099 » REI Tax Sales Part 1 – Mysteries Explained So You Can Stop Avoiding Them and Start Profiting » Corey Taylor

Joe:      Hey, everybody. Welcome! This is Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. We’re really glad you’re here. We got a special guest as usual. I mean, all of our guests are special. But, this one especially. His name is Corey Taylor and he’s with Fortis LLC. And, we’re going to be talking about something that we might have talked about once before in the last three or four years – tax sale investing. Tax liens, deeds, things like that, some really cool stuff, great creative ways to get more properties to make more money in this business. But Alex, how are you, my man?

Alex:    I’m doing well. Doing well.

Joe:      Good! Working on any deals right now.

Alex:    Yeah, actually… Unfortunately…

Joe:      Oh!

Alex:    We’ve had some crazy annoying sickness going through the family that one of the kids must have picked up somewhere. And, I got a lead on… When was it? It was Thursday. And, it was Thursday when one of the kids started to come down with it. And, we’re just starting to get over it. So, from a little foggy more than normal. And… But…

Joe:      That’s cool!

Alex:    I got a lead from my 1-800-FAIR-OFFER website. It was… I think it came over like 8:00 in the morning and I call the guy right back. And, he wanted to sell his place for $62. It’s what he said. And I said, “Whoa! Yo!” And he’s like, “Oh, $52.” I said, “Well. Would you sell for that?” He’s like, “Yeah!” “Oh, okay. Well, I can just send you this document via HelloSign, and you just click it and sign it and send it back, and we got a deal, right?” He’s like, “Ah, yeah.” So…

Joe:      Nice!

Alex:    It wasn’t as easy as that though. It’s… Sometimes I feel like we make it too easy for the seller because I went out there because he wanted to meet me. He just said, “This is too easy. You can’t just give me this price without looking at the house.” And I’m like, “Well. I mean, I’m going to tear the house down. So, it really doesn’t even matter what I’m going to do.”

Joe:      Right.

Alex:    I don’t even need to see the house. He said, “Well. I’m kind of an old-fashioned guy. So, I’d like to meet you.” I’m like, “Okay.” So, I packed one my sons in the car because my wife was…

Joe:      Right.

Alex:    …Being dutiful with all the other sick ones.

Joe:      You’re training your protégé.

Alex:    That’s right! That’s right! And, it is an ugly house too. It’s a very ugly house. And, everyone probably will tear it down and do new construction but it was funny because he was just like, “This is just too easy.”

Joe:      That’s right.

Alex:    It made me think of getting a tagline for 1-800-FAIR-OFFER. Maybe, it’s “It’s supposed to be easy.”

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      Well, part of the problem is, sometimes when I’m… And, I do this when I’m talking about lease options to sellers. They may think like, “It just sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch?”

Alex:    That’s exactly what he said. “It sounds too good to be true.” And, the key to dealing with people is being able to read who you’re dealing with. And, this guy was a federal employee. He only worked for the post office. I would say, he was probably getting close to… Oh! Probably in his 50s, I would say. And, it just didn’t… The type of person where you almost need to throw in some friction in there.

Joe:      Interest?

Alex:    I believe you need friction to make somebody get that decision and own that decision if that makes sense.

Joe:      Yeah.

Alex:    Because if you just say… Even though he was offering $60 and I came back at $52… I mean, that is some friction there but still, he was just like, “Oh. Okay.” And I’m like, “Wow! Okay. So…” So, it’s even like this guy needed some credibility, right? Because he’s hearing a voice over the phone and he found me online with 1-800-FAIR-OFFER which is great.

Joe:      Yeah.

Alex:    So, that helps me there. When I went out there, I made sure to bring my business card. I even drove my Escalade out there because it was like this guy needs some credibility. I’m going to bring out and pull out all this stuff on this one. And then, I said that “I’m a member of The Better Business Bureau. You can check references and all that stuff.” And I’m like, “Wow! This will just be really bad if I lost this deal because…” And, I mean giving him what he wants. So… But, we got it. We got the contract. They’ll probably tear it down, build a new house and make like $45,000 or something like that.

Joe:      Good for you. How long will it take you to build the new house?

Alex:    Probably four months. Well, we have to go through development obviously in dealing with this city and dealing with permits. But, we have a proven model now that we’ve been using that sells really well. It’s about 2,200 ft.², four bedrooms, two-and-a-half bath, double car garage. And, people seem to like that. It seems to fly off the shelf once it gets out there. So, four or five months. Really that. Or, I can wholesale it for probably… I don’t know. Maybe $62? But, I can call the… I enjoy the new construction so we’ll go for the bigger money.

Joe:      It’s a whole lot easier, isn’t it? You don’t have to…

Alex:    Yeah. This new construction?

Joe:      Yeah. Yeah. You don’t have to worry about what’s behind the walls.

Alex:    Right! Well. See, there’s other things we’ve done where we’ll rip every single wall down but two and leave the foundation and maybe do a little bit of an addition off the back. And then, scrape it out completely to where it’s just the foundation in a box and build up from there. And, that seems to work well too. But, then again, you’re playing with an existing foundation which you got to make sure it’s good. The house is built in the 50s.

Joe:      Yeah.

Alex:    And, you got to make sure your footers are deep enough, a whole bunch of boring stuff that I don’t get into.

Joe:      Well. That’s cool. I’m glad to hear that PPC is working for you.

Alex:    Yeah.

Joe:      1-800-FAIR-OFFER. You guys are going to be releasing that again pretty soon here, aren’t you?

Alex:    Yeah. Sean Terry and I should be doing something in the beginning of February, I believe.

Joe:      Nice!

Alex:    So, be on the lookout.

Joe:      Very good. Good. Good. So guys, go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com. I don’t have any other updates to really give.

Alex:    Maybe you just blog about the Fast Cash Survival Kit.

Joe:      Yes. Yes. Yes. I was going to say first before I got to that real quick. We have been doing a ton of marketing and I don’t see the leads at all. I mean, they just go to the wholesalers. I have started actually doing marketing for realtor listings recently.

Alex:    Oh, interesting.

Joe:      I’ve partnered with top-producing agent here. I’m doing the marketing. She’s taking the leads. And, I’m going to get a share of the commissions. And…

Alex:    Now, are you an agent, Joe?

Joe:      Yes. Yes, I am.

Alex:    Realtor Joe.

Joe:      So, that’ll be interesting. I’ll be repeating… I mean, I’ll be giving more details about that as we’re going. I’ve been doing some Facebook ads for seller leads and that’s been going pretty well. But, I have about $10 to $12…

Alex:    Well, if that’s for seller leads that have been going well, that’s usually terrible.

Joe:      Well, I’ve been doing… I’ve been paying about $10 to $12 per lead.

Alex:    That’s really cheap actually.

Joe:      And… But, it’s more of a “Hey, do you want to determine the value of your house?”

Alex:    Ah, I have got you!

Joe:      And, anybody that visits the website, that lead goes to the realtor right away. And so, they’re still working those leads. We got about 35 leads from that campaign. I’ve spent about $400 bucks.

Alex:    Not bad!

Joe:      And so, I’m pleased with that. I’m still trying to figure out this agent. The reason I worked with top-producing agents is because they already have the systems in place. They already understand sales and marketing and they’re going to jump on those leads. They’re really good already at listing presentations and follow-up and all that stuff that goes involved, that goes into that. And, I’m only targeting nicer homes in nicer areas. So, these properties in the St. Louis area are above the median price range. These are properties that are $200,000 to $400,000+. And so, I’m excited about it. We’ll see what happens. I’m thinking about bringing on a VA with really good English to actually make the initial call first and try to set the appointment. And then, get a higher percentage of the commission. Maybe, 50%.

If I can set the appointment for the Realtor, maybe I can get… I just… Money loves speed. And many times, when these sellers visit that website and they put in their information, if you don’t call them within five minutes, your chances drop dramatically if you don’t try to reach them and talk to them again later on. Do you know what I’m saying? So, I’m thinking about bringing on a VA in-house to kind of help with that. But, I’ll be reporting on that more as we go. That’s kind of what we’re focused on now. It’s just doing a ton of marketing for a bunch of people all over the country and we’re partnering with the students on deals. But, I wanted to read a review we got on our podcast. If you go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com, you can see our Fast Cash Survival Kit. We’ll tell you how we flip deals.

And, we also have on there an episode… About 10 episodes ago, where we show you how you can get a bunch of really cool free stuff. If you leave us a review on iTunes, our ethical bribe is… If you leave us a review, good or bad, we will give you a bunch of really cool bonuses that you can’t get anywhere else. And, if you go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com, look at this show called “Leave a Review, Get Cool Stuff.” I think it’s what it’s called. It’s something really creative like that. And, we just really would appreciate reviews because it helps us with the rankings in iTunes. It helps us grow the show. We have like 146 countries… People and listeners in about 140 something different countries listening to this show every week. Well, it’s a lot of them if it’s every week. But, all over the world, people are listening to this. And, I want to get this message out there. I do want to read one good review because he talks about my awesome video content here. Are you ready?

Alex:    Well, let’s hear about your awesome video content.

Joe:      Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. Glad you asked. So, this is from Tapout1977. I’m wondering if he was born in 1977. This is “Amazing content.” Five stars.

Alex:    Sounds like a fighter.

Joe:      Yeah. He says… He or she says, “I just watched ‘The Brilliant at the Basics’ videos that Joe posted on his podcast. And, the third one absolutely blew my mind. After watching that, there is no reason at all for me not to have leads pouring in every day. That video is a game changer! If you are a wholesaler, please watch it. I guarantee, you’ll be amazed! Thanks Joe.” How cool is that? Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Alex:    That’s awesome, Joe.

Joe:      Yeah. Well, I know. That’s why I read it. But, please leave us a review guys. We’d appreciate it. And so, now, enough of that. We want to talk about Corey Taylor. Corey is from Alex’s neck of the woods in the Virginia area. Is that right, Corey?

Corey: It is. Yup!

Joe:      And, where exactly do you live again? Or, what market are you working in?

Corey: Well. I’m in Virginia. We work on several markets in the country, but we do a lot of work down in South Carolina actually.

Joe:      Interesting.

Corey: Yeah.

Joe:      And, we’ll talk about the kind of work that you do. You have a very special kind of little niche you focused on. And, I don’t think that’s probably the only thing that you do. But, a mutual friend of ours, JP Moses introduced us to each other. And, JP interviewed you for one of his shows and he said, “Joe, you’ve got to talk to this guy, Corey. He’s a really great guy. He’s got a lot of really cool stuff that he’s doing.” And so, thank you JP for listening. Shout-out to JP Moses. Who doesn’t like JP Moses?

Corey: Yeah. That’s right. Well, don’t forget to say that I totally blew it off and I had to come back. We have to put that on here that I’m totally a loser. So, here I am, finally.

Joe:      No! Oh! Grace to you, man!

Corey: Yeah. Thanks.

Joe:      JP Moses is a great guy. Who doesn’t know JP? In fact, I think, Alex, JP might have been one of the one’s that introduced you and me together. Or, was it Chico or somebody like that. I don’t remember.

Alex:    Yeah. I think it was Brian Haskins.

Joe:      Yes. I think it was. Brian Haskins once has a podcast. You should check him out. Brian’s a good guy. I have lunch with him about every few months, every two or three months. He lives here in St. Louis. Really good guy. Go to iTunes and do a search for Brian Haskins and you’ll see his podcast out there. It’s really good stuff. Okay. So Corey, talk about like how long have you been in the business? What were you doing before real estate?

Corey: Yeah. Yeah. I was a… I came out of the Naval Academy into the Marine Corps.

Joe:      Wow!

Corey:  And so, I was in the Marine Corps. And, I kind of have the bug, right? I kind of knew early on I wanted to do something kind of on the side and I was freaking to know how to invest and I was looking at stocks and just… You know. I want to make money now. You kind of enter the career stage of life where you’re trying to figure out like, “How? What I’m going to make…? What am I going to do with my disposable income?” And, I happen to be in a bookstore one day. My wife was… I don’t know, taking too long doing something, right? And, I was in the aisle.

Joe:      Yeah. I know how it feels.

Corey:             Yeah. And, I came across one of the “Rich Dad” books. I like a lot of stories from years ago and I thought, “This is kind of an interesting read.” You know. Sixth grade level, lots of repetition and some sense. That’s kind of how those books are, right? They say the same thing over and over.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: And so, I liked it. And so, I’m like, “What are those things? This business thing. This real estate thing.” So, I think you only have two or three at the time. So, I’ve read those and I’m just kind of, “Hey! Let’s try that real estate thing.” And so, at the time, I was… I had little time for it then because I just got to Camp Lejeune and was doing the Marine thing. You can imagine I’m pretty busy at that point but…

Joe:      Oh, yeah. What year is this, Corey?

Corey: It’s kind of, “Where do I begin?” But, this would have been 1999.

Joe:      Okay.

Corey: 99. So, it was years ago. And then… But, in that year too, I got some “subject tos” done or did some things the hard way. And then, I just kept like a lot of people of this age with jobs. I just kind of kept it nice on weekends trying to learn more and do more, and not get crushed with education but still keep try to do things. And, we just kept doing that. And so, probably in 2005… I guess late 2004, my daughter was born and by then, we were doing enough real estate. I really don’t know how to make a financial decision to stay in the Marine Corps or not. We’ve moved here to Virginia and here to Quantico and we said, “You know what? Is this going to be a career or not?” I’ve been at eight years at that point and we thought, “We like Virginia and we don’t really have to stay financially. We don’t need the Marine Corps.” I was paying more in taxes by then that I wasn’t even getting paid in the Marine Corps.

Joe:      Wow!

Corey: That was always a nice thing to have. And so, we stayed. We hopped out and just kept doing real estate full-time in late 2004, and just kept doing more of what I have been doing the previous years before then. And, the last… I guess it’s been a lot of years now. 9 years, I guess now, full-time. So, it’s been lots of greats, lots of lessons learned too, right? But…

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: But, we’ve ran the gamut and it’s been great. I’ve done probably everything there is to do in real estate by now. And so, I’ve seen a lot, and it’s been great. So, that’s kind of how it played out for me.

Joe:      Thank you for your service, Corey.

Corey: Yeah. I appreciate that. Thanks.

Joe:      What was your involvement during the Second Gulf War?

Corey: Yeah, my involvement was begging the colonel to let me leave Quantico to go.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: I had done… My time, I assume, was over. So, my four years there, during the whole 9/11 thing, we had gone afloat. And so, we’re out in the ocean and doing all those things that Marines had to do out waiting to be told what to do.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: And, we had just come back. So, while our rotation had ended, we ended up at Quantico which is more of a hangout command. And so, you had to kind of pull some strings in there and you’re like, “No, you’re not going!” And so, it was about a year, I guess, before I got out. So, unfortunately, I didn’t get that. But, we had lots of good things to do while we’re out running around the Mediterranean and our little ship’s over there for a while. But, that was the most of it from me.

Joe:      You know. I was talking to a guy. It’s just amazing. A friend of mine who is in the military, in the Navy…

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      Works on submarines.

Corey: Yeah.

Joe:      And, what those guys do, it will blow you away. And, he still couldn’t tell me like anything.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      But, I kept on prodding him with questions and I can tell what his answers were because he wouldn’t answer the question. He’ll just stare at me, right? But, I really respect guys who work in the military and he was the guy who’s getting ready to retire and real estate himself full-time.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      But, those guys, you just think that these boats are just floating around or these submarines are just kind of floating around and not doing much.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      And, that’s not the case.

Corey: That is not the case at all, no. And, especially the last few years, it has been grueling, grueling, grueling for those guys on the rotations and really being on combat all the time.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: But, the level of alert is just 10 times what it was 10 years ago because there’s just so much going on in the world now.

Joe:      Oh, yeah.

Corey: So, yeah. That’s a real grind for those guys.

Joe:      If you could… If we… Oh, I won’t get into it because I might say something I shouldn’t say. I was literally blown away. I was speechless hearing some of the stuff that these guys do. It’s the same stuff you couldn’t tell me. He didn’t divulge too much but… Yeah, God bless our military.

Corey: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe:      Anyway, Corey… So, you started… What kind of deals were you doing in 2004 and 2005?

Corey: I was doing fix and flip mainly. In other words, all kinds of those… By the time 2005 or old around, I was doing kind of whatever the deal was that came along. I was in a good spot by then but I had learned enough and done enough that as a lead came in, I can kind of fit it in to whatever category it might be and I could do a short sale if it was necessary. Or, I could just hope cash from a private lender and buy it if that was the deal. Or, I could subordinate the seller and they participate and we do it together kind of stuff. It’s just really whatever the deal needed to get done. I was pretty good at that point of making it work kind of no matter what. And so, it’s great.

Joe:      And, how were you doing that during… You’re still working a full-time job.

Corey: Yeah. There’s a lot of the house in the weekend.

Joe:      Okay. All right.

Corey: Yeah. It really was a… My wife was loving and helping out. So, it was kind of our thing. We didn’t have kids then. I mean, my daughter was just born at the right time at that point. So, the year is far, we’re just “Hey! It’s like kind of our hobby in the weekend and we’re, ‘What kind of leads came in?’ ‘What do we have time to go do?'” And, it was a lot of fun for us on those weekends and some evenings that we got to do it. And, she would take some calls during the day being at home while I’m doing my thing most of the days or even being gone. And so, we just kind of make it work. It was a great tag team as a couple to do that.

Joe:      Interesting!

Corey: Yeah.

Joe:      And then, what were you doing when the market started turning in 2007, 2008?

Corey: I was doing the wrong thing.

Alex:    Oh!

Corey: I was doing the wrong thing. Yeah, I was doing a lot of lease option stuff at the time. And, it would’ve been fine, I think if I… I should’ve wrote a book about this, about not to do. But, I said… I had some in great positions. I was protected really well. I didn’t bother me. But, some I had obligated myself to some contracts on some of these lease options and when I took some of those “subject to” type of things that I really shouldn’t have made promises on. And so, all of my lessons that I tell people now is… You just never know what’s going to happen.

Alex:    Thanks to me, Joe, doesn’t it?

Corey: Yeah.

Joe:      I don’t want to talk about it.

Corey: Seriously, I hear you. I only got over it because I kept doing so much counseling over it.

Alex:    I’ve done that too, where you bought something just because you thought you could buy it. And then, you just put yourself in a pickle. But, you do your best to get it done.

Corey: That’s right!

Joe:      You got some counseling. And, I probably should still get some counseling.

Corey: Oh! I’ll tell you what I did. I got a lot of gray-haired guys around me after that whole… A couple years, like I just know some guys that are around that can tell me when I’m just… I never failed to that point. I mean, I had been to enough but whatever I want to do is get them done. And so, for a young 30-something that has some failure was far the best thing that ever happened.

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: But, I went and got four or five. I’ve been in business 25 years. They’re guys that you meet once a month now for five hours and talk about what’s going on. It’s just like your own board, right? I felt like guys that are really getting business done full-time should have their own board for their company. I mean, even if it’s informal just to make sure you’re not being an idiot a lot of times, right?

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: So, I got that done. And I realized, “Yeah. Even when your market’s going up 30% a year, 0% appreciation might not be the worst-case.” It might actually go down 30% in value.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: It did happen around here in north of Virginia as Alex knows of it too. So, it’s just all those things I thought I was planning for worst-case but I really wasn’t. I was kicking myself because, in Marines especially, you’re all… It’s great to look at best case but make sure you know worst-case. And, I just throw that off aside in my own business. I really didn’t evaluate what worst-case it could be because I made promises I couldn’t keep.

Joe:      Now, you’re buying homes “subject to” and then, lease options.

Corey: I was doing “subject to.” Yup, lease optioning some of those. Right. Those were probably the worst ones where I had made some promises to the “subject to” people that I couldn’t keep on the lease options side. When all the subprime went away, I was a… I was either break even or slightly cash out of my pocket on some of those because the equity side was going to be big, and then the equity side evaporated overnight.

Joe:      Now, I’m so glad to hear somebody else having these problems for once.

Alex:    No, I mean, this is bring back then.

Corey: It was huge.

Alex:    Did you learn how to do this from a certain individual with initials of K.K.

Joe:      Kris Karaian?

Corey: Oh! Oh, you said it out loud.

Alex:    Oh, common.

Corey: We had him among several. Yes.

Alex:    Okay.

Corey: Nothing on Kris. I feel it’s up to all of us to decide on our own…

Alex:    That’s right.

Corey: …What model we thought is the best for the upcoming market. But yes, that model was not… When somebody has anticipated the decline…

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: …I would have done that differently and I had to do it all over again. But yeah, 20 or 30 of those things were in the hopper.

Alex:    Wow! It just went out.

Corey: It was painful. It was painful. It was painful. But, you know what? Again, what it brought us to in the counsel and just caution and just, “Hey, man. We should run a business like a real business kind of thing.” I wouldn’t trade it. I would never trade all of that. No one has taken a step back but it was just really like a slingshot for us and those lessons learned.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: I had to eat some crows in private lenders.

Joe:      Oh!

Corey: And say, “Hey! You know what? I don’t like it. I shouldn’t have promised it. But, I’m going to make it right.” And so, that actually… It firmed up some relationships. It might not have been otherwise if I had just been, “Hey, sorry. You know. It’s a deal. That’s what happens in real estate,” like some of my peers had said to people which I didn’t appreciate them doing it to their guys. But… So, it came back around. So again, I used to look at it as like “Wow! Those are dark years.” But, I embraced it and we learned from it and I wrote a chapter of a couple of books on some of that experience and it helped people a lot. And, there was nothing else to affirm. They weren’t necessary dumb themselves. It’s just things happen and you look… It’s just like looking at the upside too much. “All right, guys. You look at the upside all day.”

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: If you don’t plan for the downside, that’s the plan you have to have in any deal. It’s like, “What happens if it goes wrong?” And, even if it’s just a checkbox, you got to at least think about it.

Joe:      Well, I remembered too, that during those days, looking at the historical charts of real estate appreciation across the U.S. You know?

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      Yeah. You hear the stories on Phoenix, in California and Florida. The properties are going up 10%, 15%, 20% a year.

Corey: Right.

Joe:      And, in the Midwest, we’re more conservative and it’s a more safe area. So, we’re just appreciating on average. I’ll be conservative and I’ll just base my calculations on 6% appreciation.

Corey: Right.

Joe:      Real estate never goes down. And man, I preached that from the hilltops and…

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      …It’s just, nobody saw this coming, or maybe some people did. But, here’s the thing, I think… And, I’ve made the same mistakes. We just got overleveraged, right?

Corey: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let me tell you about that real quick, Joe. I started… The version of how this happen was I got into Dave Ramsey’s stuff, right? I read his book.

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: It sounds like it is so super simple. And then, in my church, I started doing like the financial piece facilitation because I want to give back and just kind of tell my story and just kind of help people through it. And, you wouldn’t believe how awesome that was. Enough moment for me and my own business. It was just for people, in general. But, start pretending that debt… That is something you should be very careful about.

Joe:      Oh, yeah.

Corey: And, you have to use the “leverage” word very carefully because real estate guys love to use the “leverage” word. But, it’s only if you use it very, very carefully and almost pretend it’s like poison that you want to get out of your system as fast as possible…

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: …Or at least maintain it. Because, when you think there’s plenty of it, it’s always fine. It’s just like the snake that’s waiting to bite you. And, I have a whole new point of view about when we use that, and why, and how, and when do we get out of it just because I never want to go back to that place again.

Joe:      It’s fantastic! Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Alex:    Your new construction projects, I would think you are using debt, correct?

Corey: We are using it and we’ve calculated how many houses will get us out. And, the bulk of our first profits paid them out, and so we’re clear really early. We’re clear really early because…

Alex:    Oh!

Corey: …We don’t want to be like, “Oh! But, we can take profit early. And, they can go out to this house and we can just extend.” And so, we could do a lot of things that have them use their money longer. But, we specifically chose not to because…

Alex:    On a big project like that… Yeah, you definitely want to… I mean, on a four house project or something like that, usually what we’ll do is, we’ll pay them off on the second house and like the third and the fourth. There’s enough profit to us.

Corey: There you go. And, I’m not even saying it has to be cleared right away. It’s just understanding that if something goes twice as wrong as you think it could, can you look that guy in the eye and be square with them and act like you said something or misled something or act like it wasn’t part of the deal. I just don’t want to have those conversations again. I want to make sure that everyone knew and that things are made right and I got trusted. I came through because I’m managing equity and realizing equity can disappear. As soon as Goldman Sachs puts out a press release, equity can go away, right? That’s just the world we live in now, that I didn’t realize there was such a thing. That was what we realized too. Goldman Sachs can actually just turn things off, and then all of a sudden, it’s over. I just don’t want to be in that situation now. But, that’s how we run our business and manage our debt to try to be in that position.

Joe:      I heard a speaker the other day talking about borrowing. He’s talking in the context of borrowing private money.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      And he said… When somebody is asking him if they can borrow money, he says, “Well. There’s two things I want to know. Number one, how are you going to pay me back? And number two, how are you going to pay me back when you can’t pay me back?”

Corey: That’s right! That’s right!

Joe:      Right?

Corey: Another truth.

Alex:    That’s very realistic.

Joe:      That is what you need to think about.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      You need to think worst-case. “How am I going to pay this guy back?” And, “How am I going to pay him back if I can’t pay him back?” You don’t have any other options.

Corey: That’s it! I think, Joe… I think, you guys, we should say… On this call, maybe people are talking about their first deal and they don’t like the fact that a lender might want them to have 10% or 20%. But, they want you to have it because they want to be super, super sure that you can pay them in that context.

Joe:      Uh-huh.

Corey: Otherwise, you should get upset with them for wanting them to have all the money in the deal and it’s your first one or second deal. That’s a big deal for that lender. They worked long hard years for that money. And, they don’t want you to just think you can do anything and mess it up and they’re the ones that are out. That’s why they’re scrutinizing you as a young new investor to make sure the deal is right and want some of your skin because it’s a big deal to have the deal go bad and have their money go away. It’s obviously people that have the retirement money. These private lenders… It’s their retirement. They worked 30 years for that money.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: And, they’re like going to have somebody just make a bad mistake and they just trust you and have it go away in a blink. It would be very terrible.

Joe:      You cannot walk away from that. And, the same with “subject tos.”

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      You made a commitment to pay that seller’s mortgage.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      You got to stick with it. And, if you borrow private money on a deal, you’ve got to pay them back and you got to think about… I think it’s important and you’ve probably talked a lot about this, Corey. It’s having multiple exit strategies on any deal that you’re looking at.

Corey: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yup.

Joe:      You need to make sure that… Well, if you can’t sell it, what are you going to do? Are you going to rent it? Are you going to sell it to an investor? Sell it to a retail buyer? What are your options? How can you get back the investment that you borrowed?

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      And then also, realizing… I think this is just as important. It’s any profit that you do make, every dollar that goes first to pay back your private investors.

Corey: You’re right. Well, Alex had a great example a minute ago. We’re on a deal where he could wholesale if he wanted to. It’s cheap enough that he could have another exit if he wanted to. Otherwise, he’s got a couple of choices. He’s not going to suddenly scrape a deal out where he’s only got one exit. I think a lot of new people fall into that. “I got to have my first deal so badly” that they really put themselves in the corner where they only have one exit. And, I want to know why they can’t get the money or why they’re having trouble. And, it’s just because they want it too badly. They just really need to be patient enough to get the right first deal or the right second deal, not just a deal or it was not going to be nearly as fun as they wanted it to be. And you guys have probably met, it was… When deals are going great, real estate is the funniest thing on the planet. When they’re not going right, it’s probably the worst thing on the planet. I don’t know what else is worse than having those conversations. You know. Both probably had to have with some people about…

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: …How are we’re going to make up for it. And, it’s great to be able to do that. It’s great that real estate is a thing where you can make up for it very quickly. But still, it can go bad. And so, I would just caution people to be patient, get the right one and keep it fun. It’s not fun when you do it wrong.

Joe:      Very well said. I like that a lot. We could go on and on about that because it’s something…

Corey: Yeah, we pulled that string for a long time. Yeah. That’s right.

Joe:      Because that whole “Rich Dad Poor Dad” book… It’s a great book but he talks on there… I think he talks a little too loosely or glibly… Maybe, that’s not the right word, about debt.

Corey: Yeah.

Joe:      There is a place for debt. You could probably argue that. Yeah, the numbers make sense on paper. But, you got to realize it is… You’re enslaving yourself to the lender…

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      …Until that debt is paid back.

Corey: Right.

Joe:      So, you’ve got to make sure you have contingencies. And, you got to make sure the deal is good. And, when we were borrowing money on these “subject to” deals, just the numbers weren’t… We took the fundamentals, threw them out of the window. We were basing our profits on appreciation, on the future appreciation.

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      And, we’re thinking that we could get by with just $100 or $200 a month and quote, unquote cash flow.

Corey: Right.

Joe:      But, I was at the same point, man. I had all this equity and all of a sudden, it was gone. And I’ve realized, you can’t eat equities.

Corey: Oh.

Joe:      As the saying goes.

Corey: Oh.

Joe:      So, what do you do? You need cash. You need cash flow. That’s why it’s important to understand. And, I think… We’re talking about fundamentals. That’s why I think wholesaling is so important.

Corey: Yeah. I agree. And, not to interrupt you. So, I go back to his book not to have resurgency of this book or anything. But, his second book, I think, was the “Cashflow Quadrant” where I realized… He said the very thing you just said. Like, the balance sheet is all nice and pretty. But, that doesn’t mean anything. The cash flow statement, the income and expenses is what people need to be focused on.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: And, they don’t know that basic principle or running. Even if it’s one house, you still have cash in or cash out and equity. And, people just don’t understand the fundamentals. And, they need that more. Like, more training should be on that and people would probably be better off.

Joe:      Well, Corey. What do you do in these days? Are you? Talk a little bit about your business. What’s the model that you’re doing now?

Corey: Yeah, sure. We are focused… Probably 95%… It’s just few of the things that we think that we have over the years. But, most of our business leads now come from the tax sale arena.

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: And, what I mean by that is we have some places in the country that we life for their various rules just to… If you give me just, I guess, two minutes to kind of layout the content.

Joe:      Take your time. Yeah.

Corey: Yeah. The country… In the tax sale world… It’s different from property taxes by the way, in case it wasn’t clear to some people. Property taxes dwell on… I don’t like it, right?

Joe:      Right.

Corey: But, we have to pay them. We’re property owners until we don’t pay taxes, right? Then, they take it from us. And so, about half the country does what you’ve heard before, called the tax lien. What that means is, if you don’t pay taxes a couple of years, the county says, “Hey, Joe. You need to pay these taxes. And so, if you can’t pay them, we’re going to have this auction.” And, Alex gets to show up and Alex has to pay us the taxes because we get the money. But then, you’re going to owe the money and you’re going to owe Alex 18% or 15% or 25% or some number. And so, you’re going to have a couple of years to pay them. But, this is your fair warning that you have a problem.

And so, about half the country does that where you have a short amount of time before the auction. But, you have a couple of years to get that lien paid off before you would lose anything. Before Alex can actually get your property, this thing occurs. The other half of the country says, “Hey, Joe. You’ve been late for like three years. Like, maybe four years now. It’s been a long time. In a couple of months, we’re going to have an auction and Alex can show up and bid on it and own your house. And so, there’s no redemption. There’s no nothing. You’ve already had three or four years to pay. Whether you let go of this long, the auction is the sale of your house.

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: So, it’s about the same amount of time being late around the whole United States. But, some states just kind of deal with it differently into when they want to recover their money and that the lien states want their money sooner so that they can have the auction sooner and they give this redemption thing. So, what that creates though, depending on the kind of state you’re dealing with, it creates a lot of opportunity that not a lot of investors are focused on. Things like… Hey! These people on this list that the county publishes for me. These people are all having trouble paying their property taxes. They might be distressed.

Joe:      There might be some motivation there.

Corey: There might be some motivation. Or, there might be complete apathy because they’re an heir and Grandma died and it’s five states away and they don’t really care. And so, any money into them would be more than they thought they’re going to get. They don’t want the hassle. They’re both busy employees and they don’t want to mess with Grandma’s house that needs a bunch of work. And so, they don’t even have to be the person in the house not paying a lot of it. Actually, most of it is… There’s usually no emotional tie, which is way better than trying to deal with a homeowner who’s trying six different ways to keep their house before they sell it to you cheap.

Joe:      Right!

Corey: And so, there’s contacting people before these auctions. There’s contacting people after they have been liened and they’re striving to solve their problem in a year or two and saying, “Hey. You’ve been liened a while. You haven’t sold it. This is about to go to the auction part where you’ll actually lose it. Can we please talk about it?” So, there’s no opportunity to talk to distressed people. They’ll even be more distressed. There’s actually buying at the auctions themselves which is I’m a huge fan of. But, in some areas of the country, you can show up there. And, there’s so many for sale. You just need to have enough money to buy them.

And so, there’s some great deals to be had. And then, ultimately, there’s some things that you can buy some liens that these counties already have on their shelf. It’s called “over the county,” where you just kind of say, “Hey! I want that lien.” And, it’s a vacant rehab that nobody won at the auction to have a lien on. And, you can buy that thing and you’ll have a really good chance in a year to own it because nobody’s going to redeem it. Nobody wanted that house. It’s just kind of leftover. You just pick it off the shelf; wait a few months and “it’s yours” kind of a deal. We do a lot of that too. And so, we just found so many different lead opportunities around the distressed nature of property taxes. We really haven’t had to do anything else in the last three or four years to get enough deals that we wanted. We didn’t have to do our marketing.

Joe:      And, it seems like these lists are… They’re really not. But, you could say, maybe they’re harder to get so there’s not as much competition. Is that right?

Corey: Ironically… Yeah. It’s interesting you say that. They’re easy to get. And, let me say like this. They’re easy because the county publishes them. However, what’s been hard until the last couple of months have been what to do with the list. They’ll give you like a legal description and the amount of taxes owed. Maybe, a street or probably not, and an owner name. And, you’re like, “Well. What am I supposed to do with this?” They’re like, “Oh! All you have to do….” Typical county government thinking, right?

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: “All you got to do, Joe is go spend five hours on our website and line up all these property and partial numbers with address. And then, you can do some research and then you can find the site that you want to buy. So, it’s only five or six hours or 10 or two days hovering along the big list is, right?

Joe:      Right.

Corey: So, they’ll make it easy for you to actually take what they give you and make an investment decision. So, our company had to come out a few months ago… We finally made a software that does this where you click a button. And then, I can make the county a pretty list into a way that’s amazing, immaculate, enhanced, premium list that has everything I could possibly want on it to let me just use Excel. And, I take 500 properties and bring the top 50 to the top of the page and do all the online research I want to and which ones I want to buy in just an hour.

And so, we’ve really helped our industry move forward in using some software these days to get these lists and plug it in like panning for gold. You just throw a bunch of dirt in and the machine pops up the gold on the other end. And you’re just, “Okay. There’s the gold. Great! You buy it or you don’t buy it, or you wholesale it or give it away, whatever you want to do. But… So, getting to these lists now is much easier through our system, but it’s made even easier. So, it’s not… I think what you’re playing is that most people use the lien word for 10 years. I heard the lien word about, “Well. I don’t want to make interest. I’m not an interest player now.”

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: “I’m buying and holding. I’m earning rent. I’m flipping. I don’t want to just make 18% on my money. I need a lot better than that. I just thought it was all liens to own paper. I didn’t realize this whole tax deed thing. I didn’t realize a lot of liens could become that I own them if I bought the right liens. I didn’t know I could own through tax sales.” So, when I realized that, I was kicking myself that I haven’t done it years earlier. I just didn’t understand… I didn’t take the time to go find out what a tax lien was that I could own or tax deed or the fact that I could contact people. I just didn’t know. And so, when I did, I always tell people now, like I’m on hilltops now, “Hey. You should include the tax sale thing as more distressed in marketing. Look into these counties, getting lists, put into this tool and just popping out some properties there. It should definitely be at somebody’s source and additional sources, if nothing else of lead flow.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: After that, it’s just regular real estate. You hold it, keep it, sell it, wholesale it. Whatever you want to do is fine. But, it’s absolutely a fantastic lead flow.

Joe:      So, while you… I didn’t know you have a software that does this. I’m going to ask you more questions about that.

Corey: Yeah.

Joe:      What…? These deals that you’re doing with properties that are laid under taxes…

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      What percent of them are you? What percent of the deals that you do are actually done at the auction as compared to contacting the seller before the auction?

Corey: Yeah. I don’t do anything at the auction. We just don’t usually go to the auctions.

Joe:      Okay.

Corey: Even with the tool… Before, going to the auction was annoying because you have to research a bunch of properties. You show up there and you hope they’re still on the auction block for one, right? Otherwise, half of them are gone. Even in the bank foreclosure business, that was the kind of the deal. When you show up there, you’re like, “Oh! It’s not even here anymore.” And, I don’t like the guy next to me that wants it for his grandmother. And, there’s his personal interest in it versus me just… I’m unemotional about it. I just want a cheap property, right? But, he’s all… He’s got to have it. So, I just don’t like some of the auction dynamics to do all of that and I don’t really need to. And so, most of ours come from somebody who’s contacting me back from mail into them that they’ve solved the problem prior to the tax foreclosure. Or, I’ve bought 20 liens from a county that are properties that probably won’t get redeemed. And by the way, when I say “won’t get redeemed,” I check things like, “Hey! The owner is dead.”

Joe:      Uh-huh.

Corey: So, unless the heir really wants this thing that’s got three-foot high grass and windows broken out. Let’s say, they don’t really want that. They’ll probably not going to redeem this thing. That’s why they haven’t paid the taxes anyway and I’m going to own this thing in seven months. And so, I buy those. And, I buy 20 of them and get 9 of them at one time or something like that. There’s just a high probability of me getting it. I can just buy a batch and…

Joe:      Right!

Corey: …By the time, I get the ones I’ve done already done, I’m like, “Oh, wow! I came and it’s November already. I own nine more.” And, I just got to go make money on those as opposed to having to do something else.

Joe:      Now, I’m assuming that… Well, first thing, I want to ask you. The software that you have…

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      Do you actually have? Is this just a software that you have still get the list yourself of these late properties? Or, do you actually have a way to give people the properties that are late?

Corey: Yeah. Here’s what we did. The first thing we did in our business a couple of years ago. Again, we do all of these for our own business and people kept saying, “Corey, can we have it?” So, we kind of said, “Okay, fine. Here’s this membership site, right?” So, we said, “Hey, we’re going out and getting almost every auction there is on a calendar.” And so, by now, we have just about every auction that has ever been out. And, the good thing about tax sale is they’re pretty routine. The county kind of does the same thing every year or once a month or whatever. So, it’s kind of like hackwork, there’s no real… “Oh. Hey! Do watch out for it because it might come this year.” It’s at the same time by every time.

So, once you got the calendar built, it’s pretty easy. But, we got this calendar that shows when they all are. So, we already know which ones happened where home mortgage might be in trouble. I know what’s going to happen. So, I know when we’re about to be in trouble. I know all those things because we have a calendar that says it. And, we have a staff that goes out and gets a lot of those lists already. So, I already have the list on a site or have a button to click that immediately takes us to that county that says, “Hey. Here’s where we’ll get the list. We couldn’t quite get it. But, here’s the county website where it’s published. You can go and get it right now.” And so, we make it very, very easy to go get these lists without having to kind of figure out where to go…

Joe:      Nice!

Corey: …Right there inside our little area. And by the way, we call counties too. We call them everyday. We call counties a few weeks old and say, “Hey. Did you guys have anything left over? What do you have for sale?” And, we try to get those lists too. And, we publish those so that somebody can look at those and say, “Oh. I don’t have to call myself and get the question wrong.” That can allow us to get the question right and sort through those lists as well. So, we’re… We found ourselves in the list business because the more lists we get, the more we get them to the tool.

Joe:      Nice! Okay.

Corey: Now. It goes pretty well together.

Joe:      So, what are some of your favorite markets? If you don’t mind sharing. You don’t have to be specific either.

Corey: Oh! I do mind sharing. What are you talking about? No, I’m just kidding. I like being on the East Coast because I’m in Virginia, right? I don’t want to… I’m not going to fly to Colorado unless… We are actually… Ironically, I shouldn’t say that because we are going to fly there. But, I like the East Coast. I like the South. I’ve moved into a buy-and-hold. My partner and I for now, that’s kind of our strategy. So, I can get a really good rent return on my capital in places in the South. So, we’re in South Carolina. We’re moving in Alabama. Actually, there’s some great deals in there.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: They got some of their financial issues together finally. So, down under. So, I like being in the Southeast. I really do. I like that less of my capital. Especially if converted here in Virginia, I can make more per house. That’s true. But, I’m making a lot less ratio. The money I have to spend to get something I would rent is just not there. And, when I can get them so cheap down there anyway, I’m really in for almost just my rehab cost. So, I can be into a house for $30 grand or less. Sometimes down in South Carolina, I can be getting $750 in rent and those are kind of fun. I can do a lot of those and not have to worry about paying double or triple in some places to get that same return. And so, I like it for those reasons. So, I’m a Southeast guy.

Joe:      Okay.

Corey: We got some partners in Colorado and some other places. But, those are kind of niche projects. They aren’t necessarily the bread-and-butter like we do now.

Joe:      I know… I’ve looked a little bit and this is probably an objection you here commonly. I’ve looked a little bit at tax sales in my areas. And, it seems like most… I don’t know what percent. I’m going to guess. 75 to 80% of the houses that are on there for the late taxes are really crappy properties. They’re just not that good. And I guess, my question is, why do you like those junky properties? And, what do you do with them? Or, in any way, is my perception wrong?

Corey: Well. I don’t think it’s wrong. I think that some people have said, “Let me check a little bit.” And then, they see it as some junk, they’re like, “Oh, okay. Well. It’s junk. I’m not going to do it.” But, I equate it to… It takes a lot of leads to come in from 1-800-FAIR-OFFER to make the best ones too. They’re not all great. Some of them are like, “I want retail. And, I owe more than I want anyway.” And, that’s just a big problem, right? So I say, the quicker you can get through lists of those, the quicker you find the ones that are great…

And, that’s kind of why I keep them back to this tool. We finally used it to say, “Hey! What is on this list of 800 properties? How many here are worth buying? Because, the location or property type is what we want.” And, it’s as simple as sorting on Excel to kind of bring those at the top. So, I agree. It will be more painful if you’re just kind of looking through a handful. It’s in your backyard and convenient for you. You may not… You don’t know what you’re going to find in that particular list.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: And the other thing is lists come out all the time. Depending on the county they’re in, they’re always getting replenished all the time because they’re always late. There’s always new people. There’s always whatever. And so, I think your perception is only the way that it is because you haven’t really gotten deep in it to see, “Oh, wow! I was only in the first step of the pool. I wasn’t actually in zooming around. Now, that I’m out here, I see all these other things that make it great.” So, we only buy the properties that are going to either rent well or sell well. We don’t need to buy junk or convert junk or try to have this amazing clever way of turning junk into not junk. It’s not any of that at all. There’s plenty of them. I’m just telling Alex before the call here that we happened to come across… We weren’t looking for land. But, we happen to see a bunch of partial numbers on the list all in a row. And I’m like, “Well. This is kind of weird.”

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: “This is like 60 of them or 54 of them that are sequential.” That’s the word I was looking for, sequential. I’m like, “What is this?”

Alex:    That’s a heck of a find.

Corey: If we pull some strings, where would they go? Well, this is a development. This was a development from like 15 years ago like, “What is this about?” “Oh, well. Oh man, Joe had died and he left it to his second wife, and it’s just been sitting there.” “Oh, really. Okay. Well. Oh, looks like the county wants…” They’re totally redrawing like, “Well. Like, if I want to go through all of that. But, let’s go talk to the county.” “Oh, yeah. You know what? We really some growth right now. You know. This business, they’ve moved in like $750 million worth of businesses in this area recently. And so, we really want to develop that. Would you guys do it?” And, we’re like, “Well. It depends if you’re going to grandfather the plan.” And they’re like, “Yeah. Well, half of it already has water and sewer. The other half will be septic.”

Joe:      Hmmm.

Corey: “We’ll go ahead and grandfather the lot sizes. You don’t have to go through to any of that process.”

Alex:    Wow!

Corey: “And, by the way, we’ll put the roads in for you. Up to each house you build, we’ll put the block up then.” I’m like, “Really? Is there anything else you want to do?”

Alex:    Wow!

Corey: “Well. We won’t give you any tax credits. But, we’ll do all of that.” “Okay, fine.” So, they’re basically… Because we’re looking at the list, they basically would say, “Oh, this is junk. It’s been on the list for four years. This is just junk land.” Well, not really. I mean, that wasn’t… We didn’t think we’re especially clever. We just said, “Hey! This looks like it’s a lot of lots together. What might this be?” And so, again, lead flow. You just pursue some leads, and some work and some don’t, right? And, here we were, with 54 lots in a circle and get half of water and sewer, half of double take a reasonable size… What do they call it? The septics, ummm… It’s not the engineered. The regular gravity fed, normal septic. So…

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: …Nothing wrong with the land. Nothing wrong with the thing. We have to clear it. Lots of brush and trees are growing out by then, and we have to clear the thing out. And, we got the first four up. And… But, at the end of the year, we did that. We got a lot of traffic this week. We got a couple of contracts coming, I think, by Friday. So, we finally looked the match and started the development. And so, that was all. It all came out of a tax sale list. Just because we were looking and said, “Hey! If we had the tool, it actually would have been a little quicker to see all those work together.” We had to do some manual research on that. But, it’s just an example where even what you think might immediately be not good, you just never know what you’ll going to find. And, that could be seven figures and that makes taxes all worth it even if it’s just one deal.

Joe:      Do you find much competition on these deals when you send the letters?

Corey: I would tell you… A lot of the things that I do in Florida… Like, we just picked up a property in West Palm. And, I keep mailing there even though it’s competitive. I just keep on mailing them just because when you get the deal, it’s fantastic. And so, we mailed their mail there. And, it is competitive down in South Florida. There’s a lot of guys there that want to pick up those properties. And so, our letter is one of so many. Well, a lot… I’ll tell you this. We’re a lot less competitive than the actual foreclosure list. People are still going hard after the bank foreclosure thing not realizing that there’s such a thing as a tax foreclosure.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: So, it’s less competition. But, there is still some and some very, very popular markets like that. There are some. But, you know what? It’s still worth the mail because…

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: …I think I was in 600 or 700 in mail to pick up this one in West Palm and we’re going to be into $65 on a $420 resale.

Joe:      Wow!

Corey: So, that’s not bad on $600 bucks worth of postcards, right? So…

Joe:      Competition is such a silly thing to very worried about, isn’t it?

Corey: It really is. I tell people. That’s like what you’re about to say probably. I say, “You know…” I don’t think it’s just Marine culture. I think everybody that has competed, especially as men, we’re like, “I don’t care what you’re doing. I’m going to beat you or do it great anyway. And, I’m going to get my piece,” and possibly add… If you add bountiful philosophy to that… Anyway, if they said there’s plenty, there’s enough, you’re going to get one, then there’s really no reason to even be talking about competition unless you’re afraid of it, and we’re not. We just do what we do and deals come. And so, I don’t need to worry about whether I was one of 20 or one of two.

Deals come and we’re all happy. And, those guys that got deals also may be probably happy too. And so, we just don’t even use that word really in our company because it doesn’t matter.

Alex:    That’s really good.

Corey: Yeah.

Alex:    Okay. So, I got some more questions for you.

Corey: Okay.

Joe:      What are you sending to these guys? You got a property of late taxes? What do you send them?

Corey: Yeah. We have been sending postcards because we really didn’t start mastering marketing like we really should be. We’re just sending a message out that we want to help, and “How can we be helpful? You’re late. In case, you didn’t know the problem, you’re late. How can we be helpful? Can you please give us a call? No obligation. Just real open door.” Some people call us and want us to pay their tax for them, right? A little amount of money.

Alex:    That’s nice.

Corey: But, no. We really don’t do that. Although, if you are a lender, you can make a ton of money doing that, right? You’re going to put your lien on that…

Joe:      It is.

Corey: On houses, and make quite a bit if you wanted to. But, we don’t do that. So we said, “No, we’re not sure of that.” But, you call them Martha. You call the neighbor. Like, we just help them. “Have you done everything you can do?” And a lot of times, they have. And we’re like, “Well. We’re in the buying business. So, when you come to the conclusion that you just can’t fix it, we can do something quickly. But, you just need… We need an extra amount of time. So, this is all the advice that we can really give you.” But, they feel really good that we actually helped them think of other things. And, by the time we rattle off some that they have tried, they really believe that we legitimately want to help them solve their problem. And when they can’t, they sell. And, because we’re… I wouldn’t say, a counsel role, but because we really tried to help them out, we have a good relationship with them. I’ll tell you this. We are moving into a different mail though now called “Lumpy Mail.” You’ve heard this before, right?

Alex:    Yes.

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: There is LumpyMail.com. I know… a long time was talking about it. But, LumpyMail.com. We’re on there. And, we’re try different things on there to get some… To make sure… I want to make sure that our open rate is as close to 100% as possible, right? So I’m willing to pay more money now for fewer mailings to know it’s getting opened. And then, I can make a better determination of whether they’re actually reading the message or just they don’t want it, or whether or not, they were just throwing a postcard away. So, we’re moving into Lumpy Mail now and we’ll get some good feedback on that this month to see what’s going on there.

Joe:      What are some examples of what’s your sending in the Lumpy Mail?

Corey: Yeah. I like the “Shredded Money” one. They have a “Shredded Money” on that website as an example. They have a “Bank Bag” that you…

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: …Can put your your logo and number on there, in the bank bag on it. I’ve send out the “Trash Can” one they have before. Your messages can always play off whatever device you happen to be sending. But, it’s literally like a 6-inch tall tin trash can thing…

Joe:      Yeah.

Corey: …That you can send through the mail in a box which is kind of nice. So, those are the three that we’re looking at, in particular. But, we’re going to test four or five different ones, and then hone it down to a couple that we like. And then, just keep blowing it out until we can continue getting the deal flow that we want.

Joe:      One of the things that I’m partnering with a friend in my Mastermind on is tear sheets, newspaper tear sheets.

Corey: Yeah! Exactly.

Joe:      And, it looks like somebody actually tore off a newspaper, a long article… And, putting it into mail and sticking a Post-it note.

Alex:    Putting a little note. Like, a sticky note, right?

Corey: Yup.

Joe:      Yeah. A Post-it note on it. “Hey, I’m thinking about you. Check this out.” And, it’s a story about this awesome investor who’s helping all these people…

Corey: Uh-huh.

Joe:      …Save their house for foreclosure because of late taxes. And, by the way, “You should call this guy to get more information.” So, it’s an advertorial. I think you’ve heard that?

Corey: Advertorial, yup. That’s another great idea. Yeah, absolutely.

Joe:      I’ll be sending those out probably in the next month or two. I’ll be interested to see how that works. But..

Corey: Yeah. I can’t wait to hear back on how that played out.

Joe:      You send that…

Alex:    To what kind of list? Just the regular one?

Joe:      There has to be a special due list, right? It’s got to be… Like, we’ve been… We hired a copywriter to write different sales copy for evictions, late taxes, probates… Ummm… I forget like two or three others. But mainly… Yeah, evictions, probates, late taxes. And, the article is written more along the lines of “Company helps so-and-so. Save their credit by buying their house.” So, it looks like a new story. So… But anyway, it’s fascinating to think about that there’s a lot of different things that you can do. And, if it is more competitive or if your customers are getting a lot of mail, it’s important to make yours stand out. I like that a lot. So, on your mail that you send, Corey… Is it more like a direct response marketing? Are you telling them to go to a website to get more information? How does it work?

Corey: No, we’re telling them to call. We ask them to call the number. We have a girl that answers that phone, the phone call and do it direct.

Joe:      Okay.

Corey: Because he hasn’t gotten very creative on, “Go here or do that.” But, I liked to. We’re paying more attention to it now just because we want to make really sure that we’re consistent with it. And, our students ask us, right? So, we have to keep doing some of those things too. But, yeah. It’s just a phone call. I want them to have the least path of resistance to call in when they responded, right? And so, we… I want the girl right on the phone.

Joe:      Okay. So, you’re sending mail… What? Once a month? Once…

Corey: About that. Yeah, about that. About that. It varies on the number, but once a month in various markets depending on what’s going on. When I say that, meaning… Like Florida, for example, has a deed auction just about every month. Meaning, they’ve already been liened. It’s been a couple of years. Now, they’re about to actually have their property taken from them at the auction block and so, I want to get a hold of those people. And so, that could happen every month in that particular market because it’s just their schedule. Other places, it’s once a year that you can mail to them, or a couple of times a year. And so, that’s why we got a handful of markets we mail to throughout the year to make sure we’re doing something every month.

Joe:      Hey, everybody. Joe McCall of Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. I’ve decided that I’m going to split this podcast interview with Corey Taylor into two parts, okay? So, this is the end of first part. And then, part two will be coming next. So, I wanted to just give a shout-out to Corey. He gave some really, really good content on this podcast. And, it’s just was getting too long. It was so good that it went too long. And, I’m going to actually give you some of the websites in advance that we’ve talked about at the end of part two.

All right. So, to get more information about Corey, you should go to TaxSaleTraining.com. TaxSaleTraining.com. There was another website called CashFlowCommanders.com. CashFlowCommanders.com. And, I wanted to tell you too. One of the things we asked him at the end of part two was for him to demonstrate the software that he talks about in this podcast. So, he has this special software they created where they… You can find properties that have late taxes and you can also create marketing to go out to those folks. It tells you information about the properties. And, he has agreed to do a special video demonstrating that software to us, to our listeners.

And, he has also agreed to give us or anybody who’s interested a special fee 14-day trial to the software. So, I haven’t seen it myself yet. We have a call scheduled in a few days. He’s actually going to demonstrate the software for me. I’m going to record it. And, if you go to the show notes at RealEstateInvestingMastery.com… RealEstateInvestingMastery.com. Go to the show notes for this episode and you will find the link where you can watch that video. Pretty cool! So again, guys, thank you very much! We sure appreciate you and leave us a review on iTunes. Let us know you like the show, would you? I appreciate it. So, I’m going to hang up now. If you want part two, stay tuned because it’s going to be coming soon. Thanks a lot guys!