Joe:  Welcome. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. Hey, guys, what’s going on, Joe Macall here, the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast got another episode for you today. I’m interviewing a gentleman named Nick Fulmer and we’re going to be talking about a small little niche in real estate about recovering surplus funds and the niche that you might have heard of before. But it’s pretty unique. Not a lot of people know about it. And our guest, Nick, is doing really, really well with it.

He’s been doing really well with this for a number of years. And so I’m excited to talk about this with Nick before we jump in. And we’re not going to waste much time here, but I want to talk about my free report. You can get this free report, my five top strategies for finding deals even in this crazy market in twenty, twenty one. And this is I have some I have some favorite marketing strategies the last well, couple of years, but even especially now in twenty, twenty one where I have been finding deals, my students have been finding deals.

Just got a text from a friend, they were closing on two vacant land deals in the next few days, probably next week. He says here where we close on it after we find a buyer for it. So I’m not sure what our profits are on those, but our land deals, we’ve been averaging about ten to fifteen thousand dollars profit on each of them, sometimes more. So, yeah, this stuff works. It’s not just theory, it’s stuff that we are actually doing. So if you want this free report, my five top strategies for finding deals in twenty, twenty one, absolutely free.

I want you to go to this website right here. DoDealsWithJoe.com/Report. I know it’s a long URL. I wish it was shorter, but DoDealsWithJoe.com/Report. You get this thing for free. If you were listening to my podcast yesterday or whenever you listen to this a few days ago, this thing, I gave you the wrong URL. So this is the right one. DoDealsWithJoe.com/Report. Cool. One more thing. We’re doing this live right now on YouTube and Facebook. And so if you’re watching this, please comment down below. Tell us where you’re from.

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My audio podcast listeners. Thank you for being here. And Al has already said, hey, what’s up, everyone? What’s up, Al? So when you type in your comments in the Facebook or YouTube chat, you get to participate. OK? All right. Let’s bring Nick Fullmer on. Nick, how are you, my man?

Nick:  I’m doing great, Joe. How are you, man? Nice. A little bit of a cold. So that’s why I found the way I do. But I’m going.

Joe:  Well, you sound fine. Oh, good. I love how your books are white and then black.

Nick:  That is my wife doing. I can’t take credit for that

Joe:  It’s not like subject matter or type of book. It’s just the color.

Nick:  Well, there is. I mean, there’s two types of books on here. There’s real estate books and there’s financial books, and that’s pretty much it.

Joe:  Oh, well, that’s good. I mean, mine’s a mess. If you looked at my bookshelf, I’m impressed. All right. Welcome to the show, man.

Nick:  Yeah. Thanks for having me, Joe. Appreciate it.

Joe:  Nick, where are you from?

Nick:  I am from Utah, so I’m about thirty minutes south of Salt Lake City.

Joe:  All right, cool. And how long you’ve been in the real estate game?

Nick:  I’ve been in real estate since I got started in twenty fourteen. Started out part time at the time I was working as a corrections officer, but twenty fourteen is where I started full time, part time. So I was working as a as a prison guard at the Utah State Prison and quickly found out that’s not what I wanted to do for the next 20 or 30 years. And someone said, well, lots of millionaires are made in real estate. So that’s what I started. That’s the path I went down and started out part time, started out wholesaling, then got into what I do now, which is recovering surplus funds and overjust.

Joe:  All right. So how did you get into wholesaling about?

Nick:  Of course, I started watching YouTube videos and came across a gentleman and bought his course and did what he told me to do and did it a few successful deals on my own.

Joe:  And well, before I ask you, of course, it was was it a good course?

Nick:  It was an excellent course.

Joe:  Whose whose was it then?

Nick:  It was a guy named Jerry Norton.

Joe:  I know Jerry, good guy. I had him on the show recently.

Nick:  Yep. Jerry is awesome. Fantastic course. Did really well with a really recommend his stuff for sure.

Joe:  All right. Cool. And wholesaling is a great strategy. We’re still doing deals today. Why’d you stop?

Nick:  I stopped because I found something else. I found the strategy of overjust in surplus funds and I just liked it better than wholesaling for a few reasons. No. One is there seem to be less people doing it. So I was like, OK, if there’s less competition, I like the number two. I felt that it was a wholesaling as a great service in certain circumstances. You you are solving problems for people. But the whole idea of selling right. Is to get a. On a property, so you’re you’re saying, OK, how much can you sell me your house for? That’s less than retail or whatever, whereas with overages I’m saying, hey, I understand you lost your home. Would you like me to get you some money? So there’s two different cells there, right? One is, hey, what discount can I get versus can I give you some money? So that’s an easier sell. I totally get it. And I don’t like I don’t come from a sales background. Correction officer is probably one of the least sales-y jobs out there. So I just had better access with it. And so that’s just what I chose to do.

Joe:  All right, cool. So how did you learn about it?

Nick:  I also bought a course.

Joe:  Of course. And I noticed the traffic secrets, expert secrets, dotcom secrets there behind you and the two comet club award. I love it. I just actually before we started, was booking my tickets to Funnel Hacking live in Orlando and got my hotel. Those of you that don’t know what we’re talking about, a guy named Russell Brunson, I’ve known for years and years and we’re actually good friends. He does these huge events in Orlando with like three, four or five thousand people. It’s called funnel hacking live. And they teach about Internet marketing. It’s a really good workshop. I highly recommend any of you all listening to this has nothing to do with real estate, although he did say he’s going to start he’s going to talk about virtual real estate. Did you hear about that?

Nick:  I didn’t, actually.

Joe:  Yeah. And it’s not like doing deals virtually. It’s actually buying old businesses and old websites and turning them into a profit, applying our Internet marketing ninja to it and turning it into a profit that’s virtual real estate. I told him I didn’t like the term. It’s already is already in his head. So. But cool. Are you going?

Nick:  I think I might. Now that you just mention it.

Joe:  OK, there’s only four four hundred tickets left.

Nick:  Oh really. Get on it. When is it begin.

Joe:  At September. Ten or twenty second through twenty fourth or fifth or something. It’s four days. I’m only staying for three but September twenty second through twenty fifth. OK, Tuesday through Wednesday through Saturday.

Nick:  I’ll see what I can do. I know I’ll be in Tampa the week after that.

Joe:  So the reason I brought that up is not because you have the things in your background there which I really, I’m always, I always look at people’s backgrounds when I’m interviewing them and I’m so conscious mind. But yeah, we talked about you bought two courses that changed your life. Isn’t that amazing? I mean, somebody like Jerry Norton and then you bought another course. These two guys put two gals who are they put together a course teaching you how to do something and make money with it. And Nick, you were one of the few, believe it or not, that actually implemented it, didn’t try to change anything, didn’t question it, didn’t doubt it, just did it. And guess what? It worked. You made money, right? I love that. I love hearing those stories because it’s just inspiring knowing that I have a course to. But like, there are people out there, like you, Nick, who have bought my course and implemented it and have changed their lives for the better. That’s so amazing. Congratulations. Well, now you’re doing the same thing, too, but we’ll talk about that later. OK, so you bought a course. It taught you something about with with something with overages, right? Yep. But in a different little niche. Talk about that. Yeah.

Nick:  So it taught me how to recover surplus funds from tax sales. So I’m sure everyone knows what a tax is. But if you don’t, real basic attack sales. When somebody quits paying their property taxes, the county comes in and they auction off your property to recoup what’s so to them. However, what happens at these tax sales is investors like us will go and will bid on the properties because you can you can get them for cheap. Right. But the competitive bidding drives the price up. And a lot of those properties sell for more than what’s actually owed to the county. So simple example. If I owe ten thousand dollars in property taxes and it goes to auction and an investor pays fifty thousand or the ten thousand is going to go to the county and then they’re forty thousand forty thousand dollars left over, which is what we refer to as an overage or a surplus of funds.

Joe:  And where does that money sit.

Nick:  So with tax sales that usually sits with the county treasurer or sometimes they will elect to deposit it in the county courthouse? Depends. It varies by state, but those are the two main places that the funds are held.

Joe:  And the county doesn’t call or follow up with the person who owned the property and say, here, here’s your money.

Nick:  They will usually send out a letter notifying the homeowner, hey, there’s this money available. They usually send it to the property that they foreclosed on. And this is weeks after the tax. So and so if the homeowner is not living there and they’ve not left a forwarding address, they never get that notice. They never know about the OK.

Joe:  And so you started doing that. You started making money with it. Is it a hard business to do?

Nick:  It is this is what I always say. The concept is very simple, but the execution is difficult. But what I mean by that is the concept is this. You’re finding money owed to people. You’re contacting them, offering to help them recover the. And you’re getting a commission for your service. Simple concept, right? Doing it is another story, but that’s like any real estate, I believe.

Joe:  Oh, yeah. Any business.

Nick:  Any business. Yeah, any business can be simple, but actually doing it can be difficult.

Joe:  Sure. I get it. All right. So what I’m just curious to in that business, in a new kind of little twist on it that you’re doing now, what are some of the challenges? Why is it what is the work part of it?

Nick:  Yeah, great question. So one of the challenges is when you’re when you’re searching for these people that are owed money. We talked about the tax sales, but you can also do this with mortgage foreclosures. Right. And so when you’re tracking these people down, sometimes if someone goes through a foreclosure or they lose a property to tax sale, they usually have other debts. They have people come looking for them, trying to collect on other debts. And so when they lose that property, they kind of want to stay under the radar because they don’t want these other debt collectors finding them. So that’s challenge number one, is it can be hard to find them. It can be hard to track them down. You have to develop the skills of a detective and be able to skip, trace, track people down who may not want to be found so that you can let them know, hey, there’s money for you. The second challenge then is when you do find them is overcoming skepticism, because when you tell someone, hey, you lost a property to tax foreclosure, but there’s money for you, a red light alarm start going off in their head. And they’re like, what do you mean, there’s money? For me, this sounds like a scam. And so you have to educate them on the process and say, hey, you explain to them what happened so that they understand one. This is not a scam, it’s real. And two, you just have to make it very clear that you’re not charging anything upfront for your service. You only get paid if you’re successful in helping them. So those are some of the two biggest challenges.

Joe:  OK, so there’s another type of overages or surpluses and how did you stumble upon that niche?

Nick:  So in twenty seventeen, I transitioned from correctional officer to full time real estate.

Joe:  By the way, how much money were you making by the time you were doing this?

Nick:  So I hear this is actually a really good question. And this is something that I think a lot of it’s a trap that a lot of us fall into. So I have been successful in wholesaling. I have been successful in recovering overjust. And I had also gotten my real estate license as a realtor at one time. And when I left my job, I didn’t really have a plan. I just was like, OK, I have been successful in three different things. Let me go out and I’ll just do all three simultaneously and we’ll be OK. That was my thinking. Leaving my job, remarried. I was married.

Joe:  It was your wife working?

Nick:  She was at the time. And then shortly after she got pregnant after I left. So it was a very stressful time. But she was all for it. She was like, you know, quit your job. Worst case scenario, you can go back to the prison. So I was very fortunate to have that support system. But my my thinking was flawed to think that I was going to do three things simultaneously and be successful at all. It was not the right move. For several months. I didn’t get any traction. I didn’t see a paycheck for almost six months after I left my six months. Yeah, it’s very stressful. And then what happened is I went to a foreclosure sale of a property in my neighborhood just to see I was possibly interested in bidding on it. I didn’t end up bidding on it, but there was another property that sold and it sold for thirty thousand dollars more than what the opening bid was. And so because of my previous training with the tax all over, just a light bulb went off and I was like I just walked up to the attorney after the sale. And I was like, hey, is the opening bid the amount that was owed to the bank? And he said, yes, I was like, OK, well, that sold for thirty thousand dollars more. So what happens to that extra money is like, well, it gets deposited in the local courthouse and the homeowner can petition the court to recover that money. So same concept as tax sales, but I could apply it to foreclosure. And I asked an attorney, could I help people recover that and charge a fee? He’s like, yeah, sure, I’ll see why not. And so in that moment in time, I was like, OK, I started doing research, looking through court records, going back through foreclosures. And what I discovered is there was a lot of money sitting in the court serious. And I’m like, I’m going to focus on this. To heck with the realtor, to heck with the wholesaling strategies. I’m going to focus on this. And that’s when I got traction.

Joe:  Man, that is so, so important. I hope you guys paid attention to that because I have the same problem. But I had a problem before I quit my job because I was trying to do lease options. I was trying to do wholesaling and I was trying to do is subject to and even thinking about doing short sales because that’s what everybody was doing, short sales at the time in two thousand nine eight nine. But it wasn’t until I picked one strategy and honed in on it with like an eagle that just focused on this one thing. That’s when I started having success and started making money. There’s something about that. Maybe you’re good at multitasking, but I think that’s a fallacy. I don’t think anybody is really good at multitasking. You may think you are. Yeah, but you’re not. And well, explain that deeper than why. Why was that? Why? Because it’s not that hard to wholesale a deal, right, is not that hard to find overages and to do listings real stuff. Why why was it challenging for you?

Nick:  I think what ends up happening if you’re doing trying to do multiple strategies simultaneously, you’ll work a little bit on one. You’ll get a little progress. Then you go over here, you work a little bit on one, you’ll progress and you’re giving a little progress in each one. But if you’re just doing one, your efforts start to compound and you start to make way more progress in that one thing than just a little bit of progress in multiple things. It kind of goes along. If you’ve ever read the book, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, if you haven’t read that book or read it, it’s a really easy read that will explain why it is that you should focus on one thing and just consistently do the things that are going to move you forward in that one thing.

Joe:  Yeah. All right. Good. So you kept focusing on one thing then and then what happened next?

Nick:  And then we actually started seeing checks and I was like, OK, this is working. And by the end of twenty eighteen, so fall twenty seventeen. I quit my job. No income for almost six months, focused on the overages after the foreclosure. Got a couple of checks in. So I was like, OK, I don’t have to go back to the prison and just started, just started focusing, focusing and by the end of twenty eighteen I had made over one hundred thousand dollars, which I thought I had made it. Because like when you work as a correctional officer, I was making less than 50 a year, like, wow, I doubled my income within a year of quitting my job. But here’s the caveat. Seventy five percent of that came in the last quarter of twenty eighteen. So and the reason I bring that up is sometimes, guys, when you’re doing something, you won’t see results instantaneously. It may take a while and may take several months before you see results, but you just got to stick with it.

Joe:  Yeah, I always say you got to dig your well before you’re 30.

Nick:  I love the cause.

Joe:  It’s like if you wait until you’re thirsty and oh my gosh, I need some money and you start digging, it’s going to take time. It takes time to find the deals and then takes time to negotiate, takes time to sell. And you may not sell or flip every deal you get under contract either. It may take some time. Wow. OK, so you made one hundred grand in the last quarter of the year. Did it keep on getting better. Yeah.

Nick:  Yep. Two thousand nineteen rolled around and I, I cleared over three hundred and twenty nineteen. Nice.

Joe:  So was this full time thing for you. Forty hours a week

Nick:  I would say. Yes, but at the, at the end of the day I don’t think I was doing forty hours a week because my son was born, my first son was born in August of twenty eighteen. So there was, I was hanging out a lot with him. It didn’t feel like I was working forty hours a week because I was the one working from home and just doing what I could when I wanted to. And so I would say I was putting in probably more like 30 hours, but who knows, I didn’t track how many hours.

Joe:  So were you doing this virtually all over the country or just in your backyard?

Nick:  I started out in my backyard. And again, this goes to focus. So I tell my students, when you start out, focus on one area and focus on one market, whether it’s a one state or a couple of falls within one state. And then as I got better and I mastered that one area, then I started to branch out. So I started out in my home state of Utah. Fast forward to today. I’ve done deals and over 12 different states now.

Joe:  Twelve different states. So let’s talk about the process. You find a foreclosure. Doesn’t matter how old the foreclosure is. Could it have been ten years ago?

Nick: It depends on the state. So that’s a that’s another challenge to this business, is when you go into another state, the process is going to be different. The process of figuring it out is the same. But the the laws are different. You just have to figure out, OK, what is the process that I need to go through to learn how to do this in the state? And that’s what I teach. But I’ll walk you through the process. There’s a simple five step formula that you can do. I call it the overaged profitability formula. So remember this or write this down C four plus five steps. Step number one is you’ve got to create really how do you do that? Simply monitor foreclosure sales and tax. See which property sell for more than the down number to conduct research. What that means is you’ve got to find the people of the money. This is commonly known as a scripture’s find their contact info so that you can reach out to them, which leads us to step three, which is contact your leads, whether it’s via phone, text message, email, social media message. However, you can get in touch with them. It doesn’t matter. Just get in touch with them and let them know they’re owed money and how you can help them. Number four is to contract. So you have signed a fee agreement, a simple five page fee agreement. Say this is what I’m going to do for you. If I’m successful, I’m going to get this much percentage. And then profit is when you submit your paperwork. This is a final step. You can submit it on your own or I like to use attorneys, submit your claim, wait for the check to come.

Joe:  Nice. So you use attorneys? I do. And they just kind of writing the letters for you on their letterhead.

Nick:  Yeah, they’re writing letters. Or if they’re sometimes the money is in a court system. So you have to petition the court. You have to use an attorney. That process, or sometimes it’s just easier to use an attorney so that when the money comes, the attorney can deposited into their trust account and then disperse two checks, one to you and one to the client. That way, everything is clean. It’s handled by a third party.

Joe:  It also gives you more credibility, doesn’t it, with the seller when you’re not some fly by night guy, you’re working with an attorney and it’s all legit.

Nick:  One hundred percent.

Joe:  Are these kinds of foreclosures hard to find?

Nick:  No. I mean, it’s just a matter of monitoring foreclosure sales, which there’s tons of sites online that you can do that you have like auction dot com.

Joe:  So you’re monitoring current foreclosure. Yes. What about foreclosures that happened a couple of years ago?

Nick:  You can do that as well. You can go through public records or court records. And because there’s like some states, two types of foreclosures. Right? There’s judicial and non-judicial judicial has to go through a court system. So that’s public record. You can go through and see, OK, here’s a foreclosure case. How much how much do they owe? How much did they sell for? Oh, there’s some money here and nobody’s claimed it. So you can do that with tax sales. It’s a little easier. There are actually lists of funds that you the counties have an accounting of. OK, here’s this person and here’s how much they’re owed. So you can get these lists online as well. And so you can there’s two ways to generate leads. You can either gather lists from public records or online or create your own lists just by monitoring tax and foreclosure.

Joe:  So, OK, what percentage of foreclosures actually have money on, would you guess?

Nick:  Great question. I would say the it’s not the majority. I would say maybe 20 percent of foreclosures generate an overage. I what I will say, though, is I think that number is going up because we’ve experienced in our economy like a lot of appreciation and a lot of markets. And if if sellers don’t sell and it does go to auction because of the competitive nature of real estate, right now, these investors are paying premium dollars at the auction for properties, which is generating a lot of overjust. Yeah, it’s not uncommon in some markets for somebody to lose their home and have a six figure overage waiting for them.

Joe:  Wow. Yeah. The percentage of the ones that have the overages, the owners actually even go and try to recover themselves by themselves.

Nick:  I would say the majority of folks do not recover on their own. There is always some folks that will and that’s like any service based business. Right. So my business is a service based business and there is always a percentage of people that would prefer to do it themselves. But it’s just like I use this example, changing the oil in your car. Very easy to do, right. Even if you’re not mechanically inclined, you can go watch a ten minute video and know how to change the oil in your car. But what do most of us do? We roll down to the Jiffy Lube or the Grease Monkey or whatever, and we pay somebody to do it for us for convenience. And so that’s the same in this business. The majority of people would rather pay somebody to do it for them. Because you also have to understand, as some have gone through a foreclosure attack, it’s usually a traumatic event that caused that to happen. And they don’t want to revisit that. They just rather have someone do it for them.

Joe:  Just put it behind them. And they’re still foreclosures today.

Nick:  Yes, absolutely.

Joe:  Even in the hot market like we are in. Oh, yeah. I’ve seen foreclosures increase since it happened.

Nick:  What I have seen is a wave forming. So what I mean by that is, for example, tax sales. Last year, a lot of tax sales were canceled. This year, tax sales are happening and we’re having an abundance of inventory. So there’s last year’s inventory, this year’s inventory. So there’s a ton of foreclosures happening. Same with foreclosures. I think we’re going to see another wave now that the moratorium is starting to end and a lot of states. But even that even during the pandemic, not all foreclosures ended. There were still foreclosures happening in certain areas, depending on the type of loan somebody had.

Joe:  OK, now talk about your average profits. What what how how much do you make on average in one of these deals?

Nick:  So I would say the average profit is between five and ten thousand. These are smaller profit deals. These are you’re not going to make six figures on an average deal like you may have some fancy fixin’ four, but five and five and 10 is the average. And I would say, how much time are you investing? You may it depends on the deal. But if you’re just researching, reaching out to someone, calling them and sending them a contract, the total time invested is not a lot, maybe five to 10 hours per deal. And so average is five to 10 k. My highest profit deal ever, though, has been around 30 K 30.

Joe:  Wow.

Nick:  I had a student that had 40 K on their first deal.

Joe:  And then you can do this virtually from anywhere. Yes. You don’t have to go see the properties. You don’t have to go to the courthouse. OK, what are some of your favorite ways to reach out to. Sellers is just calling them. You also do direct mail.

Nick:  Calling seems to be the most effective. I have done deals with direct mail. It really it’s really interesting. What I’ve seen is there’s a pattern. If you’re dealing with folks that are maybe 40 plus calling or a letter is usually the best way to get. All of them, if they’re under that 40 texting, actually works very well and even email or just reaching out via social media, I’ve found people just messaging them on Facebook and saying, hey, did you own this property? And they’ll say, yeah, I did. So well, here’s the deal. So I use any means available. But again, if you’re about 40 plus age group calling and letters seem to work very well under that, just texting people.

Joe:  OK, very cool. And do you have virtual assistants that help you with any of this doing the research or.

Nick:  I do, yes. So that’s a great question. And sometimes I think some people go into real estate strategies and they think, OK, well, I’m going to outsource everything to a VA. If you have that mindset, I just caution you and just say this. Make sure you go through the process yourself at least a few times so that you can be able to evaluate whether your VA is doing a good job or not.

Joe:  Oh, yeah, for sure.

Nick:  So but yes, I do have is that build. Needless for me to skip tracing for me, I’ve even had a VA call people and close deals for me. So yeah, that’s awesome.

Joe:  Let’s see if we have any questions here. Shari Shaari from Minnesota, Elmo Torres waiting to go to St. Louis. Come on. And all nighters here from San Diego one. You’re welcome, Chris, as Nick is on a roll.

Nick: Chris, I have seen Chris. What’s up, Chris? Good to see.

Joe:  Man All nighter. Hyder on Nightrider. There is no multitasking, only the switching of focus. You’re right. OK, good question here from Robert Brown. The third, what is the percentage split between you and the seller?

Nick:  Good question. Yeah. So my average split is around 30 percent, meaning I get thirty. The homeowner gets seventy five charged as low as five percent. That was on the six figure overaged, massive overage I still made. That was still a five figure profit, even charging that little on some of the small deals. Like if you’ve got something where maybe there’s only ten thousand or less those ones, I’m going to do like a 50 50 split. So everything is negotiable in this business, but my average is around 30 percent nice. Is it possible to share screen joke? Yeah. Yeah. I just want to share with you kind of going back to your question, how many foreclosures are happening? I can give you an example of. Yeah. What I’m going to show you guys. This is a this is a list of can you see this OK? Yeah.

Joe:  Can you zoom in? There you go.

Nick:  So this is a list of foreclosures that generated overjust or surplus funds.

Joe:  In what state or county or?

Nick:  This is going to be Maricopa County, Arizona.

Joe:  And these are foreclosures with surpluses. Yes. So it’s more than one page there.

Nick:  This is an eight page list. Nice for you. On the left hand side is the name of the homeowner. This is the date the funds were deposited. All of these are within the last two or three years. Then there is how much overage is owed to them. And then there’s a case number. So in Arizona, they deposit the funds in the court record. Wow. So you can kind of see, OK, what are we dealing with? There’s a there’s some that are very small. You know, here’s a…

Joe:  What’s the difference between amount received in case balance.

Nick:  So case balance is probably what’s currently on on balance with the with the court. So here’s a good example. This one right here. So the received amount was one eighty eight and they’re still ninety four left. So that means somebody else claimed that may mean there was a second mortgage or maybe an alien. Somebody had a claim on that, maybe IRS back tax, but there’s still something left over. So there’s still money to there to recover.

Joe:  That’s a lot of money. Look at all that money.

Nick:  Yeah, it’s it’s substantial. I mean, I can tell you, New Jersey, for example, they have three hundred million dollars on deposit from foreclosure sales. And so this is one county in in the United States. Obviously, Maricopa is a large county.

Joe:  Did you put this did you have a virtual assistant or somebody put this list together?

Nick:  This is actually one that you can find online. Wow. But I do in some states, it’s tough to get this info. So I’ll have my my virtual assistant make lists like these for me.

Joe:  Now, when you’re watching the foreclosure list, you’re kind of building it as you go. Yes, OK, but then how do you find out how much they actually owed on the property? Is that is that in the foreclosure filings?

Nick:  Yeah, if it’s in the court records, they’ll be what’s called a judgment. So the judgment is what’s owed to the bank. And so you can find that in the court records to say, OK, here was the judgment. If it’s one fifty and it’s sold at auction for two hundred, then, you know, there’s something there. If the judgments one fifty and it sells for one forty, well, that’s, that’s a dead lead. There’s nothing there.

Joe:  All right. Very cool. I got some good questions here from folks. Chris Yo, Shari’s asking, how do you know what to charge? What we I think we just talked about that. Thirty percent.

Nick:  I guess there’s a little bit depending on how difficult the cases, because sometimes. So here’s a little tip for you guys. If the case is a little more advanced and what I mean by that, let’s say you’re dealing with in a state case, meaning the homeowner has passed away and you’re helping heirs recover. It’s going to take a little more extra legwork on your part, and so I would say I would use that as a reason to maybe justify a higher percentage. OK.

Joe:  D is asking, how do I get started? What’s the beginner’s first step? We’ll talk about that in a second. We’ll give you Nic’s website here in a minute. Would something like this work in a highly competitive market like California?

Nick:  Yeah, I’ve done deals, several deals in California. So, yes, I’ll be honest with you guys. There’s competition in this business now. But as a company, how do we. It depends how you look at it. Right.

Joe:  Because, like, listen, this is important. I would be concerned if there was no competition.

Nick:  That’s a great point.

Joe:  Because because there is means it’s actually good. There’s people making money with it. All right. Go ahead.

Nick:  Yeah, no, that’s a great point. Actually, if there is no competition of business, then is it even a viable business?

Joe:  Yeah, but here’s the thing.

Nick:  When I was a real estate agent, I know there’s over a thousand real estate agents in my state, people doing this, less than one hundred. So there’s still competition, but it’s considerably less compared to

Joe:  other strategies out there. And even if there is now, you got to just do something that your competition is not doing, like picking up the phone, like calling, like texting, like sending Facebook messages and Instagram DMS right there.

Nick:  There’s a very common question people always ask. They always ask what’s the easiest way to get started? And here’s the reality, guys. There is no easy state. Every state has its challenges. You just want to ask, well, what challenges do you want to face and overcome? Florida for Florida, for example, very easy to generate leads in Florida. And there’s a lot of them. But because it’s easy to get the information, there are more people doing it in Florida. So your challenge there is how do you overcome the competition? How do you differentiate yourself? Whereas we just did a deal in New York. New York was very tough to generate. It’s very hard to get the information. But the flip side of that is there’s hardly anybody doing it there, at least

Joe:  so and it’s a good appreciating market. So you’re going to and we’d be more likely to find overages there. OK, well, let me ask you that and some of those difficult markets where it’s hard to get that information. How do you do it? What do you what are some things that you do to get those lists?

Nick:  So you got to dig. And what I mean by that is you’ve got to do a lot of experimentation, meaning you’re going to be reaching out to several different entities. You know, the first place that I recommend, if you’re looking for a list is go to the county treasurer’s office. If that doesn’t work, go to the clerk of the court. If that doesn’t work, go to the public information officer and you’re just going to it’s kind of a it’s a search, right? You’re just digging, trying to find the information that you need. And you may have to reach out to several different entities to find that information. And so, you know, it could be a third party that has the info. But here’s what I found. As you reach out to different people, they may not know, but sometimes they’ll put you in touch with somebody who they may not even know either. But they leave little breadcrumbs and you just follow the trail. And so that’s kind of what I teach my students is don’t worry so much. You know how you’re going to get the lead. But how do you find how do you figure out the process for where you want to start?

Joe:  And I love that the harder the list is to get, the more profitable and easy it’s going to be. Once you figure it out, nobody else is doing it. Very good. Chris is asking here, what’s the difference between a tax lien certificate and an overage, which is first before the other, so to speak.

Nick:  So a tax lien is when someone’s owed property taxes and investors can purchase that lane and earn a return on it. If the homeowner doesn’t pay that lean back, plus the interest owed, the investor can foreclose on the land. And at the time of foreclosure, that’s what will generate an overage. They pay more than what was under the county.

Joe:  All right. Cool question from Al. Could you use something like Prop Stream to get a list of foreclosures from their big nationwide list providers that can do this and help you with it?

Nick:  Here’s a challenge I found with list providers in our business. You need to know the post sale data, meaning how much did it sell for and did it sell to a third party investor? And some with providers don’t have that data. That’s why you got to monitor it in life than live time. Because here’s the thing, guys. If a property goes if it goes to auction and it sells back to the bank, there’s no overage there. Overages are only generated when they’re purchased by third party investors at the

Joe:  auctions because the bank will buy it for what it’s old. What’s that interest? Well, here’s the thing. Even if it’s a list that’s hard to get a hold of past overages, if you’re tracking it yourself, it’s a lot easier, isn’t it? Yeah, because if you can see a list of the foreclosures and then track them every week, see if it’s sold or not and how much it’s sold for. So even in a. County where it’s hard to get past information, you understand, I’m saying if this is where it’s good to start in your own backyard,

Nick:  you have an advantage. Like if you live in California, let’s say you live in L.A. County, you have an advantage over someone like me because you could you could send somebody to the auction, you could go to the auction or you could your local right. You can knock on people’s doors. You can get to them faster than I can. You can get the information faster. But if you don’t want to work California, you’re not limited to your home state.

Joe:  Very cool. The thing I love about this, too, is if you’re traveling around Europe and you’re living in Puerto Rico, you can do this from anywhere in the country.

Nick:  If you have the Internet, you can do this business.

Joe:  Robert’s asking a good question, but I think we already answered that. We already kind of talked about the start to finish the steps. So maybe if you missed it, rewind. On average, though, once you find one, how long does it take to get paid?

Nick:  Great question. So once you file your claim with whoever is holding the funds, it will take about three to four months to get the money. So keep that in mind. That’s one of the big concerns, is your need and quick money. You know, maybe this isn’t the right one for you. Like wholesaling. You can make money faster. Right? But when you start to stack deals on deals and you have several pay out, then that’s really nice. And the reason it takes so long, we’re dealing with courts, we’re dealing with governments. They move at their own pace. And it’s not a fast pace. Yeah, three to four months on average, sometimes longer.

Joe:  All right. Any more questions? We’ve got a good comment here from Patrick, I think. Let me zoom scoot my head up here. A great podcast, Joe. Nick, I joined late. Sorry if this question was already answered. Which state is your favorite now? We already answered that. What state is your favorite to do? Surplus deals? That I’m in Florida and have actually completed one deal a few years ago. I got to hand a lady a check for 18 grand for a thirty six thousand dollar surplus. So maybe his fee was eighteen grand. That’s awesome, Patrick. Yeah, we already talked about that.

Nick:  My favorite state is where there’s money available to claim.

Joe:  Is there any state where there is no money to be claimed? Is there any state where it just does not work?

Nick:  What I have found is for some reason, Oregon, the way they do their tax sales, doesn’t seem to generate overages and their foreclosures. They do have surplus, but they don’t they don’t have a ton of foreclosure inventory in Oregon. So I don’t like Oregon. Colorado is another state. I don’t like. Those are the two off the top of my head.

Joe:  Come on, Matt. Andrew’s in the house. It’s going on now. The man that connected us actually was in that mastermind where I saw Nick. What’s up, Matt? See, in a few weeks come out. Yeah, something like that. All right. Yeah. So again, d asking I just want to know how to get more information. Give me the website. What kind of people get a hold of you.

Nick:  I will go to my website overage syndicate. So OverageSyndicate.com.

Joe:  Cool. And what do you, what do you have at that website there.

Nick:  So I’ve got a free training there that you guys can access. I go through the entire five step process we talked about today, but in more detail and I have a ton of free content on YouTube. Same name over syndicate on YouTube. You guys can find testimonials, case studies of actual deals that I’ve done that my students have done and frequently asked questions are answered there. So those are two good resources for you guys.

Joe:  Nice overagesyndicate.com. Very, very interesting podcast. Thank you, John. You’re welcome. Thank you for the question. From D. Does the age of the case make a difference? I think we already talked about that, but?

Nick:  It depends on the state.

Joe:  Question from Deborah. What happens to the overage if the seller does not claim it is our deadline after which they can no longer claim it? And does the county get to keep all the money?

Nick:  This is such a really good question. So, yes, in some states there is a deadline. For example, that list I showed you in Arizona and Arizona, they got two years. So what happens after the two years? And they don’t claim that the state gets to keep it or the county gets to keep it and they use it for their own purposes. And that’s a big reason why this business exists, is because of the counties, the government, they have no financial interest in actually tracking these people down. Yeah, they there are some states they do not like people like me because I’m basically taking money out of the states slush fund, which they don’t like. But that’s why and that’s why it’s important to to help. And this is one of the reasons why I love this business. It’s a true service. I believe that these Motley’s people lost their homes. They need this money. I’ve had clients that have been on the streets waiting for me to get their money so they can go find a place to live. It is a true service. You are truly helping people and. Frankly, I don’t I don’t believe the government should get money from people that lost their home to foreclosure.

Joe:  I’ve always said to when the IRS keeps your money also, right. If you’re overpaying your taxes and they charge you interest if you’re late. But are they going to pay you interest for holding your money?

Nick:  No, they’re not. And you’ll see on some of these, like New Jersey, do you see how much interest they’re making on some of these states, like it’s millions of dollars and so on, and they get to keep it. They’re not going to give that back.

Joe:  That’s anyway. All Nightrider, you have a YouTube channel? Yes. It’s called Overage Syndicate to check that out. And Al is asking us for the legal documents. Do we need to have them? Yeah, you do. And that’s what Nick has done here at OverageSyndicate.com. Hey, Nick, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

Nick:  Thank you. Joe was good being here.

Joe:  I appreciate. Will you be in Tampa? I will. All for the mastermind. Awesome. All right, guys, we’ll see you all later. Take care, everybody. Thank you again.