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BiggerPockets Podcast 096 with Anson Young Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 096: Finding Deals, Wholesaling and House Flipping in a Hot Market With Anson Young

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets Podcast, Show 96.

You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio -- simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place.

Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com -- your home for real estate investing online.

Josh: What's going on everybody? This is Josh Dorking, host of the BiggerPockets Podcast here with my somber-looking co-host. I don't know. You look so sad, man, Brandon Turner.

Brandon: I was reading something on the page. I don't know. Ignore me.

Josh: I'm glad you're...

Brandon: These people are listening on audio mostly. They can't tell I'm looking distracted.

Josh: I can. It's distracting. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. What's up man? How have you been?

Brandon: I've been good. I've been good. Actually, it's been good. Winter's coming in. It's getting cold. I take out my dog in the morning, not fun.

Josh: Nice, nice.

Brandon: Not fun.

Josh: Yes. I'm sitting here looking at a mini-blizzard. It wasn't even supposed to snow today. It's ten degrees out.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes, it's awful.

Brandon: You're going to write about it?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: All right. Move on.

Josh: I do. I do. All right. Great. Thanks. Awesome. Hey, everybody, check it out. Listen. This week, some cool stuff happened. We got a facelift. I actually did not get a facelift. I felt it coming. I felt it coming in from Brandon.

Brandon: Yes. I was going to say it.

Josh: Now, the BiggerPockets blog just got a facelift. We just put a brand-new looking feel to it, cleaned it up, modernized it. The old blog was a little stale. We've cleaned it up. We added some new features in the past week or so where members can leave comments without having to kind of jump through hoops. Check out the blog at BiggerPockets.com/blog and read our content and get involved. There’s some great stuff in there.

Brandon: Yes, there is. Cool.

Josh: Yes, yes.

Brandon: Cool. All right. Today, let's get to our Quick Tip. Our Quick Tip today is quick. If you want to be a guest in the BiggerPockets Podcast, normally we just choose people based on the whims of whatever we want to choose. We want to give you the opportunity to...

Josh: Don't give that away, man because there are some angry people hot-pedaling...

Brandon: You'll never know how we choose but...

Josh: The inner workings.

Brandon: The inner workings, yes. If you want to throw your name in to the hat to be a guest on the BiggerPockets Podcast, just go to BiggerPockets.com/guest and you can fill out the little application there to let us know who you are.

If you are somebody who's done...this is not the newbie podcast but if you are experienced, you've done multiple deals. You've been in this for a little while now. Throw your name in to the hat. Just come and fill out the form. If you're chosen, we got a lot of people already so there's no guarantee we'd choose you, but if you are, you'll be a guest on our show. Go to BiggerPockets.com/guest.

Josh: Nice. You can tell your mom that you're on the BiggerPockets Podcast with all one of our listeners.

Brandon: There you go. Yes.

Josh: We got about 35,000 listeners per show now. It's well worth a shot if you've got anything to talk about. We all actually do. We definitely encourage people to do that.

Really, really quick, let's talk about today's Pro Tip which is we definitely encourage you if you're a BiggerPockets Pro to get out there and make your enhanced forum signature.

For non-Pros, there's definitely value in this for brand building, for getting your name out there, for you getting your companies, brand out there. You get to put your company logo on your forum signature. It shows below all your posts. It links to your company profile. You could link to your website as well. It's just a great way to get your name out, let people start to know who you are and who your company is.

Brandon: It let's people know you're a little bit serious on the forums, too. If you've got no forum signature, whatsoever, nobody knows anything you. It shows that you are a serious person.

Josh: Yes. They can go check out your company and read about what you guys do, what your focus is. It's a good way to help build your business. If you're here on BiggerPockets to build your business, we definitely encourage it. You can upgrade to Pro at BiggerPockets.com/pro to get that ability.

All right. Our guest today, he's bald. He's funny. He is from Denver and he does pretty much anything and everything under the sun. He's an active wholesaler, flipper. I don't know what else he does. We'll find out more. We've actually had him on the show before. Last time, we had him on what was it?

Brandon: 34.

Josh: Show number 34, which was our least-listened-to show, which is why we're bringing him back.

Brandon: Anson, it wasn't. It wasn't.

Josh: It was not.

Brandon: Josh is just mean.

Josh: It was not. I'm excited to bring him back. He's a friend of mine, a local, and a great guy -- Anson Young. Welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here.

Anson: Thank you, guys. It's awesome to be here again. There it was, the least listened to show. We'll double down.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes, yes. Let's see. While we're losing, we'll just keep pressing it and hoping that people come.

Brandon: There you go. There you go.

Josh: Awesome. Awesome. Anson was one of our guests here at the ten-year anniversary party of BiggerPockets a few weeks ago. It was cool hanging out with him. I've hung out with him before but I know Brandon got a chance to do that and I think you guys hit it off.

Brandon: Yes. We went to this amazing burger place. I pictured Anson wholesaling for an hour and a half. I learned a ton. That's why we were like, "I should get you back on the show. We'll talk about more about what we talked about in our burger meeting."

Anson: That was awesome, ten years. Happy anniversary again.

Josh: Thank you.

Brandon: Thank you.

Anson: That was a lot of fun and lots of books to be had. If you missed out on that, you missed out on that, I guess.

Josh: What kind of books are you talking about?

Anson: Oh, what book is that?

Brandon: I think it's called the book on...oh, yes, my book.

Anson: Brandon's book.

Brandon: The book on "Investing on Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down."

Josh: We had a book-signing party and yes.

Brandon: Anyway...

Josh: Go to BiggerPockets.com/nomoney.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: There you go. All right. Anson, for those people who are unfamiliar with you who may not have heard you previously on the show, why don't you give us the elevator pitch of who you are and what you do.

Anson: I'll give you the short version. I haven't been working on my elevator pitch like Brandon's blog. I guess it's in the book, too. Basically, I am a wholesaler, rehab-er, investor, kind of broadened my horizons in to buy-and-hold eventually but like most guys who are in my fast-paced whatever world, we can't see the long-term. We just chase after the short cash all the time, I guess.

Josh: Nice, nice.

Anson: Yes.

Josh: Chasing your tail a lot.

Anson: I'm shortsighted. Oh, yes. Feels like Groundhog Day everyday. That's okay.

Josh: Working on your job, right?

Anson: Working on my, yes, my job, my job of everyday having to find the awesome, all that fun stuff.

Brandon: You know what's funny about what you just said? Just real quick. I was talking to a guy yesterday. We're talking about how wholesalers and flippers are generally more they want the quick cash now and the buy-and-hold guys later.

I equated that to the idea that ever since I was two years old, I ate Lucky Charm Cereal for breakfast a lot and I would always eat the cereal first, marshmallows at the end. I would always save my marshmallows, which explain a lot probably why I’m a buy-and-hold investor, more than I am a flipper and wholesaler because I'm okay eating marshmallows at the end when it's just pure marshmallow. It's so good.

Josh: Patience.

Anson: Yes, pure sugar.

Brandon: Pure sugar, right? I'm okay eating that nasty dry, dog-food cereal until you get to the marshmallow at the end. It's amazing. Anyway, everyone listen to this. Ask yourself, do you eat your...

Josh: I guess they won't be our next sponsor, by the way.

Brandon: They won't be our next sponsor.

Anson: Lucky Charms not sponsoring you.

Brandon: Yes, too bad. Too bad.

Anson: I think I did save the marshmallows last, too. Count Chocula was more my type.

Brandon: Count Chocula was good.

Josh: That should be our new question to the Famous For.

Brandon: What's your cereal?

Anson: Your favorite cereal.

Brandon: All right. Remind us again. Let's go back to the story. How did you get started? How did you get in to this whole game?

Anson: I got started about 2004. We had briefly moved down to Arizona for a couple of years. I decided to just kind of jump in, get involved in the local REA. This was after course after reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" just like everybody else's story.

I started getting involved with the local REA, cash-flow 101 game, just following people around like a lost dog and offered to do pretty much anything for them, any kind of job, "If you need me to run across town and get something done."

Eventually, I picked up one or two very kind people who I owe my start to doing crap jobs for them and then eventually just buying my first house down in Arizona. We sold it a year later, moved back to Denver with a big check and been pretty much hooked ever since.

Never stopped really learning. Never stopped finding mentors and masterminds to kind of keep that going because every time I stop, it feels like everything slows down. Just keeping that education piece rolling for sure.

Josh: Cool, cool. That was a live and flip, correct? That first flip?

Anson: That was. That was a live and flip. We had kind of tried to lease option it. I had one guy on the hook and I lost him because I had zero experience, of course. We just decided to move in to it. We lived there for I think a little bit less than a year and we ended up selling at the perfect time for Arizona, Phoenix area. That was pretty much that.

Josh: Awesome, awesome. Hey, really quick, to those people listening, this is Show 96 of the BiggerPockets Podcast and you can check out the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show96. Anson, what have you been up to since we talked to you last time?

Anson: Since you talked to me last time, I've been doing a lot more rehabbing by myself and with a partner, a lot less wholesaling but that's just because we've just been keeping everything that we would have wholesaled. Any wholesales that I've gotten passed along to me, I used to co-wholesale them, shop them to my buyer's list. Instead, we've just been buying them and flipping them obviously.

I'd say that that's kind of the big difference kind of moving in that direction. That's not to say...we've done some wholesales in the last year but it's been a lot more "keep everything that we could find," which is kind of not like a greedy thing but it's just "Hey, these are great deals. We can make more money on rehabbing them." Frankly, there are less deals out there in general it feels like.

Josh: Are you keeping them just because you've got the better margins on it? Are you keeping them because you've built out a better team to be able to handle them? Why keep them versus wholesaling them? I'm assuming there are probably some leftovers that you do still wholesale.

Anson: That's right. We’ve been keeping more just because the numbers are better. We can in four months make four times what we could make in wholesaling. There's not a lot of volume there. If we would make five grand on a wholesale, instead we're trying to pull down 20 out of a flip.

If there was a huge flood of volume coming down, it makes sense just to keep turning them but since there's not a huge flood, we're basically making the most of everything that we've got.

Brandon: It's kind of like a quality over quantity kind of thing. When there are a lot of deals to be had, you can turn them quickly and get the quantity but when there are less deals to be had, you got to shoot for the quality. That makes sense.

Anson: Absolutely.

Brandon: On that regard then, have you seen your market? Is that what you're market's been doing? What have you seen the last year in your market in Denver?

Anson: Well, it's been really, really hot. A lot of the A+ neighborhoods are just so on fire that it's been hard to find deals in there, find wholesales, find people who are actually working that market on good margins.

It's been great on the sale side. Everything that's been put to market that we've finished rehabbing has been gone pretty much immediately. Just days, one, two days and that's it. Multiple offers. One had 18 offers on the first day. It was like, "Maybe we underpriced that a little bit."

Josh: Let's talk about that. 18 offers in one day. When you looked back at it and analyzed it, did you underprice it or were you competitive? I know Denver is really, really tight. There's not a lot coming out. I'm just curious about that.

Anson: We probably priced it barely for when we first bought it. Four months later, we could have marked it up another ten grand from what we thought the ARV would be. We listed from 155 and we ended up getting about 175 as the top offer. Yes, we're kind of on the low side on that but we ended up where the market was bearing and it appraised just fine.

Brandon: That's what I was going to ask. Did you run into appraisal issues? Because in a hot market when there are a lot of buyers out there that want to buy until they just keep bidding the price up higher and higher, a lot of times people run into a problem of sure, they're willing to pay that but no bank is going to lend that much because the ARV is not there but you didn't have that problem on that one?

Anson: No. No, we haven't had any appraisal problems in the last year. There's been once that we thought, 195 was our ARV and when it comes to market, we put it out for 210. It goes under contract just fine. It passed the appraisal. We had no issues. Right now, not so much. It's kind of slowed down a tiny bit but anything that's move-in ready, that's really nice that's being put in the market is flying off the shelf.

Josh: Hey, really quick. What is ARV for those people who are unfamiliar?

Anson: It's the after-repair value. It's what the house is worth after all the upgrades and repairs are done to it.

Brandon: I was just in Denver a couple of weeks ago visiting Josh and hanging out with the BP office. When I was there, I went around driving around looking at houses. I pulled up my Zillow app. I was just cruising neighborhoods. Me and Josh were looking at property prices.

Josh: Nice plug for Zillow, by the way. Well played.

Brandon: Everything that we looked at was 900,000, a million, a million five, four million, 500,000. The cheapest house I saw the whole time was 500,000. Where are you buying in Denver? What kind of neighborhoods are these that you're buying 150, 170? Because apparently I wasn't in those neighborhoods.

Brandon: Yes. I don't think you were. If you were anywhere around Josh's office, that's a really hot, high-end area and where attached townhomes are selling for one million.

Josh: Yes. It's crazy.

Anson: That area, not so much. It feels like everything that we've done in the last about two years has been in the suburbs of Denver.

Brandon: Okay.

Anson: The north suburbs, the southeast suburbs where these are the cookie-cutter, everything was built in the 1970's. We're not running into crazy sewer issues. We're not running into anything like that. Basically, I wouldn't say the outskirts of Denver but definitely...Denver central is very hot. You really can't find a house for 150, $200,000 that you'd want to move in to.

A little bit on the outskirts. With that comes newer houses that have a lot less issues. They're not built in the 1910's and you have to deal with all that stuff.

Josh: It's a good point. I'm glad we're talking about this because people always on the forums or just generally, you hear people asking, "Hey, what's a good city to invest in?" What we're talking about here is how localized real estate really is. It's literally localized within a few miles, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Where we're located, our office, it's in Cherry Creek. It's a higher-end neighborhood. Houses, like you said, attached houses are a million plus whereas unattached house three miles away might run you 150, $175,000.

It's important for newer investors to understand that. It could even go block by block. When you're considering, when you're looking at real estate, you can't look at it on that...a city is really a macro level. It's too big. You have to go on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level. I think Anson here is proving that with exactly what we're talking about.

Anson: Absolutely. Yes.

Josh: Cool. You mentioned earlier something called co-wholesaling. I'm just curious. What is that? I don't know that we've talked about that term before on the show.

Anson: It's where maybe another wholesaler has a deal and he's having a hard time selling it. If I come along with my buyer's list, I can shop it to my buyers. If I have somebody who wants to buy it then, then that wholesaler and I can split the fee or maybe I mark it up. It's kind of a contentious thing because you see a lot of wholesalers trying to co-wholesale but they're not getting the other wholesaler's permission to market it.

Josh: That's stealing. Yes, yes.

Anson: Not only that, I've seen a lot even the last couple of days where friends of mine on Facebook are like, "I just got my own deal shopped back to me for 15 grand more than I have it." Some of them actually went ahead and tried to play with those people. "I'll buy it. Go ahead and get the information from the seller or whatever," really trying to buy these people up. I don't try to go about it that way.

It's basically friends of mine or people who I know in the market here locally who have a deal. Maybe they've been pushing after the buyers. They haven't got anything. I'll contact them and say, "Hey, can I just shop this to my list? We'll figure it out. If I have a buyer, great. You win. I win. They win. Everybody wins."

Co-wholesaling is exactly that but I wouldn't do it without permission, without even sometimes an agreement. Sometimes that equitable interest thing gets weird when you're not even the person who has it under contract when you're trying to sell it. Definitely get permission and maybe have an agreement with that person that says, "This address, I'm going to try to sell it for you. We can have it locked up."

Josh: I think that's a very, very, very fast way, not doing what you're doing, but just saying, "Hey, here's a wholesale deal," find it on a site somewhere, find it on Craigslist and just start selling it to people with the hope you can get a buyer and then go back to the guy who's listing it and say, "Hey, man, I found a buyer for your deal." "Dude, you don't have my permission to promote that. What are you doing?"

Anson: Right. Exactly.

Josh: That could lead to some serious problems, reputation issues, and yes, challenges. Don't do that.

Brandon: I love it when I see MLS Properties on Craigslist for $15,000 or $20,000 more than they're on the MLS for. Somebody's just hoping they won't find it on Redfin, Zillow or Trulia. They're like, "Oh, let's put it over on Craigslist and mark it up 20 grand and hope that I can make that profit." That's wholesaling to them.

Anson: Somebody else will get in there, right?

Brandon: Yes, that's their thinking.

Josh: That's called getting yourself in a lot of trouble.

Brandon: Yes.

Anson: That's also true.

Brandon: Don't do that. Okay. Flipping houses, that's what you've been focusing on, rehabbing and flipping. We talked about why. It's because of the whole quantity versus quality thing. Maybe we can kind of talk about how are you in today's competitive market, how are you finding deals?

Anson: A lot of them have been straight MLS. That's a game for me that's losing its appeal day-by-day just because it is that Groundhog Day thing. You're going out there with the most competition. Everybody's eyes are on there looking for the same kind of things. In the meantime, I've been doing some direct marketing with one of my partners. We've been knocking on doors....

Brandon: You physically have been actually knocking on doors?

Anson: Yes.

Brandon: That's awesome. Here's why I think that's awesome because you're like a professional full-time...you're doing this real estate investor. That's not too low for you. You don't have to go and hire...I don't know. I'm not saying there's anything bad about hiring people but I just love the fact that you're out there hustling still and making your business work. I love that.

Josh: You just said the word. He's hustling. That's why he's probably one of the most active investors I know in town.

Brandon: That's why he's successful. Yes.

Josh: He's a hustler and that's a good thing.

Anson: It's not glamorous work. It's almost literally where I started at in Phoenix. One of the guys was like, "Hey, I don't have anybody in that neighborhood, in that area. Can you just knock doors for me?" That was kind of my start in the whole thing.

Nobody loves to do it but it's definitely...the more uncomfortable things are, that's where you find less people, the less competition anyways. There might be a few people knocking on doors.

Brandon: Let's talk about door-knocking a little bit. I don't think we've ever actually really focused on that.

Josh: I want to make a point on that, by the way because when I got started as an agent, I used to door knock. It was horrible. It's horrible.

Anson: It's not fun.

Josh: It really is not fun. You have people slam the door in your face. You try and be polite. I baked cookies once and they threw them at me. Some lady punched me once. Those were all lies actually.

I did door-knock. It was horrible but there was nobody else doing it in the area that I was doing it. It did help me to get an in. What you just said, Anson about doing the unglamorous things, I used to also go and hang door hangers. I door-knock and if they weren't there, I'd put a hanger on the door.

Anson: That's exactly where I started.

Josh: What I've noticed is this: in my house, I never get hit up by investors. I never get hit by agents. None of them are marketing in my area. I have one or two agents who send something in the mail to me but nobody's marketing to me. I'll be selling my house at some point, probably in the next year. I don't even know whom I would use as an agent, maybe you. I don't know whom I would use because there's nobody marketing to me.

It's so silly. You guys get out there because I know there are a lot of agents that "work" my neighborhood but they're all doing the lazy stuff. They're trying to get the low-hanging fruit and nobody's putting in the extra efforts of banging on the door, get to know everybody in the community and be the guy that everybody's like, "Oh, yes. That guy's always kind of around being helpful, offering stuff, whatever it is."

Anson: Yes, absolutely.

Brandon: How are you door-knocking? What does that even mean? What does that look like? I would see you were knocking on doors but do you just drive up a random street? How does that work?

Anson: It's a little more targeted. We're getting pre-foreclosure lists. We could filter those out by equity. We could filter them out by all kinds of things. I usually go for they only have one loan and they have a little bit of equity; at least, some or a lot of equity. We target those first but there's not all that many out there.

You have this list. It might be 15 in an area or 15-20 in a zip code. We just jump in the car, go knock on the door. A lot of times, they're not home. We'll leave them a note. We'll just leave them a handwritten note, either a sticky note or something in an envelope with their first name on it so that when they get home, they see something. They open it up.

There are a lot of theories around how to open up people, what you say in that note that you leave. For me, it's basically just, "Hey, Joe. I really need to talk to you. Can you give me a call?" and then my name and phone number.

A lot of times it's like, "Hey, what do you want?" or "Who are you? What do you want?" It's a little bit like talking them down off that ledge. You'd do that anyways if you were knocking on their door. "Hey, I understand you're house has a sale date, November 29th." Kind of, go that route.

You’re talking people down on that way, too because you're basically, just by physically standing there, you're like a physical representation of the problem that they don't want to deal with in the first place. You standing there is usually enough to enrage people or depends on where they are at the process. Usually, there's a lot of anger involved.

Josh: Yes. Two things: one, why would you even choose to do that? When I was doing it, I was doing it as a realtor in the neighborhood of people who weren't in deep trouble. I probably would not be door-knocking on pre-foreclosures because of that very purpose. I'm not as a substantial individual as you are. I know you pack heat. That always helps.

Anson: Whoa! Rumors.

Josh: No, no, no. Hey, why not just send the mail to them or get on the phone versus doing that? Have you had any experiences where people are really, really angry and almost get physical to that point? In terms of safety, is it something that the five-foot-three woman who wants to be an investor should be doing? I know many of you five-foot-three women are very capable of defending yourselves. However...

Anson: No. The first part in that why am I doing this, it's basically with direct mail, we've been ramping up direct mail, just not to this list. Since that list is readily available with public information, there are a lot of people who are going after that. While they might have 12 letters from investors that are easily ignored, you just don't have to open them, a little harder to ignore six-foot-one guy, 200-something pounds knocking on the door.

Not in a mean way, I'm there to generally help but there's a lot less competition that way, too. Literally, this is why: because when you have people who have...this is a literal scenario where they owed about $30,000 on this house, as is, was worth easily $110,000 and then fixed up $170,000, somewhere in that neighborhood.

We're knocking on their door. It's about three weeks before their foreclosure date. They're standing there going, "I don't know what to do. I didn't know that I could sell it. I didn't know I could sell it to you. I didn't know I could sell to the market. I literally don't know what to do."

If you could be a help to them and help them and then also obviously, you're running a business, too but...in a lot of times with short sales you can also say, "If it's not working out for me, I can definitely try to either help them sell it as an agent by having that in my tool belt or I can refer them to an agent."

A lot of times they just don't know what to do. Their head might be so far in the sand that they're just not thinking correctly. When it came to that deal, it was just a light bulb like, "Oh, this is exactly why I'm doing this," because they're ignoring their mail but they're not ignoring me and I'm standing there talking to them. I'm the only one, literally, standing there, talking to them. That's a huge advantage.

Josh: Yes. That's great. That's great.

Anson: As far as safety, I wouldn't say it's for everybody. You have to have a pretty thick skin. A lot of people slamming doors on your faces, a lot of people who get pretty angry. I haven't had any angry elves since probably Arizona. It seemed like...I don't know what it is about Arizona that these hotheads or something...

Josh: Nice. You just made a lot of fans, by the way.

Anson: Right? I love Phoenix. There are a lot of jacked-up trucks parked in the middle of the yard and having to go up and knock on this door. You know that it might be confrontational so don't be afraid to just...it's not worth it to...don't be afraid to walk away. Just walk away if you feel like you're ever in danger at all. It's not worth it. It's one house on the list of thousands. Totally not worth it. Don’t put yourself at risk.

Josh: It's a good point. Safety has been something that's really been at the forefront of real estate industry lately. We had the murder of the agent; I forget where it was, about a month ago. There's a lot of stuff that can...there's a lot of crazy people out there, bottom-line. Whether investor or agent, I think we all basically should be looking out for each other and be smart and be safe.

If you ever feel like you're in a position where you're uncomfortable, get out. As Anson said, it's not worth it. There are other deals. Other opportunities will come. You should really have a plan as both investor and agent.

I think one of the easy things people can do is if you're going to door-knock, let somebody know where you're going to be, what your plan is. If you're showing houses or if you're just showing your own house, let somebody else know where you are just in case. It's just always a good practice.

Anson: Absolutely. Let them know where you're going and maybe just a list of addresses. Say, "Hey, my plan is to head up these 20."

Josh: Yes. Yes. Awesome. Hey, you mentioned the lists. Where can somebody get absentee list? Is it from ListSource or something like that?

Anson: The one that I was talking about is pre-foreclosure and that is public information. You can usually go to your county website and pick that up. In Denver, there's a subscription website. It's called RENAV that we use. It's nice because you can just filter out a lot of things by equity or lenders or stuff like that.

As far as I know, they're only in Colorado so not a huge help for a nationwide audience but I'm sure there's something available on a greater level. Maybe foreclosures.com but I've never used it.

Josh: Sure.

Anson: I don't want to plug it too hard.

Josh: Got you. Got you. All right. We talked about finding deals. How are you going about financing your deals?

Anson: We basically reached out to people three years ago who had individuals and we found these people on ListSource actually. They're just individuals who had made loans to similar investors and basically called them up or sent a mail that said, "Hey, I see that you loaned on 123 Main Street. We do similar projects in a similar area. Would you like to start dating so that we can eventually get married and be together forever after?"

These two guys have been great. They're basically just guys who have a lot more money than they know what to do with and are happy with secured first position notes on real estate.

Josh: Nice, nice. If somebody else wanted to do that, how does somebody go about finding private lenders like this?

Anson: You could do exactly what I did. Just go to listsource.com and they pull all kinds of general lists. Under the mortgage tab, there's an option for private party loan. This is where it's individual, not an institution. It knows the difference between Josh Dorkin loaning on a property and Wells Fargo. You could pull all these.

I'd pull the most recent six months and then boom. There's an entire list of private moneylenders in your area. Some I think might be hard moneylenders but I think the majority are basically guys like mine. They're just guys who have relationships with known investors. If you can get them on your team then all the better.

Josh: That's great. That's great.

Brandon: Excellent.

Josh: I don't think we've heard anybody use that as...at least, tell us about that secret. There are no secrets, people. Anson's pissed off. Everybody in Colorado, don't do that. Anyone else, go ahead. I think it's a great idea. You're literally targeting those people who are looking for exactly what you're providing. Why not?

Anson: Exactly.

Josh: That's great. That's great. Cool. You said that you've got two people, two private lenders. How long did it take? How many people do you think you'll hit up to get those two people?

Anson: Probably 20, 30, which doesn't sound like a lot but maybe these people's terms work what we're looking for. I think we just kind of hit on the right people at the right time and then thinking about going out and doing kind of a second round of this not only to retest the waters but it would be nice to have a little bit more capital at times.

Josh: You're going to go pull off that list, get their home addresses, and knock on their doors?

Anson: Absolutely. That's the best way to do it. "Hey!" No. I put that scope to the test. No. It's either a lot of people mail them and if you can get their phone number on whitepages.com or something like that. Just a quick cold call can usually be exactly what you need.

If you can set up a meeting and like I said, start dating before you go anywhere else. A lot of guys will throw their hat into the ring with somebody who has a track record and a little bit of...you have the balls to call them up and solicit them. If you're serious, you have a track record then they would see the benefits of that.

Josh: All right. You've got a track record or so you claim. That's great. You're calling me up. You want my money. How do you demonstrate that track record to me? How do I believe a word you say?

Anson: We usually have the last number of properties, sometimes all of them that we've ever done and basically just present it to them. Say, "Hey, these are the numbers in our last X amount of deals. You can look them up by tax records. It's all verifiable, this information."

If they need to drill down and see HUD ones and promissory notes and stuff that we've done with our other investors, that would be fine. Basically, anything that gives us credibility and if they need a little bit more then it's all there. We're not trying to hide anything from them.

Josh: Right. Right. Do you have a package that you provide them or you're like, "Hey, just look me up?"

Anson: Probably should have a package. We would print something out if we were going to run meet somebody but, like I said something that we've done one round of and so hasn't been...definitely need to sharpen those skills. Go back for round two. Maybe we'll have something a lot more professional.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: That's kind of like the whole theory behind...I do a webinar on BP every couple of weeks about how to analyze properties and I walk people through the BiggerPockets rental property calculator or the flipping calculator that we have.

My main belief is that if you're trying to attract financing, you need to have a professional image to show people especially if you are new. If you don't have like, "Hey, here are the addresses of the last 30 houses I did," if you don't have that, at least come together with something professional. "Look, I know how to do my numbers. I know how to take..."

Josh: Dude, are you picking on him? This is our guest. Be nice.

Brandon: No, no, no. He's got the 30 more deals. He doesn't need that. He doesn't need that. He's going to walk in to a room. "Whoa. Is that Anson? He was on the BiggerPockets Podcast."

Josh: Oh my God. Two episodes.

Brandon: Oh my. That guy's amazing.

Josh: A legend.

Brandon: A legend. A legend. Anyway, that's why I always encourage people especially when they're new to do an analysis on a property. If you're brand-new then just do a sample analysis.

That's a tip that Michael Blank, the writer on our blog, he always says, "Put together a sample. Don't lie and say it's a real deal when it's not. 'This is what the deal is going to look like. This is what I'm looking for in a deal.' Present that to a lender or a partner, whoever it is you're trying to do."

I love that tip. I think that's awesome because it says, "Oh..."

Anson: Sure. I think it's great.

Brandon: They know what to do. Kind of on that same note then, for somebody who's brand-new and just starting out, besides having a presentation, do you have any tips for people who are listening that need to attract financing? Because that's hard to get, financing for deal. What do you suggest for people?

Anson: It is. I think the caliber of the individuals that we did attract, they probably wouldn't have lent to us on our first deal or our second deal. These are guys where their track record was huge.

If you're just starting out, I think I said this on my first podcast but my very first flip deal was basically partnering up with somebody who did have cash and wanted to find a flip. I had a little bit of experience in finding these distressed properties. Creating kind of a partnership where he's bringing the money, I'm bringing pretty much the deal...

Josh: I'm bringing the Anson.

Anson: Bringing the Anson, which is worth a lot. I would say a partnership like that could be huge on the first few deals. Once you have even two under your belt say, "Hey, we did two in the last three, four, six months, whatever." That's more track record than a lot of investors even have. Then, coming to where you're cold calling, soliciting people from a ListSource then it becomes a little bit easier.

In the beginning I'd say, just like you said, "Hey, here's some sample deals." You could bill a sample deal based off of your criteria and your business model. When you're presenting that to investors you say, "Hey, this is exactly the kind of deal I'm looking for. I won't do a deal that's less than this because then it puts it at risk."

You basically funnel your business planning to let's say the BiggerPockets calculator and there you can say, "This is my ideal deal." Putting in that much work beforehand, I think lends to a lot of credibility.

You didn't just show up with a blank piece of paper. You have something there that's "Hey, I've analyzed the numbers backwards and forwards on potential deals or the ideal deal. This is exactly what my business is looking for. I won't put your money at risk or my money at risk for anything less."

Josh: I think a package should include deals. It should include, and if you haven't done deals, professional...what are your criteria, what are you looking for, how are you going to find these deals, what you're planning to do with them, your references, personal, professional, anyone who has been around that can vouch for you, and anything you can put together to demonstrate that you have some semblance of credibility even though you have not done a deal is going to assist you in building that credibility.

Anson: Absolutely.

Josh: Yes. Nice. Hey, really quick on the calculators that we were mentioning, you guys both mentioned. You can find those at BiggerPockets.com/analysis. If you're looking also, this is show 96 of the BiggerPockets Podcast and you can check out the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show96.

All right, Anson. What kind of house makes the perfect flip?

Anson: What kind of house? For me?

Josh: At least for you, yes.

Anson: For me. For me, I do like the more suburban houses that don't need a whole lot of insanity. I see a lot of the benefits to adding square footage or pop tops or scrape-and-builds, those types of things. That's not just where I'm at right now.

If I can get a 1970's house in the suburbs that needs a ton of updating pretty much top to bottom and get that at significant enough discount...and my area town it's a desirable school district so if I can find something in that school district, there's one huge plus, plus move-in ready plus pretty much a lot of things that hit on people's checklist when they're looking for houses. Move-in ready in the right school district, that's exactly what I'm looking for pretty much.

Josh: Yes. Right on. Right on. The inside could be a hot mess but you're not going to bust out external walls and scrape or pop the top here in town. You're just going to clean out the inside.

Anson: Exactly. I'd like to eventually get in to more of the development side. That's another big step up, too. In my progression of where I'm at, I just know that I'm not 100% ready for that. I don't know a lot of the numbers on foundations and basically excavating and building from the ground up.

Josh: Got you. Got you. We've got a couple of really cool threads about those topics. Jay Scott in particular has started a few of them. We'll find links to them in the show notes. He literally does a house build from start to finish and walks through the entire process and shows everything that he's done. It's amazing and well worth a look. Do you ascribe to the 70% rule as a flipper? Can you tell us what that is?

Anson: The 70% rule is basically you take your ARV, which we talked about earlier. You multiply that by 70%. You now have something that's 70% of your ARV. Then, you usually back out your expenses, your rehab and then you're potential profit. That's pretty much where you want, where this guideline says that you want your house to be at. If it makes sense after all of that then great.

I'd love to do 70% deals all the time but they're a little bit more rare because at the end of the day, you're not buying it 70% of ARV. You're buying closer to 60, 55% of ARV. If a house is worth $100,000, you might have to buy it at $55,000 to make it work with all those numbers -- rehab, profit, expenses, all that fun stuff.

I would say that it's a great guideline to filter deals through. It just doesn't work in every market. That's been well talked about, I guess on the forums and everything else. If it's a 70% deal and you live by it, it's a deal. It's a good deal. In other markets, it might not be. It's not hard and fast. Usually, ours is like we want to make a minimum of $20,000 after everything. That's kind of our rough numbers that we work with.

Josh: Okay. You start with the profit in mind and then work backwards from there instead of working from the 70% rule, I guess.

Anson: Exactly.

Josh: Cool. Cool. Right on. How good are you in hitting those numbers? How good were you when you started? Was that a natural progression? I'm assuming the answer's yes.

Anson: It is. I think one of the crap jobs I took when I lived back in Denver was basically doing BPO's for an agent for eight hours a day. I'd crank out ten to 15 BPO's a day. That was invaluable to my knowledge at ARV and that piece of it.

When it came down to kind of going in to the market and flipping myself, the missing piece was estimating rehabs. That piece, obviously Jay Scott has a book out about it. That's pretty much the only book that I know that's that detailed and comprehensive.

Josh: "The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs?"

Anson: Yes. Exactly. While the ARV's, it started off with a lot of good experience getting that, even then it gets refined and honed over time. For me, the rehab piece was the big piece and that was a lot of...my first partner who lent the money was also, I wouldn't say in construction, but he did a lot of the work himself. He knew a lot of numbers on rehab.

Then, it came to shadowing other investors, calling on potential deals to see how much these things were costing them and then working with a few contractors and just walking property after property and kind of getting a better idea of what all those numbers are because the whole key is the deal.

Josh: Yes, yes. Awesome. Hey, really quick. The book, the estimating book, you can pick that up if you're interested. It's the BiggerPockets "Book on Estimating Rehab Costs" at BiggerPockets.com/flippingbook. You can also get "The Book on Flipping Houses" at that place. It's a great book, covers a ton of stuff.

You mentioned BPO's. BPO is broker price opinion. I always get the BPO. Just for those people listening, what is a BPO? I love the idea that you went and did BPO's.

I, as an agent was desperate, was desperate to do BPO'S because I wanted to learn about the industry and I thought it was a good in to getting with REO banks and eventually become an agent that the banks would call up to list their properties with. If we could just spend a minute or two just kind of explaining how all of that works.

Anson: Yes. I think it was a good way to get in to banks kind of back in the day was they would start you off with, "Hey, we're going to sign ten BPO's over time with this agent." If they crank them out, they do a good job, they deal them on time, and their values are pretty good then they might feed you a listing or something like that. I'd say that those days probably are gone.

BPO, broker price opinion, usually the banks consign but I know that there are note servicing companies who want BPO's in their houses. There are a lot of other uses for these. It's kind of an appraisal light. I'm not a licensed appraiser but these banks were entrusting us to provide a value for these houses in foreclosure.

At the time, it was kind of just the BPO farm that would just farm it out to agents. We would get assigned a certain number of days. We cranked those out at $50 a piece or whatever they're paying. It really consisted of driving by the property, taking pictures of the outside. At the time, couldn't really knock on the doors and get to the inside. They just didn't want that so outside pictures, pictures of the street.

Basically, they wanted notes on everything that's going on around the neighborhood, what the curb appeal is, all that fun stuff. Then, a lot of the work starts when you're pulling comps on the MLS, comparables, three active, three sold. You plug all of those in to their spreadsheet and you can do adjustments on those comps.

Basically, this is a three-two, three-bedroom, two-bath. This is a three-bedroom, three-bath. What would the adjustment be for that extra bathroom? That's kind of the short version of what an adjustment is. You would go through that whole report and then come up with a value that you thought that it would sell for as is and then what the value you would assign to it if it was repaired.

If they put in the work to fix the roof, fix the outside, paint it, do landscaping, obviously, you don't know what's going on inside but you can kind of estimate what's going on. You would give those two values and then ship it off to the bank and get your $50.

Josh: Nice. Nice. It's a great way to get to know the process. It's cool that you did that. Thank you for explaining that. I think a lot of people here, these terms turn around and I want to make sure that we at least do our part to cover it.

Back to the flipping. Contractors, how do you find and manage them?

Anson: Okay. I don't want to be a broken record because I know we talked about this a little bit the first time. My experience with contractors isn't great. It's basically...

Josh: Let's ask another question then.

Anson: No, no, no, no.

Josh: For all the contractors who Anson has jerked over...no, I'm just kidding.

Anson: It was me. No. It was basically a big contracting firm here in Denver that left a ton of investors high and dry. This was 2010. Right into 2011 is when this whole thing happened. Thankfully, I wasn't hugely screwed by it but I did have two or three investor friends who also were using this company who got just worked over.

Basically, they just disappeared overnight and these guys had written five-figured draws to them, $30,000-draw. That money is nowhere to be seen.

Josh: Hopefully, they're enjoying.

Anson: No. No, they're not.

Josh: Awesome.

Anson: Yes, I know. When it comes to trusting contractors, that's definitely something that I need to work out. I've talked to a lot of people here locally and right when I was kind of about to jump back into that realm because right now we kind of project manage small crews and then we sub out anything that needs a permit. [Inaudible][50:10], those kinds of things get subbed out to licensed contractors.

Any non-licensed work that can be done, we have crews that we just manage. That's worked out really well. While we've cycled through a couple of crews, we're not entrusting them with the entire job. There's kind of a puzzle piece that comes together. That's been the work around to being screwed by a contractor.

Right when I was about to dip my feet back in, there are just a couple of horror stories through the BiggerPockets meet-up of contractors who have just worked over some of these BP members, some of them newer or right on their first or second flip. It just doesn't sit well with me that somebody could just run off and then change their business name and then start work next week. It's like argh!

Josh: That's awful. That's awful.

Anson: Finding them...I think Jay Scott has a lot of good advice on that where you can show up to Home Depot early. I've done that to find different pieces of that puzzle that we've talked about. I think that that's a great way to do it honestly is to find the hustlers who are working hard and find those guys.

Usually, a lot of times when you find these people, don't let them go because they're so good. There's also a time when things change in the arrangement or these people's lives were...things start going downhill. You need to recognize that immediately and start cutting.

Josh: My philosophy and correct me if I'm wrong. This is kind of my experience. I'm curious about both of you guys. Generally when I've dealt with contractors and again, this is not all because there are some really amazing contractors that are phenomenal.

It seems like the contractors I've always kind of run across are always looking to do something bigger and better, looking to do their own projects but never quite have all the skills that they need to do that. They're not organized enough or they're not financially capable enough or something else that they never quite fully get there. A lot of them seem to kind of come and go and flip and flop in the wind.

Again, I'm going to get slammed by contractors with hate mail now. My dad's an electrical contractor. I totally appreciate contractors and good ones who are professional. Boy, oh boy, man. There are just a whole lot of unprofessional ones and it's so challenging, so challenging to weed through them.

I don't know. I know we've talked about it but even the guys that we've talked on the show who have done a ton of deals just...we all have problems finding solid contractors.

Anson: That's true.

Brandon: I found that it's very much an e-myth thing. People who are good at baking don’t mean they're good at running a bakery. That's the whole theory of "The E-Myth" book. People who are good at fixing the door, good at fixing a flooring, sanding the floor down, and installing, installation, whatever are not necessarily good at running a contracting business. I think that's the problem that contractors face.

I don't know the answer necessarily. I think we've got a lot of good suggestions before in the podcast. Nobody has a foolproof way because there just clearly is not a foolproof way to get a contractor because...

Anson: Absolutely. I don't know. If we figure it out, if we can figure out the formula, we'll be rich boys.

Brandon: I think what you said was key was hanging on to the one when you do find them because they are there.

Anson: Oh, absolutely.

Brandon: Once you find them, you just treat them well. You pay them well and you reward them well. I think that's how you do it.

Josh: You had mentioned something else. You had mentioned the BP meet-ups as a place to go to, "BP meet-ups," right? People who create meet-ups through BP as a place to link up with other investors and kind of share notes on whom you're working with and who's bad and who might be great.

I think that's an amazing idea whether it's a BP meet-up or a local real estate club, a REA or something more formalized. The in-person networking is essential. It's just so, so important. I know Brandon and I talked about this and we want to chat really quick about the whole concept of these local meet-ups.

Really quickly, as a result of BiggerPockets we've got 215,000, 220,000 members now. Our members have realized, "Hey, this is a great opportunity to find all these other local people, get together, and let's network, do business, do deals without having to potentially go to another club or meeting that's happening in town that might be all about upselling you."

You just kind of get together and it's kind of an independent "BiggerPockets meet-up," right? You started one here in Denver. Maybe you could talk about why did you start having a local meet-up and why would somebody else want to do that?

Anson: Right after the BiggerPockets "conference" which...

Josh: No. There was an actual conference. Anson is using his quote fingers to mention the BiggerPockets conference. There was one a couple of years ago.

Anson: There was one. There needs to be one again.

Josh: Oh my God! The pressure. The pressure!

Anson: We won't talk about that. The pressure. Now you have the staff involved so you could probably pass it off to somebody.

Brandon: We can pile it up

Josh: If you guys continue to push me and pressure me...

Brandon: We will.

Anson: We will. Don't worry. Right after that, after an evening session, there was probably about 15, 20 people just hanging out the bar of the Hyatt, just this free form expression of...it's like the forums on crack plus beer.

Brandon: Sounds deadly.

Anson: It's this kind of hyper networking with people who you know and you might only know them through online and that's kind of a newer phenomenon. You've listened to them...

Josh: You do realize online has been 20 years now. It's not that new. A lot of people find their lives and husbands and...I'm just saying and it's a new phenomenon.

Anson: There was just this great exchange of ideas and people that you know from online. I talked to Brandon about this but I think I came to you, Josh. I was like, "That was amazing. Let's do that locally." You were like, "Great."

Josh: You take the lead.

Anson: "I don't want anything to do with it because I don't have enough time to it." That's where it was born out of. I posted something on the forums not too long after that says, "Hey, let's continue that. If you were involved in that, let's start that process here."

It's kind of just informal group that gets together. There's no agenda. There's no speaker. There's nothing sold obviously. It's basically just, "We're all going to introduce ourselves. We're going to talk about what we do or what we want to do." Then, we'll just open it up. You can go find and tackle that person that you really want to talk to and bend their ear all night.

That's basically how it works. It's been great for finding contractors or finding these ancillary contractors of electricians or just people like that whom people really want to share. We talk about deals. We talk about deals that people might have, what they're looking for, what they want to do, just all kinds of stuff.

Josh: That's great. That's great. There are meet-ups now in dozens and dozens of cities around the country and world. I know Brandon was at one in New Jersey that Darren Sager planned with 150, 200 people. There's one in Seoul, Korea that meets I think it's maybe once a month and they get a dozen or two dozen people to that.

Brandon: They send picture to us on Twitter. It's awesome.

Josh: Yes.

Anson: That's awesome. I will do that.

Josh: Yes. To anyone listening, if you run a group, a meet-up group through BP or any of you guys putting together a group, share those pictures. Share what you guys are doing because you're going to get other people excited and you're going to get them to want to be involved.

Of course, the more people that get involved and get excited about your local meet-up, the more people now you're networking with about deals and that you have in your circle to build up. It's a great thing.

Why would somebody want to host a meet-up? Is it complicated? Is there a lot to do? Or, is it just like, "Let's find a bar and do it?"

Anson: Yes. Pretty much find a bar and do it. I think you provided us our first place at the work share place that you were at. When that stopped working, I just reached out to another BiggerPockets member who lived more central downtown and said, "Where would be a great place to do this?" She said, "Here." We just started doing it there.

What I would say is contact the management. Just basically say, "We're going to have five to 20 people in here," because that's kind of where our group is at. "We're going to have five to 20 people here. Can you offer us any kind of happy hour or special or reserve a section for us?"

That's pretty much what we did. Now we have happy hour specials. We always have a section reserved so we don't have to worry about that. We basically just show up and they know that we're going to be there the third Monday of every month. It's literally that easy. Just post it on the forums to get the word out there, obviously and people will come for sure.

Josh: That's cool. The key in doing that is post. I guess first, generate some interest using the local networking area of the site. Just say, "Hey, I'm in Phoenix, Arizona and I want to do a local meet-up." Obviously, use those words "Phoenix, Arizona" because we have a keyword tool.

Anybody who follows the word "Phoenix" or ""Phoenix, Arizona" is going to get alerted to that and then they'll find out and say, "Oh, this is great," which by the way is another tip to those people listening. If you don't have keywords set up on the BiggerPockets keywords tool, just go to BiggerPockets.com/alerts. At the very, very, very least, you should probably have your town, your city, the area that you're at as keywords.

Brandon: Your name, you should have your name as a keyword.

Anson: Yes. I have my name.

Brandon: Yes. I get a ton because people don't always use the “at mention” feature on BP so if somebody's talking about you, you probably want to know that they're talking about you.

Anson: Exactly.

Brandon: For good and bad reasons.

Josh: Oh, yes. Of course.

Brandon: "That jerk, Brandon Turner I hate that guy."

Josh: Hey, you got my post. Good.

Anson: He figured.

Brandon: That's funny.

Josh: Use that. Use the keywords. Use the alert. From a networking perspective, it's invaluable. It's extremely helpful. Just write down, "Hey, we're looking to do this. Anyone interested?" You got a group of people on there. "Yes, let's do it. Cool." Post that thing in our events and happenings. "Hey, it's happening at this state, this time, this place." If you build it, they will come.

Anson: Exactly.

Josh: Yes. Awesome.

Brandon: Cool. My kind of last question before we move on towards the later half of the show: can you talk about any mistakes that you've made whether it was early on or maybe even in the last year since we last talked to you? Or, anything that you maybe did wrong or you wished you could have done better?

Anson: I'd say when I first started out in wholesaling, I probably made a lot of just dumb mistakes like reputation-damaging mistakes of kind of like what we talked about before of trying to sell deals that aren't yours without permission. I talk from experience on a couple of things.

Nothing ever turned out weird or pissed anybody off but I'm sure it just doesn't look great when somebody's trying to troll along deals when just mark them up and shoot them out to your list and the person who's selling the deal might be on that list.

I'm not saying that that's exactly what happened but it's basically just little things like that where you get a little bit more experienced, you get a little bit more well read in the forums and you kind of learn. "Okay. Now that I'm buying houses from wholesalers, that's exactly what I wouldn't want to see from somebody who's running a business just trying to do little things like that."

I'd say that lately we've been trying to push the boundaries a little bit on design. There was kind of a funny incident where I posted a floor just to see what people thought on a Facebook group. They’re a little bit more cynical than I'd say, the average BP member.

I posted a floor shot of "Hey, what do you guys think? We're branching out here." Immediately, it was like 50, 70 replies. It's pretty evenly split. There was a lot of hate for it.

It's not a big deal. They're basically those reclaimed wood-looking tiles and then we kind of did them in this modern kind of design where there was a bright white one in the middle of these designs. You see that in higher-end houses which what we're trying to do is kind of bring in a little bit of those elements from higher-end flips, higher-end new builds, those kind of things and put them in to a $200,00-medium home priced house.

A lot of people who are used to this HGTV idea of everything just beige, like a beige explosion in these flips that it's funny how much vitriol was..."Nyah. I hate that."

I'd say that we've done that lately and probably, I wouldn't say mistakes but we have shut out some buyers that might have been looking for that product so at a down market, that could have been a huge mistake but at the same time in an up market, people who...you might cut out three out of ten buyers. You still have seven willing to put down money on the contract.

Josh: You may expand your market as well by doing that.

Anson: Exactly. I think they're just getting bored of seeing the same old things over and over again.

Josh: I think it's cool to experiment. That's what you're doing. You're kind of bringing a little bit of art and creativity to what you're doing instead of making it so formulaic, right?

Anson: Exactly. I'd say that it could have been a huge mistake if the market was a little bit down but at the same time there are still a lot people. I might cut out half my buyers just based on that small poll of experienced rehabbers. Half of them hated it. They thought it was the worst.

The other half were like, "I see you're trying to do something new, do something a little edgy." I'm no designer but for that many people to just say, "I hate it," I knew that we had cut out a big chunk of buyers, too.

Josh: Got you. That's cool. That's cool. Those were mistakes. What about victories? What really cool accomplishments, what have you done in the last year that you have been really, really proud of?

Anson: I'd say two things: one is cookies and branding. It’s something that I've been trying to do a lot of where my...I brought up a web presence. I think last time that we talked, I was like, "I don't really have a website. I don't really need one."

I think that everybody needs one in some capacity whether it's just a vet USA as a professional or that, "Hey, this guy really is a business and he has a webpage to prove it." Not that that proves everything but basically cohesive design across the board when it comes to the real estate piece. I am licensed. Any marketing that I'm doing is branded. Then, pretty much having this web presence that's also branded.

That sounds like something with a little "Oh, you should have done that first." For me, that's been a big victory this year is to get that all together and taken care of. Now that when I do market, I have this cohesive thing where it's not just a yellow letter from a random person. It's something that's branded and a little more visibility and a little more credibility.

The other piece was a virtual wholetail deal which wholetail is kind of the marriage of wholesale and retail. It was out of market, obviously, two hours north. That ended up to be a huge learning experience with a lot of pieces of it. At the end of the day, it was a great deal and learned a ton from it.

That was kind of the capstone to this last quarter was that deal. I've done some virtual wholesaling but doing this virtual wholetail where you...it's a whole different element when you have realtors involved and all kinds of stuff like that.

When you throw it out in the market, you're doing a...instead of doing it to investors which I'm used to doing, now I'm trying to get an end buyer, somebody who's going to live there to buy my wholesale deal. That was kind of mistakes of I couldn't find a wholesale buyer in time.

Plan B was close on it and then wholetail it. Didn't do any work to it, just threw it right back there, out there in the MLS. That was a great win for recent times.

Josh: Awesome. Cool. Awesome. That's great. That's great.

Brandon: All right. Let's move on to the world famous...

It's time for the Fire Round. Fire Round.

Josh: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Scary.

Brandon: That was scary. All right. Question number one, these come from the forums on BiggerPockets which you can get to at BiggerPockets.com/forums but number one is what fix-up projects add the most value for the least cost to a rehab in your opinion?

Josh: Whoo. I like that question.

Anson: Hm, that was a good one. I'd say pretty much kitchen, bathroom. It's kind of like the age-old answer. If you can do a kitchen for five grand, a brand-new kitchen -- cabinets, tile, countertops, all that plus about three to four grand per bathroom, that kind of gives you the most bang for your buck.

You could have a house that needs little deferred maintenance here and there but if the kitchen and the bathroom are pristine and they look just amazing, I think that wows a lot of buyers. It helps them kind of overlook some of the smaller details like maybe we didn't scrape the popcorn ceiling but the kitchen and the bathroom are so amazing that they're just blinded. They’re like, "Ah, I'm going to buy this."

Josh: Nice. Nice. All right. All right. When it comes to wholesaling, what sorts of leads produce the most closed deals for you?

Anson: Sort of leads produce the most closed deals, I'd say the pre-foreclosure list leads and whether that's mailing or knocking on doors for us has been the most profitable. There's a hundred different ways to do that. For us, that's been the most profitable.

Josh: Cool. Cool.

Brandon: For a newbie wholesaler with absolutely no experience, what first steps would you say are crucial?

Anson: First steps as a newbie wholesaler, I think that the first steps are to definitely get out there in to your market, in to your local REA's or BiggerPockets meet-ups. Definitely talk to people who are buying. Learn what they're buying, their criteria.

I'd say that that before almost anything else then you could know if what you're going after is realistic. At least then you know exactly what your buyers are looking for. You always have that information. These guys who usually buy who are at these meetings, they're buying for years and years and years.

Even if it takes you another six months to get everything else off the ground, you did that groundwork of "Hey, I know exactly what these guys are looking for. Now I know what to go after." This guy looks for two-threes in this zip code. That could be enough information to get you started. You're not looking all over the city. Now you're just looking in that zip code.

Brandon: Yes. Great.

Josh: Right on. Right on. Cool. All right. Last question: would you consider involving a family member in a deal in any way or do you believe it a recipe for disaster?

Anson: I personally would not. That’s just...

Josh: I'm not judging you. I'm just asking the question.

Anson: Yes. I personally would not.

Josh: Brandon's judging you.

Brandon: I'm judging you.

Anson: He is. I see him.

Josh: He's got judge-y eyes. Look at those judge-y...they're very judge-y.

Brandon: Judge Anson over there.

Anson: Because I don't have a rich uncle that has a ton of money that throw in his money at me for deals. Even on the real estate side, on the licensing side, things get weird when things go weird. It's like when things aren't working out exactly to plan so to speak, even friends and family get really strained relationships through that. It's hard to recover from that. From doing that on the license side and things...nobody's not talking to anybody anymore. If I could avoid that headache then great. What I love to work with, my good friends and my family, sure but is it worth it to have things go crappy? I don't know.

Josh: Yes. For your friends and family who are listening, it's not you. It's me.

Anson: That's right. It's not you.

Brandon: Nice. Yes. Nice.

Josh: Awesome. Cool. Cool. All right. We have had you on our show before but we're going to do it anyways. Let's get to...

Famous For

Brandon: All right. Famous Four, these questions we ask every guest and we've asked you before like Josh said. We're going to find out if anything has changed maybe. The first question is: what is your favorite real estate-related book?

Anson: My new favorite book and I'm honestly not trying to plug this. I've been reading through Brandon's new book. It's been really good only because that's a big piece that I haven't explored a lot on past reading on the forums. Now I have Brandon's insight to how he's done these deals. That's been really cool. When I start on the buy-and-hold side, that's been huge. There it is.

Josh: What is the title? I got to read the title. It's really, really long. He made it super long.

Brandon: It is really long.

Josh: "The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down."

Anson: That's right.

Josh: It's a good book.

Anson: It is.

Brandon: Thank you.

Anson: It really is. I didn't mean to plug that one. I was thinking about it earlier.

Brandon: I'll give you your 20 bucks later.

Anson: It worked.

Josh: Nice. All right. All right. Cool.

Brandon: Thank you.

Josh: What about favorite business book?

Anson: This is another recent read. I guess you can just say, "What are the two books you read most recently?"

Josh: We've got short-term memory. That's about it.

Anson: This one is "The TenX Rule" by Grant Cardone. It's more of a goals...I think he's a sales coach. This is definitely like how to take your goals and then ramp them up as high as possible. My goal used to...not really goal but it used to be like, "If I can do this wholesale one crappy deal a month, I'd be fine. I'd reduce my expenses enough to the point where that's fine." If you aim for one and you get zero, where are you at?

If you aim for ten and you get one, at least you know you're covered. Kind of like that if you shoot for the stars and you land on the moon or something...I don't know how that phrase goes. At least, you're still up there. At least, you're part way there.

That's been huge for me. That book kind of helped me out with if I shoot for ten deals a month and I land eight. Oh no! I only need one to pay my bills. It's kind of that mentality, just ramping everything up in your life to ten times what you thought you could do. It's kind of a mentality goal.

Brandon: Nice. I'll check it our.

Josh: Right on. Cool. Cool. Hobbies? Any new hobbies? I see you and your family on Facebook all the time. I know there’s a lot of cool outdoorsy stuff.

Anson: Yes, there is. I'm trying to get my wife into camping.

Josh: Maybe we can work on that together because I need the same thing.

Brandon: What? They don't want to go and hang outside and crap outdoors? Who wouldn't want to do that? I don't know.

Josh: Hold on. That's a tweetable topic.

Anson: Who doesn't want to go crap outdoors?

Brandon: Yes.

Anson: I did get them into kind of a yard camping where we set up the tent in the yard. I didn't spend overnight because I have a four-year old and then my wife...at the end of it, she's like, "That wasn't so bad." I'm trying to get her into that. We already hike. You might as well just stay out there. I don't know. You’re already there. You might as well spend the night.

The other piece is same with kind of adventure race or obstacle race type things we did. We did Tough Mudder this year. I basically dragged my wife out there kicking and screaming. I was like, "You are going to thank me for this." She was not happy.

Then, when we were done on the way home, she was like, "I'd do that again." It was a cool way to kind of just stretch what you think you can do. It's kind of one of that can you do 12 miles and be cold and miserable the whole time but at the end you're so exhilarated that, "Hey, I did that."

For us, that was a lot of fun. We're looking forward to doing a bunch more of those next year and maybe some outdoor camping if she wants to go crap in the woods, I guess.

Josh: I like how you talk about your wife crapping in the woods versus yourself. We'll make sure she doesn't listen to the show. By the way, if you guys are doing one next year in the spring, not the winter, in the warmer weather, if there are those, I, if you want somebody else, I am down.

You guys on the show, all of our listeners, you heard it here first. I do want to do one of those. I'm looking for a partner in crime to drag me out because my wife won't do it with me.

Anson: Nice. Yes, absolutely.

Josh: Let's rock it.

Anson: Absolutely.

Brandon: Nice. Nice.

Josh: Cool. Cool. All right.

Brandon: Final question from me. What do you think sets apart successful real estate investors from those who never get started, failed or give up?

Anson: I have to go back to my original answer because for me, I struggle with it, too which is massive action consistently. I said consistency last time. This is basically the same thing just I guess rewarded. If you're not working on this everyday, you're not going to get where you want to be.

If you're not working on at least the things that matter, you could be working on your website and then never go out and find buyers and sellers and do the marketing and do the work to get deals but you're wasting your time. Be consistent on the right activities and you'll definitely reap the benefits.

I found that any time that my deal flow or anything has gone downhill, I can trace it back immediately to not working on the right things consistently, every time. I've been doing this for eight, nine years now. Every single time, you think it will be easy to wake up and be like, "Oh, this is exactly what I have to do."

Life happens. Things happen. You get into ruts or whatever but if you're consistently working on the dollar-producing activities, the rest will worry about itself.

Josh: Yes. That's great. That's great. A lot of people find themselves spinning their wheels in busy work and never actually doing anything. I think regardless of the industry, That's something that we, just in general, people fall in to. I love that. That's awesome.

Anson: Yes. It's definitely just the people thing. We're not all unique. You've got to wake up every single day and just hustle.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Amen. Where can people find more about you at work? You got a site or are you on...how do people find you?

Anson: I'm on BiggerPockets, obviously. A lot of people find me there. I'm also at ansonpropertygroup.com. That's just a basic seller website that they can come to and check out. If you want to check out thing there, that's great. BiggerPockets is the best place to find me. Just send me a message and we'll hook up there.

Josh: Awesome.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Awesome. Anson, thanks so much for coming on the show. It was great having you back. We definitely appreciate it. Picked up some new tips and I want to thank you for joining us.

Anson: I'm absolutely glad to be back. Thank you so much.

Brandon: Thank you.

Josh: Awesome. Awesome. All right, guys. Thanks for listening to Show 96 of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Again, show notes can be found at BiggerPockets.com/show96. If you are listening to the show on iTunes or elsewhere, please go on iTunes and leave us a rating review. Let everybody know what you think of the show.

Hopefully, you guys like it and leave us a good rating. This rating certainly helps us out. The reviews help us out. They help people who are searching for us to find us and find out, "Hey, these guys, they're doing good stuff."

Thank you very much in advance. If you haven't already left us a review, we'd appreciate it. Beyond that, follow us on Facebook, on Twitter, on G+, on LinkedIn, on YouTube. We're sharing lots of great content in those places.

Get active on the site. Get out there. Make things happen. If you don't have a local real estate club or group in your area, create one. Hit up Anson. He'll help you out. Post it on the show notes or just get in touch. That's it.

We appreciate you being a part of our world, our community. We want you to get out there and make things happen. Don't just spin your wheels. Be successful. Go make it happen. Good luck to everybody. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you.

Stay warm because it is snowing yet once again. It's like ten degrees out and snowing. Welcome to winter.

Brandon: Nice.

Josh: I'm Josh Dorkin signing off.

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