87 – Real Estate Day Trading with Larry Goins

Imagine a house I’m paying $3,000 for, it’s rented out for $300. That’s over a hundred percent return per year, but I sold it for 15,000 cash.

Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Everything Real Estate Investing Show with Sean Pan. Today, we have Larry Goins. Larry’s a real estate investor, and on this episode, he’ll be sharing the secrets of real estate day trading; a method to wholesale properties remotely and at a rapid pace. With this method, anyone anywhere should be able to make a profit with real estate. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show and leave a review. We release episodes every Wednesday and Sunday and release the show notes on our site EverythingREI.com. Enjoy!

Sean: [00:01:00] Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are and how you’ve gone to real estate.

Larry: [00:01:04] Sure, absolutely. I’m Larry Goins and I’ve been investing for over 30 years actually. I bought my first house in 1986. And I’ve done a ton of different kinds of deals. We’ve done wholesaling, retailing, fix-and-flips, subject-to, short sales. I’ve used private money. I’ve been a hard money and private money lender. Done commercial, multifamily, and mobile home parks and all kind of stuff. But my very first deal was an FHA non-qualifying assumable loan. And that kind of tells you how old I am and how long I’ve been doing this because they stopped doing those in 1978, but there were still a few of them around in the 80s. You were able to take over a with just a signature. They didn’t even pull your credit, but they don’t do that anymore. But we still do a lot of day trading real estate. We still do a lot of seller financing and buying HUD houses and stuff like that. And we’ve actually done deals with about 12 different states right from our office in Lake Wylie, South Carolina.

Sean: [00:02:08] Awesome. So the most interesting part about your strategy, the one that I thought was virtual day trading. You want to talk more about that and what does that entail?

Larry: [00:02:18] Sure. Well, actually I was doing virtual investing before the term virtual investing had gone into the public, right? I did my very first deal that way back in early 2000 and I kind of did a deal where I never met the seller, never met the buyer, never went to the property, never went to the closing. I did all my business by phone, fax, FedEx, email, and internet. Now we just do everything by phone, email, and internet. We buy all of our properties over the phone. We never go look at them. We don’t rehab them and we typically have them sold in a couple hours and we buy and sell them the same day. I call it real estate day trading. In fact, I wrote a book about it called “Getting Started in Real Estate Day Trading”. And now we have students not only in the US but in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Israel, to Philippines, Ireland, Chile and Denmark, that are doing day trading in the States from where they live. That’s pretty cool, huh?

Sean: [00:03:20] So I have some virtual assistants who are going to be listening to this episode and they’re probably thinking, “How can I get into this business as well?” So can you kind of break it down? What does it take to get started? And what do you guys actually do?

Larry: [00:03:31] Sure. Well, basically what we do is we day trade real estate. We market to make the phone ring. Now markets are cyclical, right? Right now we are in a seller’s market, right? Prices are up. They’re starting to come back down a little bit, you know, especially on the higher price stuff. Of course you guys are out there on the West Coast where the prices look like phone numbers, right? But we buy stuff all over, we have students in your area on the west coast and they’re buying stuff in other markets where they can get really really good deals and they can buy properties cheap. So we market, we make the phone ring. And our phone rings about 200 to 300 times a week. And what we do is we pick up the phone, we qualify the seller and we ask them a few questions. I’ve got a one call close script and literally within 10 to 15 minutes over the phone, I can make an offer on a property. And we have multiple different ways that we buy the property. Sometimes we buy and pay cash and get a big discount. Sometimes we pay their price but they give us a hundred percent financing with no money down. So then once we get the property under contract… And by the way, we typically get it under contract within two hours of them agreeing to sell it to us over the phone, right? So, once that happens, once we get it on paper, then we send somebody out to take pictures, and we do the rest of our due diligence, and then we start marketing the property, and we find a buyer and buy and sell at the same day.

Sean: [00:05:04] So, how do you get the idea to do this?

Larry: [00:05:06] Well, the very first deal I did was back in early 2000 and I’d put out some bandit signs, right? It says “I buy houses”. Somebody was passing through, they didn’t even live in our area, they were passing through. And they called me and said, “Hey Larry, I have this house and I want to sell it.” Her grandmother gave it to her and she said, “I’ve got some tenants in there. They’re not paying a whole lot.” She said, “…but I want to sell it.” So I’m a firm believer, if you’re not embarrassed by your offer,it’s probably too much. So I offered her $2,500. I mean, can you believe she didn’t hang up on me, right? It was a little two bedroom, one bath, brick ranch house. It was in a small town and the key is to not get on them hang up on you. You got to have a script that allows you to build rapport with them and leaves the door open for either them to call you back or you to call them back. So in about a week, she called me back and she said, “Larry I need some money and I need it now. If you’ll give me $3,000 for this house and I can have my money by Friday, I’ll take it.” So this was way back when they had… they didn’t have digital cameras. You didn’t have smartphones that had cameras on them then, you know, almost 20 years ago. So what I did was I went to CVS and got one of those disposable cameras. I mailed it to her. She sent it to the tenants. The tenants took the pictures. They mailed it to me. I went to CVS and had the film developed and then I looked at him and I’m like, “Hey, I can buy this!” So I contacted my attorney. I said set up the closing; the attorney set it all up. I didn’t even attend the closing. I did a POA, power of attorney. And once I got it, once I purchased the property, then I started marketing it and I found a buyer. I never met the buyer. I didn’t go see the property. I didn’t go to the closing when I sold it. I’m like I got to figure out a better way to do this . I got to do this again, right? So that’s how I came up with a whole virtual investing thing. I did one deal by accident and by phone, fax, FedEx, email and the internet and I’m like, “I got to figure out how to do this!” So I started studying and learning and I mean I read books like Bill Gates’ books, “Business at the Speed of Thought”, “Hyper Growth” and some other stuff and now it’s grown so much. We don’t use facts. We don’t use FedEx anymore, right? We use mobile notary signing services to get the contract signed or we use DocuSign or something like that. And we’ve just really streamlined this process. So I mean like last week we bought three houses and sold three houses last week. Never went and looked at any of them. Just did it all over the phone.

Sean: [00:08:02] So let’s walk through the actual process. Step one is marketing, right? So, how much do you send out in direct mail? Is direct ,mail even your main way of marketing to people?

Larry: [00:08:12] Well, we’ve got a ton of different ways that we market. I’m a firm believer in going outside the major MSAs, Metropolitan Statistical Areas. If you want to pick a market, you pick a market and then you go outside a couple of counties where there’s not as much population, right? And because I don’t like competition. I hate competition and and I don’t want to have to deal with that. So I pick an MSA and then I go outside that MSA a couple of counties, right? So once we get the deal under contract where we get it signed, we get it under contract and we mark it to get seller leads coming in. We do about 37,000 postcards a month is about what we send out. And our phone probably rings about 200 to 300 times a week and we use a CRM called Podio. All the leads automatically go into Podio and it creates a task for an Acquisition Manager to call them.

Sean: [00:09:15] And then of those people who call, how many of them usually convert to a sale?

Larry: [00:09:19] It depends on who’s talking to him. If it’s me, it’s about one in 10. If it’s one of my other guys, it’s about 1 in 15 or 1 in 20. But I’ve just been doing it so long. I know who to make offers with and who not to. But really what I have my new guys do… And I’ve got four acquisition managers. Whenever they get somebody on the phone, they qualify the person and then they turn it over to me and I actually go on the offer over the phone. Now some of my guys are given their own offers now and they’re buying their own deals, but if they’re concerned about it or not really sure how much to offer or it’s a difficult seller to deal with, they let me talk to him.

Sean: [00:10:00] And do these phone calls usually last 10 minutes to 30 minutes?

Larry: [00:10:04] 10 to 15 minutes. Sometimes 15 to 20. But for the most part, 10 to 15%. In fact, my post card says, “In about 10 minutes over the phone, I can give you a cash offer for your property”.

Sean: [00:10:17] And by then you’re able to analyze the deal and know what number you’re getting.

Larry: [00:10:21] Absolutely. And here’s the best part, a lot of people are wholesaling deals and they’re making 3,000, 5,000, 7,000, 10,000. We’re averaging about $18,000 wholesale profit per deal. I mean, we’ve got a couple coming up right now. We’ve got one coming up. That’s about $40,000 wholesale. We’ve got a few coming up that are 30. So I mean we got one house right now. We’re buying it for 25 and we’re selling it for 65.

Sean: [00:10:52] You can buy a house for $25,000?

Larry: [00:10:52] Man, I buy houses for $5,000. Listen, you’re gonna love this. Now your audience is in the Bay area of California. I mean, they can’t even understand this but we bought a house this week where the seller said, they are there in upstate New York. The house is in North Carolina. They said, “I haven’t been there. I hadn’t seen the house in 10 years. I’m sure it’s probably about torn down by now. It just needs to be torn down.” You know, I said look, “Here’s the deal,” I said, “We can’t give much for a house like this. Number one, who wants to build a new house in a neighborhood with a bunch of old houses, right? Now I know land is not as valuable where we are as it is where you are. But who wants to build a brand new house next to a bunch of old 50-60 year old houses and if you’ve got a tear the house down, it’s going to cost about 8 to $12,000 to tear the house down.” I said, “All I can give you is $300. I’ll give you $300 for it.” Guess what? We sent somebody out to look at it. It’s a three bedroom, one and a half bath, brick ranch house with a basement, that is still in decent shape. It needs cleaning out. It needs the yard taken care of because there’s trees growing up all around it now, because there’s nobody done anything to it for about 10 years. But I went in the house myself. I’m like, “Are you serious? I gotta go see this for myself.” So I went in the house myself. $300, a three-bedroom brick ranch house on a half-acre lot. Can you believe that?

Sean: [00:12:32] That’s awesome. Like our staging costs are about $5,000. So, how do you go about analyzing a deal so quickly?

Larry: [00:12:39] I’ve always said if you need a calculator, it’s probably not a deal. But what I do is I analyze them a couple of different ways. Number one is based on after-repair value. I mean, I’m sure everybody knows this. ARV or after-repair value, in our area it’s times .7 or 70%. So I need to sell a property, if I’m whole selling a property, I need to sell it where my buyer is going to be in it no more than 70 percent of value, right? So I take ARV times .7 and then I minus repairs and then I minus what I want to make. And that’s my number. And I always try to put about 15 or $20,000 in there. Now, sometimes it’s a little more, sometimes it’s a little less of course, right? The second way is I do it based on cash flow. Now this is really going to blow you away because I want to sell my properties where the rents are 1.5 to 2%per month. So another word’s if a property is rented out for $500, I need to sell it for $25,000, right? Minus any repairs, minus what I want to make on it, right? So if it’s rented out for $1,000 a month, my buyer needs to be all in at around $50,000, minus repairs, minus what I want to make. Listen, I just bought six rental properties. 6 rental properties the other day for $30,000 for all six of them and they were rented out for $350 a piece.

Sean: [00:14:10] Where is this again?

Larry: [00:14:12] It was in Lancaster, South Carolina. Remember you take the MSA and you go out a couple of counties where there’s no competition.

Sean: [00:14:19] These numbers are so different than what we’re used to right?

Larry: [00:14:23] Yeah, but you know, here’s what you got to look at it. You got to look at it like this. There’s probably people listening to this podcast right now and they’ve been scared to death. “How am I going to flip a $500,000 house? How am I going to flip a 1.2 million dollar house?” Right? Maybe they’re renting, maybe they don’t have $5,000 in their bank account, right? They can do virtual investing, go and buy a $5,000 house on the East Coast somewhere or Mid-America. They can go buy that $5,000 house and wholesale that thing for 15 or $20,000, right? We’re buying a house right now. It’s closing Friday. We’re buying a house right now that I negotiated a price of $12,000. I renegotiated after we went out and look. Now, this house has a tenant in it paying $300 a month. I renegotiated this deal from 12,000 down to $3,000. And we’re selling that house for 15,000. Imagine a house I’m paying $3,000 for, its rented out for $300. That’s over 100% return per year, right? $300 is $3,600 a year. I’m only paying $3000 for the house, but I sold it for $15,000 cash.

Sean: [00:15:49] So what are the cost involved in virtual wholesale?

Larry: [00:15:51] The number one cost is you got to make the phone ring. I don’t care if you’re doing bandit signs, direct mail, Facebook ads, pay-per-click advertising, bird dogs. It doesn’t really matter but you’ve got to make the phone ring. You could do telemarketing, RVMs, text broadcasting, whatever it is you want to do because there’s so much technology out there. You can get an app like Deal Machine and hire local bird dogs or property locators to go out there and find properties for you. There’s so many different ways to generate leads. But the key is you’ve got to generate leads. You’ve got to generate leads. Now I used to do all my deals on the MLS and HUD, but right now we’re in a seller’s market. There’s not many MLS and HUD stuff. That will turn around again and there will be a lot of bank-owned properties again. But right now is not the time. But you’ve got to make the phone ring. That’s the most important thing.

Sean: [00:16:49] How are you calculating ARV so quickly?

Larry: [00:16:51] You know, a lot of people use some sort of a membership site or subscription service or something like that. Guess what I do? I get on Zillow. I look up my house on Zillow, and I look at the map under “Neighborhood” and I zoom out and I see what other similar houses are selling for. And I pick the low priced ones and that’s the ones I give to my seller. And then I minus out repairs and I make my offer. Now there’s also some higher-priced closings or sales in the area as well. And that’s what I’m going to use whenever I sell it because I’m trying to compare the property with other properties, may be distressed sales or properties that need rehab or something like that. But I just do it all over the phone. It’s really simple. And I even tell my sellers when I’m on the phone, I say, “Well, let’s pull up and see what some similar houses to yours are selling for, because really that’s what I’ve got to base my offer on as well, other houses similar to yours are selling for. And I’m not doing anything that you can’t do on your own. So let’s take a look at it together.”

Sean: [00:17:57] So while you’re on the phone you kind of go on Zillow together?

Larry: [00:18:00] I give them the addresses, I tell them the date that they sold, and the amount of money they sold for.

Sean: [00:18:07] And how do you estimate construction costs? We live in very different worlds here?

Larry: [00:18:10] Right, right. Well after a while you learn how to do it, but you can figure a per square foot. I mean you can figure, you know, 8 to $10 a foot for cosmetic. You can figure 10 to 12 or 15 for a light rehab, and you can figure a 15 to $20 a square foot for a major rehab, right? And once you go through the house and look at it, after awhile, you kind of get an idea. Here’s the thing, I do not tell my sellers or tell my buyers exactly how much work it needs. I say, “This house looks like it needs 10 to $15,000 of work” But you be the judge. You might be doing your own work. You might hire a general contractor. You might be the general contractor and only hire subs or you might go in there and do all the work yourself. So if I tell somebody it needs 10 to 15,000 of work, they might be able to get it done for five if they’re doing the work themselves. So I try to give them a guesstimate. But I encourage people to get their own estimates and do their own due diligence.

Sean: [00:19:13] This is so interesting because for us, we budget 65 to $75 per square foot when we do rehabs.

Larry: [00:19:21] Well, but you’re doing high-end rehabs too, right?

Sean: [00:19:24] These are considered medium.

Larry: [00:19:27] Seriously?

Sean: [00:19:27] The cost of labor is very high here.

Larry: [00:19:29] Well, you know, that’s another really good reason for people in your area to look elsewhere to be able to do deals. It’s less risky. They’re smaller deals. They’re more affordable. They’re easier to do. There’s no competition. And you know, you don’t even have to worry about the rehabs. That’s why I love day trading. That’s why I wrote a book called “Getting Started in Real Estate Day Trading”.

Sean: [00:19:55] Yeah, and how are you finding your buyers?

Larry: [00:19:58] After a while you build up a buyers list. But I’m a firm believer, you can never have too many buyers. What we do is we market every single property. We’ve got about 90 different Facebook groups that we market on. We market on Craigslist, Connected Investor, BiggerPockets. We put out about 25 bandit signs that say “Foreclosure” or we’ve got another one that says “Handyman Special”. It’ll say like three bedroom, two bath. It’ll say “worth 150. Cash price – 75”, something like that, right? So we put about 25 of those out and we have signed jockeys go put those out, and they’ll just put them out all around the area where the house is, and our phone rings probably 50-75 times a week with new buyers in addition to our buyers list.

Sean: [00:20:50] You just find them out every time you have a new deal.

Larry: [00:20:53] Oh, yeah. We put them on our website investorsrehab.com. And I mean we sell a lot of people. I was just looking today, if you’re in my area and you do a Google search of “Carolina Wholesale Houses”, “Carolina Wholesale Properties”, “Carolina Discount Homes”, my website’s on the first page, right? I had 2 buyers opt-in today on my website, and it says, “How did you find us” and it’s Google search. And these are cash buyers. One said they had fifty to a hundred thousand. Now in my area they could buy three or four houses for that. That’s exactly why the people watching this should be thinking about what I’m saying because you can make more money and it’s simpler and it’s less risky.

Sean: [00:21:42] And how big is your team?

Larry: [00:21:43] I said four, but I really have three acquisition people right now. I have a closing manager and I have a lead manager. And I said 4 because really my lead manager and closing manager, they also take some calls every once in a while. So between the two of them, it’s like having one extra one. And I’ve got three acquisition people and I had a salesperson but selling the houses is so simple. I just do it myself. It’s not a big deal. I mean I talk to a few people on the phone, I give them the address and the amount and usually within a couple of days, one of them is calling me back saying I’ll take that house.

Sean: [00:22:25] So I heard a lot of good things about it. Are there any downsides or any cons in this strategy?

Larry: [00:22:29] You know, a lot of people say real estate is risky. Real estate’s not risky. Being uneducated, that’s what’s risky, right? If you get the right education, the right information, it’s not a problem at all. Because like the way I do it is, I’ve only got $100 deposit put up on every property. That’s it, $100. My contract is a one-page contract. I don’t even have a due diligence clause. I don’t have an inspection period, I don’t have a due diligence clause, it’s $100 deposit. It’s a 60-day contract with an automatic 30-day extension if I need it. I mean how easy is that, right? So is there any downside, what’s the risk? The only risk is if you spend money on marketing and you don’t follow through with your buyers or your sellers when they start calling you, right? That’s the only downside. When you’re marketing it takes about 90 days to start seeing some good traction, right? And as long as you’re generating the leads and you’re following up on those leads, if you don’t follow up with them, you’re not going to make any money, right? Because not all of them, you don’t get on the very first phone call, right? But as long as you’re following up on them, there’s no reason in the world that you shouldn’t be able to get your money back and make some money.

Sean: [00:23:53] Can we do something really unique? Can we do like a role play with a phone call?

Larry: [00:23:57] Sure.

Sean: [00:23:58] Sure. So I’ll be a seller. I got your postcard and I’ll be giving you a call. Ring!

Larry: [00:24:05] Hello. This is Larry. How can I help?

Sean: [00:24:07] Hi, I got a postcard in the mail. You want to buy my house?

Larry: [00:24:11] Oh, yeah. Like I said, this is Larry. What was your name?

Sean: [00:24:15] Oh, my name is Sean.

Larry: [00:24:16] Oh Sean. How you doing, buddy?

Sean: I’m good. Thanks for asking.

Larry: So yeah, so you have a house that you’re thinking about selling?

Sean: [00:24:23] Oh, yeah.

Larry: [00:24:23] Yeah. Okay, cool, cool. Let’s see. What is the address of that house and let me look it up and see if it’s in our system already.

Sean: [00:24:29] Okay quick pause. Usually sometimes they ask me, “Oh don’t you have my address already? You sent me the letter.

Larry: [00:24:35] You know yes I do. But unfortunately I send out more than one postcard a month. I send out about 40 thousand postcards a month. So I’m sure it’s in my system and I need to look it up to see which one it is. If you don’t mind, what’s that address?

Sean: [00:24:49] Okay. My address is 123 Main Street.

Larry: [00:24:51] Okay, cool. Yeah, let me tell you a little bit about what we do, okay Sean? We’re a local organization that buys properties. Sometimes we buy and fix them up and run them out, buy and fix them up and sell them. And the only advantage of working with somebody like me is if you’re looking for a quick cash sell as-is where-is. Because I can get you your money really quick. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. I’ll probably bought and sold close to a thousand houses and I’ll be glad to get you an all cash quick offer on the property, right? Now so let me ask you a question. What’s more important to you, quick cash sale? Or getting the most amount of money you can for your property even if you gotta fix it up and get it in tip-top shape, and wait on the right buyer to come along in the next 6 to 12 months?

Sean: [00:25:34] You know, I gotta get out of it. So cash is more important right now.

Larry: [00:25:38] Okay, cool. Well, you know what Sean? Nobody knows more about your property than you do. Let me ask you a few quick questions to see if we might be able to help you. Okay?… And then what I do Sean is I just go through and I ask him about the condition of the property. I ask him about everything. I say, let’s talk about the interior on a scale of 1 to 10. How would you rate the interior with 10 being top-notch needs nothing, right? Most people will say a 4, 5, 6, something like that, right? So if they say 8 or a 9, I’m going to ask them, “Let me ask you a question, I mean, it sounds like your property is in really good shape. Why do you want to sell it to me at a discount?” Why not just wait until the right buyer comes along after you list it on the MLS, unless you need your money like next week. And then what we do is we find out about their motivation, “You know tell me a little bit about what’s going on right now that has you thinking about selling your property.” So we go through all that. We find out their motivation, we find out the property details, is it rented, is it vacant, is it owner-occupied. Is it occupied-other, meaning is there somebody living in it that’s not paying rent, right? So we just get all the details and then we kind of transition to, “Well, you know, let’s do this. Let’s take a look online and see what some other similar houses are selling for. And by the way Sean, I’m not doing anything you can’t do on your own. You know, I’m just looking them up on Zillow. That’s all I’m doing. So, let’s see here. Let me look it up and well, here’s one right here sold for 48,000, 128 Main Street. Sold for 48,000, April 22nd. Hmm, it’s got one more bedroom than yours. Wow, okay, because you said yours is 2, right? Yeah, this is a three. Pictures’ look pretty good, too. Wow, okay. Well, let’s see. Here’s another one right here, 125 Falls Avenue. Let’s see here. This is a 1200 square foot house. I think you said yours is a thousand, right? Yeah. This one sold for 37.5, March the 5th. Let’s see here.” And I’m going to pull up two or three more and I’m going to say “well, you know looks like houses in your area similar to yours are selling for around 35 to 45 thousand something like that. What were you hoping to get for your house for a quick cash sale?” “We’re hoping to get 34- 35 as well.” “Wow. Yeah. Well, if you’re wanting to get retail, which those prices we looked at where other similar houses that it’s sold, you know, what you’re probably going to have to do is go in and do some work to it and based on what you told me it looked like the house needed about ten to fifteen thousand dollars of work. And I would go in and I would do that work, and then call three realtors and have one of them list it for you, and wait somewhere between 6 and 18 months for the right buyer to come along. How does that sound?”

Sean: [00:28:36] Takes too long? What is your offer? What are you thinking of?

Larry: [00:28:39] “Well if I could sell your house for $40,000, okay? It’s going to cost me about 10% to sell it. All right? About 10% to sell it. So 40,000 minus 10 %, now I’m at 36,000. And I say 10% because I got to pay 6% realtor commission and I got to pay closing costs. So now I’m down to 36,000 and if we talked about 10 to 15,000 in repairs, right? Now, I’m down to 21,000, right, if I do 15,000 in repairs. And I don’t want to make a whole lot of money, but let’s say I made $5,000 on it, okay, 21,000 minus 5000. I’m at $16,000. I could do 16,000 cash now. Bear in mind that 16,000 is probably the equivalent of about a 22 or 23 thousand dollar offer from somebody else because I’m going to pay all closing costs and there’s no commissions and you don’t have to do any work to the house whatsoever. So that would be $16,000 in your pocket, minus of course any mortgage or taxes that you owe to the property. What’s your address and I’ll get somebody out to get the paperwork started so we can get you your cash pretty quick?”

Sean: [00:29:51] Again. Address is 123 Main Street.

Larry: [00:29:53] “Awesome. Are you going to be home this afternoon?”

Sean: [00:29:55] Okay, I’ll be there.

Larry: [00:29:57] “Good. I’ve got an associate that works with us. I can have them come out to your house about say 4:00 this afternoon. And I’ve got a simple, standard, one page real estate offer of purchase that says I’m buying your house as-is where-is for cash, and I’m paying all closing costs. How about I have them come out about 4:00 this afternoon and get that started so we can get you your money pretty quick, how does that sound?”

Sean: [00:30:22] Okay, sounds good.

Larry: [00:30:23] “Awesome.” And then I just set it up with the mobile notary. Within two hours I got a mobile notary at their house signing the paperwork.

Sean: [00:30:32] It’s very nice. I like your system!

Larry: [00:30:35] Works pretty cool, huh?

Sean: [00:30:36] Works very cool. And it seems like ultimately anyone can do this anywhere right?

Larry: [00:30:41] Sean I bought houses in 12 different states right from my office in Lake Wylie, and I’m in the Charlotte, North Carolina MSA. I don’t buy any houses in Charlotte. It’s been four or five years since I bought a house in Charlotte.

Sean: [00:30:54] So you live in Charlotte, but you buy around, right?

Larry: [00:30:57] I live in Lake Wylie, which is a part of the MSA. But it’s just across the state line from Charlotte, North Carolina and South Carolina. But I’m in the MSA, the Metropolitan statistical area, but I go out a couple counties where I buy.

Sean: [00:31:11] So how can people get… like what are actionable steps that they can take?

Larry: [00:31:15] Get my book.

Sean: [00:31:18] Sounds good. We’ll put a link in the show notes for your book.

Larry: [00:31:20] Sure. Yeah, I would say get the book, read the book, and then just start going through it. Just start going through it. First thing you have to do is set up your tracking numbers, right? Well, let me back up. First thing you have to do is pick a market. Pick up market. In the book I’ll show you how to pick a market. Second thing you gotta do is find your boots on the ground. You need boots on the ground to be able to… they’ve got to be able to show properties, put out your bandit signs, put lock boxes on the door, take pictures of houses, and things like that, right? And then the next thing you need to do is set up your call tracking numbers. Let’s say you’re going to buy in Memphis, Tennessee, right? So you’re going to pick an area code that’s close to Memphis like 615. And then what you’re going to do is go out a couple of counties, pick some of those counties, and start mailing in those counties or doing RVMs, ringless voicemails, text broadcasting, or find boots on the ground, or put out bandit signs or something like that, right? So, once you get your tracking number setup, if you’re brand-new, you need a buy number and a sell number. We have tracking numbers for everything, right? We’ve got like for our seller leads, we’ve got seller leads for direct mail North Carolina, direct mail South Carolina. We’ve got Facebook, bandit signs, everything else. And then on our buyer leads, we’ve got tracking numbers for bandit signs, Facebook ads, Craigslist ads, Connected Investors, our website as well. So we know when a call comes in, that number’s programmed in our phone, we know when a call comes in exactly what they’re calling about. They’re either a seller or a buyer and we know where that came from, right? So we have an advantage when we answer the phone. Like if it’s a buyer lead from Craigslist, we know somebody on Craigslist saw one of our houses and they’re calling about it about possibly buying it.

Sean: [00:33:26] Yep. So what else do you think we should know?

Larry: [00:33:28] Oh man, there’s so much. The book is that thick right? You can also get it on Audible as well. But yeah, the key the key is just get started. Just get started. So many people they watch podcast, they read books, they go to seminars, but they never do anything. Pick something and start with it and just do it. Just take some action and move forward and do it. That’s the biggest key I can tell you is just do it. Just do it now and don’t wait. People want to wait until they have enough money, have enough time, you know, it’s too close to Christmas, the summer’s out, vacation, school starting, whatever. Forget about it. What you need to do is just start right now. And I’m not good on the phone. Come on, get good on the phone. I wasn’t good on the phone whenever I first started but I’ve been doing it long enough now. I mean I teach and train this stuff now, right? So just start from where you are right now and take some action.

Sean: [00:34:30] I love it. Thanks for the wonderful advice. So how can people get in contact with you?

Larry: [00:34:34] Sure. My website is LarryGoins.com. LarryGoins.com. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, you can call Zenobia in my office 877-LarryGo. 877-LarryGo. You can put that in the show notes, or they could reach out to LarryGoins.com and there’s a lot of free education and training and stuff on the website.

Sean: [00:34:59] Cool. And you have a podcast as well, don’t you?

Larry: [00:35:02] I do. I actually have two of them. I have one called BRAG. It stands for “Be Rich And Generous”. We teach people how to make money in real estate and then encourage them to go out and be generous with their blessings and help others. And then I have another one called “Brain Pick a Pro” where I interview other people who are crushing it in real estate.

Sean: [00:35:23] Awesome. Thanks a lot for your advice today. Really looking forward to trying out some of your tips you shared with us today.

Larry: [00:35:28] Sounds good man. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Sean: [00:35:30] All right. Take care.

Here are some of the key takeaways from this episode. Your job as a real estate investor is to make the phone ring. When making an offer ask for a deep discount or ask for seller financing. If you aren’t embarrassed by your first offer, then you’re probably offering too much. Larry gives a lot of information today, check out his book on Virtual Wholesaling and let me know if it works. Hope you learned a lot. You can find the show notes on our site EverythingREI.com. Thanks and have a great day!