Finding off-market multi-family with Sterling White

Sterling White is a seasoned Real Estate Investor, Philanthropist, & Former World Record Attemptee who was born, raised, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Breathing and living real estate since 2009, Sterling currently is the proud Founder of Sonder Investment Group, Sterling White Enterprises and involved in other business partnerships..

Throughout the span of more than a decade, Sterling has contributed to helping others become successful in the real estate industry. In addition, he and his current partner have been directly involved with both buying and selling over 100 single family homes and scaled personal portfolio to just under 500 units.

Sterling’s primary specialties include Sales, Marketing, Crowdfunding, Buy & Hold Investing, Investment Properties, and many more.

When he isn’t immersed in the realty world, Sterling White likes reading motivational books, including “Maverick Mindset” by Doug Hall, “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen, and “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” by Richard Carlson. As a thrill-seeker with an evident fear of heights, he somehow managed to jump off of a 65-foot cliff into deep water without flinching. (Okay, maybe a little bit…) Sterling is also an avid kale-eating traveler, but nothing is more important to him than his mini me (a.k.a. his beautiful daughter).

Episode Highlights Here:

Sterling:

I followed up with the owner. And someone drove a car into one of those buildings, and I sent a masonry contractor to help with that.

Brett:

Sterling, what’s the number one secret to finding off-market multifamily properties?

Sterling:

I’d say the greatest secret is the follow-up. And the follow-up is the creative follow-up. And that’s allowed me to be able to buy 46 units, 50 units, 280 units, and 156 units, actually all going direct to the owner, and it was through the follow-up. And it wasn’t just picking up the phone and saying, Hey, Brett, nary interested in selling your property? No, I’m not interested in Rob. A week later, two months later, now you’re interested in selling your property? No, it’s using ways to stay in touch, such as sending Rubik’s Cubes. Or you can send a bottle of Tylenol that says, hey, looking to get this handy. What is it, this headache off your hands with the Rubik’s Cube, hey, lit with a small note, hey, let’s figure this out? Or saying sending the contract. As an example, I followed up with the owner. And someone drove a car into one of his buildings, and I sent over a masonry contractor to help him with that. So it’s just going above and beyond the creative follow-up.

Brett:

I love that. I love those little analogies. Speaking of that, we’ve got two Rubik’s Cubes right here, you know, and oftentimes Sterling, when we talk about, is we’re not in the business of, you know, helping people buy multifamily properties or seller deals or in business selling tax deferred works in the business of solving problems. And to the extent we can do that, we can help people get from a Bing, maybe just shoveled and colors on different sides if you’re listening to this, and then the other Rubik’s Cube being fully congruent colors on all sides. And so talk to me, Sterling, what’s your number one secret from going helping people go from A to B to solve their problems?

Sterling:

So is an investor identifying in investing in the, or you’re saying more on the owner side? So as an owner is figuring out, okay, what is their motivation? Meaning is, do they just want to get out of the business? So that’s one, or is if they right now they’re not ready to sell, but they are nice, and their parking lot needs some upgrades to it. So it’s helping them want to solve that problem. And then that’ll lead to, Okay, well, I no longer want to own this property. I want out of it because this is just quite more of an undertaking than I thought it would be. So that is what it is, is solving those little problems. And then they’ll realize, okay, this is a bigger problem. And I long no longer want to deal with it.

Brett:

So I’m here, you’re right, you’re building this trust. And this report was done by helping them solve these little problems along the way. And then perhaps they say, You know what, Sterling, you’ve earned that trust. And now perhaps you can help me solve my bigger problem, which is exciting. Is that a fair summary? Correct? I liked that. masonry when you said, Hey, you sent over somebody to help them fix their thing, right? Like, I mean, was that just like, you knew it was gonna be there on a Saturday at two, and you’re like, hey, to just show up, and you showed up with them, or walk us through how that all went down.

Sterling:

So this was a guy, he’s in Chicago, and he owns a property in Indianapolis in a market just outside of that. And he told me about someone driving into one of his buildings. And I knew it was brick because I had visited the property. And when I first got started in construction, my friend’s dad’s construction company was a masonry. So I already had that in the back of my Rolodex. And he said that, yeah if you happen to have a masonry on hand that would be willing to work on this project, send them my way. And I said I know the perfect guy. And then there we go. And he ended up using them.

Brett:

Beautiful, so you use them and then solve this problem, you help them out. Did that eventually lead to the ability for you to purchase the property? He’s still working on that one,

Sterling:

still working on it’s going on three and a half, four years. So that’s the other thing, patience.

Brett:

The number two secret is patience. So talking about what helps you to have patience,

Sterling:

gosh, and I want to hit the patient’s home, especially the age that we’re in that most would say we’re in the microwave age where you’ve got the social media, where everyone believes everything happens overnight, some syndicator or someone posts a deal. They don’t realize that, hey, it took all of this amount of sweat, sacrifice and time, and patience to get up to this. So that’s one thing I want to indicate is that setting the expectation that these things do time takes time, and if you have the patience, that allows you to separate yourself from others who may be trying to take shortcuts which could end up costing them in the long run.

Brett:

Okay, I got it.

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About Sterling White

Sterling White is a seasoned Real Estate Investor, Philanthropist, & Former World Record Attemptee who was born, raised, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Breathing and living real estate since 2009, Sterling currently is the proud Founder of Sonder Investment Group, Sterling White Enterprises and involved in other business partnerships..

Sterling’s primary specialties include Sales, Marketing, Crowdfunding, Buy & Hold Investing, Investment Properties, and many more.

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