Taking Challenges One Step At a Time with Nick Prefontaine

Nick Prefontaine is a Rhode Island-based real estate investor and a Coach at Smart Real Estate Coach. He is also a speaker, Founder, and CEO of Common Goal a company that inspires and leads motivated people to their common goal. Our Mission is to provide people with the support and tools to achieve their limitless potential. Nick was featured on FOX40 and Yahoo Finance as one of the top motivational speakers to follow in 2022. He’s also been featured in Authority Magazine, Brainz Magazine, and SWAAY Media.

Nick grew up in the real estate industry and began working for himself at a young age. Most notably, he was knocking on pre-foreclosure doors between the ages of 16 and 17, knocking on up to 50 doors per day. Nick’s real estate career was shaped by this experience.

Now, Nick focuses on assisting lease purchasers in getting into a home and on the path to home ownership. Regardless of a buyer’s credit situation, he examines their entire financial picture and devises a strategy to get them into a home.

Episode Highlights Here:

Nick Prefontaine:

The reason that we want to build that extra wiggle room is say, a life event happens like a death, divorce, or job relocation.

Pierce York:

If you were to just give a high-level overview of how you are now acquiring these properties, like building the equity in these properties, and then offloading them what’s kind of a process?

Nick Prefontaine:

There are a number of different creative options. So, I’m not going to go over all of those right now. Just like you said, in the interest of time, I’m just going to give you a high-level 10,000-foot view, say on a particular deal that we buy a property through a rent-to-own agreement, or in other words, a lease-purchase, I will buy it on a lease-purchase, I’ll throw out five years, so abide on a five-year lease purchase. Meaning that it’s basically a delayed cash sale to the seller. So typically, the homes that we deal with are homes that have had trouble selling on the open market, for whatever reason, we’ll say, we’ll give you your price, which is typically a premium, it’s a little bit higher than what the conventional market is yielding. What conventional buyers are willing to pay at that time will give you that price. But it’s going to come in the form of a delayed cash sale, so on or before five years from now, will cash you out at that price. In turn, once we get that equitable interest, then we’re marketing for rental homebuyers with a good downpayment that is going to come into the home, buy it on another lease-purchase agreement, or rent own. The timeframe that we’re looking for. Remember, I said we have five years to get this done, we’ll usually sell our rental homes in the two to the three-year timeframe and very often buyers are able to cash out before 24 months. However, the reason that we want to build that extra wiggle room is, say a life event happens like a death, divorce, job relocation, and they have to leave the property and they can’t fulfill their obligation to buy it, then that gives us plenty of time to get back in the property. I cleaned it up of course, and then find another rental home buyer and put them in there because there’s an off term of two to three years to get them done. Now, if both options don’t work out, for whatever reason, I’m just playing a worst-case scenario, devil’s advocate, but if those both don’t work out, for whatever reason, say two life events happen which are very rare. It’s probably I say 10% of the time someone has a life event that none of us can foresee and control. Then we can get the property back, put it on the open market with a realtor and sell conventionally and still get on before the five-year mark.