Welcome to The Deal Pen, a podcast that digs into the details of untold stories from crafty real estate investors. And now, here's your host Avi Rasowsky

Okay, welcome to this episode of The Deal Pen podcast. We're here with Larry Goins. How you doing, Larry? What's up? It's great to talk to you, as always. Good to see your face. We're usually just talking on the phone, but I'll tell you this before we dive in. I don't think I've shared this with you. The first time I met you in person was at a, I think it was a Metroliner RIA meeting, and it was very surreal for me because I had known your name for several years before that. We moved to Charlotte about 2019, and I just knew you as a guy that I learned a lot of stuff from about creative financing. And I want to dive into a lot of your experience. But when I first met you in person, I actually didn't realize you were in Charlotte or in the Charlotte area. So it was very cool to meet you. And I'd love to just dig into a series of things that you've been through in your career, because I think a lot of people can learn from you.

Avi Rasowsky

Nice. Yeah, man. I'll be glad to share whatever I can. OK.

Larry Goins

One of the first things, I know you used to have, you know, you used to share a lot of content and do a lot of sort of education for investors. And one of the first ways that I ran into you was, I think you called it filthy riches, something like that.

That's a model that I didn't, I didn't invent the model. Okay. Just tell people I perfected it. There you go. But it's basically a model where you buy cheap houses and then turn around and sell them for three to six times what you paid for it with owner financing. And you don't touch them. If you're going to rent a property, it has to be what we call fit and safe. You have to make sure that it has water, the electrical works, it has heat, all that good stuff, rails on the deck and everything. But you can sell a property in any condition, it doesn't really matter. So I used to use a $5,000 house as an example, but you can be aware from, I've done it as cheap as $500 and as expensive as 50,000, but a good low number for somebody to start is a $5,000 house. You sell it for $29,900, you get a few thousand dollars down. And you're getting $400 or $500 a month coming in for the next 15, 20, 30 years, depending on how you structure it. A good friend of mine, he calls them slow flips. And he's got a little different of a model where you buy a $30,000 house, you sell it for $90,000, and you get $5,000 down and you finance $85,000 for for 30 years, right? And you have, you know, 875 a month coming in. So, you know, it's all kind of in between, anywhere in between there, 5,000, 50,000, whatever, you know, the numbers work where you can make anywhere from 30% to triple digit returns.

Now, it's a beautiful thing. And that, yes, that's exactly what attracted me to, I think it was either a webinar or something that I listened to, maybe a podcast where you talked about it. There's got to be a number that it doesn't make sense after you get above a certain number. Have you ever kind of run into that where you don't look at houses over a certain number?

Well, quite frankly, the cheaper of a house you can buy, the higher your return is going to be. Because I don't care if you charge 7% interest, 9%, 12% interest, you're making your money on the spread, right? You've got $5,000 in it, but then you finance $27,000 or $28,000, right? So you're really making your money because you're collecting a payment in interest based on, say, $27,000. If you sold it for $30,000, you got a few down. You're getting your interest and payments off of $27,000, but you really only have, even if you got $3,000 down, $5,000 minus $3,000 is $2,000, plus another $1,000 in closing costs, you got $3,000 in the deal. Right. So you're making a huge return. You could actually do it for zero interest. In fact, I remember times when I would advertise properties and I would buy a property for, say, five grand and advertise it for 30. And I would say, OK, we're financing it for thirty thousand dollars and 10 percent for every thousand dollars you put down. I'll lower your interest rate by one percent. You put ten grand down and I'll give you zero percent interest.

Right? Yep. Yeah. No, I love it. It's, uh, yeah, you're making exactly, you're making the money on the spread and whatever equity you have. And if it's all equity, it's, you can, you can create whatever terms you want. Uh, there's a series of questions that may have popped into people's heads as they hear you talk about that. Number one is how'd you learn how to do this and how'd you get into it? And number two is where, where in the world do you find a $5,000 house? Um, and maybe you can touch on all that stuff.

It's okay. How did I get into it? I've been in real estate really for 35 years, probably close to 1000 properties, we still buy 30, 40, 50 a month, or not a month, but a year. I remember, for many, many years, we were buying over 100 of them a year. But now we probably buy 30, 40, sometimes 50 a year. And I do a lot of direct mail. And we can get into marketing if you want to do that. But in looking for cash flow, but not having to deal with tenants, trash, termites and toilets, or taxes, insurance repairs and maintenance, you know, the seller financing is the easiest way to do it. And number one, I hate rehabs. I've done rehabs, done a lot of them. I used to be a GC, a general contractor, but I literally hate rehabs, don't want to do them. not gonna do them. I would rather sell a property at a discount and make a little bit on it and let somebody else do the rehab, right?

I totally agree with you. Can you explain a little bit of the logic of why you choose that or why you've chosen that over your career?

Because it's a whole lot easier, I shouldn't say easier, simpler to handle paperwork and people than it is contractors and labor and material, right? I would rather, let's just look at it like this. I also love wholesaling. I wholesale a lot of properties, okay? We've had three closings this week, okay? But when you're wholesaling, if I buy it today at 10 o'clock and sell it at 10.30, I'm paid The money's done, right? The money's in the bank, right? The money's in the bank, it's over, right? If I buy a property in rehab, I do all this work, I market, I negotiate, I get everything lined up, and I close on it. Now the work begins if I'm doing a fixing flip, right? I got to deal with contractors and, you know, contractors and labor and material and change orders and stuff's on back order and contractors don't show up and they want to draw and they're fighting on the job. I'm not going to deal with any of that.

What about the city? I guess maybe you're not buying a lot in the city limits, but city can get in your way, right?

That's so true. In fact, I love small town USA. We're both in the Charlotte MSA, Metropolitan Statistical Area. I live in Rock Hill. Our office is in Lake Wylie. You live in Charlotte. And we're in the Charlotte MSA. But I typically go out two, three, four counties. I market in 15, I believe it is, counties. I'm in York, Lancaster, Chester, Kershaw, Chesterfield, Union counties in South Carolina. And in North Carolina, I'm in Lincoln, Rutherford, Cleveland, Catawba, Burke, Hallwell, Alexander, Iredale. I believe those are

Yeah, you're basically surrounding the whole market. Yeah, I know all those areas for sure. Right, right. So if somebody were to, let's say, learn from your experiences and try to do this either in Charlotte or in Nashville area or any city that seems to be a good opportunity for investing, what is a How do you even look at values? Because I'll tell you where my question is coming from is when I first started doing this and I was buying in Gaffney and in Marshville and in Statesville, and Statesville is not even small anymore, but I was buying in some of these surrounding counties and towns all around Charlotte. But there were challenges that I didn't really know. You may look at a house, you're like, oh my God, that's only 40,000, but that's actually the value, and so you have to get it for 10 or 15. How do you establish and maybe think back to when you were first learning, how do you establish what is the true value in a neighborhood, and how do you figure out what's a good deal in some of these lower-priced markets?

Well, I use a very exclusive software online program called Zillow.

Yeah, I don't have a license for that one yet.

It's free guys, it's free. That's what we use to pull comps. You can even pull rent comps. You can click, you can select for sale, sold, or for rent. right? So, and also PropStream, we pull lists from PropStream. And that's another thing that we can talk about as well, PropStream, because we pull lists from PropStream and my list criteria is very simple. Under 100,000, not owner-occupied, free and clear. Okay? So, every property that I've talked to the seller, every time I get a seller on the phone, I know it's a free and clear property and they don't live there. So number one, it being free and clear, I don't have to worry about them having to pay off a mortgage or get to a certain price because, you know, they're asking 75 and they owe 65. Right. I don't have to worry about that because it's free and clear. So the other thing is if they say, I won't take a penny less than 75. Great. I can give you 75. However, instead of receiving all your money up front in cash, I can buy it on the installment sale. You told me you're a landlord. You obviously like cash flow. So I can pay you the $75,000 and buy it on the installment sale. Instead of receiving all your equity up front in cash, you're going to get monthly payments plus interest. Would you like to see more? And they always typically say yes. So, okay, look, let me just run some numbers and I just pull out my financial calculator and I say, and I run the numbers on 75,000 and say 6% or 5% or whatever. And first I asked them, I say, if you put your money in the bank, what's the bank gonna pay you? Oh, I don't know, 1% or two. I tell you what, I'll give you 5%, right? And we'll do it for 240 months. And the payment's going to be $494.97, right? So you told me you were renting it out for $650. Well, $5 to $650, that's $150 lower. But now you're not responsible for taxes, insurance repairs, and maintenance. I'm dealing with all that, right? And you remember that roof you told me you had to put on five years ago? That took all your rental income for the last five years for that roof. You don't have to worry about that anymore. This is mailbox money. In addition to that, because you are a landlord, when you sell this property, you're going to have a tax bill. Well, with the installment sale, the IRS says, that when you sell on the installment sale and it's an investment property, you only pay taxes on the money in the year you receive it. So your tax bill is going to be spread out over 20 years. And I know you also told me you're 75 years old. If, God forbid, something were to happen to you, your heirs will keep getting that $4.94 a month every single month until all of the Oh, wait a minute, I messed up.

I added it all up, right? $494,000 for 20 years.

Right, I added it all up, and then I tell them what the total payback is gonna be, right? Until all $118,792.03 has been paid back.

And if they're a landlord that may just have been looking at rent, they may not have seen, wow, that's actually quite a lot of money.

Right. And that's why I say, if God forbid something were to happen to you, your spouse or your kids or whatever, would keep getting that money. And I'm on the phone and I'm snapping my fingers every single month. You know, all 118,792 dollars and three cents has been paid back. Love it, right?

Yeah.

It's mailbox money.

Do you tend to find, so obviously you've got a couple of different types of non-owner occupied properties. You've got the owners who were professional landlords, maybe they had a small or large portfolio, but then you've got the person that had one house, they don't live there anymore, and they're not really a landlord. Who do you find is more open to seller financing conversations like that, and how do those different types of conversations go based on each personality?

I'm going to say it's the landlord property, and I'll tell you why. Because if it's an heir property, they inherited the property, there's usually a brother or sister or a couple of spouse, not spouses, but siblings involved. And the problem with 494.97 is it's got to be split two or three ways. And nobody ever wants to do that. I'm going to get a dollar in that 298 a month.

Right, it's not enough to get out of bed for.

No, no, no. So the landlords and the landlords like, in fact, you know, I mean, I just and I think you know about this deal. I bought it's been about a year now. I bought a self storage facility for one point one million dollars and bought it on terms like that for 30 years. She's, of course, fully assumable, non qualifying. and no prepayment penalty. My payment's 5,000 a month and the property's bringing in almost 9,000 a month.

I'm just gonna ask you, because I'm curious, did you buy it with a retirement account? No.

I wish I would have if I would have had that much money in the 401k that I put down, I put down 15%, 165. But I didn't have that available cash in my 401k. And the reason is, that's another good topic, is if I bought it in my IRA, I have to pay UDFI or UBIT, right? Unrelated debt finance income because it has debt on it. However, a 401k does not have UDFI. So you can buy a property, you know, and put $1,000, 2000 down or whatever. And you don't have to pay UDFI in a 401k. Now I'm no CPA, talk to your CPA about it. But that's my understanding.

Or talk to your self-directed custodian, they'll probably know more. There you go, right, right. So when did you start, because I'm learning a lot of this stuff as I go, at what point in your journey did you start to think about retirement accounts? Because you've been doing it, what, you said 35 years or so?

Yeah, and it hasn't been that long. I've had accounts at an equity trust, I remember having an account back when it was Mid-Ohio Securities, when they were a small organization. And over the years, I've had accounts with them, with Equity Trust, with Quest Finance, Quest Trust now. and then also Camaplan. But I eventually moved everything over to Camaplan. I don't travel and speak and coach and teach real estate anymore. I sold that business and I just have HSA, IRA, and 401k, and my wife has the same. So, well, she has IRA and 401k. But yeah, I don't have a need to have multiple custodians anymore, so I moved everything over to Camaplan. Okay, nice. And I know the owners of CamaPlan, been with CamaPlan for many, many years. And I really like the way they handle everything.

How do you spell Cama? C-A-M-A-P-L-A-N. OK, nice. So having been out of the coaching and teaching business for a while, tell me a little bit about whatever you're comfortable sharing that that side of the business, teaching other investors. You were in that for many years, right?

Yeah, I've written multiple books. My first book was getting started in real estate day trading, how to buy and sell houses the same day using the internet. I was doing virtual investing or virtual wholesaling before Chris Chico even came up with the term virtual wholesaling, right? And I kid him about that every once in a while. But anyway, yeah, I wrote that book. And then I wrote another one called HUD Homes Half Off. We used to buy a lot of HUD houses. Right now is not a good time to buy HUD houses. There's just not a lot of them out there. But the market will eventually turn again, and there'll be a lot of HUD houses. I remember when we were buying a lot of HUD houses, In North Carolina, there was 150, 200 of them every day, and South Carolina the same. And now, you know, you're lucky if you see 10 or 15 a day on the HUD website, hudhomestore.com. So but the market will turn, you know, and they'll eventually be more HUD houses, but right now is not the time.

What do you see, obviously, you've seen a few cycles, what do you think the opportunity is for investors in terms of what niches, and maybe it's just direct to seller, it has been for a while, I guess, what categories of deal finding sources do you feel are, obviously, you're going after 100K or less and the criteria you talked about in some of these outlying counties, but do you see there being another wave of HUD foreclosures, or maybe some loan modifications you can take over. I know you're not doing subject two, so maybe not, but what's your thought on all that?

I give you all my sub two deals.

And I appreciate that very much.

So yeah, I don't care for sub two deals. I mean, it's kind of an art and you perfected that and I don't really want to deal with that. But, um, but yeah, I mean, we do a lot of direct mail. We mail on average 8,000 postcards a week. That's a week, not a month. Yeah. So it costs us about 15,000 a month. Okay. Wow. But our average wholesale fee is over $30,000. Okay. Uh, when we wholesale a property and, and, and we'll do two, three, four a month, we, I told you we had three closings this week. Um, One property we sold, we sold two properties to the same person, actually. One of them we made 5,000, the other one we made 75,000, right? Now, actually, one we made 5,000, one we made 90,000 of, okay? Not a bad week. It was supposed to be 75 and 20. But we modified the numbers for them because they're keeping one and going to flip the other one. So their tax bill is going to be cheaper on the flip flip. And that was very smart of them to say.

Very smart.

Yeah, I like the numbers a little bit, you know.

So we wanted there just to make sure people understand they wanted their basis on the one that they were. Can you explain what they did?

Yes, they were going to pay a wholesale fee of $20,000 on one and $75,000 on the other. So instead of $20,000 and $75,000, they wanted to change it to $90,000 on the one they were flipping and $5,000 on the one they were keeping. Because? Because so their cost basis would be higher in the one they were flipping and they would have less profit. It was the same money. Yeah. It's just their profit would be less on the other one. Very smart, yeah. So their tax bill would be less.

And their flip is going to take them, what, a few months maybe? Much less than a year?

Right, right, right. Very smart. Might even delay into next year. It would be even better for them, delay another year, right? Yeah, we probably average over $30,000. Last time we looked, it was right at $30,000. But we've had some pretty fat deals come in recently. So I know the average now is over $30,000.

That's great. How do you decide? Do you have any rules for your company that says, OK, You know, if we get this kind of deal, we want to keep it and or create a seller finance note versus wholesaling it. How do you determine which one you want to do?

So here's here's what we basically do is. Every once in a while, I'll do a deal in my IRA. Right. My IRA or my 401k or my HSA. Right. So if I have a deal that will fit for that, whether it's to seller finance or to wholesale, to build up that account, we do some deals in that, right? It's not a lot. I don't do a lot of deals, enough deals to where it's going to trigger UBIT, right? I don't want to do that. I don't want to create a business in my retirement account and pay UBIT, but I'll do one, maybe two flips. The rest of the time, we're just lending money in our IRA or 401k.

Okay, nice. Yeah. You said something to me yesterday, and this is on a phone call, so whatever you are okay revealing, but you made a comment that really surprised me. You said you never bought a deal with private lender money. Am I getting that right?

Yeah, I've never been one to go out and raise private money. I know a lot of guys that do. I think you do that as well. Yeah. Yeah. But I've never been one to go out there and do it. I've just for one, I've been really nervous about it because I don't want to ever get in a situation to where I wouldn't be able to pay somebody back. And a lot of and you and I had this conversation yesterday. We know a lot of maybe not a lot, but we know guys that have gotten into the business that have borrowed private money. And they end up, you know, do you know, a deal goes bad or whatever, or they get more money coming at them, then they have deal flow, right. And if you have more money coming at you, then you have deal flow, you're trying to keep the money on the street, you end up making bad deals. You end up making bad deals and you end up doing deals that you wouldn't normally do. And the worst part is it's not even your money. So I've never done that. I have borrowed private money from my father-in-law and from my wife, but that's it.

Okay, there you go. They know you pretty well. And then the other sort of financing would be the seller finance deals, right?

You essentially are borrowing from a seller. I've always enjoyed wholesaling. It's quick. I'm a deal junkie. I like doing deals. I like turning deals. You're working, you're negotiating, you're getting them to accept your offer, you're doing your due diligence all the way up to the closing, and boom, 30 grand hits your account. And sometimes, two in a day, right?

Yeah, not too bad.

It's really cool. I enjoy that. I remember a time when we were doing 5, 10, 15 deals a month. We're not doing that now, but it's kind of addicting. I like it. I enjoy it. But there again, let me say this about wholesaling. I'm in the South Carolina market as well. South Carolina just passed a law. It's illegal to wholesale. I still wholesale. I still wholesale.

That's an interesting, obviously very recent update that I wasn't even thinking about until you just said it. How did that change your business, if at all? Maybe it didn't. I don't know.

The only thing it changed. Let me first explain the law. OK. Yeah. South Carolina passed a law and there's a guy out there named Gary Pickering. I believe it is. Yeah. Commissioner. He's an attorney, but he's on the on the commission. Real Estate Commission. He's an attorney. And what South Carolina basically did was they said in order And here's the way they wrote the law intentionally. In order to be a wholesaler, in order to wholesale properties, you must be licensed. In that same law, it states any licensed real estate agent or broker is prohibited from wholesaling. So that pretty much eliminates everything. And they said, you've got to have equitable interest Right? Well, a contract is not equitable interest. Okay? So what Gary suggests, and I think he even teaches this, what Gary suggests is buy the property on an installment sale, even if it's a short term installment sale, and then turn around and sell that property. Right?

Yep. Get control of the deal.

Let me tell you what we do. Okay. Let me tell you what we do. I keep it very simple, okay? I keep my buying and selling separate. Okay. I negotiate, you know, I market, negotiate, get a deal under contract, get it to closing. We close on it, pay for it, own it free and clear, and then we put it out to our list. and then we market the property.

There's the difference then. You're keeping yourself safe because you get the deed and you actually close and then you only sell something you own, right?

That is correct. I don't tell anybody. Now, I will tell you, I have done this. I'll send a realtor out to look at a property And the realtor will, you know, oh, yeah, this is a good deal right here. You know, let me know when you're ready. I might be interested. But I didn't send the realtor out there to sell it to him. Right. The realtor out to tell me what is the ARV on this property? Because it's out of my wheelhouse. Yeah. Yeah. Send them out. And then, hey, when you get ready, you let me know. Right. Yeah. I've had that happen. Very rare. But I've had it happen. But our typical model is buy it, close on it, own it free and clear, then we'll, whatever we need to do, put a lockbox on it, change the locks, clean it out, whatever, then put it out to our list. But we're not actively talking about it, telling people, sending anybody out, sending out an email, posting it or anything until we own it free and clear.

Yeah, I love that because I think obviously I don't know all the context behind why they passed the law, but I'm assuming a large part of it was in the name of consumer protection, specifically homeowners that were getting jacked around a little bit by people that were not closing. And so if you're closing, you're basically doing the right thing by the homeowner. You're doing what you said you were going to do. Simple as that. And so I love hearing that. And and hopefully it cleans up the industry a little bit with with the new law.

Well, you're going to start seeing a lot more laws sweep the nation. You know, it's already in Illinois. I think it's illegal as well. Yeah, that's what I've heard. And there's some other, you know, Ohio as Ohio, I think, came up with where if you're going to wholesale and market a property, you have to say, I have a contract I'm selling. Yeah, on property. Well, South Carolina address that they said, you can't market a contract without referencing an underlying property. So therefore, that makes that elite. Okay. Yeah, they're a little bit tougher. Yeah, yeah. But you know, listen, I'm okay with it. I'm fine with it. In fact, we've been double closing. For three or four years, we we, we probably haven't assigned a contract in three or four years. You know, we've been double closing on stuff for years, North and South Carolina.

not nervous at all about the buyer knowing your profit, it sounded like. There was a good conversation there. Do most of the time your buyers know what you're making or how do you address that conversation if they don't want to buy it, they don't need to buy it? I mean, what's your approach to someone that wants to look inside your pocket and see how much you're making?

Well, I've got a theory about that. It's not, not everybody agrees with me, but my theory is whether I'm buying or selling, It shouldn't make any difference how much I make as long as the numbers work for you. Yep. Just like it shouldn't make any difference how much you make as long as the numbers work for me.

Right? Right. Yeah, that's plain and simple. I love it.

As long as it works, that's fine. I don't have a problem. I just we're closing today on a property that I bought from a guy that he had a tenant in it. And the tenant was a family friend. And the guy did not want, he didn't want the tenant to know he was selling. He wouldn't tell them. I went over did a walkthrough, you know, we have these shirts that say inspector on the back. And, you know, hey, I need to do a walkthrough, take some pictures. And, and ends up we bought the property for 45,000. Then we sent the tenant a letter, you know, to, to let them know, and we own the property. Now you can look it up in public records. We don't rent properties. So, you know, you're going to have, you know, we're going to give you 30 days to move out.

Okay.

We'll give you, you know, I think we were going to give them a thousand dollars or something if they could be out by the end of that month. Okay. They had to let me know in the next five days. So we talked and she said, well, can I buy it? Okay. Well, we're going to sell it for a hundred thousand. She said, will you give me a little bit of time to see if I can get a loan? Okay. So we're closing today. She bought the property for $100,000. We gave her up to a $5,000 buyer credit for closing cost or whatever. I think it actually, the bank only allowed us to go up to 3%, so $3,000. We're closing today. We bought it for $45,000. We sold it to her for $100,000. The guy I bought it from could have done the same thing, but he didn't know he was selling it. He could have done the exact same thing. I made as much or more than he made.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. No, that's cool, though. And it sounded like she or her family loved the home and loved it enough to buy it. So that's great.

You've been there for years. She kept it up really good. Nice area. It's a double wide mobile home. Yeah. And she kept it up very well. You know, very nice lady, you know, very nice lady.

But I just I want to touch on that a little bit because a lot of people are kind of nervous about the manufactured houses, right? Single wides, double wides. And I saw you put something I think Facebook knew we were talking on the phone. So they sent me one of your posts that said you put out a triple wide, which I don't come across those very often. But I think you just put a triple wide out there in Florence. Is that right?

Lawrence, South Carolina, and all a triple wide is it's a double wide that has a factory made room addition added on to it. Got it. Okay. So yeah, we bought that property for 85. We're selling it for 129. Nine. It's a nice double wide on about, I don't know, maybe one or two acres. And it's it's waterfront property.

I saw that beautiful.

Yeah. And I feel like a person could go in and probably put, you know, 15,000 in it 20,000 paint carpet, it's got a couple soft spots in the floor, and do floor covering and paint and spruce it up, get the yard cleaned up, and 15 or 20 in it, and they could probably sell it for close to 200.

That's amazing. What is your mix right now? I don't know if you know off the top of your head of stick build houses versus manufactured.

I don't really know the mix, but it's probably maybe half and half-ish. Okay, okay. something like that. I don't shy away from them at all. Yeah, they don't scare me at all. Mobile homes don't scare me. In fact, one of those two properties where I said one was five and one was 90,000. You know, the one with the 5000 I bought that one for 80,000 no money down on our financing. over 15 or 20 years. And the people I sold it to, they're going to actually probably either rent out rooms as transitional housing, or maybe even have it for, you know, it's like two miles from where they live. So they'll have it for one of their kids too.

That's awesome. What should people be aware of? Because I got into, and I still have, probably I would say a third of our portfolio is manufactured and I love them, right? One of the reasons I love them is because it's actually harder to sell them. It's harder to get bank loans on them. And so sellers are oftentimes more open to work with you either on terms or price discounts. What would you say though, having dealt with them for many years about the longevity of a manufactured house and what do we need to watch out for in terms of the quality of construction if somebody does want to get into buying them?

Wow. Well, the manufactured home community, uh, the industry says they only last about 25 years. Okay. So if it was built in 2000, you know, it's about trash, right? Yeah. That's not correct. Okay. It was not correct. I, I got off the phone with the guy earlier. He said it was a 60 something model. Okay. And I sold one, one time, I believe if I'm not mistaken, It was maybe even a late fifties something model. I sold one and the guy, I bought it from the guy's brother because the guy passed away, but he was living in it up until he passed away. Okay. It blows me away how long they'll last if you take care of them.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. I was going to say, I've seen some in the 2000, 1990s that are beautiful.

Nineties, eighties. Yeah. We bought them fifties, sixties, seventies.

I wonder why they say that. So you're saying the actual industry associations are putting that out there, saying 25-year life?

And the banks hang on to that, so I don't have to make loans on them older than that.

Interesting. Okay. I wanted to ask you about, are you okay on time? Oh, yeah, I'm good. Okay. I want to ask you about asset classes that you've been in because you mentioned storage facilities you've got and other, so single family houses are the bulk of what you focus on, but do you do other asset classes as well or have you dabbled in those?

Yeah. Over the years, I've owned Shoney's Restaurant.

Okay.

multiple Dollar General stores where Dollar General was my tenant, Shoney's was my tenant. And I've owned self-storage facilities, some mobile home parks, things like that. I still own a couple of self-storage facilities as well. And yeah, those are different kind of asset classes. We've also bought land and subdivided and sold it. Okay, nice.

And it sounds like your bread and butter, though, is one house at a time. Is that or maybe portfolios?

Typically, yes. You know, one house at a time. That's where you're going to get your better deals. Yeah. Yeah. And listen. I'm to the point now, I used to be a very strong negotiator, but now I'm of the opinion, if it's meant to be, if it's in God's plan, it's going to work out. If not, I'm not worried about it, right? Yeah. And the people we deal with, they love us. I got that house in Florence. Yeah. The lady who I bought it from, she wanted to move to West Virginia. Okay. And she wanted to move to West Virginia. And when I walked in, I saw this lamp sitting on the table. And I started talking about this lamp. And I said, my wife and I just went up to Lake Lure a couple months ago, specifically looking for these kind of lamps, because there was a shop up there. And we talked about that for five minutes. And I get to the office the other day and there's a box there for me and I open it up and it's one of those lamps. That's cool. It's from her. That's awesome. It was great. You know, it was awesome.

Well, that speaks volumes about, yeah, she really, she felt like she was being helped and she wanted to do something back to help you. So that's very cool. And obviously, Lake Lure, just even hearing that these days is tough to hear. I'm sure that, is that shop even there? You know what happened to it?

I don't really know. I haven't been up there since. I hear it's pretty well devastated.

Yeah, it's been incredibly sad to see what's going on there, which makes me kind of reference what you said earlier in God's plan. I know you've got obviously strong faith. Does that play a big part in your business?

It does. It didn't used to. I've been a Christian for many, many years, but I didn't used to put God first. Now, I try to do that. Every morning, we have a short meeting. We got a small team. Candice does our dispo and transaction coordinating, and her mom is our accounting manager, and then we have two VAs in the Philippines. That's it, right? I do try to, every morning we have a little meeting, then we have a short devotion, and then we have a prayer board, and we take turns praying over people, and then we talk too throughout the day. There's some people that are battling cancer. I got a phone call the other day from a guy I had met as a seller. He called me to sell his property. ended up not only did we not buy his property, But we, he had a son who was, was terminally ill. We ended up eventually paying for the son's funeral when he passed away and ended up sending, sending this guy money to help him out with groceries and pay for kerosene during the winter and stuff like that. And, you know, he kept me updated about what was going on and, and he found this organization that helps veterans. you know, like make repairs to their house or they eventually tore his house down and built him a brand new house. And he called me the other day to let me know that they just finished. I mean, that's cool. This is like this started like two or three years ago. Okay. And now this guy who called me originally as a seller, who's probably in his 70s, you know, we've helped him out over the years. And this other organization helped him out by building him a brand new small house, but a brand new house for him to move into. Oh, that's very cool.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's amazing. It's yeah. It makes me think a lot of people don't, if you're not in the off market real estate world, You may not understand. A lot of people think, oh, you're just buying houses for cheap from people. But we're dealing with situations that can be really chaotic, and people need help from investors. And we don't have to be just the bad guy, right?

A lot of people think you're just trying to rip me off. Listen, I'm totally upfront with people. Yeah. I'll tell people if you were a seller, I would say, I mean, the only reason in the world somebody like you would sell to somebody like me is if you're looking for a quick cash sale to sell below market to get it. Does that sound like you?

Yeah.

How much more upfront can you be about it?

Right.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I say, well, the best thing you can do is spruce it up a little bit and list it with a realtor.

There you go. Yeah, if they've got the time and willingness and resources to do it, then there you go. Exactly. You talked about your team a little bit, and I remember hearing this. I think it was on a podcast that you did with maybe Mitch Steven, because I remember listening to one that you did with him, about how you include your team throughout the day and specifically remotely. Do you know what I'm referencing there?

Yes, I do. We have an office building. It's in Lake Wylie. And we used to occupy it's like almost 10,000 square feet. We used to occupy about a third of that, right? At one time, we had 26 employees between the education business and the real estate business. Okay. But after during and after COVID, we decided to go virtual. Okay. So we all work out of our homes now. And Everybody is on Zoom all day long. So in fact, you know, when we signed up for this, this podcast, well, I think I was already off Zoom then, but every day we're on Zoom, everybody logs in. And if I want to speak to somebody, we're all muted. If I want, so we can make our phone calls or whatever.

Yeah.

But if we want to say something to somebody, we just unmute and say, hey, Candice. Hey, Gene. Hey, Donna. Hey, Teresa. I got a question for you. Are you available? And they'll go something like, I'm on the phone, or one second, or whatever.

Yeah. That's cool. So it's like you're in the office together. You can see and talk to each other.

Right. Very cool. Right. We're in the office. We see each other. We talk to each other throughout the day. So, it's just like if you and I were on Zoom all day long doing our own thing, but if I wanted to say something to you, I'd just unmute and start talking.

Yeah, I love it. It's got to build camaraderie and just collaboration more so than just knowing, well, you can call if you want to and not really see him.

Our VAs have been with us for years. Okay. right? And that's unheard of, you know, in the VA space for real estate.

And where are they located?

Philippines. Okay. They're both in the Philippines, but not even close to each other.

And what are they doing? What's their role in the company?

I've got one VA, which is a lead manager. Every week it comes in, You know, she handles that lead, updates it, puts all the information in the CRM, which we use Podio. She does all that and she updates leads. She'll re-engage leads. If it's somebody that maybe we've talked to 3, 6, 12 months earlier, she'll re-engage them and try to get them interested. Hey, did you ever sell your property? Are you still interested in selling it? And then And then the other one does marketing for the properties and she'll send out the blast. You probably got a blast today from us.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I get them all the time. Yeah.

So, she'll send out the blast about properties and send out the emails about properties and post them on Facebook. And she also posts like our office building, we're not occupying it anymore. So, we have We still have two units left to rent. We've got 20 units at the office, but we have two available, and one of those is our small office, which we moved to. Once I get everything else rented, if we have somebody else that wants to rent another space, I'll move out of mine. Yeah, I get it. We go there one day a week. We go to be together and have lunch together or something, but we're only there about a half a day usually. And then we go home and work from home the rest of the day.

Nice. Now, are you going to properties yourself still or no?

I do occasionally. I like to get out of the house. Yeah. I like to get out and go out and look at properties. I keep a list of what I call pre-looks. Okay. Like somebody will say, you know, you can't buy a house over the phone. Just come down and see it. Yeah, right. So and I'm also looking for some land right now to maybe do a tiny home village or a long term RV park. Yeah, not a campground where people come in for two or three days or a weekend, but where I can put in multiple pads and rent out spaces for RV or camper for 500 $600 a month.

And they're paying, they would pay monthly.

And they would pay monthly. There's a lot that there's a lot of people go into that.

I hear about it a lot. Yes.

There's a there's one up 321 off of Startown exit.

I think I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. 321 RV park. dot com or something like that. Anyway, it's a really, really nice one. They've got about 70 pads. And most all of the RVs and campers in there are, you know, $100,000 campers. Yeah, it's mostly retired people. that have sold their house, they got a nice camper, and they want to move somewhere close to where the grandkids live. And plus, they can still travel when they want to, but they need a place to park it, and they don't want yard maintenance or anything. There's a lot of them in California. for oil rig workers, like that. There's a lot of them in Texas, a lot of them in Texas.

Specifically in the oil field or?

Not specifically for that, but it just so happens that's what a lot of them are. And a lot of traveling contractors will live in them as well.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that's a, I've never gotten into that model, but I just heard just over the last couple of days, somebody talking about a big deal in Georgia with 300, 400 acres, and one of the uses they're talking about is an RV park. Yeah, that's amazing. There's so many opportunities in real estate, which is obviously part of why you still do it, I'm sure.

I love it. There are so many things you can do. You can buy it, you can wholesale it, you can flip it, you can sell it retail, you can sell it wholesale, you can seller finance it, you can lease option it, you can straight rent it, you can Airbnb it. There's so many things. You can develop it, you can subcontract it.

And we didn't even get into another thing you've been doing, I know, for quite a while. I've heard you talk about it at some of the local meetings is lend money, right? So you've lent money for a while, right?

Yes, we only lend in the Carolinas. But yes, we do hard money lending. My wife does most of that. And she's very, very, very good at it. She knows what she's doing. She You know, she builds relationships with the people. It's not a big business. Yeah. It's not like we're out there raising money to live now and making a spread or making the points and the person who has the money gets the interest. We're only lending our own money.

Okay.

So we're in control of it. And we just keep it small. And it's not like we're doing dozens and dozens of loans, you know, a month or whatever. We just we're just lending our own money. And most of the people who borrow money from us or from her, I should say, are repeat borrowers.

Okay.

the repeat borrowers and build a relationship. And yeah, so we just keep that small. But yeah, it's a good way to earn a decent return on your money. Plus, you get to help other people in the business. And some of her borrowers are first-time flippers, so to speak.

So you may put out a wholesale deal and say, here's this deal. And then you say, we'll also lend you the money to buy it from us. Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's great.

I'll sell a property and they'll go to her to get the finance. And in fact, on all of our wholesale marketing, it says financing is available for this property for a flipper. Nice. Not for owner-occupied, just for an investment. We don't lend to owner-occupied borrowers because that's a whole nother license category and disclosures and all that. We don't do that.

Yeah, that's a whole separate can of worms with Dodd-Frank and regulations and consumer protection and all that stuff. We didn't touch on your music. I see the guitars in the back. You want to tell us a little bit about your just, you've been playing music for a long time?

There's a few more over there. Beautiful. So yeah, I love music. I've been playing since I was a kid.

Okay.

I played in bands over the years, traveled a little bit, not a lot, but traveled a little bit when I was in my twenties, playing music and, um, not on the road or anything, just go to Virginia to play this gig or go here to play this gig. Yeah, it was cool though. So, but I do love music and, uh, enjoy it and try to, I try to pick up, pick it up and play it at least every day or every other day.

What kind of music, anything or?

I like all kinds. I used to kid my mom. I used to say my mom likes both kinds of music, country and Western. But no, I like it. I love classic rock music. You know, that's probably my favorite. OK, nice. Yeah.

Favorite band? Van Halen. OK. Not far. Actually, I think I've seen you wear a Van Halen t-shirt. I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

Oh, man. You probably can't see that one guitar over there, but I'll go grab it if you want me to.

Yeah, let me see, if you don't mind.

Yeah, I'll be right back. I actually designed and built this guitar myself. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, what was the inspiration? Zero zero zero zero one. That's cool. So yeah, I designed it and have a patent on it and built it back in the 80s.

Oh, wow. OK.

Yeah. So I've had it for a while.

That's very cool. Have you designed any more beyond that, or was that the main one?

No, that's it. I have some others like it that I actually had built later. But no, that's the only one.

I'm sure when you play with that, people ask all about it, right?

Yeah, they have no idea where it even came from.

Well, I think one thing that I truly appreciate about you is it seems like you're just living the life that you love living. And there's a lot of stress in the business. There can be, at least. And it seems like you really enjoy what you're doing. And I just respect what you've built. It's really cool to watch.

Well, I appreciate that. It's not always been easy. I mean, there's been times when I've been upside down. There's been times when I've lost money on deals. I've lost as much as $75,000 on a deal before. Twice. One was a fix and flip. That was the last fix and flip I did. I said, I'll never do another one. And I didn't want to do that one. But I got talked into doing it and it was in the middle of winter. We had it almost ready to put on the market. It was going to be put on the market on Saturday. It was the coldest winter we'd had in years. The neighbor called and said, I don't know what's going on with your house, but the windows are all fogged up and there's water coming out the front door.

Okay.

So the upstairs pipe had burst from the freeze. Oh man. And down, down the steps, we had to, we had to rip out the sheet rock from, from waist high on the second floor down.

Oh man.

And you know, all it costs, it costs me my profit plus $75,000. Yeah. Not fun.

Yeah. Yeah. The actual loss was more than that. It was the opportunity that you lost the profit on too.

Right, right, right. And I lost $75,000 on the Shoney's restaurant I sold. Oh, wow. Okay. Shoney's was in financial trouble when I owned it and I had it sold. But then right before closing, I got a call and a letter from a professional commercial lease negotiator wanting to negotiate the lease because Shoney's was in financial trouble.

Okay.

I told my, I told my buyer about it. I told my broker who told my buyer about it and the brokers or the buyer said, we'll still buy it, but we need a discount of X, whatever that was profit plus 75,000. And, and I ended up taking it only because I owed about a million dollars on it. And I wanted to get that million dollar debt paid off.

Okay. You get it off your back.

That's right. And I'm a big proponent of being debt-free. There's a lot of people out there that are doing well and have done more deals and that are doing the BRRRR method. You buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. But in a downturn, if their payment is $800 and they're bringing in $1,100, right? If a COVID hits, $800 payments to have to make when your tenants quit paying. I'm a firm believer in paying stuff off, getting it paid off, right?

Well, that goes right back to your first thing that flashed in my mind when you said that is your calculator where you showed me 494 seller finance. That's a much nicer payment to have than a big bank loan.

That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. been through good times, I've been through bad times, but now I have, I'm to the point where, you know, You want to be debt free as soon as you can, right? I've sold some stuff in the last year. The remaining, whatever remaining consumer debt or whatever that I've had, the only thing I still owe, I owe my wife $250 on a self-storage. And I'd rather pay her interest than somebody else. And then I owe that seller financing on that other self-storage I told you about. That's all the debt that I have.

That's nice. Yeah. I was going to say, what do you like to keep it at? But that's a pretty low ratio. And I hear that from a lot of people that have really built a nice wealth for themselves is that they're just an animal about paying down debt and getting rid of it and being the recipient of interest, not the payer.

Not to mention the fact that It's a peace of mind. Yeah. Knowing that, you know, listen, if whatever happens, you know, your house is paid for whatever happens, your vehicles are paid for. Yeah. Whatever happens, I've got this coming in. I've got that coming in. Yeah. I want it free and clear.

That's awesome. That's it's definitely refreshing to hear that. And it's a direction I'm working towards as well. But yeah, I have taken on private loans to buy stuff. I try to only take loans on stuff that's really tremendously cash flowing. But yeah, it can be dangerous. And like you said, there's a ton of people out there that are big proponents of leveraging up to your eyeballs. And that can be very, very dangerous.

I do have two other things. I don't want to be a liar. I do owe $40,000 on five acres next door that I'm buying. And I still owe $88,000 on my office building, but we're paying $12,000 a month.

Oh, there you go. There you go.

It'll be paid off in June of next year.

I was not going to fact check you, but now, thank you for... I just want to be truthful. You know what I mean? No, I love it. I have some friends that tell me that they paid off their house. And they said, it sometimes doesn't make financial sense if you think about it. Oh, what's the right thing to do? You can make more money on your money. But they say the peace of mind you'll get if you pay off your house is just amazing. And it sounds like you've also achieved that.

That's so true. That's so true. There's no way in the world I would ever do the Bermuda. Yeah. Maybe in my 20s. But still, there's other ways to, you know, I would much rather buy, sell, bank the money, buy, sell, bank the money. Now take some of that money and go out and buy a property free and clear. Yep. Yep. Right.

Yeah, that's for sure. It seems to make a lot of sense and it's a more controlled way where you're controlling it. It's not a bank controlling you.

Sell three, keep one. Sell four, keep one. Sell five, keep one. Yeah. But now you own it free and clear.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Is there anything else that I'm just thinking through? You've got such a vast set of experiences in your career. Anything else that we didn't touch on that you'd like to make sure we cover that people would find helpful?

Well, I think the thing about it is we talk about money. We do these podcasts because we want to make money. We want to teach people how to make money and that sort of thing. But remember, money is just a tool. to give you the freedom to spend your time. I enjoy work. I'm at home, but I'm working. My wife is downstairs. She likes working, doing lending and stuff. So we still like to work. I mean, I don't know of anywhere in the Bible that talks about retiring.

Yeah, I don't know if it does. Actually, that's a great point.

So but remember, you know, money will buy you a house, but it won't give you a home. Right. Yeah. You can buy your Rolex, but it can't give you one more second here on Earth. And money can buy you a cross, but it can't give you salvation. What else can you do, right?

What else can you say? Exactly right. Well, I, yeah, that's a great perspective. Um, what, if anybody does want, I know you were so kind of just saying you're willing to do this to help out, but if anybody does want to reach out to you to either buy a deal, cause I'm sure people are going to be saying, saying, okay, I'd love to take a look at deals. I know you blast them out all the time when you get them or borrow money. Um, what's a good way if you're open to sharing websites or phone numbers or whatever, whatever people can do.

If somebody wants to get on our wholesale list, we only wholesale in the Carolinas, although I did just sell a small mobile home park in Arkansas, but primarily in the Carolinas. That website is InvestorsRehab.com, and you can opt in to get on our buyers list if you'd like. We send out weekly texts and emails about properties, investors we have, and our lending that my wife handles is carolinainvestorloans.com, carolinainvestorloans.com.

Okay, perfect. And if somebody, and you may or may not want this, but if somebody says, I really have a question for Larry, are you open to taking questions or how do people connect with you if they don't live here?

Wow, if they don't live here. Or even if they do, I don't know. Yes, if somebody has a question, they can call 704-228-4848.

Well, that's bold of you. Not that I have too many people listening to this. We'll see. I think I've had a couple people say they like to listen to these episodes, but I'm really doing it to learn for myself and people can listen and learn with us. But it's really helpful to hear your experience. And then let me make sure I got those. those websites, investorsrehab.com for the deals to buy from you. And then if you're looking to possibly apply as a borrower or potentially be a borrower for your wife's lending business, it's carolinainvestorloans.com?

Yes, in the Carolinas. We only lend in the Carolinas.

Okay, so North and South, right? Right. And then any criteria people should think about before they contact you, like it's got to be a certain LTV or what do you want it to look like?

We typically do 65, sometimes 70 percent LTV. And but it's just common sense lending. We want to make sure the deal works. Yeah. We want to make sure the deal works and the person either has some experience or has some education. OK. and they're trainable. I mean, my wife has done many loans for people who it's their first deal working with her. It's their first deal, right? But it's, you know, people she feels comfortable with and, you know, they're kind of coachable or trainable, right? You know, you get some people that, you know, well, you know, I want to buy this one bedroom house that's 700 square feet and I'm going to flip it. Well, who can flip a 700 square foot one-bedroom house too? And I'm only paying $150 for it and he's $100 in work.

That's not a deal. Yeah. Common sense lending. That makes sense. So, okay. Very cool. Well, I appreciate you doing this. I don't want to keep you too much longer. You've been so kind with your time and it's always great talking to you, Larry.

Yeah, man, I really appreciate you having me on. I really don't do any of these anymore. But since you're a local and I know you, I've known you for a while and, you know, we talk to each other and I send you send you sub two deals or whatnot. You know, I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. I'll be glad to do it.

Well, it means a lot to me. I'm very honored. And and I know people are going to get a ton of value out of just hearing what you've been up to over the years, because it's it's it's tremendous to see how you've built your career and helped so many people along the way.

Awesome. Thanks, man. I hope it was good for people. I hope they got a lot out of it.

I'm sure they will. Thank you.

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of The Deal Pen. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way we'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. And remember, there's always more deals to be had in The Deal Pen. Until next time, friends,