Strategies For Finding Deals
Nhan Nguyen is a highly successful property developer and investor and has been working in the property industry since the age of 21. He has amassed an amazing amount of knowledge throughout his career and built an extremely impressive portfolio. We are lucky enough to hear some of his expert advice and learn from his incredible experiences.
Join us as we cut your learning circle in half by discussing some of the key things you need to know about becoming an area expert, including budget, strategy and locality, as well as sharing our amazing tips on everything from how to deal with agents to what you should look out for in your first investment property.
Nhan and I kick off the conversation by discussing the importance of having some kind of strategy to keep you on the right track when buying as an investor or as a developer.
When you’re buying a property, it’s a significant financial decision. You know, when you’re spending 500, $800,000, once you’ve bought it, you know, if it needs to make money, it needs to work for you. It needs to fulfill what you’re looking for. You can use a lot of these strategies, whether you’re buying an investment property or a development site or even an owner-occupier property. So don’t think that just because you’re buying a house to live in, you can’t get a good deal. I think that’s a very good way to think about it is if you can buy your next property you’re living in and get fifty or one hundred grand under market value. That’s very important as well. But the questions are like, how do you determine those suburbs?
How do you determine the market value? How to determine what to offer? How do you find the deals? Because generally I don’t know about you there Tyrone, but when I was starting out, I was 21. And yeah, all you do is look in newspapers back in the day, as well as in realestate.com or online. And that was probably more emerging back in 2000 when I was getting into the property game, I was just looking at retail sources. So what was your initial experience with buying your first deal Tyrone, was it realestate.com or newspapers or…
Even today we still use realestate.com.au, to be able to search for property, you know, for both rentals and for buying. And I remember that first deal cause I… Actually I’ll paint the picture before. This was our first principal place of residence, my wife and I initially when all uni students were actually a bit, I guess cash strapped. And I was working from home, running a small little business as well, selling, I guess rowing equipment online and we were sharing accommodation actually with three other tenants in this big house. And it got to a point where my wife was saying to me, or my then girlfriend back then, now wife, saying to me, ‘This is getting a little bit too tight for all of us.’ So there were five of us living there, even though we all got along very, very well.
And we said, ‘Look, we really need the place for ourselves.’ And we had lived out initially during that period of time in our own place for a while, you know, a one bedroom unit and then we decided to move back into shared accommodation, cause we were just deciding what to do next, which I think was sort of the, the conversation was to probably look around the market to purchase a property. So that first experience when I was looking, we actually looked online via realestate.com, put our criteria in and we were just able to afford, I think we started off with initially a two bedroom or three bedroom unit that we could afford to buy in the area. And then eventually we purchased a townhouse because this townhouse was something we just kind of, I guess you’d say ‘emotionally’ fell in love. And that was the big mistake we made.
Not saying that it was a mistake because interestingly enough when we purchased that property we used the RP data, it was actually market value. So we were very fortunate and I think maybe the reason why that particular property was being sold was because there was a motivated vendor and they were happy to sell it at that particular price. Not knowing that they were motivated to sell and the fact that it had all the conditions that we wanted, you know, big living space, three bedroom, two bathroom, double garage, all that kind of stuff was ticking our boxes because eventually, the reason why we purchased that, was for our kids at the end of the day, you know, when we had two kids, which we do now, this would be the ideal spot, so we wouldn’t have to move, but obviously life changes and circumstances changes and you need something else.
So we no longer live in that particular property and rent it out as an investment property. But that’s initially how we first started finding that one. And I think during that realestate.com.au there were initial searches to actually find the property, but you actually have to get out to have a look at the properties because if you don’t see them and just look at it online, you can’t really get a feel of what they look like. And cause we probably shopped for about, I think four or five months to actually find the property that we eventually bought at the end of the day, it actually gave us a good insight and you get to know who are the good agents. You get to know who are the not so good agents, like, there’ll be some who start playing the game with you. And I knew this from the beginning, like this lady who, we actually put an offer down initially for this two bedroom unit that we really, really liked and it’s sort of all our needs and wants.
It initially came down at, I think from memory we offered 380 for it or something like that, 380,000. And initially it got accepted verbally by the agent and the vendor. And then literally within I think a few hours the next day, because we hadn’t actually signed the contract, she came back and said, look, there’s another offer on the table at 420. And because we were buying in a seller’s market, prices moved so quickly and I said, gosh, 30,000, they’re just playing this game? In the end we didn’t go with it obviously cause she just, you know, said something that kind of ticked us off. And then in the end, yeah, she obviously sold it to someone with a higher offer and the vendor obviously took that. But yeah, we started getting played by the agent and you start to learn these tactics that they do because they’re just wanting to use to sort of have a silent bid in the background. And the reason why I know that is because as an agent back then from experience, that’s what agents used to do as well. And I didn’t like that game unfortunately, but you know, you learn these things along the way as a buyer as well.
So what’s been your experience?
Well, when I bought my first property, this was in early 2000, I think 2001. Definitely the newspaper was one of the main ways as well as looking online at realestate.com. It wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. You know, newspapers every Saturday open up what was the crew mail and there’d be a couple of sections in there which were ads being advertised, properties being advertised there. I think the other thing that was quite common for me, was just going from office to office to office. So in any particular suburb you might have, you know, two or three agencies on a strip. And then within an hour or two hours, you just go from one agency window to another, to another and then, you know, inquire and build the relationships that way. And sometimes, yeah, I know that we’re all, often folks are online, and we don’t want to get off our backside sometimes, but I think that can still be a very, very important way to build relationships.
And we’ll talk about that a little bit later, but I think, yeah, zooming out a little bit, as well as looking at the key things like, you know, how do you determine where do you focus? What suburbs and how did you determine that suburb? Because I think a big part of what I talk about in my courses is about becoming an area expert. Like how do you know something’s worth 380, 420, 750, what’s it really worth? And what’s the market willing to pay right now? So I think if it’s alright with you, there Tyrone we’ll segue into, you know, some of the key things to consider when becoming an expert. Is that all right?
For sure. For sure. Let’s jump into that because I think that’s an interesting thing because I think people subconsciously don’t realize while they’re actually looking for property, whether it be for their own home or looking for investment property, they’re actually getting a feel of the market. Like I just remember when I was looking at that first property around the area that I’ll tell you where it is, sort of in The Hills area district, we looked at so many different properties and after a while you go, ‘Okay, that unit, we think it’s worth 250 or that unit might be worth 300,000.’ And you kind of subconsciously go, you know, ‘I’m willing to pay maximum 300, cause that’s what I’ve seen in the market.’ And you build that knowledge. And I remember as a real estate agent, we were encouraged as an agent to get to know specific areas.
And I became one of the area experts in units around the North Ryde/Macquarie park area, which is sort of also in the Northern districts of Sydney. And back then when the units were selling for 320, 350, max selling for 360, because we’re in a seller’s market, I was going to go, you know, ‘I’ve got the highest sale price.’ Cause I sold one at a hostile price. And I’m like, ‘That’s fantastic!’ You know, to be able to get 360. Now those properties are worth in the vicinity between 800 to 900,000. And I was like, ‘Wow, you know, so much has changed in that period of time.’ But becoming an area expert, knowing what the properties are, knowing what’s inside, what’s the differences between a two bedroom, a three bedroom. How does an extra garage impact it, you know, if an extra bathroom or there’s extra, like, you know, kitchenette that’s been added, those are the things that will impact the price and knowing exactly how that makes it change.
Because as an investor or as a developer, if you’re going to do, you know, a buy/reno and sell kind of property and you think, ‘Okay, I’m going to buy a two bedroom house. I know there’s a potential to split the living room into a third bedroom. How much does that add onto the property itself?’ It could be 20, 30, 50, 60k depending on the area. So these are the things that I think subconsciously as a buyer back then, looking for my first principal place of residence, you kind of pick these things up. But when you actually realize consciously that you are doing that as an investor, that really, really helps to become an area expert. And I think that really hits that on the head. When you talk about becoming an area expert, it’s so important to do that.
For sure. For sure. And yeah, so generally when I talk to clients about becoming an area expert, I suggest some of the things that they focus on is firstly, budget. If you’re looking to buy at a certain price point, you probably need to get pre approved by your finance broker on what you can afford. And I believe in affordability for yourself and for others because whether you’re buying it to live in or buying it for an investment or buying it to reno and flip, you know, it needs to be affordable for other people as well. Cause down the track, you might be selling it. So affordability is key and some times, especially if the suburbs are quite expensive, close to town… You might have to go a little bit further, half an hour, an hour out of town, depending on where you are. I think the second thing is strategy. So what I mean by that is whether you’re looking at, buy/reno/holding, buy/reno/selling, whether you’re looking at a block of land in the backyard to put a granny flat, you’re looking at building duplexes like my relatives in Sydney, they live in a place called ‘Revesby’ as well as ‘Panania’ and ‘Padstow’ there. So in Padstow I remember rocking up to their place and a lot of old houses were getting knocked down to do duplexes. So, you know, I think that’s the other thing, if you want to choose to do certain deals you need to know what zonings or what opportunities there are in those areas. I know clients who have done granny flats, let’s say in places like Blacktown, where you can still get properties with a reasonable backyard potentially on a corner block slope towards the street in the right zoning as well. So other ones like I’ve mentioned before is the reno, so you’re obviously not going to buy in a new area, let’s say in Badgerys Creek with huge blocks of land there, which bring your houses on it, if you’re looking at doing renos, whereas you might look at older areas like Ipswich in Queensland or in Logan where there’s older houses, were you can potentially renovate. So I think budget is important. Secondly is strategy. And then thirdly, and I think this is important as well, is locality and proximity to where you live. So I’ve done interstate stuff as well, and I know you’re working on that interstate commercial property there Tyrone. So it just can be a bit difficult, I prefer within 45 minutes to an hour of where I live. I am doing an interstate project in Melbourne at the moment.
It is definitely proving challenging for me being a couple of states away, but you know, being local, if you do have a problem, you can go check it out. Luckily for me, my current land subdivision is in the same street that my dad lives in. So he lives at number 30, the project is number 376 which is, I think literally 2km’s. He goes out his gate, turns left, drives up through two roundabouts, or one roundabout and yeah, the next suburb over he’s literally there on the same side of the street even. And yeah, he takes a few photos, looks for a few things for me and reports back. Cause oftentimes people will say they’ve done stuff and they have, or they haven’t. And sometimes obviously I just need someone who I can trust. So anyway, in summary: budget, strategy and locality and proximity.
I actually was going to talk a little bit more about locality and proximity and this is the thing that I think we all also understand. If you’re doing say maybe a buy and hold strategy you can actually invest across interstate quite easily if you’ve got a buyer’s agent and you’ve got a good property manager that can be maintained, but as we’re sort of talking about from a perspective of say maybe a development or potential renovation, then I think it would definitely make more sense unless, you know, the trades people and unless, you know the teams in the different states, it would make more sense to be able to do it within a local proximity. The only issue I guess with that is affordability. Once again, it comes back down to people who live in Sydney and Melbourne have to spend quite a lot of money to be able to invest in a property, at least, you know, anywhere in the facility of a million dollars or so.
And not many people usually can just have a million dollars of cash or a million dollars of equity to be able to just draw out into a development. And that’s the reason why they go interstate and potentially do joint ventures. And I can tell you just from experience, that’s probably one of the reasons why I’ve gone up to Queensland to work with joint venture partners, to do developments out there. Cause they’re a lot more affordable. You know, we can buy a block of land even with a house on it for around that 450/ half million dollar mark and still be able to make a profit from that based on, you know, the subdivision deal or whatever it is. And I guess that really ties into all those two things, because one, if you’re going to do it, I guess remotely, as it might be in another location, then you’ve got to find someone who can actually compliment the skills.
In my instance, you know, I bring in the money partners and the other person of the joint venture deal is the one who actually does the development and manages the trades, manages the whole project and ensures that it gets delivered on time and also works and deals with the agents to ensure that it gets delivered and sold, you know, to be able to return the profit back from it. So it’s a key component, I think that is important. If I could do something locally around here, I would cause I’m quite hands on. And you know, in my role as a project manager in the full time job that I am, I love getting involved in the project and helping and supporting and getting it delivered on time. Cause that’s what my strength points are. But it’s quite challenging to do that.
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Something like that in Sydney, unless you’re doing a larger project. So yeah, we’ve looked at so many deals, like before, I was going to do a triplex around the Western Sydney area and I did all the numbers, stacked it all up and it still didn’t add up to make even much of a profit, maybe at least 2 or 3%. I’m like, that’s not worth my time after 18 months of work. And I asked the developers the same question, ‘How do you guys make money from this?’ And they said, ‘Well, it’s really more of a buy and hold strategy because once you’ve built it, you just gotta rent it out. You really can’t make a profit except wait for the market to go up.’ So those are the things I think just need to be taken in consideration. And it’s great to be an area expert, but you just got to also know where it is that you’re going to choose and who you’re going to work with as well too.
Yeah. And sometimes it does take weeks and months. You know, if you’re going out of state, whether it’s flying to Sydney or Melbourne or, you know, Newcastle, Hunter Valley, you’ve definitely got to investigate what the market’s doing because there’s markets within markets. I know within the suburbs, some of the suburbs I’m in, there might be four quadrants or three quadrants or three segments that are quite different from each other, based on locality to the shops, train station, schools, main roads, people’s preferences, one side of the road to the other, flooding. So I think that’s one of the downsides with people when they’re investing is that they just don’t take the time to get on the ground and walk the path. I talk about, you know, driving for dollars where you might get a map out, get a highlighter and just drive around and do laps of the area to study it for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Looking for change, looking for opportunities where people let’s say might neglect their property or a really little private for sale sign. I’ve had clients who’ve bought property privately because the owner was too stingy to get a real estate agent or get even a big sign. They did a handwritten sign, ‘For sale. Call me.’ No kidding, no kidding. And my client’s gone in, bought it and made $150,000 on it, right. Because the owner was just too stingy and did a handwritten board in really bad handwriting. And you know, no agent’s going to promote that because they’re not going to get any commission on it. They’re not interested, so they don’t care. So I think yeah, driving for dollars is another tip there.
Nhan and I move on to the topic of open homes, which we know from personal experience can be intimidating for first time investors.
I think there’s a lot of angles and importance to the open homes on the weekends. I think like with anything people think that investing is just with money, a big part of it, you have to invest your time as well, especially when you’re starting out, to look at the nuances and understand the specifications of different houses. Cause you know, as a beginner, when you look at a house you don’t take in everything like, I’ll go in and I’ll notice the ceiling heights, the floor covering types, the size of the tiles, the brands of the air conditioner. And I’m very, very detailed on those things. Why? Because I’ve been looking at property for 20 years and my level of detail is a lot higher. Whereas when I was starting out, ‘Oh, it’s three beds, it’s two stories.’ You know, ‘How much does it rent for?’ You get the basics, which is important. But then you look at things that are problematic, like the roof type. Okay.
Is it gonna be asbestos? Is it a legal height underneath, if you’re going to be able to build underneath? Are there signs of flooding? What’s the fence like? What’s the driveway conditions like? What’s the traffic like? So I think there’s two parts to the open homes there’s definitely the physical part of the property… the materials, like the bench tops, the size of the bathroom, the types of the you know, the laminate versus stone bench tops. But building the relationship with agents and showing that you are genuine, I know you’re talking about the seller’s market or the buyer’s market. I know sometimes in Sydney it always feels like a seller’s market.
Even in COVID, you know there’s less stock in the market, so people go, ‘Oh, they aren’t going to buy a house.’ But yeah building a relationship with agents, putting your face in front of them and getting information from them because it’s not just about the property that they’re listing at the moment. It’s about upcoming listings that they’ve got down the track because you want to build that relationship because people do business with people they like. They’re like, yeah, you know, other people may offer high numbers like you’ve talked about and outbid you, but if they feel like they want to do business with you, they’re potentially going to give you first dibs, at least so that you can have the first right of refusal.
Yeah, totally. And I think that’s so, so important. Relationships are key in this game of property investing because at the end of the day, you want to build a team around you who you can trust and who can actually work with each other. Because I think, you know, the people who actually get the best deals are the ones who’ve got the strongest relationships with those agents. And it’s proven time and time again, even like, I’m working with this joint venture partner in Queensland, he’s constantly getting deals with all the agents, but that doesn’t happen overnight. He’s been building that relationship for more than a year. And you know, now all the deals are coming through to him and he’s just picking through them doing his due diligence and seeing which one works because these agents know that he’s an investor looking to buy more and more properties and coming through.
If we’re actually looking at the open homes and detailed inspection, depending on what you’re planning to do, some of these properties can also have potential value that you can add on to it. And I think that’s one other thing I also look out for when I go in. Is to go, ‘Okay, is it possible to add an extra bedroom? Is it possible to do any renovations?’ Because there are some properties out there depending on where you look, that have already had a full cosmetic renovation and they’re selling at a premium. And you’d be wondering why you’re looking at buying that? It may be because the block is so big that you can actually put an extra granny flat in the back or you may be able to subdivide it so that way you can do something else. So just consider those as factors that need to be looked out for when doing open homes or inspections and so forth. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, you just got to go through and just make sure that you look out for some of the, you know, have a checklist of important things that you need for whatever strategy you’re putting in place.
Oh, look, I think I completely agree with you. And I think that’s definitely going to that next level. As a beginner, which most people are when they’re buying houses, especially their first owner occupier place, I think it’s just teaching people the fundamental habit of going to open homes regularly every Saturday, especially when you’re ready to buy. You’re looking at buying something in the next 60, 90 days is a good habit and you may dedicate, every Saturday, where you go every week for three to six months. And I’m not saying that flippantly, I’m saying that quite genuinely until you beat your master and become an expert, cause everybody wants to produce results so quickly. It’s like going to the gym. ‘I want to lose 10 kilos, but only want to turn up, you know, half a time a week. You know, when I’m asleep.’
It doesn’t work that way. And so I’ve been in the game, like I said, doing deals for 20 years and my abilities to become an area expert is a lot faster, but I still have to do the groundwork. And yes, there are hints and tips and ways to get the information faster and absorb it faster. However, you know, it’s like with anything, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And the more deals that you do, the nuances, you might go, ‘Oh, you know what? I made that mistake. I paid too much. I missed this bit. You know, that the property value was actually five to 10, $20,000 cheaper for various reasons.’ And you may have missed those signs oftentimes until you have a property on the market itself for selling, then you sometimes won’t realize how close you are or not to the market value.
Yeah. That’s very, very true. Well, let’s talk about some of the other potential ways to find deals. I know we, we sort of touched on one of your clients who mentioned that they purchased a property from a guy who just put a handwritten sign out the front. That’s basically, it sounded like approaching owners directly. How have you been able to find deals through doing that kind of method?
Yeah. So there’s multiple ways to get deals directly from owners, and some people I think, think a little bit too literally. What I mean by that is property is like any business. You’ve got to have multiple ways of getting opportunities to come to you. Just like people have multiple ways of getting clients and customers to come to their shop. You know, whether it’s advertising on TV, advertising on radio, brochures in the mail, online marketing. With property and getting deals to come to you, people need to think exactly the same way. Exactly the same way I.e. What are the multiple ways of getting deals to come to you? And then there’s really two avenues. One is through agents, who’ve listed the property and then there’s property owners directly. So I think yeah, it’s a very much a part of a wholesome strategy and a universal strategy, holistic strategy, not just a focus only on owners directly, because I think if you just discriminate against real estate agents, it’s going to, you know, you’re not being able to get all the opportunities come to you in the best manners.
So the main way to get deals from owners are from letters or donor knocking or flyers, I’ve found the most effective one for me personally, have been the letters. Some people use price finder, some people use RP data. I would like to send owners letters. Otherwise door knocking is really powerful as well. I don’t personally like to do it myself, but get other people to do it. You might hire them, you know, good old AirTasker to get people to go and door knock and talk to potential owners. Sometimes there’s tenants there, but it’s just getting out there and doing things differently. Cause that’s how agents generally get listings is through letters and door knocking.
So if you’re doing the similar things that they’re doing, essentially, you’re getting at the coalface, like with some of the letters I’ve received phone calls from owners whereby their deceased estate was an example where it was a thousand square meters on a corner. And all I wanted was the opportunity to get the deal before it got listed with a real estate agent, even though I didn’t pay a hugely discounted price, they were definitely committed to sell. And I got a price less than with an agent. So then, albeit I only saved let’s say 3%, but I got access to the deal. Whereas I know if I had hit the market, one, the deal wouldn’t have been feasible or I would pay too much. And two, I would probably have missed out on it because it was such a good deal — corner block, retain the existing house and I cut off four blocks off it.
So 162 to 205, right? So that was off of a letter. And sometimes it takes a thousand, two thousand five thousand letters to get a deal. But the thing about that is sometimes it takes 6 to 24 months for people to finally get ready to sell and respond to your letter. So I think that’s a very big thing that people think in this world of instant gratification. You know, you go to an app on your phone, press a button, 10 minutes later, you get food at your front door. Property. Property is not that whatsoever. It is completely different. It’s about relationships and you can’t force people to transact or sell to you. So yeah, door-knocking, letters, flyers. I know flyers work in certain areas a lot better than other areas too simply because of lack of marketing or too much marketing, depending on the area.
So just curious about the letters, how frequently and how often, I guess, are you sending these letters out? Because you’re saying, you know, it can take up to 1,000, 5000 letters sending out, but like say in that area, cause I used to do this, I used to do a lot of drops of about 300 letters per fortnight or so, and I was getting some responses, but I’m just curious from your point of view, like how many letters would you be dropping? You know, all that kind of stuff?
This depends if you are in the market or not in the market, but at this point in time, we’re about to gear up and do a lot more marketing to owners as well as agents, we’ve stopped it for a short while just to finish off some projects. But in the prime, you’d be looking at somewhere between 50 and a hundred letters a week, and you might get a 3 to 5% response depending on the area — how hard it’s been worked over, what the market’s like. So we did find generally, let’s say during COVID that the responses were down. People weren’t really decisive about what was going on, but once COVID was pretty much over or started easing restrictions, the response has started to increase dramatically because people who are waiting, waiting, waiting for things to move on and get on with things, have started to pick up the phone. So yeah. So my point is that yeah, 50 to 100 a week is a good number. It’s healthy. You don’t want to get overwhelmed with too many phone calls and that allows you to cover areas thoroughly enough, because if you’re sending out, let’s say a thousand letters and you’re in 10 different suburbs, it’s just too much of a scattergun approach. So what about your experience with dealing with owners directly as an agent? I know obviously one instance, but have you done any direct marketing there at all Tyrone?
Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, as an agent, it’s one of the requirements that they said to us, we had to send letters out to a specific area. So as I said to you, I was focusing on units. So I would do a letter box drop to a bunch of units in the area saying that, you know, we’ve recently sold XYZ property. Cause that seems to always work. It’s like once you’ve sold something, the neighbor might be interested in selling, you know, maybe the person down the road might be interested in selling because it just goes to show that there’s been a successful… And it’s really funny, it’s just human psychology. Once someone does something, they want to do the same thing. It’s like going to a restaurant. You always, and from my experience, I’ve noticed that when the restaurant’s empty and there’s not many people you go, ‘Hmm, this restaurant doesn’t look too good.’
But then when you see a restaurant that’s got lines crowded outside and you go, ‘Wow, that looks like a good restaurant. I gotta try next time. Or I might just join the queue. Cause I’m interested in what food they’re offering.’ It’s no different to buying property or selling property. If a vendor sees that this person sold their property and got a pretty good price and they’re like, ‘Mmm, I’m actually in two minds, I might be looking to have a change or, you know, maybe something in my life has changed.’ They’d be interested in actually reaching out to that particular agent to sell. And once you become an area expert and people recognize your face, then they’ll keep that in mind. And within that period of time, whether it be a year or two or three, they’ll come back to you. And that’s what was really funny because when I actually went door knocking a few times and I walked into the house or unit of a potential vendor, they actually had a picture of me with my big face on it, A4 piece of paper.
And I go, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ And they picked that up about six months beforehand. Cause I changed the marketing before. And that’s why I remember it was just quite funny that I saw it. Like, ‘Okay, you definitely saw that six months before.’ So that method definitely does work. It just takes a bit of time. And I think it comes back down to patience and knowing, you know, how to actually do it regularly and consistently. And when you think about it, even now, we’ve got access to the internet and having things really, really at a fast pace, it’s kind of no different because when you’re marketing, say for example, this podcast or marketing your business online, the more frequent and the more occasionally you do, then getting your brand and your face out there, people remember, they’ll end up eventually coming back to you if they resonate with you. So it’s no different to, I guess, owners and vendors, it’s just building that regular frequency and also then building that relationship with them.
For sure. Look, I absolutely have to agree. I think that those ideas definitely work. The frequency is important and when they’re ready, they’ll be ready. And just a simple matter of the fact is, there is going to be competition out there. Other people were doing letters as an investor, sending that letter, you do have an advantage that yeah, you’re not an agent in that way that some people discriminate, they don’t want to talk to an agent. They don’t want to pay the commissions. And that’s the advantage that you do have dealing with them directly. I think a skill that people need to develop over time is how to talk to strangers because it’s not common conversation. We have to talk to somebody and say, you know, can I give you half a million dollars for your house? We’re not used to doing that.
Right? But the thing is if you’re wanting to become a better investor and developer, you need to… that’s a skill that you need, right? Just like an engineer needs to have certain skills or a town planner has certain skills, a painter has certain skills, a property developer or an investor needs to know how to talk to owners because that can save you a minimum 3%, even if you’re just paying full retail and you don’t pay the agents you save yourself 3% with 500k property. That’s $15,000, 800,000 property that’s 24 grand. So just waking up, talking to somebody has a skill you save between 15 and 24k as an example, you’re ahead of the game. On the other side, when you’re flipping it or renovating it, that all adds to the bottom line.
