Dustin Heiner is a buy and hold expert. He’s on the other side of the fence, buying properties from flippers and wholesalers so he can rent them out. So he knows exactly what he wants from investors who offload properties.
Listen to this episode as Dustin explains:
- what we need to continue doing as flippers/wholesalers with our buyers list
- what can turn away cash buyers like Dustin
- how important it is to build your list and regular emails of new properties are
Get into the mind of a cash buyer and understand exactly what they want and need in this episode so you can offload more properties.
Show Notes:
Master Passive Income (masterpassiveincome.com/freecourse) – Dustin Heiner’s free course on buy and hold properties
Cozy.co – Payment collection system
Jessey: 01:00 Hey there, welcome to the REI Conversion Podcast where each episode we discuss strategies and digital tools to help you launch, automate and scale your real estate investing business. Learn how to run your investing business remotely. Find out ways to automate your business to better utilize your time, and learn what other successful investors are implementing so you can get to the next step closer to your investing goals. And I’m your host and founder of REI Conversion, Jessey Kwong.
Hey there, welcome to the REI Conversion Podcast where each episode we discuss strategies and digital tools to help you launch automate and scale your real estate investing business. Today I have Dustin Heiner over from Master Passive Income with us today on the show. Dustin runs a great podcast, also several sites including Master Passive Income, and really focuses on building passive income through rental properties. I actually brought Dustin here on to talk about working with wholesalers and how he finds deals so that’ll give you a chance to find investors like Dustin to work with, but first of all, Dustin, how’s it going?
Dustin: 01:05 Oh, it’s going fantastic. Jessey, thank you so much for having me on the show.
Jessey: 01:09 Yeah, absolutely. Dustin, in a few sentences can you sort of explain … I sort of introduced you can you sort of explain to our audience what you are up to, in terms of investing and what you do, and actually what you also share with your audience?
Dustin: 07:12 Absolutely. I mean, that’s one of the best ways to find properties or to buy properties is when you have somebody bringing you through an email a property so that you can take your time wake up, drink some coffee, open up your email. As an investor, I love getting those emails because I could just leisurely and honestly, right now is such an amazing time to be investing in real estate. I know people might be thinking, well, the markets high, prices are pretty high, which I don’t disagree that the prices are relatively high, but there still are deals out there. In fact, just yesterday, one of my students just closed … No, I just got the email this morning. He emailed me said, Hey, I just closed on this property. Everything went through and so he’s super happy. I have another student, somebody working with me for maybe three months now. She already has two properties, and each one of these are making them a minimum of $250 or more every single month.
Now what I love like I said is I love getting emails from wholesalers that show me the properties because I could go through Zillow, I can go through Trulia, basically any single site to figure out what is the value, how much I can rent it for, what my expenses are going to be. So I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I buy this property at whatever price it is, I’m going to be making money. That’s the great thing. I know for certain I’m going to be making money. So getting on a buyers list is crucial for me. I love getting on buyers list.
Now here’s one thing that I’ll quickly jump into that I show all my students how to do this. Now if you are a wholesaler right now, you know things you should do. You should be on Craigslist saying I buy houses fast with cash, or putting up the bandit signs, or you should be getting all those ways out there – direct letters and direct mail with yellow letters and all that sort of stuff. Absolutely should be doing that. But one thing I try to teach all of my students is that you as an investor, should not discard those or just drive past the bandit signs, or just overlook these. No, these people are wholesalers. You want to call them up and say put me on your buyers list. I want to be on your buyers list. And now here’s one thing I want to tell every single wholesaler out there. If you have somebody that’s on your wholesaling list, you have their email address, I would say as an investor because I buy plenty of properties. As an investor, what I would suggest to every single wholesaler is literally keep sending every single property to everybody on your list. Don’t start to think, well, this guy hasn’t replied to me in literally a year and a half. Don’t think that. Keep sending those because us as investors, there are times where we go through a buying stages where we have more money, or there are times like six months, life happens. We stop buying.
Jessey: 10:05 Absolutely.
Dustin: 10:06 But you want to continually until the investor says literally take me off of your list, do not remove any investor. If they told you in the past that they want to be a buyer, do not take them off, and the reason why… I get, I don’t say hundreds but like every single day, I get at least dozens of emails with properties and I look through all of them, but I don’t reply. I don’t want to take their time. I don’t want to take my time. If it’s a good property, I’ll buy it. And if I have the time to actually run the numbers and I have the money to buy it, then I’m gonna buy it. So do not take anybody off your buyers list unless they literally say stop emailing me. Right,
Jessey: 10:46 Right, right. And it’s great to hear that confirmation on the other side because we’re always working to get out our newsletters or new properties out to all everybody and it’s interesting to hear from your side that you guys do focus and spend a lot of time looking at that now. Are there sort of any other things that you think a lot of wholesalers or flippers or people that are offloading property, whether houses or land, are there any things that you find that they’re forgetting to do other than what you just mentioned with the newsletter, or that bothers you, or mistakes that they are making, that they could be doing better to making sure they offload those properties a lot faster?
Dustin: 11:27 Let’s see. Well, number one in finding more buyers, usually whenever I tell anybody, if you’re an investor, and you see a bandit sign, get that number and call them up because that says wholesaler. That’s foreign to everybody, like what? Yes, so I’m doing my best to teach people to do that. So hopefully you get some calls from investors that will look for you. Now what I would suggest is think of your customer. Who’s your customer? The seller is not necessarily your customer. Your customer, in my opinion, is the investor. You want to think how is an investor going to be looking for properties and where are they going to be? How can I get around these investors? So everything from real estate investing meetups, or Facebook groups or anything like that online. I have MasterPassiveIncome.com. I have the Facebook community where it’s basically investors that are in there that are working together, talking about deals and all that sort of stuff. I love it when wholesalers come in and say, Hey, here’s a property that I have. How much did it catch for? Well, because I have investors in there that want to buy properties. They need more deals.
So you want to think about what an investor is doing with their time. I know it might be hard because you’re not actually an investor. That’s why I’m trying to explain this to you. Go to where there are real estate investing meetups. Go on to Facebook groups that have investors in there, and then just let everybody know, hey, I’m a wholesaler. I have plenty of properties I’m going to give out. I want to get your information so I can literally email to you. Now here’s a big thing. Your email list is where you make your money. Now, the Facebook groups email, the investing meetups, those are good to get emails. So that’s what you want. You want to get the information so you can put that in their inbox, and so they would be able to pull it up one morning drinking coffee, hey, this is a good deal. Let’s buy it. So all that to say you want to think like an investor and grab that email because that’s where the money is.
Jessey: 13:28 Yeah, and we’ve emphasized this on the podcast before quite a bit, is making sure you’re building that buyers list. So if you have a selling site of your own, or if you’re using something like REI House List or Land List, we have the property content lock where you can, again, before they can look at your properties, you’re collecting those emails now. That’s just one strategy of collecting emails obviously. You can write it down and add it to the list manually yourself, but make it simple and automate those things and allow you to scale the list. Drive them to your website easily. Just drive them your website, get them to submit their property, get them to submit their email to you. And now you can start the mail sequence of whatever you might do. You might warm up your leads, however you might do that and work with investors like Dustin.
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Dustin: 15:28 That’s a fantastic question. So I absolutely – I won’t say despise or hate – I just don’t trust when a wholesaler tells me the after repair value, and they put it at something that is absolutely not possible, like the price is so far above what it should be. And I know what you might be thinking, well, I want them to understand the value of it. No, here’s what it is. If you’re more conservative on the low end, and you’re helping them to realize that the actual value is … let me give you just generic numbers. Let’s say you think the after repair value is $150,000, but that’s reaching. That’s best case scenario, like everything worked out perfectly and then the bank fudged the numbers in order for it to be $150,000. I would personally say, it’s not the total dollar amount. It’s how realistic this property is. Because if I see the numbers and it looks good initially, and I could see okay, I think it’s probably all right. Here’s what I do actually. I’ll walk it back just a step.
As soon as I open up an email for a property from a wholesaler, the first thing I do, I quickly, like a half a second, look at what their numbers are, because I don’t believe their numbers. I literally don’t believe their numbers. I don’t care about the numbers. Only one I look at is how much they’re trying to sell it to me for, and then I quickly jump into Zillow. I take the address. I put it in Zillow and I see what Zillow has. I see what Trulia has or realtor.com, or all the sites, but I go to basically number one, I go to Zillow, see what they tell me that the value is. And then I can understand just because I’ve been doing this for a while, to figure out how much I think the after repair value is, I can see how much I could rent for. And so what I don’t like is – and I tend to stop trusting wholesalers that inflate their numbers. That’s something you don’t want to do. Because as somebody that is an investor, I want to get realistic because this is my livelihood. I know this is your livelihood as well. But the more trustworthy you can be as a wholesaler, the more people are going to trust you and say, you know what? this guy brings me good deals. He doesn’t inflate the numbers. He doesn’t make it look better than it is. This guy is realistic. And so if you do that, you’re going to have more investors in my opinion. They’re going to say, Hey, I trust this guy. Not necessarily trust the numbers, but I trust that he’s bringing me a good deal. He’s not trying to swindle me, that’s the last thing.
So as an investor, I think a couple things. Number one, I don’t want to lose my money. That’s the last thing I want to do. Number two, I want to make money on my money, but the first and foremost is I don’t want to lose money. And so if you put out there that, the property is worth $150,000 when Zillow literally says 115, I’m like, Man, this guy’s just trying to take my money. Unless I look at the asking price or what how much they want to sign it over to me for and it’s a great deal, I’ll move forward, but usually that’s a red flag for me.
Jessey: 18:36 So would you say typically, if they’re going to list a property, say on their own wholesaling website, would you just say leave out the ARV and just not have it there or what do you prefer?
Dustin: 18:47 Yeah, that’s a great question. If you’re going to have the ARV, you need to put in how much it’s actually going to be to repair the property, how much it’s going to cost. Now if you’re saying it’s going to cost … or what I get is they literally have the asking price and then they put the ARV and have it at, let’s say $150,000. They’re asking, 110 or 100,000. I’ll just round numbers, 100,000 and the ARV they’re saying is $150,000. I’m like, Oh, great, there’s a $50,000 spread and that’s really, really good. But you’re not saying it’s going to cost $48,000 to fix it up. And so if you get as detailed as possible, helping them to understand. As an investor, I save my time. I love my time; my time is very, very valuable. If you can save me time by doing the legwork, like letting me know what needs to be fixed up in order to get it rent ready, what it needs in order to flip, if you break down those numbers for me, I know it’s gonna be more work on your end. But I think you’re going to be more trustworthy in the investors’ eyes because you’re literally giving them everything. You’re being as transparent as possible, and in my opinion, that’s going to be the absolute best thing.
So I would not say leave off the RV; don’t. I would say that’s not the necessary thing. I’d say give more information than less to help your investor feel like he’s already done all this much work. Wow, look at this much work. Not the fact that you did the work is that I don’t have to do the work and I already have the information, and then now I can just verify, make sure it looks good. Don’t inflate those numbers. Make sure it’s actually adequate and good numbers, but all that general hard work is done. And then I just verify those numbers. That’s the thing. Think about your customers. Your customers are your investors. If you save them time and save them money and make them money, you’re going to do very, very well.
Jessey: 20:39 Right on, right on. Well, thank you for sharing that perspective. And this is a totally unrelated question and I know you were talking about rental properties. out of curiosity, and we work with a lot of land investors as well that put their property on terms and very similar they collect payments, is there a piece of software that you’re using to collect payments, or they typically checks that get sent to you? How do you usually deal with payments that come in for a rental property?
Dustin: 21:20 So there’s two parts to collecting. Number one is either a property manager, I love investing all over the country. In fact, my students, they invest in basically every single state. We try to invest in every single state that we can. I find that the Midwest down to the South East, those are really, really good properties. Prices are low. Rents are high; you can make a minimum of $250 a month on those properties. And so the property manager, they have all that software baked into their system and so I personally believe in online banking from now on for every single one of my rental properties. No longer will I get checks or take any checks just because it’s so much easier and almost guaranteed that it’s actually going to go through, unless it’s cash. That’s perfect, but I’m not there because I’m in Arizona. I invest in Ohio and Texas as well. And I have students that are in other states, and I even have students in Canada and students in Israel as well, students in Switzerland that invest in America, and so you need tools.
So number one, having a property manager is fantastic. They’re gonna have that system in there but a tool because I do also manage my own properties. There is a tool that’s absolutely fantastic and it’s free. I love promoting them because they’re terrific. It’s Cozy – cozy.co. That is a fantastic system for listing properties, for leasing properties, for collecting rents, basically for everything. I point everybody over to Cozy as the system that you need to use if you’re managing your properties yourself, use Cozy. I’ve checked out all of them and this is by far the best one and it’s absolutely free, which is fantastic.
Jessey: 22:53 Wow, that’s awesome. Yes, I’ve heard of Cozy and I do know some people that use and have said great things about it. Okay, well, we’re coming up to the end of the show. I’d like to do a quick fire round with you and ask you quick questions and you can give me a quick one word or two word answer. So, first one, your favorite digital tool for real estate investing.
Dustin: 21:15 I’m gonna have to say it really comes down to Zillow. Even though Zillow is getting a little different because they’re buying properties now, but what I love about Zillow is it gives me so much information right there and then on every single property, so Zillow is was my go-to tool.
PC because I’ve grown up using it. I tried Mac in the past, I’ve heard everybody say it’s fantastic. I worked in the government when I got laid off. I was actually in the government. What’s funny is you never hear anybody getting laid off from the government. Nobody gets fired or laid off for the government, but I did, and so I realized I gotta invest in real estate because it can happen, but I was doing technology for the government. It was all Windows and I’m really good at Windows. Anyways all that to say Apple is just confusing to me. The one button is just weird so just Windows
Jessey: 24:08 Right. Now, single digital tool that saves you the most time consistently for real estate.
Dustin: 24:15 Man, Zillow is fantastic but I’m gonna have to say Cozy. I’m going to have to go back to Cozy because it literally does everything for me from managing all the expenses to everything. Check them out. You’ll be really happy with it.
Jessey: 24:29 Right on. And last thing, do you work with a VA and does your VA help you out with anything?
Dustin: 24:34 No, I don’t, and the reason why because with rental properties… well, you know, I take that back. A property manager could be a VA. I have plenty of property managers. They literally do everything. So yes, I absolutely love my VA, my property managers. They do all the work for me. Like I said, it takes me three hours of my personal time from finding the property which means I just opened an email while drinking coffee, and another one is running the numbers myself or calling the property manager, hey check out this property or shoot off an email, or even just wiring the cash over. It’s just three hours of my time and then I literally don’t do another thing on the property. The property manager does everything, so yes, I love VAs.
Jessey: 25:18 Awesome! Dustin, can you share with us how people can get a hold of you? Where can they find you and your website?
Dustin: 25:25 Yeah, absolutely. So I love just helping people with rental properties. That’s something I just absolutely love. I’ve helped so many people from buying the first property to quitting their job and that’s just a passion for me because I don’t have to work so I created masterpassiveincome.com where I teach everybody. I have my podcast where the majority of everything I talk about is rental properties, how to do it right, so Master Passive Income Podcast and I do have a free course that I can literally send it to you. It’s a free real estate investing course – how to get started, how to run the numbers, how to find properties, how to do it right. It’s masterpassiveincome.com/free course, all one word forward slash freecourse. And I will get you that free course. I even have bonus videos and worksheets and all that good stuff all for free because I just want to see you get started. So masterpassiveincome.com/freecourse
Jessey: 26:17 Awesome. I’ll include that in the show notes. So everything that we discussed here, for all of you guys that are listening will make sure that in the show notes for you guys. Well, hey, Dustin, thanks again very much for coming on the show. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you and getting to understand your perspective on working with wholesalers and flippers and whatnot. And yeah, thanks again very much for your time.
Dustin: 26:39 Great. Thank you, Jesse. I really appreciate it.
Jessey: 26:41 Awesome. Thank you. Before you start this podcast, or head to the next episode, I want to personally thank you for listening to this episode of The REI Conversion Podcast. If you found this helpful, we greatly appreciate an awesome review and rating on whichever platform you’re listening to this on. And if you have two minutes and wanted to step it up even more and help others, feel free to share this in other Facebook groups or pages or any communities giving others a heads up of the REI Conversion Podcast or this specific episode that may help them on their investing journey. Once again, thanks very much for listening and catch you on our next episode.
