Intro:   Welcome, this is the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast.

Joe:     Hey everybody, welcome. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. We’re recording live from REI Mastery Studios in St. Louis, California.

Alex:    Is it? All right.

Joe:      St. Louis, Southern California, in San Diego where it’s nice and beautiful. No… Alex, how are you my man?

Alex:    I’m good. That was a very interesting introduction there. We are recording live also from Virginia Beach, California at the same time so…

Joe:      Right, right. It was my frothy and slip wishing I was in California. But I’m glad to be on the show. I love doing this podcast and we got a great guest, Tom Nardone.

Alex:    Yeah, we do.

Joe:      Better known as the “Millionaire Mailman” and we’ll talk about his story. He’s got some really cool things to share. Tom has been in the business a long time. He does a lot of deals. He’s a great guy. I met him at my mastermind. But, I just want to let everybody know that if you got to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com, you get some cool stuff like our Fast Cash Survival Kit. And if you go to the show notes for this episode with Tom, we have a really valuable free bonus…

Alex:    Very, very valuable. Absolutely.

Joe:      I don’t think anybody has ever offered anything like this on a podcast before and…

Alex:    It’s the first time.

Joe:      Yeah, we will talk about it in a little bit. Build some suspense here, right? Get people to listen to the show.

Alex:    Drop a mental anchor.

Joe:      Yup. So any deals you’re working on that you want to talk about real quick before we jump into our interview with Tom?

Alex:    Oh, let’s see here. Oh, yeah. I guess there’s a pain in the neck deal that I’m working on actually trying to get wrapped up. A lady came into one of my websites and I sent my acquisitions guy out there, met with her and got her under our contract price. She said, “We’re good to go. We’re going to close in 14 days.” And then the next day, she calls me up and says, “Oh, is this contract legal or is this a contract I can just get out of?”

Joe:      Wow!

Alex:    I said, “Well, ma’am, you actually signed a legal agreement.” You wouldn’t want it in the same way. If this is a contract that you wanted to sign and wanted me to perform on, you wouldn’t want me to just bail on you at the last minute, would you?” It’s a legal agreement. It goes both ways. So she’s like, “Yeah, but I think my payoff is higher than what I thought it was. And I think I’ve got another judgment on it and I need to make sure I cover those.” So I said, “No, I’m sorry. It’s just as what it is. We negotiated the deal.

And with the recorded contract down at the court house and a legal agreement between you and I, this is what it is.” And we’re supposed to close on it in the next week so it would be interesting. She’s tried to play some games with me and I’m sure people have experienced that before. But we’ll see what happens. She can maybe try not to show up, and then she’s going to have to deal with a little bit of a lawsuit action but it is what it is, right?

Joe:      Hmmm. You’ve reminded me of… This is something I don’t do, but I have always wanted to. And this was an idea I got from… Oh, what was her name? His name? Michael Quarles. And he does something really interesting. He has his attorney send a letter to every seller that he gets under contract. And the letter is just a simple, friendly letter that says, “Hey,” and it has the law offices of, “Do we cheat him and how?” at the top, right?

And the letter gets sent and it says, “Hey, congratulations on entering into a contract to purchase the property at 123 Main Street with Joe Blow, the investor. And I just want you to know that I would be handling the transaction. If you have any questions, dah, dah, dah, dah… But it comes from… And here’s a reminder of the details. We’re going to close on this date. It’s going to be for this price whatever and ever.” But the fact that that kind of letter comes from an attorney helps solidify the contract and helps at least psychologically make them think twice before trying to break it. Does that make sense?

Alex:    Yeah, I know. That makes sense.

Joe:      Okay. Well, cool, something to think about. Maybe that would be helpful to somebody out there.

Alex:    Yeah, I mean you got… I mean, people… It amazes me how when you give your word to something, some people really put no value behind their word. They’re just like, “All right. I said I’m going to do this but that was before…”

Joe:      That’s our public school that works.

Alex:    You think?

Joe:      Yeah, it’s a public… Everything is a public school’s fault. No, I’m just kidding. That was a bad joke, bad joke. Sorry. Ha!

Alex:    It’s okay.

Joe:      So what’s going on in my life? I don’t know because it’s hard. We just recorded an interview podcast the other day and I gave all my updates on that last podcast. So if anybody wants an update, just go listen to the last episode.

Alex:    Yeah, I did too, my update with the four or five deals we’re closing and still… Oh, I had the other thing. I got a really crazy, picky buyer for new construction where she’s gone through with a fine-tooth comb. And like, she noticed even like little things like a screw wasn’t perfectly straight, and one of the door locks sets or something like that.

Joe:      Wow!

Alex:    I kid you not… like hundreds of items like that. It was ridiculous. But everybody deserves their opinion, I guess. It’s all good.

Joe:      Depending on several factors. But let’s get in to Tom.

Alex:    Let’s get him. All right.

Joe:      Yeah, yeah. Tom Nardone is with us from sunny Florida, right, Tom? Where you hunt alligators and you… What else do you do? Do you hunt pigs or something?

Tom:    Go airboating on the weekends out in the swamp or… I’m 20 minutes from the beach and five minutes from the Everglades.

Joe:      Awesome. And you’re from New Jersey though and you’ve kind of lost your New York accent.

Tom:    Yeah, I have, I have. I’m a first-generation born Italian…

Joe:      Yes.

Tom:    …In the New York, New Jersey area. But yeah, I’ve got southern roots for sure now.

Joe:      Now you’re a redneck?

Tom:    Exactly.

Joe:      That’s bad.

Tom:    Oh, it’s good.

Joe:      It depends, yeah. But I’m just in a bad mood today. There’s nothing wrong with being a redneck. There’s nothing wrong with public schools. But if you’re a red neck from a public school, then that’s bad news. So anyway, sorry, Tom. Tom, we met at a mastermind and in fact it was probably in Florida, I think, we met for the first time. It was in Tampa. And you’ve been in the business a long time, haven’t you?

Tom:    Yeah, no spring chicken. I actually started and I bought my very first property… Well, my first investment property I bought when I was 25. I actually custom-built my first home when I was 23.

Joe:      That was just a couple of years ago too, right?

Tom:    I am 55 now, yeah. So it’s been about 30 years in the business.

Joe:      Wow! But you have a really… your kind of unique story. You started… You had a career as a mailman, right?

Tom:    Exactly! It’s way back in the day when I was 19 years old. I moved from Jersey down to Fort Lauderdale. And I did that because when I was 16 years old, I lied on a postal application down here when I was visiting for the summer. And I said I was 18 because I’m like 6’5″ so I really looked my age.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    But I lied on the app. And I got called for the post office by the time I was 18. And they called me down here to work as a mailman and it was amazing. They put me on a route right next to Fort Lauderdale beach watching girls in bikinis and I thought, “I would’ve done this for free. They don’t have to pay me to do this.”

Joe:      And how old were you again?

Tom:    I’m 55 now.

Joe:      No, no, like were you when you started working?

Tom:    Oh, I was 19 when I moved to Fort Lauderdale.

Joe:      Wow, okay. And so, you started working for the post office right about that time, right?

Tom:    Yeah. And that’s where I met my wife when I was 21 years old. We got married. We built our own house. And I’m sure you got a lot of listeners that are kind of blue-collar workers that could probably relate to me on how I got started because I got started with not a silver spoon in my mouth. I really didn’t have a rich mommy and daddy to help me out or anything like that. But I met my wife at the post office. We settled down. We were making good blue-collar pay checks. But then, my wife with her high standard, she informed me that she was going to be a full-time mom, and that I was going to have to support us all by myself.

Joe:      Hmmm.

Tom:    And living on the mailman’s pay check – that was not easy. And I soon realized that I had to do something and I had to do it fast. So back in the early ‘80s, being from South Florida, we used to have a lot of these no money down seminars with Robert Allen back in the day of the mid 80s that would run through Florida, through Orlando, through Fort Lauderdale and stop. So I actually jumped in one of those seminars and I learned from a couple of old timers in the businesses that were really real people here in Florida.

And I learned from a couple of mentors that were really dialed in. So they kind of helped me become aware that, “Hey, Tom, you’re a mailman. You get to see all the stuff on the street that the public really can’t see and stuff like people getting certified letters from mortgage companies saying that they’re going into foreclosure. You get to see the bills and the bills that they get from bill collectors. I mean, this is way before the Internet in the 80s so the only communication form you had was really through the U.S. postal service when bad news came.

So it was my job literally as a letter carrier when Bank of America or somebody would foreclose on somebody. They would send out a certified letter. This is before it’s public record if you think about it. And it was my job to go out to the homeowner and knock on the front door and say, “Hey, I got a certified letter from Bank of America many times.”

Joe:      Wow.

Tom:    That conversation would turn into, “Oh, my God. I got to get rid of this house. Do you know anybody who wants to buy it?” And was just standing there in my postal uniform and I’m saying, “Yeah, me.”

Alex:    “Wait, let me go run into this phone booth and come out a different person.”

Joe:      That’s awesome.

Tom:    That’s exactly what I do. I would run home and get in my civilian clothes, and then come back so I didn’t get in trouble with my boss and my job.

Joe:      Wow! So you had to tell them, “Yeah, I kind of… I would like to buy it but I can’t talk about it right now. I would be back in a couple of hours.”

Tom:    Yeah. And I would come back, and then I make a deal with them at night. And it’s just kind of for those old-timers listening in, just to refresh their memories. Back in the mid-‘80s, we had a savings and loan crisis that happened. A lot of it was… A lot of the inventory was disposed through the RTC, The Resolution Trust Corporation.

So if anybody remembers that time, it was kind of a mini version of what we just saw happened in the market place here over the last five years. So that was my opportunity that I had to get started with. And it was awesome. Because doing that, I actually wound up buying 37 houses and…

Joe:      Now, were you doing short sales at the time?

Tom:    No, no short sales, in fact, I didn’t even know what they were until I got into the 90s, I think.

Joe:      Right.

Tom:    And short sales weren’t popular. We really didn’t hear about lenders taking discounts. It’s like the bank just took the property back and disposed it some other way. But back in that day and age, I literally, from age 25 to 35, I actually left the post office when I was 35. And over that 10-year period there, I accumulated about 37 rental properties that I was renting.

And then, it got to be kind of crazy because I’m pulling up to deliver the mail and the tenant would run out the front door of the house and she’ll go, “Wait a minute. I got money.” She would be peeling off hundred dollar bills in rent at the mailbox. And I’m like, “No, no, no. Don’t do that here. This is not the time and the place for that. So I have some houses that I still owned that are on my old mail routes here in Fort Lauderdale where I have three or four houses all in the same street…

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    …Because the word got out that, “Hey, if you get in trouble, Tom will buy the house.” So I had a lot of networking…

Alex:    That’s really unique.

Joe:      It sure is. Can postmen still kind of do deals today like that or is it harder for a mailman to be able to do something like that?

Tom:    Well, they have had a lot of things that you’ve… We’ve all probably experienced with things like private information and privacy disclosures and stuff like that.

Joe:      Yup.

Tom:    But pretty much, overall speaking, a mailman is like a public servant just like a fireman or a police officer. And if you walk up to a mailman or a police officer for that matter and you ask them, “Hey, how do I get to 123 Main Street?” Well, they’re a public servant, so they’re really supposed to volunteer any information about that address you ask them about because it’s plain-view information. Plain-view information… if you can see the address from the house and you can tell them it’s no big deal to help somebody out.

Now, where you start to push the issue a little bit with the letter carriers, you can start to ask them questions like, “Hey, do you not happen to have any house in your mail route where you’ve got really tall grass or you know that the house is vacant?” Well, that’s also plain view information. So if you ask them about any vacant properties on your mail route, if they’re friendly and they have the time to talk to you, they’ll probably talk to you.

Joe:      Okay. And if you’re a jerk, they won’t?

Tom:    Yeah, it’s all in how you approach the mail carrier. And this is kind of maybe getting into a little philosophy about, “How do you approach your mail carrier and how do you ask them about these things?” Well, first of all, you don’t want to be dressed with a suit and a tie because they’re going to think you’re from some branch of the government to check up on them or something like that.

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    You just want to look like you do every day in your business. And if you look like I do, I typically wear just like a casual polo shirt that has embroidery around it, “I buy house as cash,” with a house and my phone number. So right away when you walk up to them, they’re seeing something like that on your shirt and they’ll think, “Oh, okay, this guy is probably an investor or a house flipper or something like that.” And usually they know that you’re not going to bite them.

Joe:      Okay, now, how long did you work for the postal service and why did you leave?

Tom:    I worked for them for a total of 16 years. I started when I was 19 and I left when I was 35. And I mainly did that because when I got up to the point where I had over 30 rental properties, now I would wake up and I just had… I had stuff to do. I didn’t have time to go to work, but I was afraid to quit my job. I mean, it was like a leap of faith that I had to take to get to the next level.

And even though the houses were producing cash flow, because even back then in the 80s, $200 bucks was pretty much a decent chunk of money and I wouldn’t touch the house. I wouldn’t buy it unless I knew that once I took it over, it was positive cash flow for $200 a month.

Joe:      And again, you were either assuming these loans or… but taking over a subject-to, right?

Tom:    Yeah. And I should tell folks, some of the younger folks listening to this podcast, believe me or not, there actually was a time when there was no such thing as a due-on-sale clause in a mortgage.

Joe:      Right.

Tom:    That’s something that…

Joe:      That’s like 1986, right?

Tom:    Yeah, in fact, around ’86 or ’87, a lot of the fully freely assumable FHA loans were just starting to get some regulation in the paragraph 17. They were now starting to say that they’re freely assumable or they were assumable with qualification. So it wasn’t just freely assumable, then you had to produce financials. But back in the ‘70s, if we could turn back a page even further earlier than that, a lot of the mortgages you could just take them over if you wanted because they weren’t any due-on-sale clauses in them.

Joe:      Wow!

Alex:    Right. And that’s where people… That’s why they put the kibosh on that because they didn’t know where the loan was going, and then it make sense. That’s the smarter thing to do for sure.

Joe:      It might have been assumed by three or four different people.

Tom:    Yeah. In fact, it’s funny we’re having this conversation about this right now because I actually have one house that’s in its 28-and-a-half year of a fully assumable VA loan that I took over. And I’ve only got… I was looking at my books this morning. I’ve got 15 more payments on it, and then it’s free and clear. But I never qualified to take over that loan. I just took over that loan and it was fully assumable without qualification.

Joe:      So you’re on the title. The bank sends notices… notifications to you?

Tom:    Correct. They send it to me.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    And yeah, most of those payments are fully amortizing at this point. And I’m not saying the way I started, Joe and Alex… I’m not saying the way I started was really the best way. In fact, looking back at it today, I tend to tell people that I think I actually started backwards. Because if I knew what I know now, I would start out buying and selling to generate a large pile of cash, and then go into very low-end rental properties and just buying for cash with the money I would make in my buy and sell business.

Joe:      Interesting! So you’re saying I would either wholesale properties or fix and flip and use my profits to start buying low-end rental properties?

Tom:    Correct, yes.

Alex:    Now, low end… I mean, that’s a lot of a merry-go-round, isn’t it? In and out of the property, tenants in and out, tenants in and out, teared it up, fix it up, teared it up, fix it up.

Tom:    Well, it just depends. It’s…

Joe:      Yeah, if you live in the slums of Virginia Beach, sure.

Alex:    Ha! Nice. Hey, we don’t have $5,000 houses like St. Louis. Doesn’t that? Come on.

Joe:      Well, every city has their rundown areas. But I think what Tom’s talking about… I’ll put words into his mouth… are the areas outside of the really expensive market. Florida, you can buy a house for $75 grand that rents for $1,000, $1,200 a month, right Tom?

Tom:    Absolutely. In fact, the actual town I live in is a little horse town called Parkland and it’s right next to Boca Raton. And in fact, Boca is only a few blocks away. And if I go and rent to Boca Raton, that property that I was just describing to you that’s going to be free and clear and 15 more payments, it’s a mobile home.

Alex:    Wow!

Tom:    It’s a three bedroom, two bath mobile home and I just got a tenant signed up this morning. I took the application deposit of $1,500 a month.

Joe:      Wow.

Alex:    Whoa!

Tom:    All I paid for that thing was $45,000.

Alex:    For a mobile home.

Tom:    For a mobile home.

Joe:      When did you buy it?

Tom:    I bought that about seven years ago and I even had the seller carry back a zero interest fully amortized mortgage for like $7,000. I just did quick math in my head. And I said, “Let me see. $7,000 divided by 100, $70 a month. Okay.”

Tom:    And he said, “That’s fine.”

Alex:    Wow!

Tom:    Yeah, for no money down.

Joe:      Yeah, that’s nice.

Tom:    So, yeah. So the bottom line is, I would make cash if I were starting all over again. I would make chunks of cash for buying and selling activity because as much as a lot of us like buying and selling and wholesaling and even rehabbing houses, it’s a treadmill that you’re always running on. And if you just get to the point where you’ve got 10 houses just to start, 10 low-end houses, free and clear, you’ll be having a lifestyle like a lot of people in American don’t have.

Joe:      Well, especially if you don’t have any debt, right?

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      I mean… And I talk about this a lot. When you talk to somebody who thinks that they have to have like $5 million dollars in the bank to live, retire comfortably. And that stresses people out. “Man, I got to work till I’m 75 years old. I have to save every penny. I have to live like a poor beggar until I’m 75 years old. And then when I’m 75, I can retire and live comfortably because I’ll have enough money to survive me or whatever.”

But here is the bottom line. The beautiful thing about real estate is you could have… if you just worked on eliminating your debt… if you had ten rental properties that were paying you $1,000 a month, that’s what? That’s cash free and clear and it will take out 30% for maybe 40%.

Alex:    About like $7,500 bucks.

Joe:      Yeah, a month. You can live really high on the hog on $5 to $7 grand dollars, $5,000 or $7,000 a month with no debt.

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      I mean, you should live very comfortably. So you’re absolutely right. And how much would those ten properties cost? $500,000 bucks, $750,000? Not that much.

Tom:    Well, not to mention that’s a mobile home that I just mentioned there. And Florida is the good Old South, and they’re all over the place. And when I say mobile home, mind you. I would never buy one unless the land came with it.

Joe:      Okay.

Alex:    Yeah, I was going to say that because in Florida you have a lot of…

Tom:    Yeah, we have a lot of mobile home parks. This is not a mobile home park where you pay a lot rent. It’s actually a mobile home subdivision which is just like any other housing subdivision. But that’s Boca Raton which is probably one of the most expensive parks of the state of Florida. Once you get into the center of Florida… Florida is still very much at hick state. And all throughout the center of Florida, in the heart land of Florida, you can buy still a solid single-family home for like $50,000 to $60,000, and in many cases much less.

Joe:      And how much would they rent for?

Tom:    They’ll rent for $1,000.

Joe:      That’s pretty good.

Tom:    They’ll rent for $1,000, yeah.

Joe:      Those are similar numbers to what you see in St. Louis?

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      But it’s a lot less humid up here in the summer?

Tom:    Yeah, that’s true. And your wind doesn’t blow at 150 miles an hour every now and then.

Joe:      All right. That’s interesting. So you finally quit your postal job because you had enough properties. You were bringing in enough cash flow. And you really came to a point where you had too much work and you couldn’t do both, right?

Tom:    Exactly. So I remember that day well. I woke up. My wife was like, “You’re too stressed. You have more important things to do in your own business than to go to work for Uncle Sam today. So she was the one who helped put a foot down and it was like, “Enough is enough.” So I gave my boss a 30-day notice and it was actually quite interesting. Because when I turned out my resignation, they said, “You got 16 years. You got a promising life as a mailman.” He said, “What would…?

Joe:      Oh, yeah.

Tom:    We never had anybody quit with 16 years and for no reasons.” I said, “I got some better working for me.” And they said, “Do you want to be a supervisor?” I said, “No, thanks.”

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    So I left. And once I quit my job, obviously I had my daytimes available which I never had before. And with 30-something properties, honestly guys, I never even sold a house. I had never bought and sold a property having three dozen houses. So then, I had my daytimes available and I thought, “Well, this is interesting. Let me try rehabbing a few houses.” And that kind of came natural to me because my dad built houses up north in Jersey.

And from when I was a kid, I’d watch him nail these houses together and I pretty much saw how they go together and I thought, “Well, remodeling a house can’t be all that hard.” So I got into doing that during the days and I figured, “I got enough tenants and I got enough long-term keepers. I’m just going to focus on buying and selling activity.” And then I went into buying and rehabbing houses.

Joe:      Now, was your income from these rental properties enough to replace your income as a high-paid postal delivery guy?

Tom:    It was enough. And a high-paid postal delivery guy doesn’t make that much money.

Joe:      I know, I know.

Tom:    It’s about $50 grand a year. And back in the ‘90s, the market was steadily moving up and I had some houses where I would just buy it and sell it and remodel it and we would make $50 grand on one deal.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    And probably a lot of the rehabbers that did this prior to the real estate crash in the early 2000s experienced the same thing as the market was going up so quickly.

Joe:      Well, if you don’t might talking too, what happened to you and your business during the crash because Florida was hit really hard?

Tom:    Yeah, it definitely was. And I would be the first to say that sitting on all these houses, I came to a realization one day that as the equity was going down and down and down, I realized, “Wow, I need to sell off some of these houses and I need to sell them off quick.” So I did that. And there’s a couple of them that I actually did have to short sale in the end because they were… We had such a market collection here that you had to be such an astronomical buyer that it would… For instance, I have houses right now that I still own that went all the way up to $300,000 and in the market crash, they were worth $35,000 or $40,000.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    In two years, I saw a 75% to 90% correction in some of my properties. And the good news was I learned about the houses that didn’t have a mortgage, I was okay.

Joe:      Right.

Tom:    They still rented. They still cash flowed. That was okay. But it was a time to trim the portfolio and just really weed through it and figure out, “Okay, if it’s upside down and it doesn’t create a profit, then it’s okay to nip and prune.” And every business has to prune at some point, every portfolio. It’s like dumping a bad stock or something that’s not performing.

Joe:      But you weren’t overleveraged for the most part. In some properties, maybe you were. But in general, you weren’t overleveraged which allowed you to whether the storm, right?

Tom:    Yeah. And the good news was a lot of those properties that I had seller carry-back mortgages. It opened up the door to renegotiate the debt on those properties with the sellers. So even though they were getting steady cash flow for mortgages I held over years, I was like, “Hey, guys. Look at where the market is at today,” and I’d send them some statistics and start negotiating all over again and made an even a better deal. And now the truth be told, in the last three years, our market here has at least doubled in three years.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    It was like the last, I’d say, four to five years ago, the whole state of Florida was on sale. And I went and looked at a house this morning that I bought 18 months ago for $60,000. It was a short sale I got from a bank and I wholesaled it to an investor for $125,000. So I made about $65,000 profit on that deal. He went and sold it just six months ago after taking his time over a year to rehab it. He sold it for $320,000.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    So that’s what our market has been doing. That’s in the city of Coral Springs right next door.

Joe:      Do you think it’s a bubble? Is it a new bubble or prices just coming back to normal?

Tom:    Well, I can say that as long… So far, it hasn’t exceeded the highs that we had in 2006. It’s probably come back about 75%, which yes is a little bit scary. But I would say a lot of this is also fueled by the low cost of borrowing money because when you go down the bank and get like a 90-something percent loan with a three-and-a-half percent interest rate, your payment is so small that it allows you to pay more for the properties and still have a relatively low payment. It’s as long as things make sense. And when I say as long as things make sense, like as long as the rents are $1,400 or $1,500 a month for a three bedroom, if you could buy that house from a basic ROI point of view and it still cash flows well, then it makes sense. And when houses make sense, people will buy them.

Joe:      And so, do you see more speculators coming back into the market or do you see investors still sticking to the fundamentals like they should with buying cash flow? Does that make sense?

Tom:    Well, investors that are like you and I, we are having a challenge here. And it’s mainly because a lot of the hedge funds in the South Florida area, they’re gobbling everything up. And they’re paying full-market value for properties, and when you get the property at full market value, it still needs another $20,000 to $30,000 for rehab. But these hedge funds are under such pressure to get this money out on the streets so that they can get their management fee, I guess, for placing all these dollars and putting in the work that they have to just get the money out. And they’re making stupid buying decisions in my opinion.

But what it has done is it has made us as a mom-and-pop investors if that’s a fair word to call us. It’s made us have to go to more keen ways of finding deals. You just can’t go to the MLS today and really find a deal. Not in my market. Now, I can go up into central Florida. I can go to… We just finished rehab on a house the other day in Titusville. I just finished up about a month ago another house in Port Charlotte. And there, you can still pick up a nice three bedroom, two bath with a two-car garage for like $55,000, $60,000. And then when you fix it up, it’s still worth $100,000 to $120,000. So those numbers make sense.

Alex:    What market are you in? What’s your home market?

Tom:    My home market is I like to work Broward…

Alex:    Ah!

Tom:    …Because that’s my area. And I live like about three or four blocks from the Palm Beach County borderline.

Alex:    Okay.

Tom:    So Palm Beach County is also a good county. But the last two properties, I bought about one in Titusville which is up where the space shuttle takes off. Literally, there’s a rocket launch about a month ago and the house shook a little bit because it’s…

Alex:    Nice.

Tom:    …Like seven miles from the launchpad. And the other house in Port Charlotte, it’s over in the Fort Myers area. That’s a real good area too. I recommend that area if anybody knows anything about Florida because Florida is like the New York City part. I’m sorry, Fort Lauderdale is like the New York City part of the state of Florida. And we’re very trendy and we’re always ahead of the rest of the state. The rest of the state moves a lot slower and tends to be a little more country.

Alex:    Interesting.

Joe:      Where do you see the hedge funds right now? Are they still actively buying or are they leaving Florida?

Tom:    No, they’re still actively buying. In fact, I went and looked at that house I just told you about for $60,000. I looked at a house an hour before this podcast five houses down from there and a Realtor called me with a tip. She said it was a bad pocket deal. And I walked in there and I was looking at the house with a friend of mine. We’re in there about five minutes and a hedge fund guy called up and he said, “I got to buy five houses this week.” He said, “I’m buying this one. I don’t care what the price is.”

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    Okay, how do I keep up with the…?

Alex:    That’s who you want to wholesale to right there.

Joe:      What’s his name and number? I’ll find some deals for him.

Tom:    That’s off-market information.

Joe:      Uh-huh. We’ll talk after.

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      So they’re still buying?

Tom:    Yeah, they definitely are.

Joe:      Wow!

Tom:    And if some of the bigger ones have slowed down, then some of the private ones that just have maybe $10 or $20 million dollars that they got to place are buying. And the prices are going up. Everything here pretty much sells within a reasonable amount of time.

Joe:      But I just still don’t get the cash-flow numbers. I mean, how can those properties and those price ranges cash flow?

Tom:    Our rents are high. Our rents are high. Now, that doesn’t mean you can pay $300,000 for a property and rent it for $1,500 a month. But if you’re paying around $150,000 and you can rent up for $1,500 a month, we still get a fairly decent yield.

Joe:      It’s crazy because just when you think Florida is super competitive and there’s no more room for wholesalers there like… I have one coaching client who just flipped a deal and made $20 grand in Miami. You know how competitive Miami is, Tom, right?

Tom:    Yeah. Yup.

Joe:      His first deal makes $20 grand on it. And I have a partner that I’m doing some marketing within the Tampa, St. Pete area and we took about a couple of months off just kind of slowed things down a little bit. And about three weeks ago, we ramp it up again and he’s already got four deals under contract. And he’ll make an average of $8 to $10 grand on each of those.

But it just blows me away that even though it’s so competitive there, you get tons of wholesalers; you have tons of hedge funds in there buying properties that there’s still enough left for the beginning investor, for anybody that wants to get down there and hustle, work hard, do some marketing and make a bunch of offers. You can still make money.

Tom:    Right. Well, I will say, our county which is Fort Lauderdale is very competitive. And what I’ve learned over the years is one of the best parts, one of the finest parts about having a whole bunch of rental property is now you’re on all the absentee owner list.

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    So I have a collection of direct mail. I’ve got everybody’s postcard and yellow letter. In fact, one day, if you’re ever here at the house, I’ll show you. I’ve got trays of mail that I just collected over the years and it’s really interesting to look at the different direct mail pieces and how they’ve changed over time.

Joe:      I wonder if there’s something that you could do with that kind of list, right? Because you have the mailing addresses and you have phone numbers, right? I wonder if there’s like some way you can make a product for those folks or you can maybe co-wholesale deals. The reason I’m bringing up is like… I know a guy in Georgia. I think at Atlanta. His wholesaling strategy is basically… And this isn’t Peter. Those of you that know that I work with Peter, it’s not peter.

But when he needs some money, he just goes through his list one-by-one of his network. These are wholesalers. These are buyers, property managers, realtors, anybody, right? Anybody in the real estate game. And he just goes through that list one by one. “Hey, do you have any deals I’m looking to buy. Do you have anything?” Then if they say no, he says, “Okay. Well, do you have… Are you looking for deals right now? Are you looking for a deal or do you have any buyers that are looking for a deal?”

And he just goes through his list one-by-one calling everybody and asking them those two questions. And inevitably, he’ll find somebody that has a deal they’re trying to sell right now. Maybe they just got it under contract. And he’ll find somebody else that is looking to buy a property in that area and he puts them together and makes his wholesaling fees that way. And he does it again next time he’s hungry and he wants to make some more money. You know what I’m saying? The power is in the list.

Alex:    The network.

Joe:      They say your network determines your net worth.

Alex:    You have some good clichés two in a row right there.

Joe:      Yeah.

Joe:      So that’s interesting. I mean, Tom, I’m just thinking with all of that mail that you’ve collected, maybe that you can get a VA or somebody get an acquisitions guide to just start going through that list and calling every single investor you have.

Alex:    See, it would be interesting. Though over the years like that, it would be interesting to see who’s still active, right?

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    I was going to say, a lot of people have come and gone for sure. But for the most part of it, my wholesale buyer’s list, which is about a thousand people on my list right now for this area, it’s mostly comprised of those letters and some of the top funds.

Alex:    Well, there you go.

Tom:    And if you just follow the title chain and just look who’s buying these properties and look how much they’re buying them for, it will tell you how you can sell your house for top dollar and to whom. It’s all a matter of public record.

Joe:      Which also goes to show you the importance of having a solid buyer’s list. I mean, you may think too that, “Well, if I get a property under contract in Florida, it’s going to be easy to sell.” Well, that’s true. But, if you’ve got the right buyers and you know who they are and you have their phone numbers and you have a relationship with them… You can send them a text or you can either pick up the phone or call them, you’re going to sell these properties a lot faster and for a lot more money if you set it up right.

Tom:    Yeah, I definitely agree. And you can actually track it down to about ten really hot buyers. And I can say the same for my list. I can blast a property out to a thousand people, but at the end of the day, it’s usually the top ten buyers over and over again who are snapping the stuff up. So I’ll just call them and give them a personal introduction of the property and have somebody show it to him or I’ll meet him out there and the house usually goes under contract right away.

Joe:      Nice. So, Tom, are you doing much wholesaling now or are you still just fixing and flipping, buying and holding?

Tom:    I still buy and hold. I’m not a real high volume, low margin wholesaler like a lot of the guys around me are. And a lot of the guys around me are because I watch their numbers and I watch their transactions. A lot of them make like $1,000 or $1,500 or $2,000 on a deal.

Alex:    Oh, that’s terrible.

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      Those are the guys that you want to co-wholesale deals with, Tom.

Tom:    Well, that’s the thing. I know that they’ve got good buyer’s list and if I get a property on a contract, that maybe doesn’t have as much meat on the bone as I thought.

Joe:      No.

Tom:    They’ve got contacts that will take it.

Joe:      But find those guys who are okay with making $1,000 bucks on a deal. And say, “Listen, bring me the deals. I’ll pay you $2,000.” You may need to renegotiate a lower price or something like that. But, you take those wholesalers that are okay in making a $1,000 bucks, and then you just match those deals with your buyers and you can now have these bird dogs be… I mean, these wholesalers be your bird dogs. Does that make sense?

Tom:    It does. But I’ll also say, the reason they’re making such a low margin is because there’s not a lot of margin here to start with.

Joe:      All right. Well, they’re not negotiating down low enough, right?

Tom:    Right. But that’s their model. And if that’s the model they like, well then who am I to comment on it? They like to do a… I’d rather not be running on a treadmill because I run a pretty simple operation. I have a book keeper. I have a virtual assistant in the Philippines who does all the property research and stuff. And I have just two property acquisition people. And I pretty much myself take the low-hanging fruit of the calls that come in where they leave a message and we don’t answer any calls live. We let everything go to voicemail. And I just do the call backs, which is the low-hanging fruit. And then…

Alex:    Do you do it with the recorded messages or just a brief, “Hey, this is Tom. Call me back or I will call you back.”?

Tom:    Excellent question. I like the recorded message.

Alex:    Okay, a short one or a longer one?

Tom:    I’ve done it both ways and it depends in the medium that I’m using. Because actually, over the last years, I’ve been experimenting with television commercials.

Alex:    Aha!

Tom:    And since probably… I really went hot and heavy on it last September. Since September to now, I’ve probably ran about 500 TV commercials.

Alex:    Oh!

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      How did it go?

Alex:    How did it go?

Tom:    It went, but it didn’t go as well as I had planned. And what I learned is number one, your calls come from every walk of life.

Alex:    Absolutely.

Tom:    I was getting empty vacant lots. I was getting mobile phones I was getting folks that live out in the swamp. You can only get there with…

Alex:    You can’t really target it very well.

Tom:    You can’t target it all. So we spent a lot of time analyzing deals that were not so much in the target market and I’ll just pick a big city like say, Tampa, okay? I ran my commercials in Tampa. I was getting all these little hick towns in the center of the state that no one even ever heard of.

Alex:    Well, markets too. So when they see that, they’re like, “Oh, somebody finally want to buy my house!”

Tom:    Exactly. And I kind of named my price and got into the house, but I really didn’t want it…

Alex:    Right.

Tom:    …Because it didn’t fit my acquisition model.

Alex:    Right.

Tom:    So there’s a lot of demographics you have to study when you’re running television commercials, just in the same way that you have to know exactly what your direct mail criteria is going to be.

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    And the way you do that is it’s the price you have to pay to run the commercial, number one. And number two, it’s about the demographic of the person that watches that particular program. So just to give you one of the secrets and some of it… I can’t give it all away. I can tell you one of the secrets was we weren’t running like conventional AT&T U-Verse or Cablevision or any of that stuff. We’re running rabbit broadcast TV. So people that are watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island and the Chaos…

Alex:    Yeah, you don’t want the news stuff.

Tom:    No, people that are old enough to watch The Honeymooners. You know who they are. That’s the folks we were targeting and you got to keep in mind where Florida is and who Florida is. Florida is a state that has a lot of snowbirds. So you have a lot of people that are living on the budget. They go up north during the summer, but they come down here in the winter, so we’re in our prime season right now. We’re just getting close to the end of it.

So when these people come into their condo in Florida, a lot of them are too cheap to have the cable TV turned on the whole year, so they resort to rabbit-ear TV. So now I’m having a conversation when they call because we’re advertising on broadcast TV. They’re calling because number one, they’re too cheap for some type of cable TV which easily, we know cost $100 a month on a steady basis. And they’re watching all these old rerun TV shows.

So they’re probably not the brightest bulb on the tree. I mean, in all reality, we’re dealing… And you guys will probably admit to this too. It’s when your seller calls you, the less sophisticated the seller is when they call you, the much better chance you have of making a deal. So people that can relate to these old black and white rerun shows, they’re older.

They don’t know how to jump on the Internet typically and do a Google search for the value of their property and know what it’s worth within a thousand dollars so you’re dealing with a less sophisticated seller. So your chances of making a deal with that person go much higher. So, all those strategies come in to the TV advertising market that I’ve been learning over the last year. But I will say, direct mail is actually better than TV depending on what your advertising budget is.

Joe:      Cool. Let’s talk mailmen.

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      So are you still using mailmen to bring you leads? Do you still recommend that? Because you… One of the free things we’re going to be giving away in this podcast is access to what? Well, let’s talk about mailmen.

Tom:    Absolutely. Well, I would say that my number one… It’s just to kind of lay the framework of how my marketing of my business happens. My number one favorite thing is direct mail, and maybe because I’ve been a mailman for all those years. I know mail. I’ve worked with mail literally in my hands for years. So now that we know here in this day and age that we can pinpoint criteria with age and number of bedrooms and by zip code and all the different things we can do when we go to one of these list companies, you can really fine tune your target customer like so easily now with a couple of clicks on the mouse.

So that’s still my number one priority. But as a real estate investor, it’s almost having like having a golf bag on your shoulder every day; you’ve got a series of clubs. You’ve got the potters when you are out on the green. You’ve got the drivers when you are starting out at the tee, and you’ve got all these tools for making a shot out on the golf course. And in essence, as a real estate investor, we all have tools that we use in different ways of acquiring leads. So I’d say my number one way is using direct mail.

One of the other tools that I have in my golf bag or one of my other clubs so to speak will be this mailman handout CD that I created. And what this does is it sets up a like a bird dog network, a mailman who can looks for deals for you and scout stuff that they’re tripping over every single day and they don’t even realize it. Because when you’re out driving for dollars and you’re out in any neighborhood and you see a rundown vacant house, okay, you write it down.

But there is somebody who’s delivering your mail right now today that does that every single day. And believe it or not, it’s a boring job. And I’ve always said that you can train a chimpanzee to deliver the mail because it doesn’t get mentally challenging after a certain point. And that’s… Hey, I do respect postal employees out there. Sorry about that. That was a little insane. But you know what they say about mailmen, Joe and Alex?

Joe:      No.

Tom:    Well, wherever you find four mailmen, you’ll find a fifth.

Joe:      I don’t get it.

Alex:    I don’t get it.

Joe:      Let it sink in. Let it sink in. I still don’t get it.

Alex:    What? Mailmen…

Tom:    A fifth of alcohol. Come on, guys.

Alex:    Oh!

Joe:      Oh, yeah.

Alex:    That’s because you drink so much, Joe.

Joe:      Yeah, I don’t. That’s why I didn’t get it.

Tom:    Oh, gosh. But anyway…

Joe:      Okay, Tom. Now we know where your head is at.

Tom:    No, when you see these mailmen hanging around like that, you want to approach them and tell them who you are and what you do. Everyone in this business has a little elevator speech they can get about. You know, how they buy houses for cash, and if they know somebody who needs to sell in a hurry, you’re the go-to guy they go see. But back… It was about 10 years ago when I came up with this idea.

Because I’m a mailman, I can go to any letter carrier when I’m out on the street or I’m going to check one of my rentals and I see the mail truck. I usually pull over and I’ll have a conversation with the guy and they’ve given me leads that they wouldn’t give anybody else. And part of the reason they do that for me is because as soon as I go up to them, I say, “Hey, I was a letter carrier too, and I kind of know what you’re doing. How’s your day going?” All that stuff. So I speak mailman.

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    It’s like I know all the shop talk. I know the buzz words they use. I know the lingo and I can connect with them right away. So about 10 years ago, I thought, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to just kind of record on a cassette tape back in the day when we all listen to caste tapes.” I thought, “I’m going to record a cassettes tape just for mailmen, and I’m going to put on there all the things I would see during my day and I would tell my story of how I got started buying houses.” And like I said, a mailman basically, once they know the route, they can do it subconsciously. And they have nothing else to do during the day, so a lot of them listen to like CDs or DVDs or something live. They bring their radio in their truck.

I know I did that for years. I plugged in the cigarette and I listen to recordings. So if you go up to a mailman and you hand him a cassette or in this day, you probably say a CD… something that you can just give them that says, “Hey, Mr. Mailman. This is how letter carriers are turning their routes into a cash cow.” And what I did was I started with this cassette tape, and the cassette tape was just me talking mailman talking to their mailmen, and I started handing these out to postal carriers. And one day, I was at a REIA club for a luncheon meeting and a couple of the other investors looked at me and they said, “You know what? We know you’re doing something out there that’s a little different from the rest of us. What do you do?”

So I said, “Well, it’s simple,” and was giving them the advice that I’ve given listeners on your podcast here today. We make a little recording on a CD that tells about all the things you’d see like when you’re out driving for dollars or rundown vacant houses, houses with the water bill overdue, a hanger hanging on the front door, a hanger along with the pizza coupons and the newspapers piled up in the driveway and maybe the mailbox is full. It’s not hard to spot an empty house. A lot of times, if the front drapes are open, you could see straight through the house through the front window and out the back door, so your mailman knows where these houses are located.

So this tape brings that awareness to the mailman and I would pass these out. And I was telling the guys at this REIA luncheon that I was at, that this is what I was doing. And I told them, “Just go and make a tape like that for yourself and you could do the same thing.” And they say, “Well, we don’t speak mailman. We don’t want to do that. Why don’t you make it for us?” and a couple of them started paying me to record these tapes for them. And I said, “No problem. I’ll do it for you guys. That’s fine.”

So what that turned into about 10 years ago was it turned into a real estate product that I would sell at REIA clubs, and I would often sell these for like $7.95 and I had some other courses on buying and selling and stuff that I bundle it with. But I would sell this and people would pay like $800 bucks for it and they would turn their mailmen that they would see out on the street into a bird dog for them.

Joe:      Nice.

Tom:    So Joe, is it okay to talk about giving this away here?

Joe:      For sure, yeah.

Tom:    Okay, because I know we had discussed that. I had this product and honestly I have… There are not a lot of people using it right now because I haven’t really marketed this. I’ve just been using it for myself and for a few friends here locally. But you invited me on your podcast and we talked about what we can give your listeners that’s of value. And I thought, “You know what? Why don’t we just make this MP3 that they can download and they can create their own CD?

And I’ll talk to their mailman and for them because I know the shop talk and the lingo, and they can just download the MP3 and burn it on a CD and make a label for it. And I’ll tell them a little bit about how to use this in the MP3 that we offer. They can go to our website, which we have to talk about, where we can make this. And I’d like for your listeners to benefit from this. They could just have this for free and use it. Free of charge to just…

Joe:      Let’s do this because we haven’t worked out the details yet. So Tom called me like a week ago and I wasn’t able to call him back so it’s my fault. But let’s do this, Tom. They can go to the show notes for this podcast and they’ll have… There’s a link on the show notes. If you go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com and you just… from the top box, if you’re listening to this in ten years and you can see that the audio will still be there, and just do a search for Tom in the search box. And you’ll find this episode. It might be like episode 105, 110. But did you know that, Alex? We’re over a hundred episodes now already?

Alex:    That’s pretty incredible.

Joe:      Yeah, but there’s other guys that have been doing podcast for maybe like BiggerPockets. They’ve been doing podcasts for maybe a quarter of the time we have that they’re already up to like 3,000 so it’s not a big deal. Well then, there was the guy from… Never mind, sorry. If you go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com and do a search for Tom and Tom Nardone if you want, you will see the show notes and there will be a link there where you can download this MP3 audio, okay? And after you click that link, it will ask you for some information. You will get… You will be sent to a page where you can download the audio and there will also be a link on there for more information on this… to get more information on this topic and to get and connect with Tom. Does that sound good Tom?

Tom:    That sounds good.

Joe:      Okay.

Tom:    That sounds good.

Joe:      I didn’t mean to make that sound so complicated, but I think I did.

Tom:    Sure. And if they want a brief course description, they can also visit my website as well.

Joe:      Yeah, what is that?

Tom:    It’s as simple as, MillionaireMailman.com.

Joe:      Okay, MillionaireMailman.com, M-I-L-L-I-O-N-A-I-R-E, Mailman.com.

Tom:    Correct.

Joe:      Excellent. So Tom, we still have a few minutes here. I’m just hoping to keep this under an hour. Talk about real quick if you don’t mind, what are some advice that you give to somebody who maybe they’re on a market like in Florida, maybe California where they feel like it’s really competitive; they’re struggling to get deals or do marketing; maybe they’re getting just a little frustrated. What kind of advice would you give to somebody like that, Tom?

Tom:    The advice I’d give is if you’re frustrated because of your marketing efforts, talk to somebody in your market if you can find some friendly local competition that will just tell you what the numbers are. Because I think when you have the right expectation from your marketing, then you’re not going to be disappointed. Because when you don’t know what the standard of comparison or what the results or the response rate really should be, then you lead yourself to frustration. And Joe, I’ll just say, I think between the mastermind group that we both met in, that’s one of the biggest things that I left that mastermind with. It was knowing what my numbers ought to be.

Alex:    Right.

Tom:    And I think one day, a bunch of people in the mastermind agree that… And I’ll just throw some numbers out there because I think people will find these beneficial numbers. Well, the things I got at that mastermind were 5,000 postcards mail equals about 50 to 60 calls, and at the 50 to 60 calls, there should be one to two deals in there.

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    And most people will agree that those are the numbers. So if you think, “Oh, my God. I spent $5,000 in postcards and I only got one deal or two deals.” Well, that’s great.

Joe:      Right.

Tom:    That’s great. I mean, those are the numbers so…

Alex:    Well, especially if each deal made you $15,000 to $20,000 each, well, then it works.

Tom:    Exactly. Then there is conversion taking place that’s the right numbers. But that’s what I say to new investors starting out all the time because I do have some students that I mentor. And when they have an expectation of their numbers and they know what they ought to be upfront, then they find out the experience of marketing and sending out a lot of pieces and having to talk to 50 or 60 people then that’s not… That’s the business. Those are normal numbers.

Joe:      That’s good. And even if they’re not maybe normal in your market, well, you learn what that normal is by doing it and testing it. It’s maybe one out of 30 leads that you get a deal and maybe it’s one out of 100.

Tom:    Right.

Joe:      But you know what your numbers are. And generally speaking, if it’s one out of 100, maybe you’re in a more competitive market, but your profits are going to be higher on each of those deals most likely because there’s a higher demand. Buyers are willing to pay more for those properties. But you also need to know those numbers. It’s important because you may be doing something wrong. It may be that… You know what? You’re not calling sellers back quickly enough. Maybe you’re not making enough offers on the phone. Maybe you are… whatever it could be. Maybe you need to brush up on your sales skills. You know what I’m saying?

Tom:    Absolutely.

Alex:    One thing I do have to say, Tom, is I just went to your website and I can see where and who your mentor was way, way back in the day. And you know how I know this? By looking at your tie.

Joe:      Uh-oh. I’m going there right now.

Tom:    Okay, okay. Yeah, he was one of them.

Alex:    I didn’t even have to say it.

Tom:    Famously known for his tie, yes.

Joe:      Who was that? Can we say it on-air?

Alex:    Look! Did you go there?

Joe:      It looks like a normal tie to me.

Alex:    That’s the swirly… What’s the name of that? What is the name of that?

Tom:    Paisley.

Joe:      Which lots of people wore that kind of tie. Maybe they still do. I don’t wear ties but…

Alex:    That’s the… What’s the name of that?

Tom:    It’s paisley.

Alex:    Paisley! Yes, yes, yes. Ron LeGrand! He always wore the big… the bright paisley, red tie and everything.

Tom:    Well, it wasn’t Ron.

Alex:    Oh.

Tom:    Yeah, well actually… I mean, this goes very old school if anybody remembers Jack Miller?

Joe:      Yeah.

Alex:    Miller sounds very familiar. I think you learned a lot of the financing techniques from him then, right? Like zero interest?

Tom:    Yeah. And I learned a lot from John Schaub also. He’s from Sarasota and he’s a really good guy and he’s gone up there in age like us all. But John is a really good guy. Learned a lot from him.

Alex:    Awesome! Sorry about that. I just notice that.

Tom:    It’s okay. I thought you’re referring Pete Fortunato because I know Pete well also.

Alex:    Oh, wow.

Joe:      I can’t believe that you look at his tie and you know who’s one of his original mentors are.

Alex:    Hey, I know Ron LeGrand. He’s got the tie like that, and that’s like one of Ron LeGrand. It’s just green.

Joe:      Wow, amazing. Okay. So that’s a good-looking website. You got a free report there, “5 Ways to Find Houses 30 to 50% Below Market…

Tom:    Yeah.

Joe:      …And how to Start Making Real money in the next 30 days.” So go to MillionaireMailman.com to connect with Tom and to get more information. And if you want this free MP3 recording, it’s a download. We’re not going to give you a cassette tape. If you want the MP3… You know, it’s funny. All those videos, I see them on YouTube, where they film little kids. They give them a VCR and they film the kids trying to figure out what this is and how to work it. It’s so funny.

Alex:    A cassette tape would be even harder.

Joe:      Yeah.

Tom:    Yeah, it is. It’s amazing how things have changed.

Joe:      They do. That’s a series of videos where they’ll… One day, they’ll give them an audio tape, and then they’ll give them a VCR, or they’ll give them an 8-track… different old technologies. But anyway, so MillionaireMailman.com is Tom’s website. And if you go to RealEstateInvestingMastery.com to our podcast, go to the show notes. We’ll give you a free MP3 audio of this audio that you can give to your own local mailman to maybe start being a bird dog for you and start bring you leads. A real quick, Tom, on that note. How much would you recommend paying a mailman for bringing you leads like that?

Tom:    $500 bucks is plenty. It’s plenty

Joe:      Great. And then, do you talk at all on your website on how to find other mailmen that can do this for you, not just the one that’s in your neighborhood?

Tom:    Not really. That’s kind of something that I do in the course.

Joe:      Okay.

Tom:    And I do that when I mentor people and stuff. I kind of tell them that as well.

Joe:      All right. So we’ll have more information on that when you download the MP3. So we’ll figure that out.

Tom:    Yeah, we’ll add an extra page or something like a quickstart guide if you have, if you will.

Joe:      Good. Tom, are we going to see you in San Diego in the next mastermind?

Tom:    You won’t see me there. No, I won’t be at that.

Joe:      All right, all right. That’s a long flight. All right. Well, this has been good. Alex, do you have anything you want to say before we let go that does not have to do with Tom’s ties?

Alex:    Not with Tom’s ties. That’s cool how you can… and I always say this… how you can really change your life with real estate. And we saw how Tom went from a mailman to the millionaire mailman. Now, no longer a mailman.

Joe:      Yeah.

Alex:    But, he took real estate and changed his life, I mean, all the way from… We see it’s the 70s, 80s and now until where we’re at now so…

Joe:      I just wish we still had assumable loans. That would be pretty cool.

Tom:    Oh, I won’t have it. It’s the good old days.

Joe:      Yeah. In fact, it makes you think like what is going to be like in 20 years from now. You’re going to have to have… How is it going to be different then? That’s the crazy thing. Maybe interest rates will be back up to 20%.

Alex:    Oh!

Tom:    Yeah. I also wish they had ’69 Camaros also but…

Joe:      Right. The Lincoln is coming out with the New Continental. Did you see that in the news?

Tom:    No, I didn’t.

Joe:      Lincoln Continental is coming back. And it’s actually really nice. They show… You should look it up on Google. You can see some pictures of what the backseat looks like. This is a luxury car where they’re actually putting a lot of attention into the backseat for the players like me. We have our chauffer driving us around town and we’re in the backseat doing business.

Tom:    What kind of business are you referring to in the backseat?

Alex:    Oh, boy.

Joe:      No, it’s not. I’m just kidding. No, but look at the videos. It’s pretty cool. They’ve got this… They’re putting some really luxurious upgrades in the backseat of this Lincoln Continental for the higher-end market, the guys like me and Alex who are hustling in our minivans.

Alex:    I don’t have a minivan, man.

Tom:    Yet… You will one of these days.

Alex:    No, I’ve got an Escalade ESV and that serves my purpose just fine.

Joe:      Have you bought a front-end washer and dryer yet, Alex?

Alex:    Actually, I have not. And you know why? I’ve heard that. Well, we’re going to be moving into that house.

Joe:      Right.

Alex:    They get really dirty around the rim there…

Joe:      Oh.

Alex:    …So it’s hard to clean them out, so go with the newer top loads.

Joe:      Okay, all right.

Alex:    What a way to end it.

Joe:      Yeah. Hey, thanks, Tom. You’ve been a good sport.

Tom:    You’re welcome guys. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Alex:    Thanks, Tom. It’s been good.

Joe:      All right guys. Talk to you later. See you.