How Raymond Made $28K On His FIRST WHOLESALE Deal! | Real Estate Skills Review

Here's EXACTLY How Real Estate Skills student, Raymond, made $28K on his FIRST WHOLESALE deal in California!

Discover how Northern California entrepreneur Raymond transformed his career, moving from flipping and rehabbing houses to closing his first wholesale real estate deal for $28,000!

In this interview with Real Estate Skills, he shares the full story of his transition, the mindset, the strategies, and the systems that made it happen. 

In this video you’ll learn:

• Why Raymond decided to pivot from house rehabs (where he took a big hit) into the world of wholesaling.
• How he leveraged his entrepreneurial background—owning multiple businesses, including a hair salon for 40 years, an industrial racking company and a patented golf wedge—to win in real estate.
• The critical role of relationships: building rapport with realtors, using the MLS, and switching into off‑market deals.
• How the deal came together: the acquisition price, the ARV, the buyer alignment, the joint venture partner split, and how that equals real cash in your pocket.
• Why negotiating matters: when you ask for a price reduction (e.g., $15K for a bad AC unit) you boost your profit margin and set up your business for repeat success.
• Building a team that works: remote acquisition assistants, employee‑buyers, systems and process, so you can focus on the deals.
• What’s next: Raymond already has four rental properties and is planning for 20+ rentals while continuing wholesaling and flipping. He explains why now is one of the best times to be in real estate, if you’re ready to move.

If you’ve been studying wholesaling, flipping or building a rental portfolio and still haven’t landed the deal that sticks, this session gives you the real‑life blueprint. It’s not theory—it’s real work, real numbers, real success. Use this story to mirror, adapt and accelerate. The peak of opportunity is when others are hesitating. And right now, Raymond says, that’s exactly where the market is.

*For in-depth training on real estate investing, Real Estate Skills offers extensive courses to get you ready to make your first investment! Attend our FREE Training and gain insider knowledge, expert strategies, and essential skills to make the most of every real estate opportunity that comes your way!

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Peter Soros (00:00):
Welcome Back! Today I've got another interview for you with one of our students in Northern California. Raymond, who is a serial entrepreneur, owns multiple businesses, used to fix and flip a lot himself, decided he wanted to try wholesaling. Just didn't have any real training or really understanding on how to really get it done. That's why he came to Real Estate Skills through a lot of trials and tribulations. Finally closed his first wholesale deal for $28,000. Let's dive in and listen to his story. Hey Raymond, how's it going? Glad to have you here with us.

Raymond (00:33):
Doing good. Good to see you, Pete. Good to see you.

Peter Soros (00:38):
Yeah, I knew we'd do this eventually one day.

Raymond (00:41):
Right, about time.

Peter Soros (00:44):
Yeah. So obviously we got a lot to talk about the deal. Obviously a really good deal. You got done your first wholesale deal. But before we jump into things like that, always like to get a little bit of an introduction about who you are, what you used to do before this, what you're still doing now. So just give us a quick little intro of Raymond, where you're coming from.

Raymond (01:09):
Well, as you know Peter, my background is basically flipping houses, got into flipping houses and doing rehab on houses. And the last house that I did, I took kind of a beating on it, so I told myself I was going to ever do that again. I was going to do figure out the best way to get properties on market, and that's why I signed up for Real Estate Skills to be able to acquire houses wholesale. And as I got into it, I realized that it was something that I could actually make money off of without even flipping houses. So that being said, I was planning on doing both, but I decided to really focus hard on doing wholesaling, and that's kind of what I've been doing for the last, well, as you know, for over a year, and actually it's been long before that just studying it. I just studied real hard figuring out the ins and outs and not how to work the system. Now, as far as my background. Believe it or not, Peter, my background is I've been in a hair color as for over 40 years.

(02:29):
So, I actually just sold the salon that I had so that way I could focus even more on my real estate. The other thing is I have an industrial racking company. It's got, what we do is insulation of industrial racking, kind of the racking that you see at Costco.

(02:50):
Also I have a golf club company called ProTrac Golf, and ProTrac Golf is like a golf wedge that I invented. And we just recently got patented. So as you could see, I'm fairly entrepreneurial.

Peter Soros (03:05):
Yeah, you are.

Raymond (03:05):
However, real estate is where I want to be and that's why I focused on it. And I'm a very driven person. I am just going to keep on doing it until I succeed. And I think my feeling is that the vast majority of people that fail in business fail because they quit too soon and don't wait to get those legs going.

Peter Soros (03:34):
Yeah, it's a good thing that you're well aware of that and that's not an issue you deal with because you had to go through quite a few deals. I remember seeing you have to cancel a few, getting so close on a couple, which it hurts to see you get so close and then hae to just cancel. But it happens to the best of us. And again, it's always better to cancel than to get stuck with something that's going to be a problem. But yeah, you definitely stuck with it. It's kind of like that picture I always like to share. There's the person who gives up and they were just two more hacks away of getting to the diamonds where the other one just keeps going, keeps going. Eventually he's going to hit gold and get those diamonds. So you're definitely a testament to that. So really happy and really excited for you with this. So you've always been interested in real estate, obviously you're entrepreneur. What is it about real estate that you keep coming back to and why you want it to be the one thing basically, or at least the biggest part of maybe what you do?

Raymond (04:39):
Yeah, I think that as Alex would say, it's one of those type of business that's really always going to prosper and do well. I understand there's their ups and downs, but in wholesaling I feel that it's, although the last six months or so have been tough because of how administration is and because of how the treasury has kept interest rates higher, I think there is highs and lows on that, and I think there's been a lot of skittish investors that are just holding off. But I think actually right now, I think there is no better time to be in real estate right now than ever before. This is to me where fortunes are made.

(05:34):
And if you can get in right now, or at least convince your buyers that this is the time this is, it's like you're hitting at the bottom of the market. I don't see the market going down much. I feel that if the market does happen to go down, it's going to be going down because of stuff that the administration does to sabotage it. But I feel that this administration is going to do everything it can to keep real estate in a good place. So although it has been affected by what the administration's doing, I think that this is a turning point right now. And that's kind of how I feel about it. And I have rentals. I actually have four rentals, but I'd like to build that portfolio. And what I've found is right now I'm in Missouri, a lot of houses in Missouri, Pennsylvania. I was in Texas, I was briefly in Florida, and it turns out a lot of those markets are changing. So I think that might be a good time to get back into those markets. But my point is with the real estate acquisitions part of it, as I get into building cashflow, I plan on investing more in rentals, so putting money aside so that way I have rentals going. So I'm building that real estate portfolio. As Alex s, it's a systematic thing of building wealth and by yes, doing flips, doing wholesaling, and also acquiring and just buying old. So that's kind of my plan.

Peter Soros (07:23):
Yeah, it's kind of like what that's saying. We've all heard when there's blood in the streets, that's the time to be buying. And it's for investors as we know, it's all about the price. It's all about the purchase price. And right now there's less competition. That's one of the best times to buy. You just got to get buyers, I'm sorry, the sellers to just understand that what they have is just not worth what they think it is. And that's always one of the challenges we'll always have. And it'll always probably be like that. It'll never change. And then of course, like you're saying, there's so much in the air with economies and different administrations and just things pulling one way or the other and where's it going to land? We don't know. Everything's kind of pointing towards, prices are going to go up eventually at some point. We don't know. We don't know. But to investors, it almost doesn't matter. It just means we get deals at the price we need 'em, and we can always be making money this way. And there's lots of deals being done right now, and it's always a great time to be an investor. They always say, when's the best time yesterday? Right, 20 years ago. But no, that's great that you see that.

Raymond (08:35):
I'd say I'm persevering and just keep on moving in the right direction. Right now, I have a couple of properties right now we're looking at JV with, so I have some buyers that I think might be interested, actually, because I'm on another platform right now if you're familiar with, called Investor Lift. Yeah, yeah. So we're on that as well. So it's helping to dispo our properties. I feel that it'll be a lot of help in doing that. And I have a small team of people that I work with that work under me who basically do all the stuff, pretty much do all this stuff. As you met Jenny before, she does all my MLS stuff, and then we ran into an issue with MLS and that I was running out of cashflow and it's like deciding on how to do EMDs and EMDs, I just couldn't come up with enough capital to be able to keep that going quite as fast. So, we're doing a little bit of MLS and off market deals. That's in a nutshell. But I believe that MLS deals are just, I mean, they're easy, they're great. I love 'em. You don't pay for 'em. You build great relationships with people. The only thing that I find about that is that one Pleasant Hill property, I had the Pleasant Hill property, had a Concord property. I couldn't dispo fast enough, and it was like, oh my gosh, I felt so bad for the realtor who was on the hook on that, probably. She's a good friend of mine's acquaintance, and I just feel that, I hope I didn't damage that relationship, but I told her I'd make it up for at some point in time.

Peter Soros (10:54):
At some point, we all have to realize it's just business, obviously. We're not trying to hurt anybody. That's never ever what we want to do. We're never trying to screw people over or be immoral or unethical. That's far from what we ever want to do. Just sometimes things just don't work out. And sometimes people take it personally and hopefully people can just realize, Hey, it's just business. It could be a bigger problem. Again, if we go through with some deals, it would be bad for everybody in a way. So, alright, so we've touched a bit about where you've come from, why you're going into really want to stick with real estate, and I'm glad you'll have some rentals. So there's more plans of getting more rentals in your portfolio?

Raymond (11:45):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I'd like to have at least 20, but actually there's one investor that I'm working with right now. She has like 400. That's just way too much to manage. I want something that's reasonable to manage.

Peter Soros (12:05):
How many do you currently have right now?

Raymond (12:07):
Four.

Peter Soros (12:08):
Four. You got four rentals. Okay.

Raymond (12:10):
Yeah.

Peter Soros (12:10):
And are these all in, because then you're in Northern California, so are they all in that area or the other? Yes. Okay.

Raymond (12:15):
Yes. Yes.

Peter Soros (12:16):
Got it.

Raymond (12:16):
Okay. And it works out pretty well for me, or actually it'll work out very well for me, but right now being entrepreneurial, you're leveraging cash flow, you're leveraging your money, and that's where I'm at right now. I see a lot of promise at the next year because of how far I'm into wholesaling with Real Estate Skills. You've been an enormous amount of help and Real Estate Skills in general has just been very encouraging. Well, I don't like the community. I love the community, but I just love the communal support that you get from everybody. And I wish I could reach out to everybody that's congratulated me on this recent deal, but it's nice. It's nice. You feel like you have somebody to bounce off of. I think that for those people who just feel that this type of business is something that you just walk right into and pick up everything that you have, there's a lot of experience that goes into getting somewhere in this business.

Peter Soros (13:34):
Yeah, absolutely. That actually leads me into my question was, I'm sure you looked at every other potential education company out there. What made you decide to go with Real Estate Skills above everyone else?

Raymond (13:50):
I knew I wanted to get into off-market deals, sithout a doubt, but when I discovered MLS deals, it was kind of a game changer. It was like, oh my God, I could do this without having really spent that much money doing that. Now, one of the things that I found is that although MLS, it's actually kind of fun for me because you, you're very much a people person, so it's easy for you to chat with people and build rapport with people. And I think it's easier for people like you and I to be able to do that because there's not really much of a language barrier.

(14:33):
We speak English pretty clearly. So it's pretty easy. We can connect with people and even if somebody is, I think we were dealing with a lot of stuff in Los Angeles area and there's a lot of Spanish speaking people over there. I mean, I think that people that speak Spanish that are in MLS, Real Estate Skills should be the ones that connecting with those people, they would do extremely well. Or let's say anybody that's Asian or wherever, but speaking English pretty well and to be able to connect with people makes it a lot easier. I found that I have built a lot of great little relationships with realtors who are willing to work with me, call me, Hey, I got this deal and a lot of the deals that they're sending me are stuff that I really don't want to have to get into that are total tear downs or just stuff that it's just crap, I can't do that. Or in a bad area. I'm trying to stay away from that.

(15:41):
The other thing is that I think that with the MLS, it's kind of nice if you pick, we're picking a niche of renters or buy and hold people. So with that, it's just a lot easier to dispo those because they're people that you could have higher, let's say there's higher numbers on that. You can get to that 70% number and be okay. Whereas there was a person that you send me on MLS, it was looking at deals that 45%, it's like on a condo deal. I mean, those are the people I typically stay away from. I don't want to work that hard from being in this business. I'm trying to find out faster, easier ways to get things and to get 'em disposed and not to work harder on both ends. That's kind of why I felt that real estate MLS program was awesome, just great. And also having the one-on-one support or the type of support to you offer your students. I think a lot of them just need to really pay attention and just learn from experience. Don't you agree?

Peter Soros (17:05):
Absolutely. And having us there basically, I can't say we hold your hand every step of the way, but in the way we kind of do. At the same time too, we can't do your homework for you and really you wouldn't want us to. You need to be able to be independent and do your own business. It's your own business. But we're right there with you looking at contracts with you calling cash buyers. If you bring the deal to us and you want our help with it, reviewing the deals ahead of time, doing whatever we can, we just want you all to win. That's basically it. Whatever we can do to help, we're willing to do that. Ryan's called agents for students before because they were getting some pushback that just wasn't making sense. And you're just, oh yeah, we're just partners. Yeah, so what's the problem? Oh, this, yeah, we can just do this, this boom done. And sometimes that's all it takes.

(17:59):
And having someone on your site to do those things is, like you said, it's a game changer. So we're more than happy to put in that effort for everyone else who's putting in the effort as well, which you definitely have and you're roughly a prime example of that. So I mean, you show us, you're bringing in employees right off the bat, but you have that experience from the past of fixing and flipping. So you already know building a team helps a great deal, especially when you've got other businesses and things like that.

Raymond (18:31):
And that is exactly why I did that. I did that because, and I sold my salon because I'm getting pulled in too many different places. So I just really want to focus mainly on real estate. Now. I'm still a colorist.

(18:51):
Still have a full schedule, but I just don't have to manage the salon behind it. But being in this business, I started out in this and as a really shy guy, and obviously I'm not so shy, I could talk to and get into anybody's space and I need to get in front of, and I think that's part of it. It's like a lot of your students mean that are kind of on that shy side, just need to, I think you could train anybody to become more personable and build that nice connection with people that are selling their homes or realtors that are selling and clients' houses. That's what it takes. Am I correct?

Peter Soros (19:45):
It absolutely is. I mean, we can all be a certain person. I was a very shy person before myself, but I knew I had to do things to get myself out of that shell. So I remember one of my first jobs was being a doorman and valet, so I had to greet people all the time, and that helped. And then my background was in music, so I had to get up on stage and perform. Mr. Shy guy had to get up there and perform. But I think I say this a lot even to students. I think sometimes you're drawn to this not just to make a change in your life for your family and the money, but there's probably something else that's kind of tickling you that says you need to make a change to grow yourself as well. The money and stuff could almost be a byproduct of who you're actually building. And I say it all the time, you are your business. If you don't show up for your business, nothing's going to happen.

(20:37):
If your business, your family's future requires you to be this person, which isn't saying that you can't be yourself, you can still be yourself. You're just actually uncovering a different layer of yourself, you could say. And then at that point, you become that other person that's more sociable and it's not a negative. It's actually a positive. It actually helps you connect with people. It helps you not help yourself and your family, but it helps you help other people as well too. So it's just good all the way around. All the way around.

Raymond (21:09):
Well, I think my family knows how I am because I would think that somebody as personable as you go to a rest, sit down at a restaurant, you be, how's your day going? You try to connect with the person that's serving you to hopefully get better service out of them. And that's kind of what I do. And my family just says, don't say anything. Come on. I don't want to know their life story. And it's just like, that's kind of how we are. But I do have to say that I think a lot of your students that I here you work with, you can't be transactional.

(21:51):
You have to build that rapport and then get into the transaction. You got to be able to connect with people and build that rapport. That's how you get to get people eating out of your hand, right? It's true. And bringing deals to you and coming to you first to get deals done.

Peter Soros (22:13):
Yeah, you have to, again, it's a lot about trust. We kind of touched on it earlier on this interview, is you're dealing with people's money or you're dealing with people's homes. It depends who you're talking about. If you're talking about cash buyers, if you're talking about sellers, but trust is a really big part. I remember the first two deals I did were meeting the agent in person and they got a good feel of who I was, that they felt comfortable moving forward with me. More often than not, it's because someone feels comfortable working with you or they'll work with you even if your offer is less than some of the other offers because they feel that they can trust you. There's the old saying, people want to do business with people they like. Right? So how can you be a likable person? How can you show that you're interested in them?

(23:04):
These are all things that the next level of sales and just growing your business, how to connect with people because, and it doesn't mean it's like you say, transactional or it's not genuine. You want to connect with people because you want to have a good time doing this, and you want to feel to bed sleeping fine, knowing that you're not doing anything bad to anyone. You're not just trying to be transactional and stuff like that. These are clients. We always see cash buyers, sellers, anyone. We work with more clients as opposed to just customers. So it does take more work to show that trust. And some people are just afraid to do it. Some people just don't want to do it because again, a lot of it's usually just fear, I think. Or they're just like, I need the money. I need the money, I need the money. But that's the part where we have to learn. It's more than just that You're building a business in your community, so that'll speak volumes if you want this to last for a long time.

Raymond (24:07):
Well, I think that it's a lot of hard work and just sticking with the system, getting better and better and better at it to a point where you're just great at it. And I think that what I train my team, I train my team Real Estate Skills, and a lot of it has to do with building that rapport. I have a person that acquires properties for me between Jenny and this other person. Oh my God, they're just amazing. It's like me being right there. And the thing about where I am, probably how you are, you meet realtors in person, I meet realtors and connect with them, but also because of my background, knowing enough about, I'm at a builder level knowing that pretty much everything there is to know about how to build a house, it's easy for me to sound pretty educated, going into a house, viewing a house and pointed out things that need to be pointed out. Whereas some of the, even my acquisition people, they don't know enough of it. Their background isn't with construction. So they're not always able or asking always the right questions. And I think that that's where I think that could be a subset of what you do is do kind of an educational thing on basically things to ask, how's the sewer, the structural, is there any structural issue with the house, roofing, plumbing, all that stuff.

Knowing every little in and out when you're trying to give somebody an accurate assessment of what you could bid on a house, but your people need to know that. And people in Real Estate Skills need to know how to ask the t questions because it's essentially tearing down the value of the house because my people are asking that, even if it's a realtor, it's like, how's the structured doing? And they'll go over that. Okay, so that's about 20,000 just instructional stuff in the kitchen. We know that that needs to be redone. That's another 15 to 20,000. It's taking that price down and down so that way they feel good about, Hey, look, we already know that there's $150,000 that we have on improvements just to get it to market value. So I think that our students need to know that how to negotiate that way, and I think that there's a lot of material on Real Estate Skills, but I think it could be more what we're doing here.

Peter Soros (27:11):
Yeah. Yeah. That's why those Q and A calls are great, and having you jump on there and we do deal reviews and you get to hear everyone always. I think it's a great atmosphere when we kind of get together and kind of a meeting of the minds that way. I always think it's great. So let's jump in real quick to this deal. So this was something you found on market. Tell me about how you found it, how you acquired it, and how you lined up the buyer. Give me a little bit about that.

Raymond (27:39):
So we acquired it through a local realtor in that area, and it was actually the way we acquired it, it was an off market deal that came to us through a realtor. That's what it was. So it was to be listed on MLS through this realtor, but she turned us on to it.

Peter Soros (28:12):
How did you found this realtor?

Raymond (28:16):
Through MLS in that area.

Peter Soros (28:18):
So it was still in a way, still through MLS. Yeah. That's usually what happens with you make the connections on market and then it can lead to off market. Yeah, appens all the time.

Raymond (28:27):
Yes, exactly. So that's exactly what happened. So not only did we do that, but she also turned us on to a couple of other houses that were off market. So it was like, okay, so I have this other couple of houses that I have a client that would like to get rid of. So that's kind of how it all started. So what I did is I put one of my acquisitions people on it and we ended up acquiring this particular house, I think at 182, 182,000. That was an agreed acquisitions price.

Peter Soros (29:09):
How much repairs was it going to need? What was your estimate?

Raymond (29:13):
I don't do, I really don't necessarily do that. I think the ARV on that house was about 280.

Peter Soros (29:24):
280 to 182. Okay.

Raymond (29:27):
Yeah. So I figured that I had enough on it to be able to do something with it. It looked like it just needed to be painted and cleaned up. But as far as doing repair values on that, everybody has different repair values. If I get my team on it, they'll probably whip it out in less than half, probably two thirds of what most people are bidding on houses, because I had them systematically go through a house. My team works seven days a week, so if they're working seven days a week, obviously I'm in and out of there pretty quick, and I'm scheduling it where the landscaping's going on when somebody's painting the inside of the house or doing floor, everybody's like a person not getting.

Peter Soros (30:22):
Each other's way. No one's getting each other's way, but getting done at the same time.

Raymond (30:28):
Yeah. So that's why I don't get too hard into that. Yes, I do calculate, basically get a good idea of what the rehab would be on it just from looking at the house. I could go give you a quick guesstimate, and you know what? That's from you guys helping me with that. It's giving me good numbers to work with. That can give you a ballpark of where you need to be at. And truthfully, it's like you put it out there to people and it's like I let them decide how much they think they're going to spend. If somebody says, Hey, on this deal had that person said to me, it's like, look, I got X amount of dollars for rehab in it. I need to be able to acquire this house at let's say 190. Then I said, well, then I'm going to have to go back to the person selling the house and renegotiate a price reduction to get me my number. Right?

(31:34):
So anyway, that's kind of how it happened. But the way this happened is that we put it out to all our cash buyers in the area and somebody spotted it. JV partner spotted it and said, Hey, I got a buyer in that area that's willing to pick it up for you.

(31:58):
So that's kind of where we started negotiating. I asked him, I said, well, this is how our JV partner agreements work. We got a certain number I want to get out of a deal. Anything beyond that. I mean, if you want to mark it up, however you want to mark it up, mark it up. I said, but this is how we work it. Anyway, so we gave them a number. We knew that we could probably get 210 for it, but I'm not exactly. I think it was like we agreed to come out of it at 205, so we gave it to him at 205. He listed at 210 and got somebody to pick it up at 210, which meant that we got, I believe we got 23,000 on it. Well, we got a total of 28,000, but I had to pay 5,000 for the JV partner. But I think that's what really, that's kind of the way it should go. I mean, this whole business of people splitting at 50 50 is not necessarily, I'm not sure that that's the way to go. What do you think?

Peter Soros (33:15):
I mean, that's pretty industry standard to do it 50 50. I mean, you kind of look at it also, I always like to compare to look at just a regular transaction with a listing agent and a buyer's agent. Typically, they could sometimes give the buyer's agent sometimes more commission because if they're having a trouble selling it, they're like, please, we will give you more money if you bring us a buyer kind of thing. Sometimes listing agents, they'll do work deals out, okay, I'll take two and a half, but we got to give them 3% because we really need a buyer for this. We need to move quick. We want to really incentivize, because the thing is, it's usually a 50 50 because you don't have anything without the other. It's kind of like if you don't have a contract, the buyer's no good, but if you have the contract with no buyer, well then what's the point of the contract if you have no buyer for it? So I definitely see how 50 50 is fair. Now, I guess it can depend on the quality of the buyer or how fast they can move or who your partner is. I mean, in the end, everything is negotiable. So if you negotiate that and they're okay with it, then that's business. That's how it works.

Raymond (34:36):
Well, I think that most wholesale deals, I think a lot of people are happy to get a $10,000 assignment fee on that. Well, if you're a solid negotiator and you can negotiate it pretty low, that wasn't even our max offer on that. Our max offer on that property was probably about 10 to $15,000 more than that. So we picked it up pretty good price. So we're the ones that are doing all the work. We're setting up the title company, we're working with the seller, we're working with the buyer, all that stuff, and it's like, I think we're doing all the work and the guy that sent us, the JV partners just sitting there waiting for his money to roll in.

Peter Soros (35:29):
Yeah, no, I can see that's part of it too. Again, I always think of it from the agent's point of view too. A listing agent markets the property, gets the listing agreement, gets the photos taken care of, make sure everything looks, if they're doing a proper job as an agent, getting it online, getting it, blasting it out maybe to neighbors doing open houses, marketing the property, doing whatever they can to try to sell it because they're doing all the work, and then here comes a buyer's agent just brings the buyer and they close. But if they didn't have that buyer, then that agent would not make any money. They would've done all that work and gotten nothing. The last thing an agent would want is for their contract to expire, their listing agreement to expire. Same thing with when we have a property under contract. The last thing we want to do is to have to cancel it unless it's better that we cancel it, we find out our numbers were wrong. But I see both sides of it, and in the end, like you say, it's you negotiate for it. If you've got better negotiating powers than someone else, then that's just the name of the game.

Raymond (36:33):
Oh, absolutely.

Peter Soros (36:34):
You get what you negotiate for, right? In life in general, right?

Raymond (36:41):
Yeah. It's not like, okay, so let's say if the JV partner said, Hey, let's say I told them we can get 'em to 210, and then we went, is there anything wrong with, we agreed to that and we agreed that he'd get, let's say instead of 5,000, 10,000, and I just go to my acquisitions or I go back to the person selling the home to the realtor and say, Hey, you know what? During our inspection, we discovered this and this. I'd like to get a price reduction on this, and we happened to get one. This has happened on multiple deals, multiple on this one deal. I didn't realize the AC unit was so bad it needed to be replaced. I got a $15,000 reduction on this from the realtor just from asking. It didn't hurt to ask. So now, not at all. I could still give that person this $10,000, but I'm making it up on the other side. So I think you're right. Negotiating and getting better at being creative with negotiating is good, but I think that the idea of spending is 50 50 on something that's beyond, let's say five to $10,000 can be kind of unreasonable. You don't think so?

Peter Soros (38:16):
Again, it depends on a case by case basis. In my opinion. I've always kind of been just split 50 50. I just want to keep doing deals. But I mean on certain things, yeah, I don't want to split 50 50. It depends on what role did the other person play. I think that's the most important part is what role did that other person play is if it was something like there's plenty of other buyers. I could have gone with someone else but stayed with this longer and it would've maybe cost me more money. If that's the case, then you kind of just pick and choose your battles. A lot of times I was just, a lot of mentors that I worked with were just find a buyer, get rid of it, move on to the next one. Just keep moving. I agree. Just keep moving. Just keep moving.

Raymond (39:05):
I totally agree.

Peter Soros (39:06):
There's a point where you can try to just try to haggle for an extra couple thousand dollars where maybe that might leave a bad taste in the mouth of the person you're working with that then that could have meant tens of thousands of dollars more, but now they don't want to work with you because maybe they filter trying to just haggle them too much. Again, who knows? Who knows. But in the end, whatever you negotiate for, and again, as long as I think you're doing it ethically, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If everyone's in accordance with it, then it's fine.

Raymond (39:39):
Yeah. Well, I don't feel that. I felt that it was an agreement that the JV partner and I came to. I said, would it be okay if we pay you $5,000 on this deal just for the, and it's like yes or no, and if he said, no, you're need to pay me 10,000, then I'd say, let me think about it. Are you sure we can't get to let's say 7,500? That's kind of where I'd beat, and that's kind where it was at. Just like you said, we negotiated in good faith and he was okay. He said, yeah, I feel happy with that.

Peter Soros (40:22):
Yeah, just like you said, it doesn't hurt to ask. You get reductions just by asking. You could have not asked, but now you just made a better deal for your cash buyer and now it gives you a little bit more flexibility to even maybe pay someone even more for your JV partner or for you, and then you have employees. You have to think about all those things. But yeah, in the end, just negotiating and just asking the question and going from there.

Raymond (40:51):
Yeah. I think that if it were just solely me and no employees, I'd probably think about a 50 50 split, but it isn't. I have to think about having to pay people.

Peter Soros (41:05):
No, it makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. And in the end, it's your business and you have to run it, which what's going to work for you and your business? Lots of cash buyers run their businesses differently because of their business structure. Do they have an acquisitions team and a disposition team? Do they have office people? Setup could be different. So everyone's requirements and criteria will be different.

Raymond (41:31):
So, one of the things that I mentioned in a post is with that JV partner connection. For one thing, the person that he found thought the guy was weird, unfortunately, but it was like, and I didn't tear the guy down or anything. I'd say, I could see where you might say that he's a nice guy, whatever. But it's like, but now you're dealing with us and we'll make sure that it's a smooth transaction. So that actually I think is going to open the floodgates with this type of person that she says she's picking up a lot of houses in any given year. So it's like we're going to be like your predecessor who just found somebody that could do that is willing to pick up all these houses on a regular basis. So I need 10 of those. So I'm going to keep on looking until I find 10 of those. Because that's how I get to my numbers because I have a certain goal of where I want to be. You got to start somewhere. And one in 10, and even if I'm half wrong and then get five of those, I'd still be doing pretty well, right?

Peter Soros (43:00):
That's right. You shoot for the stars and hit the moon. Still good. You're still in average space. Right. Awesome. So yeah, go ahead, finish.

Raymond (43:11):
Yeah, no, that's kind of where I'm at. I have a clear idea of where I'd like to be and I'm not going to stop until I get there. And even when I do get there, I'm sure what it's going to turn out to be is me being able to pick up as many rentals as I can to build that generational wealth to be able to pass it on to my children and do pretty well.

Peter Soros (43:42):
Awesome. So I wanted to make sure, so for this property, it didn't cost you anything to get the lead, right? It was a referral from the agent. I think you probably did you put up the earnest money deposit to keep?

Raymond (43:59):
No.

Peter Soros (43:59):
You didn't even have to do that. Awesome. So basically there was no out of pocket or do you pay your employees by the deal, or is it like an hourly thing? So people always wonder what did it cost for you to get this deal? A lot of people always have.

Raymond (44:16):
It costs me $10,000 to get this deal. So I had 28, I got 18 out of it.

Peter Soros (44:25):
Okay, so what was the 10,000 that you spent out of pocket?

Raymond (44:30):
It was for my employees, their wages.

Peter Soros (44:33):
Okay, got it.

Raymond (44:37):
So what I did is, I think, I don't know if you're aware of this, but I have VAs in the Philippines that do all my do a lot of my negotiations, their wages are so less than here. You could find VAs for $5 an hour, $3 an hour there. That's probably not really good VAs, but I get to get one that's good. Pretty well trained, probably about seven to $8 an hour, which for my time is worth it. But what I did is as we were, we're questioning whether or not we can get EMDs laid out, and I didn't want to necessarily risk losing my staff. They agreed to work on commission. So that's kind of where we're at right now. So I would think that we commission now. Now we're going to get ramped up because everybody needs to eat.

Peter Soros (45:48):
Yeah, exactly. That'll be a little bit more, that's kind of where we're at. Yeah, a little bit

Raymond (45:53):
More motivated.

Peter Soros (45:53):
More of a motivation. Yeah, exactly.

(45:59):
Cool. So what was the last things I wanted to ask before we wrap this up? So we kind of already know where you're planning on going. You want to do some rentals, you already have a couple rentals, but you want to build more of that portfolio rental portfolio. So that's where Raymond's moving into the future. What about right now? Are you still focused on doing a lot of wholesale deals? Are you trying to do some fix and flips again soon? Or you just want to do wholesale and then just get into portfolios right now?

Raymond (46:27):
I'm going to wait until the beginning of the year to start getting into fix and flip.

(46:33):
I'd like to do fix and flip out where I live so that way I can manage it easier. We did have a fix and flip in Austin that we were having issues with the financing part of it and being entrepreneurial. I'm balancing having my VAs work for me versus stopping that and then working on this flip, I chose to stick with real estate wholesaling. So I put that on hold and as I acquire more capital, I'll get back into doing real estate flips. But I'm kind of what I'm sure that Alex and Ryan and you are doing. It's like you get to a point where you just want to cherry pick the properties you want to acquire. I don't want to do properties that require massive work. I want something that's, I don't want to work beyond 10 weeks on a project, maybe 12 weeks, but really 10 weeks is the max. I want to be on any one project and with the crew that I have, they could get projects done pretty quick so I could get it in and out in six weeks. So that's how you make money and flipping. You don't make money by sitting on there waiting for permits from cities and counties and now it's diminishing all your profits. So that's where I'm at and I don't mind paying more and making maybe a little bit less, but being in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Peter Soros (48:24):
What advice would you give someone who's thinking about joining and then anybody just in general advice, thinking of getting into real estate to begin with your moment to just share your thoughts and your experience.

Raymond (48:36):
I think all the material that Real Estate Skills has, if you listen to it and follow it over and over and just use a practical application of it, you're going to do well. It takes time to get that skill going. It's just like playing golf. You don't just get in there and pick up a club and you're hitting it straight. It takes practice and practice and practice until it starts clicking. And when it starts clicking, it's like right now for me, it just feels like it's starting to click and it's like we're going to be off to the races. I know we are, but you got to stick with it. But the material you have is fantastic and for what you charge for it I think is affordable. And it's like a lot of people that are in this business at a high level spend like tens of thousands of dollars on education, and that's not really that much money to spend on the type of education that you offer, but you have to be practic, use it, you got to listen to it, you got to apply it. You can't just have it sitting around and without any use, but that's the vast majority of people that buy classes. Never even go through the whole thing. I have many of times, and you know how I did it, I work out, so I put my headphones on, I listen to a program every workout. How many times do I have to do that, do it over and over and over again, and then I pick out the ones that I really am weak at and just listen to it over and over again until I get it.

Peter Soros (50:28):
Just consistency and dedication and making that decision and sticking with it. It made me think of, you mentioned working out how many people get gym memberships, but don't go.

Raymond (50:42):
Right, and this is a good time to do it.

Peter Soros (50:44):
Right. Awesome. Well, Raymond, Raymond, I'm glad we got a chance to do this. I'm sure we'll be doing this again soon.

Raymond (50:54):
I hope so.

Peter Soros (50:55):
Yeah. I'm looking forward to the next one. As you refine the process even more, and if you're looking at more properties so that to your portfolio, I mean we're here for you, Ryan is open to having chats and offering. He's already connected to one student with his first, I think he's picking up his second buy and hold I think this next month or so. And that's part of what you paid for is having a call with Ryan about things like this. I mentioned this to a lot of people who I think could get to that goal faster than maybe what they think. A lot of people think, well, I have to do 10 wholesale deals before I buy my next rental or whatever, and you already have four. But if you want to get more and more, which is what you want, you might be able to get there a lot sooner with the right network and connections.

Raymond (51:51):
It's funny you say that because I thought about that. It's like why didn't, it would've been nice to just use the Real Estate Skills, people on Real Estate Skills to pick up my and just I'm the buyer. I could have just said, Hey, does anybody have any properties in this area? I'd like to buy wholesale and have them work for me. It would've just been a lot easier because look, I have the skill of flippant houses pretty quickly. It would be, I could make money off of that fairly easy, but with this visit, you really got to learn it. Its a good, it takes a little bit of time.

Peter Soros (52:29):
It's a very good skill to have for all things, for finding deals. It'll help you with everything. So, alright, Raymond. Well, it was a pleasure. Glad you were here. We able to make it.

Raymond (52:41):
It's always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure. You got my number? You call me anytime. All right, Raymond will do. We'll tell Ryan to do the same.

Peter Soros (52:49):
Alright, will do All. All right. Thank you. Take care. Take care.

(52:54):
There you have it. As you can see, in Raymond's case, he comes from a long history of just running businesses. So he approached this much more like the way a CEO would run a business, had employees helping him out, had certain tools in place. He really went above and beyond to try to build a business that could work for him. While he works also on his other businesses as well, even though you heard he has sold one of his businesses so he could focus more on this because he sees the potential in this. Now he knows the fix and flip game. Now he knows the wholesaling game, so I'm sure his next wholesale deal is right around the other corner. I know, I think he just told me he's got another deal on the contract right now. So we'll be taking a look at that with him soon.

(53:39):
But as you can see, if you apply yourself, if you stick with it, you heard he went through lots of offers, got really close so many times, and we were right there with him trying to push those across the line. Just sometimes deals are not going to work or you need a little bit more time and sometimes sellers are just not having it right. But he persisted. He knows in business it's all about your mindset, it's all about your commitment. And that was never in question with Raymond. He knows the commitment level he needs to have. He knows the consistency and the discipline and Raymond's not going anywhere. He's definitely going to be one of our best students, bringing in more and more deals, showing everyone what can be done when you really apply yourself and really treat this as a real business.

(54:24):
So if you're interested in learning more about the Real Estate Skills community, head on over to RealEstateSkills.com. Send us an email, send us a message and we'll get in touch with you and have a chat. Alright, until next time, take care everyone. Bye-bye.

*Disclosure: Real Estate Skills is not a law firm, and the information contained here does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with an attorney before making any legal conclusions. The information presented here is educational in nature. All investments involve risks, and the past performance of an investment, industry, sector, and/or market does not guarantee future returns or results. Investors are responsible for any investment decision they make. Such decisions should be based on an evaluation of their financial situation, investment objectives, risk tolerance, and liquidity needs.