In this video, we’re going to have a special guest, Paul Lizell. He’s a real estate investor and has purchased properties in 44 of the 50 states since 2001. Founder of www.reoauctionacademy.com, where we teach others how to buy from online auctions, bank REOs, and off the MLS. He’ll be showing us how he does virtual wholesaling all across the country. Check this video to know more
We are live with the painless wholesaling Podcast. I’m here with Paul Loiselle. Is that right, Paul? Good. Good to have you on here, everybody today. Stay tuned, because we’re going to be talking about how to wholesale across the united states across the nation.
We got Paul, I think you were saying you’ve done over 45 states wholesale number for 45 states.
So 44 to 50 states at wholesale yet, man, what about those ones? You haven’t heard of those ones still, like keep you up at night? Are you going for those?
Not really, if something happens, great. There’s certain states I avoid. And a lot of them fall into certain states, the only one I would probably do additionally would be actually to Hawaii and the three the Dakotas and Hawaii. Notice and bother. Yeah,
I know that when I was doing a lot of marketing and nationwide for Pay Per Click leads, they would tell us to not even turn on the Dakotas. They’re like don’t even worry about it. Yeah, well, that’s really interesting. So let’s dive right in. If if this is your first time tuning in to the painless wholesaling podcast, what our goal is, is to make wholesaling and real estate investing painless for you. Because everyone knows it takes time, it takes effort. And if you do this on your own, you feel like you have to do on your own, you’re gonna make a lot of mistakes. So we try to make take away those mistakes by bringing on experts. So we have Paul here to tell us a little bit about his business his life and provide as much value as we can in the short time. So Paul, take it away. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what got you into real estate.
Sure. So go back to where I started. 2001 is when I very ended with as one as when I started investing in real estate and I bought my very first bank owned property off the HUD home store. And I partner with a Guyana, we picked it up for 29 Five, we put four grand and when we sold it for 69. We each walked away with 15,000. So 30,000 net profit and a few months it was great. And then I rinse and repeat. But I was doing this while I was working full time for a bank, I was a commercial loan underwriter for a small community bank for a year then it became a business development officer for a couple years thereafter. And then I went to Citizens Bank, a bigger bank, bigger war regional bank there went for a few years till 2004 When I finally quit my job and went full time into real estate investing.
Wow. Sounds like you went through quite a bit. And that’s that time. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know,
Mike, one of my keys was like, and I had to do this convince my wife, potentially as well. But for definitely for myself, I had to save up 18 months worth of bill paying ability. In other words a year and a half of bill paying ability before I would eventually just jump on go on my own. That’s what I did got once got that 18 month, boom, it would end up being like December and in November, early December of 2004. I quit the job and it did it ever since I went through that financial crisis 2008 I shifted my model, that’s where I was doing a lot of fix and flips and I was buying almost exclusively off HUD and bank Oreos off the MLS in the suburbs of Philadelphia at that point, okay, and then I kind of shift to those nine once I lost a ton of money on a bunch of the fixer flip side going on. Like I did a couple wholesale deals and they were easy money and I didn’t have any risk. Why don’t I go back to doing that. So I flipped my model from 90% fix and flip and 10% wholesale to 90% wholesale 10% fix and flip and I did that for a while, you know until 2013 roughly when the market shifted and started to go positive. And I did a mixture of stuff but I started doing all over the country really adding to 2009 going into 2010 when it became a little bit easier I started buying in Indiana and Ohio New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas Florida before you know what I bought 44 to 50 states wow that’s amazing.
And if you had to go back would you have changed anything on the model of going to more towards wholesale would you wish you would have kept more oh definitely wish I would have kept more
I think we all say that we’ve been around for a long enough time 22 years doing this business now. I always wish I would have kept more but I’ve also done really well in building up some rentals selling them when the markets going up and then building up getting some more and sell them when I didn’t expect the market to go parabolic air after COVID but it did and I sold some more and made some more and now I’m building again and we’ll see where that leads but now when I’m building this I get some like 12 unit building five unit building and Wyoming I’m gonna probably just refinance keep those things long term and now there’ll be in my you know just stick it set and forget it because flow very well and then I’ll add more as as I need to at that point you know pick and choose which markets I want to be in for the buying Holtz
yeah are you continuing continuously looking for more deals like multifamily deals right now or not so much?
Yeah, we do but not the big moldings right now the big molds we look at them but when you don’t do the underwriting on them, they just don’t make sense right now and especially with the cost of capital right now on a refinance side. Now the smaller ones is say you know 20 And under or 30 and under units that’s that’s a largely ignored class so you can go in there and get some pretty good bargain basement pricing and can even get some owner financing on occasion, right? These are good ones getting so you could really just value add with them like the one I picked up a Casper, Wyoming. I picked it up for 430 1000 I put 500k into it, but it just appraised at 1.3. And I’m a roughly about a million into it, and I’m refinancing it right now and I should be able to pull almost all of my cash out.
Oh, that’s awesome. Yes. The reason I’m asking you is because today, one of my family members has a website where he traffic generates traffic to, I guess, leads for multifamily. And sometimes he gets some outside of Tempe out of Arizona. And we got he got one in Salina, Colorado, which is like close to pueblo. And it’s a 12 unit. And I don’t have any buyers there. I’m interested. Yeah, I’ll have to I’ll have to send you the information. Yeah, it’s under it’s under rented. It’s like each units between 500 to $700. And it’s way way under rent. But again, I don’t really know that area, and I don’t really mess with, you know, outside of Utah when it comes to multifamily. After that, I’ll send rancher said those are like that 12 units has been my specialty number.
Okay, well, there you go. 12 units right there outside of Pueblo and like south of Denver, so that’ll be cool. Awesome. All right. Well, tell tell me a little bit about what you do to help new investors get into wholesaling because you said you do virtual real estate wholesaling. So do you teach it do you what do you do? We do
So we have REO auction Academy see it right here behind me. And what we do is we do something totally different than everybody else out there. And it’s kind of how I got in, right. We teach people how to buy bank Oreos, but mostly on online auctions, whether it’s auction.com Hubzu, Zoom Hudson, a Marshall real deep bid auction network, Williams, Williams, any of these platforms and even every once in a blue moon, there used to be stuff on eBay that you can get. And there’s some smaller little auction houses that are more local in different markets that you can also sign up for, and potentially pick up stuff. So that’s what we specialize in buying in we have an educational platform teach people how to do that. And a lot of people are leery of buying outside of their area where they are. And we kind of take the headaches away from you there. It’s not as daunting as it seems. systems and how we go about doing it and it’s fairly simple. And we’ve been doing it since 2009.
And with really good success, like an example of a property we just are about to close on, I think on a 23rd of this month here in June and Hubbard Ohio we picked it up for 177,000 It’s a big big building big house. Six 6080 square feet I believe and like a four car garage, big huge finished basement. We’ve picked up for 177 We put almost 40 Just under 40 into it and we’re selling it for 345 We had six offers in or six offers over asking price we want highest and best and that’s that’s only 105k Pay up. It’s a rarity, right they get one great one. Now that’s amazing, but they do happen and we have another one and cuero Texas which is south of Houston we picked it up for 53 put just about eight or nine grand into it and we’re selling it for 128
Wow And on these auctions you need to come up with the cash correctly to buy it all out. So how do you how does that work for you know someone that probably has $0 so that we can some of our students will joint venture with them right if they’ve got no money with a deal, we’re gonna do it we’ll JV with course well we are JV Yep, JV is always a great one for them.
We have private lenders on our platform Believe it or not, that will fund a lot of deals as well other people other students will sometimes joint venture with each other on different deals if one person comes in as a capital partner the other person is one finds the deal so we got that we also connect them with companies Lhasa based lenders like chiave Dominion financial lending, one Lima one capital and others. Coco capital, Li Arnold’s group out there and we’re working on a few different other ones as well. That way they can get in there with without having to worry about coming up with money right and the funds themselves because that is you do when you buy these bank owned properties, you’ve got to come with the cash right it’s not assignable contract they don’t aid you in general.
Yeah, so you’ve got to do it back to back closing however there are states if you work with the right title company, there’s wet fun states and dry fun states if you’re in a dry fun state you can use your buyers cash to pay for you on the A to B side you’re just collecting the difference there which we do as well so that’s a way to do it basically with almost no money down because those are the best. The best I love when we get those in those markets if you wanted to.
Do you know a couple more of those markets off the top of your head that well?
We do Texas with that a lot I believe sippy is one two and this is sippy is
to remember I don’t think Alabama was I believe we did New Mexico I’m sure very Missouri, Nevada. I think there’s either eight or nine of them. Somewhere in there.
I have a list somewhere yeah, those are seriously the best we did one of those where we have the we use the the end buyers money. Yeah, that’s great.
Those are the best when you could do that. And again, you need to you need a title company. I’d be on board with you to be able to ever because not all do it because they want to make sure that none of them getting causing the issues.
So that’s the main marketing strategy you teach in REO auction is to how to find these sources deals is there. Would you say there’s a link It is, because it’s the whole United States that you can open this up to. Is there no limit?
There is no limit. And I used to do two direct mail marketing, right, which I cut off in 2013. Because I just had too many deals. On the auctions. I didn’t need to do any direct.
Super expensive too. I’m sure this your strategy is inexpensive cost nothing, right. So there’s zero marketing class.
That’s the big bonus that when you think about getting in is, do you want to spend three or 10 grand a month marketing, when you could just do it? Now you’re it’s your time and your time is a value, right? You and I, we have value on our time, right? So if you’re putting in 15 hours a week, there’s no reason you can’t find a deal maybe two or three a month, putting in that once you get good at it right? Once you get good pumping properties and know how to contact the agents and what questions ask them and get the information that you need, it becomes more simplified. So these,
So these, these bank owned properties are represented by real estate agents. Still, it’s not all of them.
There are some that aren’t there’s a program out there called the HUD CW co T program, which they created a few years back where instead of throwing them on a HUD home store, because they’re trying to get away from the HUD home store. So if you go on there and look at it, you’ll find very limited inventory in different states. Most of them they throw on the online auctions, but with the HUD, CW co T, they’ll foreclose on them, and then just list them with an auction company. And they’re not listed on the MLS. They’re like off market properties right there. Market technically, I don’t really have a price on them unless they feel like throwing something on Zillow, which they will at times put it on Zillow to put a number on it.
And then And then basically we’re trying to find an agent in that area has somebody is an expert in that area has been there for a while to give us an idea what they think would be worth go out there, take a look at it. A lot of them they don’t let you in even if they are vacant, and we try to get students focused on the vacant ones not occupied because he of course was rejecting or evicting anybody focused on those if they could peek into Windows, they’ll generally the agents get a pretty especially spirit stages can go there, peek through the windows, get an idea what they think it’s worth and what kind of repairs they think it needs. And it just gives you a ballpark estimate. And then you can assume you know, there’s 15 or $35 per square foot to renovate the property you felt you put those factors in you come up with your maximum allowable offer. Man,
I really liked this strategy. I haven’t really heard of it too much. That’s very interesting. I’ve been in the game for a lot like five years. I’d say that’s a long time. But no, I haven’t really heard that people using this marketing strategy very much. Do you know why that is?
I don’t know why we’re the only ones in the game. I think people are creatures of habit. And they’re used to your traditional if you think of it this way it’s riskless if you’re doing your traditional wholesaling method direct to seller, except you are risking your marketing money, right you are you are risking that with ours, you actually have to close on a property. Maybe it’s a little riskier, but for we did a lot of our students, believe it or not, are experienced investors that do a ton of deals in certain markets. And they feel like they’re missing out on the reo inventory. And they just buying our program, they usually signed somebody to just deal with the Oreos, and then they realize shoot, I can go in other markets too. And it’s another segue for them to start in another market invest in.
I love that. I think that’s amazing. Do you are there some states that just because it’s a hot area, hot state, I guess market there’s less Oreos, or is there always opportunities?
There’s always opportunities, but there are areas where there’s just such a little bit of inventory, it’ll go like that, regardless, like a lot of these properties will move really, really quickly. Were the asset managers or banks will recognize that instead of putting it on the auction platform, they’ll throw it on the MLS that you’re making get more that we can’t blame them right campaign. Especially on it, it should say what’s your market again, I forget your call like Salt Lake City. It’s pretty hot.
It’s a hot market being a big time hot market for a while now. So it’s hard to find inventory, at least fairly priced inventory, but I’m assuming the Midwest probably has tons of opportunities in Ohio, like you said,
Lana, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the Carolinas, Maryland, Pennsylvania. Yeah, a lot of Mark we spoke is just knowing where to look, you just got to know where to look. You just gotta know where to look right.
And if you follow demographics, where people are leaving the cities that people are vacating the States, people are breaking like Illinois, right? That’s that market is really following New York, parts of New Jersey, New Jersey is weird because people are leaving maybe more towards the city and they’re shifting downward within a state so they’re going more towards the shore points where they’re going to Delaware or Pennsylvania. So that market has become a red hot, but other markets people are shifting out if they’re going out of Minnesota, Minnesota is losing a little bit of its luster in around minute. We call it Minneapolis. All the issues they’ve had their other parts of it and suburbs are doing great. They’re flourishing still. So if they are
losing the zeal or like we’re talking about some of these markets, those are where you would target or you wouldn’t target I wouldn’t target if I’m looking to hold long term but you can target to find bargains occasionally late especially if you and I I won’t,
I won’t do cash flow rentals in those markets because I don’t trust the government, the local governments, municipalities there, they’ll let the tenant stay in for forever. So I tend to go just avoiding zero income tax from my rentals. But some people do it right. It’s their market, they don’t mind doing it and deal with that. So you can occasionally find some really good deals because there is a little bit more inventory, especially outside of Chicago proper, right? The suburbs of Chicago, still very hot, but you outside of that, and the more rural areas and you’ll find really good deals in those markets. Same with Kansas. The same with Oklahoma, in Tulsa, is different markets here. There’s some really good really good opportunities, you kind of want to focus and so if you’re looking at Missouri, St. Louis, don’t focus necessarily on St. Louis itself, because you got so much competition there. But if you go 30 minutes, 60 minutes out to floss more say or even a little further out, you’ll find really, really good deals in that market.
Sounds like some I need to check out, Bob and know about this. So Paul, for my listeners on here, since we’re gonna wrap up, what would they’re this call to action? What would you have them do if they want to learn more about what you’re talking about?
So if they want to learn more about this, like if they want to reach out to us, that’s great, they can reach out to us at REO auction. academy.com. And we have a couple different platforms they can if they feel like they can do it themselves. We have a do it yourself program for like 497 for $97. And then we also have a full fledge coaching for 5500, where we show them everything and they get all kinds of training videos and all kinds of access to lenders and other things. Wow. But if they want to do it on their own, start with your local Oreos on MLS look@auction.com Hubzu those two platforms have a ton of inventory, your two best biggest sources for looking at properties, and then start contacting agents and try to feel like what is the value of this particular property right? start targeting properties and testing it and seeing if you can come up with a good comping. Like if you figure out what the value of the property is, as opposed to what the realtor gives you.
It’s good way to test yourself, of course, so that if one of the listeners today, find something but they don’t know what to do with it, could they also reach out to you and say hey, absolutely we’ve done that with people people have reached out to us they found deal they can’t find a date on what to do we look at it we analyze a yeah, this this deal will go will join to join together with you or we say this isn’t a deal. The reason you’re not finding fun lenders where it’s because you’re overpaying here’s what the comps are and here’s what you’re paying, and here’s kind of repairs need. So gotcha. I do that and then maybe help them get out of that deal. So they don’t lose their earnest money deposit.
Well, Paul, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you and I actually, I’m gonna send you that deal that I have the 12 Plex in Salina, Colorado and also they are willing to do terms they I talked to him about it. He said he’d be open to doing 10 years 10 to 15%, down 10 year balloon amortize over 30 years. So we’ll see. Again, I come to the point where this is kind of a newer territory for me in a different market. But I have all the Performa and all that information. I’ll send it to you and you can I’m extremely
I’m extremely interested. This is right up my alley. This type of property. All right.
Hey, we Hey, everybody is listening network network network. That’s how you do deals. All right. Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
