1024 » The Advantages of Being an Investor / Agent with Gavin Timms & Frank Jr

Joe:   Welcome. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast.

Gavin: Hey, guys, how are you doing? Welcome back to the REI Network podcast. OK, if you are watching us on the podcast or YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe. We’ve got some more episodes coming with some really cool people. I want to introduce today’s guest just here in a second, but I did want to give you a quick giveaway. If you want five thousand free property records for you to mail or skip trace to start calling and texting, go to batchleads.io/gavin. They’re running a promotion right now to give people in my audience 5,000 records. So jump on that, get them and get marked and get some leads coming in. All right. So now I am going to introduce my guest. I want to bring him over right now. It is Frank Hopkins. Frank, how are you?

Frank:   Hey, Gavin. Good. I’m doing really well. How are you?

Gavin:  Yeah, good. I appreciate you jumping on. You know, I’ve been pretty impressed. I’ve known you for I don’t know how many years. It seems like a lot of years,

Frank:   It’s been a while, yes.

Gavin:  It has. And it’s been impressive to see your journey, right. When we spoke back in I don’t know what year, several years ago. I know you were at the day job.

Frank:  Yes.

Gavin:   I know you were looking for a way to go into real estate full time. And I think our big discussion today, which is going to be a killer one, is the advantages of being an investor and an agent. Right. And getting that across of how come people that have their license do both sides. And I think there’s sometimes different ways investors get their license to stay maybe compliant or realtors have been doing traditional real estate, but they have no idea on the investment side. So I’m definitely going to dive into that and talk about it. I’m not an agent and I have my reasons for not being an agent, mainly because I’m virtual in multiple markets, it doesn’t make any sense. But I do have, depending on what we’re doing, I do have agents that I do use to bring in for certain things if it’s listing the property after a flip and things like that. So let’s dive in. Tell us a little bit about you, kind of your background, your back story, how you got into real estate, and then we’ll build it from there.

Frank: OK, cool. Well, honored to be with you, Gavin, and I’ve learned so much from you over the years, so I really want to acknowledge that first. I started, I was actually working for a church in Miami at the time. And because there was so many people in the church in Miami from Cuba, we had a big missions ministry in Cuba. We started going down there to help plant churches. You couldn’t build a church in Cuba at the time, but you could buy a house. And then a pastor would live in the house and then he could have church out of that house. So our my first foray into buying houses was in Cuba. We’d go in and help fund houses. And you’d pay, I don’t know, three, four or five thousand dollars, really inexpensive. And then there was a pastor would move in with his family and then they would start having church there. So that’s when I really got started buying houses. A very unusual way, I’m sure. And then the church in Miami started wanting to expand. So I spent a lot of time with our commercial real estate folks doing that. And then when I finished my time at the church, I got my license because I was going to be a business broker. You had to have your license in Florida to do that, because I had sold my business before I worked for the church. And then I moved to Orlando to be closer to my kids and then bought a franchise from a national wholesaler. And that’s kind of the short version of my journey into real estate.

Gavin:  OK, awesome. Yeah. So let’s talk about when you get in. Obviously, you started that way so you could see the opportunity within real estate. And obviously your job being with the church led to like OK, I could probably take this on full-time. And I remember the transition. I remember exactly where I was. I was traveling at the time. When we talked about the ways to get invested, I remember you going with the franchise, which we got. We don’t need to talk about that. The problem with the franchises is that they tie you down with your marketing pieces. I remember that was one of our big things, and the way that you advertise yourself. So, you know, you’ve got out of that. Well, let’s talk about the big advantage of what do you do in between the investment and the the agent side? How will you play in both sides? So give us some examples of how it’s working for you and what people can take away.

Frank:  Yeah, so I meet quite a few folks who are obviously investors and I meet quite a few that are agents. I don’t always meet folks who are agents who utilize the investing side of it or vice versa. So first of all, the idea in terms of the actual testing and all,  it’s a fairly simple process. But I feel like that when especially, as you know, real estate today is so competitive that when I was only a wholesaler, I started this wholesaling with the company that I had a franchise with and it was a really good experience. I just wanted to be free to do my own thing. I would go into houses and make offers. If my offer didn’t work, which many times it didn’t, then I had nothing. I got frustrated walking away from leads. And not only that, Gavin, the bigger thing to me was I would meet people and I would think to myself, they shouldn’t discount this house. Their best exit is to sell this house listed with a professional agent and sell it. So I got tired of that pretty quick and I decided, you know, I had my license, but wasn’t really active with it at the time. And so I said, how can I utilize the license part of this? Because I really thought in my soul there was many people that needed more money than I could offer as a wholesaler and with partnering with professional agents, because a lot of times I get calls, and people will say to me, “Hey, I don’t want to work with a real estate agent”. Well, the reason they say that is because either they’ve had a bad experience or they need to leave quick or whatever the case may be. But there’s been something in the past and they have this idea of what working with a real estate agent is. And so if you have a license and you understand whether it’s a creative deal, whether it’s subject to, whether it’s listed form, pay cash, whatever the case is, if I believe this one hundred percent, from the depths of my soul, that when I walk into a house, I have the option or the answer for you. You’re going to be the one that’s going to define what that answer is. And then I’ll roll whichever way you want to roll. But personally, I can honestly tell you, I don’t care which way you go. And I’ll tell you this, too. And if I’m not the answer for you, I always tell customers this. If I’m not the answer for you and I’m not always the answer, I’ll help you find the one that is. But I believe by being able to do both, I walk into a customer feeling like I can help them do what’s best for them. At the end of the day, you know, I mean, this is a people business, as you’ve told me from day one. And we’re there to help the people.

Gavin: Absolutely. People do business with who they like. And I think there’s another big learning point in what you just said. The way that you position yourself going in, you said something that was crucial when you said “Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Seller, if I can’t help you, I will be able to provide someone that can”. What you’re doing is you’re not there to sell them. You’re not there to talk them in and you literally relax the room, right?

Frank:   Yeah.

Gavin: Because you’re not here pushing the cash offer. You’re not here pushing the retail. You’re listening. You’re getting the information. You’re kind of then taking that and then going, “What is the best move to solve their problem?”, and “Hey Mr. Seller, if this doesn’t work or I can’t help you, then I’m going to try and help you find someone who can”. What that’s showing the seller is this guy is not trying to sell me.

Frank:   Exactly.

Gavin:  It’s just going to lower the room temperature. And everyone’s just going to relax. And when everyone’s relaxed, they can have better conversation. So I just want to point that out, because that was that was awesome.

Frank: I feel like when people reach out to investors, because I’ve had them tell me this, that they have this idea or this perception of what being an investor is. And they’ll say things like, “I know you’re going to lowball me” or “You’re not going to take my house. You’re not going to steal it from me” or whatever, or “I hear you guys get things in a contract, then you don’t close”. Those are experiences somebody’s had. And so I know some of those things are true. I know people that have told me that they’ve experienced that. So when people reach out, there’s a defensiveness. I mean, there’s a wall, ‘Hey, I need to do this, but then I’m going to reluctantly go down this road”. And so I think it’s so important, absolutely so important. I learned a lot of this from Todd Toback as well as you and Joe, that you pull back like, listen, I don’t have to have this deal. I don’t have to help this person. I don’t have to do this. I’m here to help. If it makes sense for you, great. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, too. But when I need to deal and you might have been the one who told me this, but somebody said to me, and I haven’t forgotten this, the way to be successful in this business is to not need the deal, because when you need it, it comes across as big dollar signs in your eyes or whatever, and you’re all focused on you and your bills or whatever. You cannot succeed in this business that way, in my opinion.

Gavin:   Yes, be the reluctant buyer. Absolutely.

Frank:   Exactly.

Gavin:  Because you’re right, it shows, you know, the panic sets in, the desperation sets in, and you’re always going to win more than you lose by doing that. Right. At the end of the day, we can only work with motivated people. And that’s what that proves, right? If they’re not motivated to do anything, it doesn’t matter who’s in front. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best closer ever. If you have found out the situation and the situation isn’t really a bad situation and they don’t really want to sell, then there’s no deal to be done. Right. But I think what you’re doing is it’s kind of like my method when I say no lead left behind, right? You’re basically saying we’ll buy it cash, we’ll take it creative finance or we’ll list the property. We’ll cover pretty much anything that’s going and  you’re right, you go into that house knowing or believing that there’s nothing that you can’t do or achieve in this deal. But you’re also dropping that comfort in of saying, well, if there is someone better, I’ll find them. I’ll help you find them. So that’s really good. So when you’re doing this, how is that since you started to apply this method? How has that changed your business from how are you setting up these type of deals? Because I already know the answer. But I want you to say it, are you taking these down as the investor? Are you handing them off on the realtor side? Are you partnering? Are you doing it all? What’s all that look like?

Frank: Great question. So when they reach out, I’m the one that talks to the people because I use my own name: Frank Jr. Buys Houses. Somebody suggested to me early on, people like to do business with a person. So that’s the reason I did that. I feel like the most important piece of this is connecting and building rapport. So that initial call, once the person comes in and it’s passed to me, I talk to them. And then, Gavin, I’ve heard different things about this, but my own experience is that I assume when somebody reaches out, they’re interested. Now, I realize not everybody is interested. I get it. But the majority of the time, when I assume you reached out, you don’t want to waste your time. You reach out for a reason. I assume you’re interested. And so my goal is to get in the house. Now, I know many do virtual etc. I still want to go into the house. I love the connection and I know when you and I connect that something good is going to happen. What happens is, once we decide we’re going to meet, and sometimes that’s “Hey, call me back in two months” or “I’m not quite ready” or whatever. And so there’s a follow up CRM and follow up as well. But when I go in, depending upon where it is in central Florida, I’ll go in with an agent. Now, if somebody says to me, “Hey, you know, I got to sell and I got to go, OK?”, even then, I will go in with my partner agent. So there’s two of us in the room. Let’s suppose you’re the customer. I’ll say “This is my partner”. One of my partners is Tom. “This is my partner, Tom. We partner together when we buy it. I’m the one who buys it and I’ve got my own lenders”, and explain that how that works. But sometimes customers decide they want us to list it for them and Tom focuses more on that side of it. So I feel like I work with five different agents who are awesome. They get deals done. And so what happens is, when they tell you I’ve had people on the phone say to me, “I don’t want to talk to a real estate agent” and I’ll say, “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to either”. And I’ll say to them on the phone, “We are licensed. I am a licensed agent. I know you didn’t call me for that reason or reached out to me for that reason. But I am. I just want you to know that. And I can help however you want help”. “No, no, no. I don’t want to deal with a real estate agent”. “I get it. No problem”. So I always bring my partner in depending on where I’m at. So if I’m on the coast in Volusia County, I have something I work with there. We go in together. We have the conversation. And I feel like between the two of us, there’s so much experience and knowledge of what possible exits could happen that it works. I’m really shocked, and I don’t mean to sound arrogant on this at all, but I’m shocked if we don’t walk out with an agreement, either a listing or an offer to buy the house ourselves. So if we buy it, I like to include the agent in that as well. So I literally like to partner with them the whole way. So if I buy it, then they get a percentage of that. If it’s a listing, they’ll list it and then I get a referral fee for that. So let’s say you say to me, “Hey, you know, after thinking about this, I need the money from a listing. Let’s retail this”. Then I’ll hand the conversation off to the agent. “Hey, OK, so Tom is going to kind of walk you through what this would look like and then he’ll talk through that part of it”, and then I’ll stay quiet. And then I’ll reassure the customer “Hey, listen, we’re both in this together and we’re both available to answer any part of this. But Tom is going to drive the retail listing part of this. And I’m here to support him in doing that”. And then if it turns out that we buy it, then I’ll be the one to drive that and then Tom will be the one to sell it for me. Unless I’m going to wholesale and I generally try not to wholesale stuff, I’d rather just take it down and put it on the MLS because I’ve just seen that work out better financially. I like for the guys that I work with to benefit either way, which means they’re getting parts of listings that are deals that we take down that in the past they wouldn’t have. So I’m splitting. I got four deals that are going to gross right at two hundred thousand and an agent is going to get half of that money. But I also feel like this is my risk too.

Gavin:  Well I think people listening to that number will be thinking you could have had it all. But the reality is. Yeah you could, but could you? Right. Could you have done four or would you’ve just done two on your own because not only are you partnering, but you’re also giving a lot of tasks away. You’re giving and gaining a lot of time back. That’s exactly my model. I tell everyone I don’t think I’ve ever done a deal start to finish on my own, whether it’s from me looking at me, dispo in it, bringing someone in to partner. I’ve always had people who partnered on deals because I know that people are better in certain areas than me and while they’re handling that, I can get the next one.

Frank: I totally agree, 100 percent. Well, here’s the other thing. The agents know people I don’t know, and they have investors. For example, I went to a mobile home because we will buy mobile homes on own land as well. And I’m there with another agent in Volusia County. And the seller tells us what they need. And what happens is, as they’re telling us what they need, they needed more money than what I could pay. But the agent knew somebody who would pay what they wanted. So literally, while we’re sitting there, the agent gets on the phone and calls their investor, “Hey, this is what we got by, bla bla bla”. “OK, I’ll take it”. Literally the agent sold that property while we were sitting there. So, you know, I’m with you. I could have made the two hundred thousand? I don’t know. Maybe, but that’s not even a thought for me. I don’t even care because my goal is to bring as many guys along with me. I want a bunch of us to be successful in this, and not just me. That’s just my thing.

Gavin: I agree 100 percent, 100 percent. We just closed on two big deals finally yesterday, the same thing. We had two 50k deals close and I make, after acquisition and closing, I made about forty six thousand for me. But again, I’m happy everyone’s been paid. And I think that’s really important. The other key thing, I just want to jump back real quick that you said, which is huge. When you get on, and this goes for anyone. When the seller gets on the phone, they’re going to attack either party. What do I mean by that? You’re an agent. I don’t want to deal with agents. You’re an investor. I don’t want to deal with investors. You’re going to hear it on both.

Frank:  Yes.

Gavin:  The key is to try and shut that down and agree with them as fast as they can. Because you said something genius. You said, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t either. Something along them lines. It’s the same thing. So on the investment side, if I get on the phone and they go “You’re an investor, you’re going to lowball”. And I go, “Yeah, there’s nothing worse than a lowball cash offer is there? I don’t blame you. But what if I could get you the price that you wanted? What would you want to do then?”. And then all of a sudden, disarmed and they’re like “What, wait. You’re not going to lowball me?” “No, absolutely. I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t buy cash houses, but it’s gotta suit your situation, Mr. Seller. So let me ask you a few questions”. And then we’ll start to build that rapport. So I always believe that when you’re on the phone, you have ten seconds. Right. The first ten seconds is crucial to whether this call is going to go or if it’s going to be a get off the phone moment. Right. Little techniques like you just said. And I just wanted to really bring that to the service for people that have a like an aha moment. Right. Because these things are killer little moves that’s going to change everything.

Frank: So, yeah, if you get on the phone, tell them all you can do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, like you said, you’re lucky if you get ten seconds, they’ll hang up on you quick because we’re so used to getting spammed because I answer my phone every day, I get calls from telemarketers etcetera. I mean, you just don’t get much time. So I agree with that. You’ve got to be on point. But I think the other thing, too, is, you know, when I was being coached on the speaking side, they used to say to us, don’t get in speaker mode. Just have a conversation like what we’re doing now. if you get on the phone and act all salesy and let me read my script and all that, then, I mean, I’m OK with scripts. But if he come across real sales. No, thanks.

Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. And that was like when we got on. Right. We just hopped on. Today and I’m like, just be you we’ll roll with it like that. I want to know Frank. I want to know you. Just like if we were sitting just in a bar or in a restaurant or we’d bump into each other at the airport. Right. And it’s just going to be natural. You know, there’s no editing. It’s just me and you having a conversation, delivering a ton of value for people who are interested in this field. And guess what? There’s a lot of interest, right? Especially, you know, it’s easier probably for the investors to go to agents because they already understand it. And the agents, in my opinion, it’s just one way. It’s retail, retail, retail. So it’s easier for the investors to turn to agents. But I think it’s very difficult for the agents to go to investors because they learned one way and now everyone’s teaching something that’s not taught the one way. And I think that’s harder. So how will you with these agents that have these leads coming in? Right. First thing, who is a seller going to call? They’re going to call an agent. Right. For the most part. Right. They’re going to pick up. They’re going to find an agent. So these agents that aren’t investors. Are you networking with them? Are you trying to build relationships with them or are you trying to show them a different way?

Frank: Yeah, good question. I’m with a really large international brokerage. And so we have a lot of opportunity to connect. So what I did was, when I when I joined this brokerage, I asked the person that did some of my training with me, “Hey, who are some guys who really know how to make customers happy and that I could work with?”. So he introduced me to some of them. So we met, I’d reach out, we’d connect and then ask “OK, tell me about how do you treat customers? Give me your philosophy and all that?. I wanted to be sure that our philosophies on dealing with the customer. For example, if you text me and this is just me, if you text me, unless I’m just sitting there with my wife or my grandkids or something and we’re in the middle of conversation, I’m going to respond back to you, especially if a deal is going sideways, there’s trouble with closing or whatever it is. I expect you to treat that customer the same way I would like they are a priority. And as I’m sure you know as well, I’ve tried to spend my money with companies where I couldn’t get anybody to respond. Or like I said, I have dollars I want to give you and I can’t get anybody to get back with me. I can’t stand that. So I had the broker send me some names. I reached out to them and found the ones that I felt like were a good fit. Now I work with a few different companies, but I try to work with the agents and the brokers that I’m in because I try to also add value to them by teaching them some ways. For example, we came in and we talk to you as a customer. When we drive away, we’re having a phone call. “Hey, how did it go?” “Hey, what could we have said differently?” “How did we do?” “How did the customer respond and how could we have improved that?” So we’re giving each other feedback on the lead. But then I’m also telling them now this is an opportunity to keep this as a rental. And here’s the reasons why. Or this is an opportunity to flip this house and here’s how this could happen. And so I’m explaining to them things that they may or may not understand to help them learn the investing side of it. I don’t have all the details. I forget who it was that said, I don’t need to have all the details, I just need to know somebody who has them. And so I don’t have all the legalease of the retail side. I depend on the agents for that. But my goal is to help them build wealth. And I’ve seen in my own life, my wife and I started buying rentals in 2017 and I’ve seen just how it’s changed our life. I mean, it’s just had a complete, huge impact on us. And so my passion is to help as many people. There’s a lot of great companies, a lot of great organizations. I hear how everybody should work for themselves. I don’t agree with that. Some people love a company they work with. Great. But I do believe that if you’re totally dependent on that, like it’s a dangerous place to be. And so I know many agents don’t have retirement plans and accumulating properties along the way and building wealth through real estate is a way to do that. I’m just shocked at how little time that I’ve seen, maybe it’s different in other places, where agents aren’t taught the investing side of real estate so that when you finish, when you busted your tail for 30 years, did great service and you chased deals, and after a while I don’t want to chase deals anymore. I want to keep stuff along the way so I don’t have to do that at some point.

Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think everyone, depending on where you are on your journey, right, I think that happens. I love starting with, I wouldn’t even say wholesaling, the way my mind works, if I can be a marketer, if I can be a master at sales and marketing, I choose what happens with the deal.

Frank:   Yes.

Gavin: I choose to wholesale. I choose to flip it. I choose to do a lease option, a creative finance. I choose to list it, I choose, I make the decisions when I get control of something.

Frank:   I totally agree.

Gavin: The art of everything that we do is having the ability to find off market deals to then get them to market. Right. And that’s how what we kind of specialize in doing, because there’s so many investors trying to get on the MLS, buying on the MLS to flip. And for me, the margins aren’t there. For someone to go in and say there’s twenty five thousand in this deal, right. Top end twenty five thousand, they’re going to flip it in this market is just madness to me. You’ve got to be making twenty five thousand and everything went wrong to make twenty five thousand.

Frank:   Exactly.

Gavin: That’s my and we will not buy, this is another tip for everyone listening. We do not buy what we can’t wholesale. Right. Meaning if it doesn’t fit the wholesale, if I can’t sell it to Frank for ten grand and I can’t sell it to anyone, I’m not going to go “Well we’ll buy it because no one else wants it”. No, no, no. That is a sign that you don’t have a good deal. If I want to say, I can wholesale this for ten to Frank, or I’ll take it down and make sixty and flip it. So I always stick with that. If I can’t wholesale it myself, we do not buy it. That’s kind of what we stick to and stands us in good stead.

Frank: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I want to emphasize, you guys taught me this and so did a coach I had here in Orlando, that everything that you buy has to have multiple exits. If you don’t have multiple exits, then you can find yourself in trouble. The first flip that I ever did I lost my tail on the first slip, and it’s because I did it by myself. I didn’t see the right enough information. And the information I got, I didn’t listen to because I thought, oh, you know, I got this figured out now. But the other thing is there was only one exit on that property. And so that was a huge mistake. And just to emphasize your point, there’s got to be multiple exits. And I know the theory today, like I have a price point that I’ll buy in. I don’t want to buy expensive houses. I don’t want to worry about that. There’s a price point where I’m going to stay and I’m not going to be tempted by something that looks awesome that’s in a higher price point because, you know, it’s good today. But I don’t want to be, what’s that game where you pull the chair away and someone’s left without a chair, I forget what they call that. But I don’t want to be in that. Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to be in this market where there’s no chairs and I’m stuck with this real expensive home. I don’t do it. When I buy a house, it’s in a certain reach.

Gavin:  Yeah, absolutely. And the deals that we just closed. Right. There were 50k apiece. But they were high-end and I don’t know if you people use this word, but I say I bottled it, right. I basically was scared to take the deal down. These things were probably, one was four hundred grand, one was 450 in Alabama. They needed four or five hundred grand in each and they’d sell for one point five million and take about eight, nine months to do it. And we can make 400 grand profit on each one. Right. But at the same time, look at the job, look at the risk, look at all the money in, and look how many times and how long it’s going to take. So then we thought, hold on, we can get fifty a pop here just to hold him to a high end flipper. We can make a hundred grand, we could make eight hundred grand if everything goes to plan, but we’re tying up two million dollars or whatever, 1.7 million dollars for eight months. We were in a madness market. Everything we flip, we want to make sure it’s on the market within about eight weeks.

Frank:   Right.

Gavin: We’re not taking off. So it just didn’t fit the model. And I think as investors, you’ve just got to stay disciplined to your thing and not chase the shiny things because you think that that’s what you should be doing. And I nearly did it. I went back and forth for seven, eight days on this.

Frank:   Yeah.

Gavin: And then we just said no, we can’t, because. Yeah, great. If we could have made that. But I’m thinking, OK, can I make that money in eight months anyway, and I think I can, with a lot less risk,

Frank: With a lot less risk, stress, you know. And by the way, if you don’t have a full-time or ongoing rehab crew today, I mean, it’s a struggle. So, yeah, I actually like to buy properties that I can wholetail, like where you do like very, a little polish, a little spit shine, and put them on the market. I did a one hundred twenty thousand dollars rehab in the last year in 2020 and I said never again. That’s just not my specialty. And to your point, you know, I could have run it, I could have wholesaled it, but I thought it would be an awesome thing to do. As it turns out, we went over budget, it cost a lot more money, a lot more stress. We had to fire the GC in the process and try to find someone else. And, you know, just like, OK, no, no thanks. And it’s easy to do even I mean, you’re super experienced, one of the most successful investors I know. And even you with two recent deals are going back and forth. Shall we flip it, you know, so I think you just have to constantly remind yourself, OK, what’s my sweet spot? And I need to stay there.

Gavin:  Yeah, definitely. We just had something I’d like your opinion on this, to see to see if this happens. So we’ve got to flip right now that’s in closing, right. We listed it at $262,000. We got an offer for $300,000 or ten thousand over appraisal. Right. We know it’s not going to price three hundred grand. In our head, we’re thinking it might appraise for 275, maybe 280, OK. The appraisal comes back yesterday at 263. Oh. So we’re like there’s no way. There’s no way. We’ve looked at comps. There’s no way. So anyway we got the appraisal and start digging. The appraisal guy has not, we’ve got a pool. It’s not on, it says no pool. We have a pool. It says it’s not been remodeled, the bathrooms haven’t been remodeled in the last six to ten years. It’s been fully remodeled. Right. I’ve never had this happen. We’re appealing it right now to the mortgage company because that’s who sends out, the lender sends out the appraisal guy, and she’s looked at it and gone, “Yeah, I have no idea what he’s done here”. It’s frustrating, though, because now, we’re in covid, everything’s taking ages. Now we’ve had to go and dispute something that’s clearly wrong, because if he wouldn’t have ticked the box, like if he would have said pool, renovated, and it came in at that, I’d be like scratching my head thinking, how? He’s ran a comp that sold for 265, that’s not been fixed up and is smaller without a pool. I’m just mind blown with this thing. So anyway, so we dealt with that yesterday. We’ve gone in and we’ve  appealed against it or whatever. No idea how long that’s going to take. Have you run into anything like yourself? I’m just curious.

Frank:  Yeah. I got four houses closing in the next couple of weeks and I think the process, I don’t think it’ll take long. I’ve seen this appeal some appraisals. I’m just guessing, I don’t know what this person did, I’m not even sure they even went to the house. I mean, they might have done it from someplace else.

Gavin:   He was there for sure.

Frank:   Oh, he was, OK.

Gavin: It took a week to get it back. We don’t know if he’s mixed it up. We don’t know what he’s done. I was thankful to see that my team was fuming. And I was at the start, but then I was like, well, he’s made all these mistakes. So that’s better than him saying everything was right. I mean, the bathrooms are like brand, new redone. This thing is nice. And anyway, it was just crazy.

Frank: I think it’ll come out OK, I think. And to your point, the appraisers are backed up for weeks. I mean, I got the results from one ten days later or whatever, and it’s possible all that happened. But I think you’ll get it fixed and it shouldn’t be a big issue. The challenge is, is that when they do an appraisal where he actually did it correctly. But you know, it didn’t come in. I had a, for example, a house that a gentleman called to sell his house for cash. But when we got there, we’re like, man, this is a killer house. Like, this is beautiful. There’s nothing like this. Let us sell it for you. And he did. Well, the first appraisal came in at forty thousand under a list. And so when we challenged the comps and all, and then the seller was like, I’m won’t take that. So, OK, cool. So we just put it back on the market and then the second time sold it for the list price and done deal. So sometimes it doesn’t make sense what happens.

Gavin:  Absolutely. We even went back to the seller and said, hey, it’s come in. And he said it, “No, that’s crazy”. He was happy to pay more. He’s like, no way. He’s like, “I don’t blame you. Just don’t take another offer, just figure it out”. Because we had tons of offers on it. You know.

Frank:   I’m sure. Was this in Alabama?

Gavin:   Yeah, yeah.

Frank:   Yeah, yeah. They’ll get it figured out. You should be fine.

Gavin: Awesome. Well I appreciate it. Just one last thing before we go here. You’re working obviously central Florida, Orlando, but you’re going coast to coast to.

Frank:   Correct.

Gavin:   So what areas are they?

Frank:  I go from Palm Coast was just north of Volusia County and then kind of like down the I4 corridor from the East Coast down to the northeast side of Tampa, like Pinellas County. Lakeland is really the point where we stop, but we do a little in some of the communities in the surrounding area. And I partner with agents from coast to coast, basically.

Gavin:   Awesome.

Frank: Yeah. So it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy that. And I want to say and I want to give proper credit here. So before we hang up, thanks for all the all the learning I’ve done from you. I’ve texted you, called you, all kind of stuff, you and Joe, and you guys have taught me so much about this business. And maybe the two most important things that I learned from you guys is this is not a real estate business. It’s a marketing business. So if you don’t market, you got no shot at being successful in this, whatever that channel is for you. And make offers.

Gavin:   Make offers, absolutely.

Frank:  You don’t make offers, you can’t win. So anyway, I’m hugely indebted to you guys, and I really appreciate all that you’ve done to help me in this journey.

Gavin:  And I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And Frank, just one last thing here. If people are listening here, they’re going to be thinking, well, how do I partner with Frank? They might be new. They may be an investor, that doesn’t have a relationship with an agent to say, “Hey, we’ve got a retail one here, can you come in?”. How do people get hold of you if they want to message and reach out?

Frank:  I’m happy to take calls on my cell phone. I still have my Miami area code 305 775 8750. Feel free to text me or call me, I answer my phone. Or you can email me frank@frankjrbuyshouses.com.

Gavin:  There we are guys. So yeah. frank@frankjrbuyshouses.com Awesome. So guys, if you are interested in partnering with Frank in that kind of window that he gave, I’m sure he’d love to do a call. And I just say this to everyone as well listening, try and always bring, not just with Frank, but with anyone, right, try and bring, when you get on and you reach out to people, how can you help Frank? Be thinking about that, right. Don’t come in and go, “Frank, can I take you for a coffee”, right, “Can you give me all this information, Frank?”. Right. Try and think, well, hold on, Frank’s done his time. He’s been in every program, he’s learned, he’s worked with me and Joe and all these other people and he’s got to where he’s got by taking massive action. So just be thinking about that guys when you’re reaching out, “Hey, Frank, how can I help you?”, “What can I do for you?”, “How do we do business together?”, “Hey, Frank, here’s a deal”. Just be really thinking. And that goes for all people in the market. Any investors that you think “I wish I could work with that guy”, “I wish I could know that guy”, in your market. That’s how you need to do it. You need to add value as quickly as possible and not just be the guy, oh another take, take, take. Right. And if you do that, you’re going to network a lot faster. You’re going to get to where you’re going a lot faster as well. Awesome. Well, Frank, I appreciate you. Great episode. Thank you so much. And we will catch up soon.

Frank:   Thank you. Take care.

Gavin:   Bye bye.