How to Consistently Succeed in The Bay Area with Eddie Lam

[00:00:00] Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of the everything real estate investing show. Today, we have Eddie Lam. Eddie has been investing in the Bay Area for over 14 years and has seen it all. He’d be telling us a story of how he got into real estate investing and how he’s been acquiring his deals since 2005. Enjoy!

Sean: [00:00:17] So go ahead and just let us know who you are and how you got started with real estate investing.

Eddie: [00:00:22] Okay. Yeah. My name is Eddie Lam. I’m just like other Asian in the Bay Area. My former life is a software engineer just like you, you’re an engineer as well, right?

Sean: [00:00:32] That’s right. I am an engineer just like every other Asian the Bay Area.

Eddie: [00:00:36] Yeah. How I got started like it’s just by accident. Everyone read the book my Rich Dad Poor Dad, but I what got me into buying the first piece of real estate is actually my mother-in-law. Like when I was dating my girlfriend back then, we want to get married and she said that no, you can’t you my daughter unless you own some real estate. So I need to buy something but I couldn’t afford a big house back then I could only afford a fairy dinky condo in San Mateo. It was so small like I was so embarrassed to bring friends to my place. Look, she’s the first lady who got me into real estate and then a second lady, old lady who got me into real estate is actually the neighbor who’s living downstairs. She’s the next one then who forced me to sell a property and then I realized that wow, you can make so much money in real estate. That’s what make me realize that real estate is so powerful. So so the story of the second old lady is like she’s my neighbor. She live downstairs.

Basically, she’s kind of annoyed by like very little noise. So she didn’t like me walking in the condo at night, even though it’s only around like 10 or 11 p.m. She’ll be annoyed by it. She will just keep pounding the ceiling. So it’s getting worse and worse like at one point like she got so pissed and she’s using the vacuum cleaner to to make noise in her ceiling. So it’s noise on my ground. Then I said like well, I can’t make her to move so what about I move. So I decided to sell the place. And what happened is I realize that I make a lot of money selling that plays off the living there for barely about like two years. I bought it around like 220 and then I saw it around like 320 something like that. That’s basically almost like two times my annual salary, the game, so just by living there. So I said, maybe I’m in the wrong industry. The realtor who helped me to sell the place, she didn’t have a college degree, she’s not engineer and she make tons of money. After there like I start going to Rio learning from here and there and then slowly I like acquire the knowledge and wanted to do deals.

Sean: [00:03:07] What year was that?

Eddie: [00:03:08] It’s around like 2003 or so when I bought the first property.

Sean: [00:03:14] Your first property was a condo, right?

Eddie: [00:03:17] Yeah. It’s a condo in San Mateo.

Sean: [00:03:19] Okay.

Eddie: [00:03:19] I think it’s roughly 220.

Sean: [00:03:21] So then you started going to like REIAs in 2005?

Eddie: [00:03:24] I don’t remember exactly probably around that time like when I started out, I was doing buy and hold out of state because we cannot afford to buy in California. So like all these regroup like they have all these TurnKey rental. They package it and bring it to California and have all the engineers buy those all estate rentals.

Sean: [00:03:46] Nice and so you moved out to your condo. Where do you end up moving out to?

Eddie: [00:03:50] I moved to another one.

Sean: [00:03:53] Also in Summertail?

Eddie: [00:03:54] That one is in Belmont. Yeah, that one I bought it, but then I sold it at a loss because when I sold it, it’s wrong thing like early 2008, because I keep going to this REIA and then I think you heard of a guy’s name. His name is Bruce Norris.

Sean: [00:04:10] Yeah. Bruce Norris.

Eddie: [00:04:10] He’s a California market timer. So after like going to the seminar like he said, you better sell the stuff back then 2007-2008, and then he was right. But I listened to him and and I sold it even if I have to sell it and take a loss, I did that anyway.

Sean: [00:04:31] Nice. So at 2005, you started going to these REIAs and you started buying ad estate properties. Where did you start buying?

Eddie: [00:04:38] In Texas, Washington State, Idaho and Utah.

Sean: [00:04:42] But it’s a lot of different states.

Eddie: [00:04:44] Yeah, don’t put all your eggs in nest, right?

Sean: [00:04:47] Okay, I mean, they’re all TurnKey anyway. So are they the same company or is it just different TurnKey providers?

Eddie: [00:04:53] The first four probably the same but then I didn’t like the group then the last one, I just went on my own way to find a local realtor and buy there.

Sean: [00:05:02] Nice. So what were you looking for in those out of state properties?

Eddie: [00:05:06] What they propose is like I thought that was really an idea back then but it didn’t work out. Well, what they are saying is like you need to accumulate 10 rentals and what you need to do is once you accumulate 10, then you never sell. What you do is like say, for the first five years you accumulate all 10 and then starting the 6th year, you pick the best two performer on the 6th year and then you cash out refinance, take the money out. And that’s the money that replace your annual salary and then you keep doing it. On the 7th year, you pick the next best two. You cash out refinance and then you just keep going and going. So it’s based on the theory that like real estate price would always go up and never go down. If that’s the case and then it works but in reality that’s not the case.

Sean: [00:05:59] So what happened?

Eddie: [00:06:01] What happened is like first of all, it’s just going too slow and then I don’t like the house stay rental because you have to rely on the property manager to manage your property. It’s a key part because they could either make it change it from positive cash flow to negative cash flow overnight. Maybe it still happened to me last year, one of the rental, the property manager retire. It used to be making money, but once they replaced a new property manager, it just go downhill.

Sean: [00:06:31] Wow. Yeah, because I mean, you guys have to rely on someone else if you’re not there.

Eddie: [00:06:36] Yeah, you have to rely on them and they rip you off. They always come up like the bad one. Like they always come up with something that needs to be repaired.

Sean: [00:06:46] I see

Eddie: [00:06:47] Even before I never like I went to look at the repair list. I was like, how could this happen, right?

Sean: [00:06:54] Yeah. Before it was fine. Why is it all that now?

Eddie: [00:06:56] Yeah. Then the money is not like growing as fast as promised so I start looking into flipping and next step is I bought from MLS in the Bay Area.

Sean: [00:07:09] And when was this? What time was that?

Eddie: [00:07:10] That was like before somewhere between like 2005 and 2007.

Sean: [00:07:15] Oh, wow. So you’re flipping during the…

Eddie: [00:07:18] Yeah, and when it was still going up. Well, I caught it like almost at the end. There were prices like three properties on MLS. I think I just barely break even on those three, but the realtor made lots of money. So she really liked us.

Sean: [00:07:33] Cool. How did you even get started with flipping? Back then, I don’t think there was as many meetup groups and there’s definitely not as many online resources so what do you guys do to learn?

Eddie: [00:07:45] Yeah. There isn’t that much. There are some courses. They have those real estate investment club. I went to SJREI. There are some courses by some guru that’s available. I purchased those on eBay.

Sean: [00:07:56] And then what happened? The market turned, 2008?

Eddie: [00:07:59] Yeah. The market turned and then it stopped. That was the beginning of the foreclosure. And then I met a guy on eBay. He’s based in LA and then we became friends and he’s introducing the idea of short sale to me. So when I start flipping from MLS, the next thing that I did is chase after foreclosure. There isn’t that much equity when that happens. So I start like chasing after short sale.

Sean: [00:08:30] There’s more equity in short sales versus equity…

Eddie: [00:08:32] There’s no equity in short sale. We just create equity by negotiating with the bank but like since everyone like nobody has equity, so maybe short sale is the right way to go. My friend talked me into doing that but I, anyway, I chase after several like short sale leads but I end up not getting any short sale deal at all.

Sean: [00:08:53] Got it. So then what happened?

Eddie: [00:08:55] I realize that well, I passed on like those short sale to the realtor friend of mine who helped me to do those flips. And I said, well since I’m getting all these like short sale leads, I might as well get a license and do the listing myself. So then I got the license by accident but after I got my license, I never got any short sales listing. What happened is after I got the license because my experience and knowledge on the buy and hold rental estate, that’s a right timing. Like after that foreclosure become a common thing in the Bay Area and there’s a several pocket in the Bay Area where you can buy with 20-25% buy and cash flow because I was experienced enough to know the numbers on those property. After I became a realtor, I start like bringing investors to buy those properties in the Bay Area. Back then, it was it was okay, like, you know, like engineers make like high-income comparing to other industry.

When I first started as a realtor, I pretty much made about the same as what I was making as an engineer. So it was okay for a while but deep down in my heart, I still want to do like flip. And by accident, I found out that like two kinds of mine, they got tons of money. So I start like talking them into flipping and then I end up teaming up with one of them to buying a trustee sale.

Sean: [00:10:25] How are you buying those houses? Was it like loan still or because they had money, do you buy cash the whole thing?

Eddie: [00:10:31] Yeah. When you buy a trustee sales, it has to be all cash and no inspection. You can’t like do inspection on the property. You can’t go inside. So basically, other than the outside, I almost like bought it unseen.

Sean: [00:10:45] And you when did you decide to quit full time from your engineering role?

Eddie: [00:10:49] 2008.

Sean: [00:10:50] Wow. During the recession?

Eddie: [00:10:51] Yeah. Well, I don’t know what it’s like lucky or unlucky. I basically lost my job and then it’s a good chance for me to just jump in at it.

Sean: [00:11:01] I mean sometimes layoffs are the good thing, right? Because now you have the opportunity to try something new.

Eddie: [00:11:05] Yeah.

Sean: [00:11:06] It’s 2009, you started doing trustee sales with your rich client. What happened after that?

Eddie: [00:11:11] Well, he had more passion to become a developer then flipping because like later on, I realize that he got tons of money. So the gain from flipping is just too small for him so he went on to become a developer. So I have to do new things. So I stumble upon direct mail and then I start doing direct mail after that.

Sean: [00:11:35] So direct mail, how much did you decide to send out?

Eddie: [00:11:39] Oh, I don’t know like when I started like my budget is like 16 somewhere around $1,600 a month.

Sean: [00:11:45] Okay, that’s pretty good. How did you determine who to send out to?

Eddie: [00:11:49] Oh, basically when I started, I don’t know don’t know much. Basically, just try to find someone they said like absentee owner, high equity. So basically that’s what I did but it took almost a year to get the first deal. I don’t know what kept me going. It’s kind of stupid to keep burning my $1,600 a month.

Sean: [00:12:10] Like your first deal you got by yourself?

Eddie: [00:12:12] Yeah, that’s my first solo deal.

Sean: [00:12:14] And how did that go?

Eddie: [00:12:15] That one is actually a housing in San Leandro. It’s a two-bedroom, one-bath I think like around like 600 to 800 square feet. It has serious foundation issue. You can see the curve on the floor. Like if you put a marble in the middle of it it would roll either way. It’s owned by out-of-state person, so absentee owner. What happened is he inherit the property from his thing like grandfather and his grandfather ran into a friend of his old guy living there at a very low price like I think like 500-600 a month for the rent, because he’s not getting much rent and it has serious foundation issue. It turns out that his brother is local and his father is a contractor. He went on sale with me to show me the property and he agreed that the property needs a lot of work. That well I remember the number I bought it at $60,000 and then I flip it to to a contractor that I know back then for $120,000.

Sean: [00:13:19] Oh you whole sold it?

Eddie: [00:13:20] Yeah I don’t know how you define wholesale but I actually closed on it and then I sold it after I closed.

Sean: [00:13:27] Okay, that’s still pretty good. Wow. San Leandro for $60,000?

Eddie: [00:13:31] Yeah back then.

Sean: [00:13:33] Wow back then. Did you wish you kept it?

Eddie: [00:13:35] No. Well, I need the money to do the business so I couldn’t. And back then I’m not experienced enough to fix the foundation issue. It’s really bad.

Sean: [00:13:45] So it has mailers been your only source of leads? What else have you been doing?

Eddie: [00:13:48] Direct mail was my only source of lead and I’ve been doing that until like 2017.

Sean: [00:13:55] Wow. And still at $1,600 a month or did you wrap it up?

Eddie: [00:13:59] Yeah, I bump it up a lot. In 2017, it was about like $10,000 a month.

Sean: [00:14:06] Whoa.

Eddie: [00:14:07] Yeah. That’s a lot of money and somehow it stopped working for me. I felt like I was a newbie again because I was going through almost a year without getting any deal at all just like when I started.

Sean: [00:14:20] So basically 2016 to 2017 you’d send out $10,000 a month and get nothing?

Eddie: [00:14:25] Second half of 2017 to 2018.

Sean: [00:14:28] Well, honestly, it’s a blessing in disguise because that’s when the property shot up like crazy. And then mid 2018, that’s when it peaked and then now it’s still on.

Eddie: [00:14:37] Yeah. Well, after 6 months, I tuned down. I couldn’t keep burning cash like $10,000 a month and not getting any income at all.

Sean: [00:14:45] Yeah. I mean is that your main source of income right now? Flipping homes, or do you have other things going on?

Eddie: [00:14:48] I accumulate some rentals. Basically the rental is good enough but then I still like need to do some flip and go to the next level. So…

Sean: [00:15:00] That’s true. So that at your peak like how many projects were you doing?

Eddie: [00:15:04] I rarely go more than two projects at the same time. In the Bay Area, you don’t need that many deals to like make a lot of money.

Sean: [00:15:14] Yeah, that’s true. How did you find the contractors to work with? I think a lot of people are having that problem right now.

Eddie: [00:15:19] I knew the contractor like when I was buying a trustee sale. My partner like got some referral and we’ve been using that contractor since then. But then he retired a couple years back so I’m now working with his apprentice so the contractor’s second-generation.

Sean: [00:15:40] Nice. That’s pretty cool. How do you like analyze your deals now? What do you use to determine and say I want this one versus I’ll pass on this one.

Eddie: [00:15:48] If I want to take on a project, it probably be like more than a $100,000 that I can make when I’m done with it. And also it depends on how much money that I need to put in. So say for example if I can buy something around like $300,000-$400,000 and I can get the repair done around $50,000-$60,000, so I’m in about like $350,000 or $450,000 and if I can come home making at least a $100,000, I’m fine with it. But anything less than that, I might as well just wholesale it.

Sean: [00:16:21] $350,000 for purchase price? That seems very low. Where are you buying a property for $350,000?

Eddie: [00:16:28] It depends on the East Bay I could do it. There’s another one in San Jose that I bought it last year, I pay like $200,000 for it. So there are still deals that you [00:16:39] can buy at that price range, but most of the time it’s like you need to go up to at least like half million to buy a deal.

Sean: [00:16:46] At least. I mean most of the deals that my friends and I have been looking at is like a million plus.

Eddie: [00:16:51] Okay.

Sean: [00:16:52] Yeah, so I mean, are you still buying them with cash or do you have hard money involved?

Eddie: [00:16:57] Yeah, I always use my own money to close. That’s why I didn’t go to the million dollar level but I would start considering that because like the deals are getting expensive.

Sean: [00:17:10] And well atleast the good thing is at least with your style, your able to buy it and not have to worry about selling it when you don’t want to, right? Because you’re buying cash you can hold on to it for whatever/however long you want.

Eddie: [00:17:23] Yeah, for all the properties that I’m willing to put money into, I always have two exits. Either I can fix it up and sell it on MLS or I can hold on to it,  it would cash flow. So I always make sure that I have two exits before I put my own money in. Otherwise, for those that I don’t feel that comfortable, I would just wholesale it.

Sean: [00:17:46] Yeah that’s really smart. So I guess you’re not buying properties in like Sunnyvale or Palo Alto, you are focusing more in East Bay?

Eddie: [00:17:54] I did buy one in Sunnyvale.

Sean: [00:17:55] Maybe East San Jose?

Eddie: [00:17:56] Throughout my career. I bought one in San Francisco county and one in San Mateo county. All the others are like South Bay and East Bay.

Sean: [00:18:05] Yeah. I mean, that’s pretty crazy that you can still make a $100,000 spread from you know a $350,000 property.

Eddie: [00:18:11] That was like a few years back, that one like I think my profit was around $150,000 on that one.

Sean: [00:18:18] Wow, congratulations.

Eddie: [00:18:20] Thank you.

Sean: [00:18:20] Can you talk about how are you even finding properties for $200,000 in San Jose? That seems very, that’s pretty rare.

Eddie: [00:18:28] It’s just by accident, I like that number $200,000. Let me see. I think I’ve bought like four properties around that price range, $200,000.

Sean: [00:18:38] I could buy that with cash too, dang.

Eddie: [00:18:39] No, but no, I have a theory behind that. Like I bought these from old people maybe back then at the time like $200,000 seems to be a good number for the property that they purchased and they want to sell at that price. I don’t know. That’s just a theory.

Sean: [00:18:56] That’s crazy. So well, tell me the story how you get that.

Eddie: [00:19:00] It’s thru direct mails. It’s the one that I sent out like a lots of direct mail for almost a year before I got that one. It’s actually an abandoned property. The guy that I bought it from, I’ve been sending him direct mail since 2015 but he never contacted me, he never call me, nothing, nothing happened. And this time like he called me up, and later what I found out is he got a stroke the year before, the stroke affect his vision. So the doctor asked him, hey, you can no longer drive because it’s dangerous for you to drive. So basically, he had to sell his car, he’s like basically just walking distance, that’s his area that he can go to. The property is in San Jose, so obviously he cannot go there and he cannot drive. So he cannot have someone to fix the property for him because he cannot monitor the work. So he called me up, it’s a family home, but then he moved away for more than 10 years. It’s been vandalized by some homeless people. He couldn’t keep up with the property. So he decided to sell me the property.

Sean: [00:20:19] And how much work that it need to be completed?

Eddie: [00:20:22] Basically everything, I can send you the picture. It’s so ugly that like basically new kitchen, new bath, new windows, new roof, new electrical system, basically everything.

Sean: [00:20:38] How much did that cost?

Eddie: [00:20:41] Cost me roughly like $65,000.

Sean: [00:20:44] That seems pretty cheap.

Eddie: [00:20:46] Because you need to know the right contractor.

Sean: [00:20:49] That’s pretty good. Congratulations for doing the right contractor. Okay, and then I guess you turn it around. Are you going to hold onto that one? Did you sell it?

Eddie: [00:20:57] If I had enough cash I might hold on to it. But like I need cash to just continue to run the marketing. So I sold that one.

Sean: [00:21:06] Did it do okay?

Eddie: [00:21:07] Yeah, fairly okay. Yeah, well, yeah, I sell it at $720,000.

Sean: [00:21:13] Wow, so you put your buffer $200,000, you put in $65,000 and you sold for $720,000?

Eddie: [00:21:19] Yeah.

Sean: [00:21:20] Congratulations.

Eddie: [00:21:21] Thank you.

Sean: [00:21:21] That’s amazing. Did you work with that with somebody else or was that all just you and your team?

Eddie: [00:21:26] Yeah, it’s just myself, yeah.

Sean: [00:21:29] Cool. See, I guess if you persist enough, you can definitely get very, very good deals still. So you’ve been mailing for quite some time now.

Eddie: [00:21:39] Yeah.

Sean: [00:21:40] So when I was mailing people, one of the things that stop me, you know, besides spending money every month on direct mail was that I would get a bunch of phone calls from people and the phone calls are always like super, super nasty for the most part.

Eddie: [00:21:53] Yeah.

Sean: [00:21:53] Do you want to talk about that experience?

Eddie: [00:21:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll share that with you. I’ve got a very nasty voicemail from a lady.

Sean: [00:22:03] Alright, we’ll put that in right here:

Stop putting your communist propaganda about cash. We don’t want your bad money, your crap money, your communist chinese money. Go back to China where there’s communism. We don’t want you destroying our freedoms here, polluting this country with your communist agenda.

Sean: [00:22:26] All right. Now we’re back.

Eddie: [00:22:28] So well, I guess like yeah well for the first few times, like it kind of feel uncomfortable, maybe you get upset or you’re not happy but after awhile you get used to it like I bet you like if you talk face to face with those people they would never say that thing to you in face.

Sean: [00:22:51] I’m pretty sure.

Eddie: [00:22:52] Yeah, it just happened that like they are not talking to a human, they don’t know you and they know that like they can say whatever they want, nasty stuff. But then at the end of the day, if that’s what you need to deal with you make lots of money, I’m fine with it.

Sean: [00:23:09] It’s a small sacrifice to pay.

Eddie: [00:23:11] Yeah.

Sean: [00:23:12] Do you track your metrics to see how effective your mailing campaign is?

Eddie: [00:23:15] I still do yeah. Like I haven’t done any direct mail this year because like it’s not working well so I’m trying to develop other source to get me leads.

Sean: [00:23:30] So, what kind of stuff are you doing now?

Eddie: [00:23:32] I’ve been having a person, well I actually also set to accompany to do cold calling for me. So basically, instead of me cold calling people, a company they would hire VA overseas and do cold calling for you and and they manage that VA.

Sean: [00:23:49] How’s that working out? I’ve heard about that service before and I wasn’t sure if it was worth it.

Eddie: [00:23:53] Yeah, it’s not working very well. They claim that like before I signed up they promised me the world. They said you can get like four or five leads a day, but that’s not the case.

Sean: [00:24:02] Yeah, of course, I mean cold calling is very difficult, you know.

Eddie: [00:24:05] Yeah, yeah. I know a guy like he, but that’s the only thing that he does. His market is in Sacramento.

Sean: [00:24:12] See, that’s not here though.

Eddie: [00:24:14] Yeah.

Sean: [00:24:14] I know it’s different.

Eddie: [00:24:16] Yeah. I know the price range is different, but I’m always like, one thing, I know there’s some real estate agents, the only thing that they do is cold calling and they make a lot of money. So I think like it works maybe like it depends on the person.

Sean: [00:24:33] Yeah, alright so are you whole cold calling to represent them as an agent or you’re cold calling to like find house?

Eddie: [00:24:38] No, I’m cold calling to find deals, but I’m saying like it’s almost the same thing like real estate agent and us. The only difference is like we buy versus we have them to list on the market. So if a real estate agent can do cold calling and get listing, I think we should be able to do cold calling and get a deal.

Sean: [00:24:55] Maybe, and the way I see it though, it feels like real estate agents are a little bit more respect than buyers, because when they see us want to buy your house off market, they think of us as a leech.

Eddie: [00:25:06] No way, no way. I don’t think like people respect an agent at all.

Sean: [00:25:11] Oh I mean like at least it’s like, okay, this guy’s trying to provide a service whereas, oh, this guy’s trying to scam me and buy my house.

Eddie: [00:25:18] No, no, no, not that way. They always shop for the agent with the lowest commission, that’s the truth.

Sean: [00:25:25] So you don’t do that anymore, right? Like your focus is only on pretty much investment?

Eddie: [00:25:29] Once in a while I do get a listing but that’s not the main source of my income.

Sean: [00:25:33] So what do you do? Like, what is your day to day look like?

Eddie: [00:25:37] Working from home, like sometimes it’s that boring, and I know why on HGTV when they do those program, they always go to the job site trying to videotape them when they’re fixing a house, but never like how they find a deal because finding the deal part is not exciting at all. Like basically you need to call them through the leads, you need to like look at your spreadsheet, like making follow-up calls, this and stuff. And lately, like what I’ve been doing is I hire a virtual assistant. So this week I spend some time, I try to assign her some tasks that I was working on, trying to unload the work on myself. That’s what I’ve been doing lately. So but typically like the life of a real estate investor, at least from my point of view is like, working on getting some new leads, getting some new data trying to plan out the next marketing campaign, taking calls, trying to set the appointment, go to appointment and look for the next deal.

Sean: [00:26:37] Nice. But other than that, you know, it seems like you wake up really late, take your time, do whatever you need to do, enjoy life.

Eddie: [00:26:44] No, I got two kids, I need to get up early. Yeah, number of hours that I can work every day is very limited.

Sean: [00:26:50] Does your wife, is she working right now?

Eddie: [00:26:52] Yeah, yeah, she works, she works.

Sean: [00:26:54] You don’t let her retire?

Eddie: [00:26:55] Well, she want to keep her job. She doesn’t want to stay home and take care of the kids.

Sean: [00:27:00] She lets you do that, right?

Eddie: [00:27:05] No, I don’t take care of the kids but I just pick them up after school so…

Sean: [00:27:09] Nice. Well, I see, you’ve also been doing this for a very long time now, right? Like I said, nearly 10 plus years. You’ve obviously requires so much more knowledge than when you first started.

Eddie: [00:27:20] Yeah.

Sean: [00:27:20] So if you can go back in time and tell yourself some advice, what would you tell yourself?

Eddie: [00:27:25] I would say definitely you need to go out and try to team up some people with more experience and try to learn from them instead of trying to figure it out all by yourself because I’ve seen that like many people, they go from nothing to become very successful in a very short period of time because they do that. I’m not at doing that. I’m not good at like networking, trying to be friends with people. That’s something that that everyone needs to learn.

Sean: [00:28:00] That’s some really good advice.

Eddie: [00:28:01] Yeah.

Sean: [00:28:02] Is there somebody in particular that you wish that you would have like talked to you back then?

Eddie: [00:28:08] I would say he already like become very big, the way I knew him is through his seminar. So you know when people start talking in front of like hundreds of people they are afraid they already very successful and back then I knew nothing. It’s very hard for someone who is like almost like a guru to team up with someone who knows nothing. So, I would say maybe like next best thing is try to find someone who doesn’t want to be very famous, who is not a group but then like maybe got a little bit more experience and you do and willing to like share the information with you. They would have you to go to the next level very quickly. And nowadays, like there are so many like mastermind guru, networking event that you can go to that would definitely have you to propel your business to the next level very quickly.

Sean: [00:29:08] If you’re a brand new investor and you have no experience, you don’t probably don’t have the money, you have nothing will be going on for you, what would you say to entice this more experienced investor to allow you to work with them?

Eddie: [00:29:20] Well, I would say best thing is to find a deal and then maybe you team up with them and you give them a share of the deal and they would teach you how to finish the deal. And if you’re good, then they like you they team up with you more deals in the future.

Sean: [00:29:38] That’s a really good advice.

Eddie: [00:29:39] But like it’s always hard to find the first deal. So if you have no money at the beginning like you can’t do direct mail, maybe driving for a dollar would be a good way to to generate leads. I haven’t done that intensively, but like throughout my career, I purchased at least one property from driving for dollar. And I know that like some people drive for dollar is their main source of lead. However, you can write a bio, you can drive around the neighborhood and find out like abandoned properties.

Sean: [00:30:13] You know, I saw this one property near my house and it’s a duplex and the weeds are up to like my height, so 6 ft tall.

Eddie: [00:30:19] Really.

Sean: [00:30:19] I’m like man, this is gonna be perfect and I tracked this guy down, you know, I looked him up, found his name on the title. I found his phone number through, you know public research. I called them, he’s alive and he’s like, nah I’m trying to remodel the place. I’m like, damn it.

Eddie: [00:30:36] Yeah, it happened to me more than once like somehow at Bay Area property owners, I think they are different type of people because there are at least like two properties that I remember. I can show you the pictures, it’s completely abandoned, bordered up. It’s been vacant for a long time and I remember like when I talked to one of them, she said I’m not selling. And then when I talked to the other one, she said I want $3.6 million for it. Yeah, $3.6-$4 million for that.

Sean: [00:31:10] Cheap.

Eddie: [00:31:10] Yeah, I don’t know why they just leave the property vacant and they don’t do nothing and they’re not selling it. I don’t understand.

Sean: [00:31:18] I mean people do that, like really rich people do that in Arcadia, you know in SoCal, they buy these giant 5 million-dollar mansions and they leave it empty. They don’t reinvent it, empty.

Eddie: [00:31:29] Crazy. Oh, by the way, you asked me my day-to-day activity…

Sean: [00:31:35] Yeah.

Eddie: [00:31:35] Being a real estate investor, I start documenting my my Life as a real estate investor on IG. So you can follow me on IG.

Sean: [00:31:45] Nice. So yeah, how can people contact you?

Eddie: [00:31:47] They can follow me on IG, it’s Bay Area houses buyer and they can also find me on Facebook, Eddie Lam real estate.

Sean: [00:31:58] Cool. Awesome. Well Eddie, thank you so much for being on the show today and thank you for sharing so much knowledge. I look forward to see you at the next meetup.

Eddie: [00:32:04] Okay. All right. Thanks for having me. See you next time.

Here are some of the key takeaways I got from speaking with Eddie. Buying properties at the area means you need to rely on someone else and you might have a larger chance of getting ripped off. The market has also changed and the old strategies of just sending out mailers doesn’t seem to work as well. But whatever you do, you need to stay consistent. He was able to buy a deal in San Jose for just two hundred thousand dollars after mailing the same person for over three years. And when you buy a property, make sure you have multiple exit strategies. So you aren’t forced to take a loss. And Finally, if you want to be really successful in this business, align yourself with a mentor and offer value. I hope you learned a lot. Thanks, and have a great day.