to become a non-profit, and he didn’t want to beg for money. Plus, he figured that if he ever needed money, he could just sell a property.
So he studied real estate from top to bottom and did everything, wholesaling, cold-calling, door-knocking, hand-writing letters, and buying lists.
Once he started to accumulate a cash buyer’s list, he got aggressive on the real estate side. In his first year in business, he flipped a $1M in real estate.
Siloh considers himself an impatient person. This can sometimes come across as aggressive to people. He’s very hands on, so he only follows up on people. Sometimes the people who want to be nice stop answering his calls. So he’s lost deals that way.
From 4 am until 11 pm, Siloh is doing real estate. He starts his day by waking up early, praying, exercising, and then reading 10 pages of a book. Then he looks at his list and calendar.
Even now, he is still cold-calling people. Real estate is not about properties but about the people. Siloh believes that he needs to be with the people to create relationships because even if they don’t end up buying, they will refer him to other people.
What’s important is to ask the right questions. So Siloh starts his calls by asking people about themselves. He asks them questions based on the F.O.R.M – family, occupation, recreation, and motivation.
At the end of the day, seeing a family finally own their own home is what matters to him. Their investors get an average return of 10-15%. Then they’ll see the impact of what they’ve done, and decide to continue investing with them.
There are 3 things you should believe – what you stand for, what makes you different, and to not be afraid to be who you are.
Let that be every decision you make moving forward in life
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