JF2229: Wholesaling Deals With Emilio Basa

Emilio Basa is a full-time investor with 6 years of real estate investing experience who started off by wholesaling his first property within 4 months of learning how to wholesale. He consistently will wholesale about 3-5 a month and with this experience, he shares how he goes about growing his business so you can take the same steps.

Emilio Basa Real Estate Background:

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“I network with other wholesalers to share deals and grow my business” – Emilio Basa

TRANSCRIPTION

Theo Hicks: Hello, best ever listeners and welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Theo Hicks and today, we’ll be speaking with Emilio Basa.

Emilio, how you doing today?

Emilio Basa: I’m good, Theo. How are you doing?

Theo Hicks: I’m doing good as well. Thanks for asking and thanks for joining us. Looking forward to our conversation. A little about Emilio; he is a full-time real estate investor with six years of experience. He has five rentals, two flips and over 30 wholesales under his belt. He is based in Detroit, Michigan, and his website is http://www.quickpropertysolutions.co/.

Emilio, do you mind telling us a little bit more about your background and what you’re focused on today?

Emilio Basa: Absolutely. I’ve been doing it for six years. When I started, I primarily was strictly wholesaling. When I first started, I say six years, but to be honest, the first two to three years, I was doing it part-time because I was always doing other businesses. I did web design. I was also a musician in the Detroit area, so I was still doing gigs and things like that. I really was doing wholesaling just to try it out and just to do it part-time.

And then just over the years, I just started realizing that—I kind of took to it really quickly. I think I did my first deal in—after learning wholesaling, I did my first deal in four to five months. It wasn’t like a big deal. For me at a time, it was a lot. It was a $1,000 assignment. I started doing wholesaling. And then what I started doing was I started gradually trying other investing methods like rentals and flips, and I’m actually doing my first note this year, and just trying different strategies. But the core of everything has always been wholesaling for me.

Theo Hicks: How many wholesales are you doing per year or per month or whatever frequency is you wanna say?

Emilio Basa: It really depends. Consistently, I’m doing three or four a month right now. I think in December and January, I think I did six a month. It comes and goes. I think with the COVID thing too, we kind of slowed down a little bit.

Theo Hicks: Sure. What’s your preferred method for finding these deals to wholesale?

Emilio Basa: Funny enough, 70% to 80% of my business was actually joint ventures. In my market, you’ve got to be careful with some wholesalers, because some of them are kind of shady and they kind of try and steal the contract from underneath you. But I’ve always been somebody really easy to do business with and I always worked really hard to get a deal sold. A lot of the times people just started bringing me deals, and then more and more, I guess word got out because people just started reaching out to me.

I wanted to say, the last two quarters of last year, almost all my deals were joint ventures. I focus on [unintelligible [00:05:48].21], joint ventures, direct mail… That’s been trailing off. I don’t really do cold calling. And then Lately, I’ve been doing text blasting, which has been working phenomenal, actually.

Theo Hicks: I definitely want to talk about the texting, but I want to circle back to the JV. You said that people are bringing you deals.

Emilio Basa: Yeah.

Theo Hicks: What does that look like? They’re coming to your house? They’re calling you up? How do they know who you are?

Emilio Basa: They just call me up. Yeah, they just call me up. What I do is, whenever I have a deal, I put it on every social media platform you can think of, and then people reach out to me. When people reach out to me, I’ll just ask; are you a cash buyer? Are you a wholesaler? Most of the time people will say, “I’m a wholesaler looking for deals for my client.” And then I really just kick it with them, and just talk about their business and how their wholesale deals are going. And then I just pretty much say, “Hey, I’m growing my buyers list and I’m very transparent. I’m fair.  I’m easy to do deals with.” And then I really just pitch the pros of doing deals with me, which that’s pretty much it. Everybody works hard together to get the deal done, and people just like doing deals with me. So people just started bringing me deals.

To this day — the one deal that we’re closing on now, it’s three houses, online contracts; that came to me from another investor that I did a wholesale deal with. They’re actually his houses, and we’re doing that deal together right now.

A tip for a lot of people too is if you’re trying to build your wholesaling business, whenever you see, “We Buy Houses” signs in the road,—I read somewhere some people take those signs and they take them out, they throw them in the trash. I call all those signs and then I just say, “Hey, are you a wholesaler? Because I’m a wholesaler and a buyer.” I call all those signs. And then a lot of the times you find some really good people.

Theo Hicks: Nice. Basically, you’re networking with other wholesalers, so that a wholesaler brings you a deal. And then you’ll put it on social media and then another wholesaler will reach out, and you’ll kind of JV together to sell that deal.

Emilio Basa: Yes.

Theo Hicks: Okay, I just wanted to make sure I had that right. Is it just a 50/50 split of the assignment fee?

Emilio Basa: It depends on what the deal is. That’s the thing. It’s like, when you’re doing a deal, you just wanna be transparent with everybody. Whoever has it in the first position, you say, “Hey, how much do you have it under contract for?” If they trust you and they want to do deals with you, they’ll tell you. At the end of the day, I’ll tell them, “I don’t care how much you make. You can make 20 grand, 30 grand. If I make two, then I make two. But if it’s a good deal, and I could find a buyer, then that’s what it is.” Because some people won’t tell me and then some people are like “I want 10k, and I’ll take nothing less.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s fine. Well, I’ll try and do this. And I’ll try and work the deal this way.” And then what I do is I have a JV agreement.

What I used to do was either splits, or I had two contracts; one was a 50/50 split, and the other one would be where I’d add my fees on top. And usually, that worked out pretty well, until sometimes with some deals, I’ve had up to six wholesalers on one deal. It was definitely—it was a daisy chain, that’s for sure, because one guy had it, and then another guy told me about it, so he wanted to cut… And then I told another guy about it, who told somebody else and that somebody else brought the buyer.

Theo Hicks: Oh, man.

Emilio Basa: I know, it was a big mess. The way I work out in my JV contract, I literally have six blank lines. And then I put down everyone’s LLC, and then next to the LLC, you write the amount down, and then at the bottom, it says ‘total’ and then everyone has to sign it. So then when you take that agreement, you send it to the title company. There’s two ways you could do it – everyone could get paid straight out of the settlement statement, or one person can take the lump sum check, and then pay everybody out. But that takes a lot of trust. A lot of people won’t do that. They rather would be on the settlement statement, on the HUD, and get paid out that way.

Particularly, I don’t like doing daisy chains, but sometimes some deals that’s what happens. It just unfolds that way. If you have a deal and no one else is buying, but this one guy found a buyer, but it’s not his buyer and it’s another one’s buyer, at the end of the day I’m like, “Dude, let’s work it out.”

Theo Hicks: Yeah, so it sounds like it’s pretty negotiable, right? It’s kind of like what people want.

Emilio Basa: It is. Yeah, yeah.

Theo Hicks: Okay.

Emilio Basa: The tricky thing is that when you’re dealing with two people like me and another wholesaler, our values pretty much match up. Everybody just wants to do a smooth deal. No one gets too greedy, things like that. And then the more people you add, the more personalities you add. So sometimes somebody actually might get really greedy. If you get one person that kind of messes up and messes up the deal, then that’s where it could kind of derail the deal. But for the most part, especially when they start finding out how many people are involved, there’s not a lot of meat on the bone, but everyone wants to get a deal done, so let’s get it done.

Theo Hicks: Sure. Let’s transition to talking about the mass texting you do. Walk us through that.

Emilio Basa: I just started doing it. I’ve probably been doing it for two months now. I’m not going to lie, I pay about $3.50 a bandit sign, and I used to put them up myself. But now I’ve got one guy that delivers them for me, so I pay him three bucks. So my cost per bandit sign is usually $6.50 or $7 a sign.

My response rate was, let’s say 10-15 percent, and sometimes I get some pretty good deals. But with text blasting, it’s 20 cents a text and you could send out 1,000 texts. If you just get one deal, the cost per lead is extremely, extremely low. You’re spending $200 to close out on a contract as opposed to doing like a bandit sign or direct mail. Let’s see, I’m closing one today and that was from a text blast from four weeks ago. I closed one, two weeks ago, that was also from a text.

Theo Hicks: Are these text to wholesalers or are these to the actual sellers?

Emilio Basa: The tricky thing is for text blasting wholesalers, a lot of them are already on my email blast. If ever I need a deal, I’ll either just send out an email blast and just say, “Hey, wholesalers, anybody got a deal that you’re looking to sell, reach out to me,” or when I call people on the bandit signs, I’ll say, “Hey, what’s your name,” and then his name’s Jason. I’ll put in Jason-wholesaler. So whenever I need a deal, I’ll literally go on my iPhone, type in wholesaler, and maybe like 50 wholesalers pop up, and I just text them all the same message. I just copy and paste it and I say, “Hey, I need a deal, what do you got?” And then I paste it to the 50 wholesalers, and you’ll get a deal by the end of the day for sure.

Theo Hicks: Nice.  So for the 20 cents per text, though—

Emilion Basa: That’s to the seller.

Theo Hicks: Because you’re going to find a deal to put under contract. How are you getting their numbers? Is there like a service that does it all for you, who you’re targeting? Walk us through that.

Emilio Basa: I just started using Prop Stream.

Theo Hicks: Sorry, what’s it called?

Emilio Basa: Prop Stream.

Theo Hicks: Prop Stream. Okay.

Emilio Basa: Yeah. Prop Stream is a software where you can look up different lists. As a wholesaler or as an investor, your best deals come from motivated sellers. What you want to do, instead of targeting a blanket area, let’s say you’ve figured out one county’s got 80,000 leads or 80,000 people that own homes. But then what you want to do is you want to find the motivated list out of there. There’s either pre-foreclosures, there’s bankruptcies, divorces, things like that.

With Prop Stream, what you could do is you could type in a county or a city and then you could start adding different attributes to filter down to your criteria of what you’re looking for. You could target specific lists, so you could target — absentee owners is a really popular one. You could do absentee owners. And then what you could do is you could filter down by—if you only buy three bedrooms and up, so you could filter that.

An important one that I do is I get rid of all the LLCs. I do individual owners only. So that filters out a lot of LLCs. And then what you’ll do is you’ll get a list at the end of it. What you could do is you could export that list. What I do is I take that list, and you can either skip trace it in Prop Stream, but whatever text blasting service you use, and there’s a ton of them. I think there’s one called Roar, there’s one called Sherpa, there’s Batch Leads… You could take that list, and then you could put it in your text blasting software, and then you just start sending it out and then see who’s interested.

Theo Hicks: So you’re having a lot of success with that. You’ve done two deals so far. What was the assignment fees in those?

Emilio Basa: One was 15 and this other one that was a double close, it’s a five.

Theo Hicks: How quickly are you able to get these deals under contracts after someone reaches out to you? Is it pretty quick? Is it that day? Or does it need a little bit more work?

Emilio Basa: No, it depends on their motivation and it depends on their situation. Ideally, I would love to get it under contract after the first call. But a lot of the times the sellers – some of them might be motivated, but they’re not really motivated to close that day. A lot of the times, you really have to work a lead by just following up with them, and then just building that rapport.

I’ve got a deal right now – it’s in Moore, Michigan. The lady, I probably called her four or five times. Really all it is, is just like you catching up with her to see how things are going. One thing that I’ve changed this year is I actually learned wholesaling from a few people, but the one that it’s honestly is like my mentor and my largest influencer is Sean Terry. A lot of people that know Sean Terry – that’s the Flip to Freedom students… With Sean Terry, he’s a really good salesman. I don’t want to say it’s the hard sell, but when he goes into an appointment, he’s leaving with a signed contract. That’s the goal. A lot of the times if somebody isn’t terribly motivated, or they’re in a situation where they’re kind of getting to that point, there’s no point in trying to do a hard sell.

What I’m doing lately is I’m actually not trying to do a hard sell. If listing it with an agent might be better for them. I actually don’t think I’m the right buyer for you. I actually think an agent is better for you. Have you tried being an agent? Have you tried doing this? Have you tried doing that? What happens is is that whenever you start suggesting them other options than you buying it—because they’re on pre-foreclosure list, they’re used to people bombarding them trying to really pitch him to sell that day. When they talk to somebody that honestly says, “I don’t think I’m the right buyer for you,” it kind of puts their guard down, and they could start talking to you as if you’re not trying to sell the house, you’re really just giving them your honest opinion.

They appreciate the transparency more than somebody that’s just looking for that person that’s truly motivated, because I think some wholesalers – if they’re not truly motivated, they’ll really probably just walk away from the deal. But a lot of the times, if you just build that rapport, and you’re there, and you call them up and just see how things are going, they appreciate that more than somebody that’s just trying to buy their house.

Theo Hicks: Okay, Emilio, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?

Emilio Basa: I would say be uncomfortable, which means I talked to a lot of newer investors, and a lot of them, they’re making that first call or they’re doing their first walkthrough, and sometimes — I know a ton of them that have a bunch of calls that they have to make and they just stare at the phone… Or bandit signs. They have to put up a bandit sign. I was just talking to somebody the other day. They ordered 50 bandit signs and they were ready to go and then they went out that night and literally they didn’t do it. A month later, the bandit signs are still in their garage, just sitting there. That’s the thing – be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because when you start off with one thing like wholesaling, wholesaling is to me the—I don’t wanna say kindergarten. It’s like elementary. It’s like the basics of real estate investing.

What you’re going to do is you get out of your comfort zone and then when you start graduating up to other things, like when you start doing your first flip, or doing your first rental, you’re going to do things that are very uncomfortable, and you have to get used to that, because by you being uncomfortable, you’re stretching out and you’re growing as a person, as an investor.

Theo Hicks: Okay, are you ready for the best ever lightning round?

Emilio Basa: Sure, do it.

Theo Hicks: Okay.

Break: [00:16:48] to [00:17:39]

Theo Hicks: Okay, Emilio, what is the best book you’ve recently read?

Emilio Basa: A book by Gino Wickman called Traction. That’s a really, really good book. I just started it, I haven’t finished it, but it’s a really good book about scaling out your business and trying to put a team together and creating a vision for your business. It’s just been a great book so far.

Theo Hicks: If your business were to collapse today, what would you do next?

Emilio Basa: I’ll be honest, I’d probably would start the same business. I’d just starting another same business. That, or — I was a musician before. If I could try and make money as a musician, then I might go back to that.

Theo Hicks: Tell me about your best wholesale deal, your biggest assignment fee. Kind of walk us through how you found it, who you sold it to, things like that.

Emilio Basa: Well, I got two that are tied. My biggest one was in Detroit. It was a double close. We made about 26k on that one. That came off of a bandit sign lead. That was an amazing deal because I didn’t even have to negotiate the price. He said his price and I was like, “Holy crap, that’s a really good price.” I was like, “I’ll meet you there tomorrow,” and he met me up there. I built the rapport… It took them a week to sign it, but that was a pretty good one.

But I think honestly one of my favorite deals, my best deal that I remember was – I do virtual wholesaling too, and I was doing deals out in Washington, out in Seattle. I wasn’t doing houses, I was doing vacant land. I remember I just bought the course on how to do virtual wholesaling land, and then three months later, this deal pops up and that one was a $20,000 assignment off of virtual wholesaling.

Theo Hicks:  What is the best way you like to give back?

Emilio Basa: I give a lot of advice over the phone. I don’t really mentor, but I get a lot of wholesalers that are new to the industry, and I love to just talk to them about how to grow their business. Any advice I could give. Oh plus, I also have a YouTube channel where I cover Detroit real estate investing. It’s https://www.youtube.com/quickpropertysolutions. I also look out for out of state investors that are buying in Detroit, because a lot of them get burned or get their money stolen or something like that. I created a YouTube channel where I’m starting to give advice on that channel as well.

Theo Hicks: And then lastly, what’s the best ever place to reach you probably just reach you?

Emilio Basa: Probably just reach out to me — I think the YouTube. I’m very active on YouTube. If anybody was interested, they could go on there and leave a comment, or just go to my website, http://www.quickpropertysolutions.co/, or the YouTube, which is https://www.youtube.com/quickpropertysolutions. I’m on Instagram too and Facebook, so they could pretty much find me anywhere.

Theo Hicks: Well, thanks for joining us, Emilio. I really enjoyed our conversation; lots of interesting takeaways. I definitely like your mindset. It seems like you go against what most other wholesalers do, which is helping you be successful.

A few of the things I hold from this was I liked how you mentioned how some wholesalers see a bandit sign, they want to yank it out of the ground and throw in the trash, light it on fire.

Emilio Basa: Oh my God…

Theo Hicks: Whereas for you, you actually call them up because you found a lot of success doing joint ventures with wholesalers. It’s kind of like 70% to 80% of your deals have been JVs, you put your deals on social media, and you’ll have people reaching out to you that actually happen to be wholesalers, and those are people that will do deals with.

You also mentioned that you do text blasting, so you kind of walked us through that and why it is kind of a much lower cost per lead.

You said if you use a Prop Stream as a software, you talked about how to create the list, make sure you’re targeting a specific county, find motivated sellers list, like pre-foreclosures, delinquencies, divorces, absentee owners; you can filter by the number of bedrooms. You’ve personally filtered out all the LLCs, you only want to target individual users. Then you export that list into the text processing software that will send text messages to all those people.

I also liked how you said whenever a wholesaler calls you from a bandit signs or whatever, you’ll save their name in your phone as wholesaler. So whenever you need a deal or you have a deal, you just have your own kind of customized text blasts with your cell phone, you just blast all the wholesalers in your phone.

You also mentioned that when you’re talking to them, you don’t do the hard sale. Instead, you kind of just build a rapport and be honest, even if that means that you believe you don’t have the best option for them. By doing that, you found that they open up a lot more and are willing to work with you a lot more.

Lastly, your best ever advice, which was to be uncomfortable and you gave a lot of examples about that.

Emilio, again, thank you so much for joining us today. Best Ever listeners, as always, thank you for listening, have a best ever day and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.

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