Mike DeHaan Mike is a 2013 Gonzaga Graduate who manages the primary operations of INW Properties. He spends most of his time working with lawyers, escrow agents, the city, and our private lenders to ensure every transaction is handled perfectly.
Episode Highlights Here:
Mike:
is a very competitive space, there are a lot of people that you can go and start trying to find off-market properties with very little experience and not a huge amount of capital. You must stand out amongst all the noise out there.
Pierce:
That’s kind of what I want to dive deep into you today and then get in a little bit into like the market shift and where you think things are going. So let’s start since it’s your strength, right? Building Systems, when like, what are the top three things, someone who’s new should do to start building out their systems or how should they start about or look at this? Where do people start?
Mike:
So when it comes to building the systems and the general process, you know, it’s not rocket science. I mean like, honestly, what we do, isn’t that inherently different than what you can learn about on YouTube, you know, you can hire a real estate coach to teach you. But what we do is we approach things in a way we put kind of our spice, our flavor on it, which makes us stand out. You know, and a lot of it revolves around, you know, brand recognition, you know, little details on your marketing pieces, you know, a little details in your conversations that make it so that you are, you know, one or 2% more recognizable than all of your competition. So that can be strong branding, that can be, you know, strong web presence, that’s, you know, building out the, like, different web, I’m losing the word here. But you know where they see your ads on the web on around the internet after they visit your website, the retargeting, all that sort of stuff, and building out your process, kind of to be omnipresent, once someone starts to engage with you, okay, because it’s a very competitive space, there’s a lot of people that you can go and start trying to find off-market properties with very little experience and not a huge amount of capital. So you must stand out amongst all the noise out there. So when you’re approaching it, like, I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is they say, you know, I want to buy off-market houses, apartment complexes, whatever it is, and they go, and they, you know, pull list, anybody can pull this, it just costs all the time money, they go. They send some mail to make some cold calls to send some text, whatever. They don’t get any results in the first two to three months, like, wow, this bullshit doesn’t work. So then, you know, what, they don’t build the presence in the brand around it. So if you instead approach it, if like, I’m going to do this for three months, but when they get my card, it’s just a direct mail. So what we mostly use to get my card and everything and go to my website, after they go to my website, they’re going to see us, they’re going to see our track record, they’re going to see reviews from other people, okay, and then after they visit our website, they’re gonna go on their Facebook, they’re gonna see ads from us, they’re gonna go in, they’re gonna Google whatever, and they’re gonna see Google ads from us, and all of a sudden, we are now meeting that typical marketing, I don’t know, if it’s a belief or a proven metric that somebody has to be exposed to seven times before they’re willing to do a transaction or have a conversation, we’re getting that within the first day or two, once they visit our website, and once they’ve engaged with us initially. So having that sort of thought process, when you go into it, as opposed to, I’m going to be like a fly-by-night COVID operator that’s just trying to buy houses. However, you can do that, and you still get deals. I promise you. I’m gonna get more deals than you because people are going to know what they’re dealing with. I’m going to have a lot more, you know, brand recognition than you will. So that’s, that’s the number one thing for anyone that’s starting is lead with that, as opposed to worrying about pulling your data and, you know, trying to, you know, cut every single cent and dollars, you can’t do marketing, because it’s just not gonna be as effective.
Pierce:
So basically, what you’re saying is that you need to make sure that you’re hitting that brand awareness aspect of the marketing piece, and that’s a lot of it for sellers. So let’s flip to the other side, the right disposition. How are you disposing of these properties? What are you doing with leads that are coming in? What system do you guys use to get rid of these things?
Mike:
Yeah, so it’s very similar, right? So when most of the deals that we wholesale, we sell to kind of the same buyers, just because of the biggest risk as a wholesaler. You know, it’s very expensive to get deals signed around. It’s a very expensive business to run, and the biggest risk is ending up with buyers who are unable to perform or not being able to sell a property, you know, you can spend like our average cost per contract about $3,000. So, you know, if we’re getting 15 deals a month, we’re spending $45,000 a month on marketing, right? and it pays off because we have margins like a single deal can pay for that entire month very easily. But what can happen is you start working with new and inexperienced buyers, and all of a sudden, you have these deals that you’re getting signed around, but people can’t perform just because, you know, they can’t get their stuff together. They don’t know how to get along. They don’t know how to close and do all that sort of stuff. So what we do is we have our key buyers who get almost everything, But now and then, our key buyers don’t want the deals, they can’t close, they’re out of funds, whatever. So we need to have that strong presence. So we send out like we have an email list, we have a texting list, and we send out our deals to every single list regardless of whether they’re available or not, and you know, sometimes what it’ll do is it or at least like stir, conversational stir engagement, and all of a sudden, we’re being known as the guys that have deals, right, the dispo guys that have the opportunity for people to buy. So then when you are sending an email out, you know, or a text out and it’s connected to your company, you now have more credibility because they see you as a company that sends out stuff, you know, multiple times a week, and they want to engage with you. Not only that but they missed out on the last deal. They’re going to be more competitive with their offers, and they’re going to be more willing to try and get stuff done because they don’t want to miss out again. So it’s kind of the same process. You know, it’s like a little bit of different language in your game. Definitely.
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About Mike Dehaan
Mike DeHaan Mike is a 2013 Gonzaga Graduate who manages the primary operations of INW Properties. He spends most of his time working with lawyers, escrow agents, the city, and our private lenders to ensure every transaction is handled perfectly.
