Joe:   Hey, what's going on? Joe McCall, the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. Got a great interview today. We're going to be talking with a guy named Logan who actually takes the little deals that everyone else throws away. And so if you're interested in maybe a new secret hidden pocket of deals that everybody else ignores. While guys like Logan are killing it with these deals, pay attention because we're going to be talking about how to make profit, how to make money on the land, deals that scare everybody else on. This is going to blow you away. I remember once talking to Logan recently about this, and I was like, you do what again? Say, say what? I did that I did the why. How do I say it again? This is going to be a good show if you're interested in learning how to flip vacant land. Pay attention because we're going to be talking about that. Also, by the way, if you want to get my simple land contract that I use to close all of my land deals, it's free. You can go right now to simple land contract.com, simple land contract.com to get the contract that I use to do all of my land deals absolutely free. All right. Shall we bring Logan on? Logan, how are you?

Logan:   Excellent, Joe. Thanks for having me on.

Joe:   Glad you're here. So, yeah, you do some weird, crazy, really cool things. You can have all three of those, right. With these land deals. Talk a little bit about what you were doing before you started getting into land.

Logan:   Yeah. I did like a lot of folks, I went to college at my parents that I shared and kind of bounced around different jobs, making 40 to 60 grand a year and just never really found what I wanted. But I did wind up in the oilfield and gave me an outsized income. I was making 2 or 3 times what I'd made and I thought, Man, this is like I got money in my bank account. I'm no longer living paycheck to paycheck out. I got to do something with this money. And that became a real estate career.

Joe:   Okay, so how long ago was that?

Logan:   2015. So actually, it's nine years.

Joe:   Okay, cool. What kind of real estate investing did you start doing right away?

Logan:   You know, years before then, I inherited about $1 million, and I was a dumb young guy and blew it all, doing all the things that you shouldn't be doing to burn through like a retirement worth of money in about 3 or 4 years. And when I got this new job in the oil field, I was getting real money back in my bank account again. But I realized it would take me ten years to save what I blew in just a few off my new job. So I still like to say I really started to value risk. I was worried about investing and losing. So I started to look at infill land because back there in downtown San Antonio, you could buy a lot for 5 or 10 grand. And I just remember thinking, it's big enough to build a house. What could go wrong if it doesn't explode in value like I saw in downtown Austin or Dallas or whatever, I can probably sell it and get my money back. Or I also had people say, But you might not get your money back. And I thought, $10,000. What? What if I sell for 7000? I don't have 10,000 at risk. I have 3000 at risk. So low risk, I can probably recover my money. So I spent a couple hundred thousand I'd saved in oil field and I bought two dozen vacant lots. Nice downtown San Antonio. That was my first entry point, truly.

Joe:   And did they did they all appreciate.

Logan:   It was wild. This was 2014, 15, 16 range. And literally in 18 months our market started getting swamped with speculators and I had people buying those large for me. They were now calling me off market as a dude who owned all this land in my own name. No corporation, no nothing. Offering me between 100 and 200,000 a piece. And my basis in the whole couple of dozen lots was about almost 300 grand. I sold my first one for 200 and don't I don't want people to see that and think, there's a model. If you know how to do this, you can go speculate and recreate that. It's not that easy. I lived through it and I sold all that for millions of dollars, but it's not as easy. I was very lucky. Right place, right time, and I pushed all my chips across the line. But it was just a lot of luck, dude. So don't take it the wrong way.

Joe:   Well, at the time, did you see the market already? Because it kind of bottomed out in 2012, right? Did you already were you seeing the signs of the market coming back up in San Antonio at that time?

Logan:   We were seeing recovery, but at the time we were considered a tertiary market. So Dallas, Houston and Austin were primary markets. I wouldn't even call it secondary. So there was some activity, but it was as strong as the others. But as the others really started to lead, folks were looking for other big MSAs and in Texas, to go to San Antonio had been untouched. So we started to take off slower.

Joe:   So these infill lots in San Antonio, were they in the hood, the inner city of San Antonio or in the suburbs where there's new homes being built? Where were they?

Logan:   This is straight hood. I'm talking the central business district. It was where all the downtown is. You cross just outside of that, which is still downtown. And there were several square miles of just bad stuff. But wow. So the neat thing is the moment of value crossed over that highway from the CBD.

Joe:   So yeah, that doesn't happen for every market to just see. You all know like St Louis right now still properties. If you would have bought vacant lots in certain areas of St Louis in 2012 2014, it would still be worth nothing today, right?

Logan:   That's the tricky part. What's going to happen and which one of those markets is going to take off?

Joe:   Yeah. Okay, cool. So you were interested in land investing. You started flipping these vacant lots. You'd held them for a couple of years. Then what did you start doing after that?

Logan:   So this is really a thesis of my entire career changed. I did a couple house flips and I sold some of these vacant lots and started to convert them into cash. So I had a little bit more resource. But once people started buying those from me, I immediately thought, wow, I can sell them for 1 to 200,000. Let me go back to the east side and buy more these $10,000 lots. Unfortunately, I was too naive to know that there were no more $10,000 loss. They were $100,000 lots. But at the end of the year I was sitting down looking at all the deals are. I made the most money and while I made great money on all those, some of the properties I bought for 3 or $4000 because I had to track down another sibling or negotiate a judgment or a lean. And when I started to see those, I would just shy away from them. But I did one like that. And then there was one other property that I didn't buy with title insurance, and I got kind of I made a mistake. I bought one of nine owners. So I went through that summer, that process of tracking, calling lawyers, getting guidance, tracking down the other owners, buying their shares individually. I had to negotiate a couple of judgments in leans and I didn't make as much money on that one. But I learned this process and I realized I'll still go buy houses at the auction and do remodels and make some rentals. But how do I really want to get the big opportunities again? And I looked at the east side and still saw a lot of transacted property and realized it's because it had the title problems. It wasn't simple to clear. So I went to look for them intentionally, that that's what happened.

Joe:   That's the money right there. So you're looking for properties that have title problems, right? And explain what title insurance is and why that was good for you.

Logan:   Before I tell you that, what I want to tell you is this was neat. I was smarter than anybody. I'd been working awful. I was not a sophisticated real estate guy. I found some lawyers who referred to me through the title company and started asking them how to fix these problems. And the one thing that set me apart from others is I was willing to pay the lawyer's fees and I didn't know where was going to go, but that's how I learned how to do this. So the point I want to make to a lot of folks out there listening who may not be sophisticated or may think it's above their head, it's not if you're willing to spend a little time and a little money with the lawyers to learn and roll your sleeves up and get to work, it's really not rocket science to solve this stuff, but there's very low amount of competition. So the barriers to entry are so low and it's such an efficient use of capital. I bought lots all the time for five and $10,000. Even house is still happens all the time. My office both can do that.

Joe:   So are you focusing still on in San Antonio?

Logan:   So now across Texas, anywhere in Texas. I would go outside Texas maybe ten times. But I understand the laws here and our market so big I don't have a need to leave it. Yeah, but what's different now is it's no longer these small infill, vacant lots. I buy businesses like this about apartment complexes, warehouses. I buy ranches and develop them. But it's still the primary acquisition model.

Joe:   Okay, cool. So talk about what are some of the problems that you'd normally would see, title problems that would scare other investors?

Logan:   The most common that you're going to see are breaks in the title chain, which might mean like if you sell a property to me a long time ago and I don't record the deed and then I sell it to somebody else, but record that there's a gap that doesn't connect our ownership. So is a break in the title chain, and it's actually looked at in a scary way. But all you have to do is go find Joe or Joe's heirs and get a replacement deed that's next to breaks in the title chain or big multiple ownership like multiple heirs, feuding owners, disassociated owners. The fractionalized ownership is probably the best. There's the best opportunity for discount, actually the easiest to solve. So that's a really big one. Delinquent taxes, tax liens, those are a problem to some people. But for people like us, we just pay it off the title, That's a big deal. And the last one is judgment. Celine's. Sometimes they can value the property, but a lot of times you can get them stripped, stripped or negotiated or your deal recovers. Those are the four most common.

Joe:   You know, it's crazy. There was one deal I was working on where there was a federal IRS tax lien on a prop. Right. If you understand the order of leans like that, two proceeds overrides every other lean. And the IRS, federal government, they have no reason to negotiate with you. Right. If you owe them $100,000, they're one of the. What's the word? It's supreme. It's number one over everything. Primary. Is that the kind of title of it?

Logan:   Well, those are superior. They're superior liens. They're the highest priority. So you have the federal have municipal and then you have tax liens. Those are the three top priorities. But your tax lien is a super priorities, a superior priority over all.

Joe:   Yeah. So we're all of that, right? So I had a property with one of those on it and I was able to negotiate not a reduction on the lean, but a subordination to a loan. A bank loan. All right. So let me. That'll blow you away. Like I don't remember the exact numbers, but this federal tax lien was just only 100 grand. And the bank wanted to lend money on this deal and they wouldn't because of this federal tax. And so the loan was going to be like $700,000. And the bank said no. Because there's this $100,000 federal tax. Well, normally that supersedes anything else. So the IRS was willing because I asked they were willing to subordinate their always in first position loan to second position behind the bank. And when I told the bank they were they were like freaking out. My gosh, I've never heard of that before. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So I got just lost. I had an act because I asked I had an actual letter from the IRS saying that they would subordinate this. And then they still believe me. So I. I had the IRS record that subordination letter in the county records. I don't know how that even happened.

Logan:   Here's the kicker though. You didn't have a huge amount of knowledge about it. But what you did is you said, I don't know what to do. I'm going to try something. I'm going to do a little work. And you literally asked one of the toughest entities in the United States to deal with for a deal and they gave it to you. That is the heart of this cleared of title work. Right there is the spirit that you use to go do that.

Joe:   Yeah. Big lesson learned. I didn't think it could ever happen, but it did. Anyway, so we've got a lot of land deals that we've tried to do in the past. And as soon as it comes up with some kind of title issue or probate issue, I'll be honest. I'm like, man, it's not worth the hassle. I'll throw it away. Maybe. You know what? What we'll do is usually we'll tell the owner, Hey, you need to do it. You need to do these things here and take care of this and call so-and-so and call your family members and let me know when you got it done. And most of the time we'd never happen. But we've had a few deals, big deals that we've done where just because of persistence, we refused to give up and we kept on making the phone calls. We couldn't file the paperwork for them, but we kept on calling them and following up, Hey, have you got this done yet? Here, call this attorney. Did you get their email? No. Okay. Well, let me send it to you again here. Okay. Did you get the email now? Good. Now printed. You walk them through the steps. Print this. You'll need to get it notarized. You want us to send you a mobile notary to get this notarized? No. You can take care. All right, so. And so we would follow up with them. And some of our biggest deals came from that, which is scares a lot of other people who are afraid to do that extra work. But it's brilliant. It's when you stop throwing away those leads, don't we.

Logan:   Yeah, here's where you do. So here's where our paths diverge a slight amount at that one moment where you gave them a little guidance and options and did a good job of following up. What we'll do is we'll use that opportunity for a trade down and we'll explain the situation they're in. And the what they sell us is like a broken lawnmower. It's no good as a lawnmower until it gets fixed. And if we can't fix it, we're in their shoes. We're stuck with property that's not worth anything. And we have a kind of process to trade them down. So let's say the house or two and agree and we're in by 400 or 125. Our offer turns around like 25 and $50,000 and we buy it without the title insurance. And we do kind of our own examination, a risk assessment, and then we'll close with cash in a very short amount of time. It could be anywhere from that same day to within a week, but it's quick.

Joe:   So you'll still close on it even though there's still title issues.

Logan:   Right so here's the way that works. Let's just say it's $100,000 property and I'm going to buy it for 50. But now they're title issues. I'm going back and offer them 5000, maybe $10,000. I'm trading down so low that I can pay forward cash, I can carry on my balance sheet. It's not going to cause negative effects to my financials. And now I have budget to go do these fixes or whatever it takes, or maybe buy out a few more owners, but because you're trading them down so far, you just you're better off cash amount that moment into them. They say forget it. It's easier like a pawn shop Let me out of here. So that's what we'll do, we'll trade them down.

Joe:   Okay. So that's interesting. You're so that you now have ownership of the property, but you don't have title insurance. But the seller now has their money. So I would think that their incentive for continuing to help you get this stuff resolved wouldn't be there. It'd be gone, wouldn't it?

Logan:   Many times it does. But that's where you've got to kind of assess your problem. So let's say what their situation is. We have a break in the title chain from 20 years ago. I don't need the seller anymore. I'm going to look to break up that person who caused the break in the title chain up and call them in. My deliverable to them is, Hey, about this property. It has title problems. We need to get a replacement deed from you. Can I send you $500 for your time to do it? So I don't need a but there are times where you would need them and sometimes will say, okay, I'll pay you half now and a half later or there's a very makes, but it depends on the problem to solve. If you don't need them, clear them out sometimes or incentivize them.

Joe:   Okay, so if there is five owners that you need to get signatures from, do you still wait to get all five signatures before you close on it?

Logan:   Usually not. In those cases will trade each person down. So far that I'm buying this share and then that share and then that share. In that case, you always want to make sure whatever percentage of the property you're buying, you're picking up equity. So if you have $100,000 property and for simple sake, we have two people that are owners, 5050, there are no loans, none of that. Let's just say there's a $10,000 tax lien or delinquent tax bill. I'll tell that person, Look, your brother is lost. You know, you told me he's been gone. He's in a homeless shelter 50 years ago and can't find them anymore. Your share is worth about 50 grand. I'm going to offer you $5,000. And the challenge with that is you think I'm giving and getting them for a cheap. But if I can ever find your brother, I can. Actually never sell his property. And the only way to do that is to file a partition lawsuit. The court costs me 20,000. After I do that, a carrying costs. And you? I don't make that much money. There's a risk. So when I buy their shares for five grand, then I'll go hire a private investigator and give him five grand and say, Find me Johnnie Walker. And they will go to all lengths to find that dude. Hire international private investigators, go do surveillance stakeouts, interview people. Like, I think you have a ten grand and we find him. And as long as you're picking up equity along the way, you're always in the money, even if things go sideways.

Joe:   Okay. So getting back to this thing where you're finding and you're hiring a private investigator, are you buying the property before the private investigator finds that guy?

Logan:   I'm buying 50% of the property from that. They're and I take their spot. So now I'm in the place of their sibling.

Joe:   So that's interesting. You can buy a certain percentage of the property and you have a title company or an attorney that helps you with this.

Logan:   So I do have them. We're actually the project managers, and we know this model probably better than most. I do have an attorney in my office. I've got a genealogist in my office. Yeah, I mean, we did we usually do between 150, 200 transactions a year. Right now, I've got 65 items in inventory. We have a couple of companies, 65, 15 and 20. So we have about 90 properties in inventory that we own all or part of right now in this process.

Joe:   Wow.

Logan:   So here's a here's the special part, though. So I've got 20 people here that's total headcount, including me. But that inventory list I just told you about, 65 of those 90 are in one company. One of my partners runs that company. I own half. He owns half. 65 units are total spend, all in not including overhead and salaries and stuff. We have spent 2.5 million to acquire 12 million worth of real estate. Now I've still got another million to spend to aggregate the remaining interests pay for some legal fees. Puts me in at about 3.5. And after costs of sale and all, I'm going to be about four to exit the 12 million real estate. So it's about an $8 million margin on a $4 million spin.

Joe:   I love it. So it's worth the hassle you're saying.

Logan:   It is. That is the important part, though, I tell people, is when they learn that they can fix things like this and do it a couple of times, they're confident they'll go take on any mess. And for me, I want to make sure folks understand. You want to mess, That's big enough so folks can't sell it easily or someone else can fix it. But it's not such a big mess that you can't ever fix it or it becomes not worth your time.

Joe:   So there are messes that are too big, too messy to fix.

Logan:   The saying I always say in the offices, Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Joe:   So you were saying is the juice was worth the squeeze, Right? I take that analogy a little further. I've always been like, if it's not easy peasy lemon squeezy, I'm out. Right. So I guess I guess the question would be kind of like, well, where do you where do you determine like, all right, this is worth it now or this isn't worth it? What are some of the problems that are not worth it.

Logan:   When you have a property that's worth 100 or $200,000 and it has 60 owners, not worth it, when you've got $1 million worth of judgments and leans on the properties worth 100 grand, not worth it. But we did one a couple of years ago that 65 owners and it was worth a million and a quarter and we were all in for 250,000 with the tax liens and paying out the 65 owners. And then once we closed, we ran it through the title company to get a TBD title commitment to make sure I work clear title. And it was clear. So we sold it. We sold it for a million a quarter and we netted $1 million on it and it was a nine month project. So in that case, the juice is worth the squeeze when you have that big of a margin. Now, the challenge for most people listen to this right now is they'll get involved of getting some good resources, find a local attorney to help them and an escrow officer that will get their questions answered so they can navigate through some of these. But you're not going to know what you're up against until you complete a couple. And at that point, you're more equipped to assess and say, ooh, this is going to be tough. And so you've got to go out there and swing at a couple before you can improve your vetting.

Joe:   Okay. So let's talk about how do you find these deals? How do you go look for them or do you.

Logan:   Yes. Well, I've got 1 in 5 deals now referred because we spent time telling people about it. And unless someone wants this to be a side gig for them or they actually want to learn a little bit, I tell people, don't waste all this time learning this skill. Just find it. You could find me, but I'm not trying to always promote me there. There are some other people that do this. Find someone who knows how to do this and just refer to them and take a share. Take a third or 25%. Let them do all the hard work. If you don't choose to want to acquire this new skill, that way you don't lose these kind of deals in your pipeline because some of them can be really lucrative. But what we learned after finding all these different ways to scrape data, aggregate it, stack it, compare it, the most glaring commonality across all of these deals that I saw after a couple of years of doing this is every one of these well, 95% of them are delinquent on taxes. So starting with a delinquent tax list or a tax foreclosure list, meaning that property's going to be sold in the next month, those are the two fastest, easiest, lowest cost ways to intentionally find property with title problems. Delinquent tax list.

Joe:   I like it.

Logan:   Here's another key. Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, Yeah. Think about it for a minute. When a property is being sold for delinquent taxes, it probably doesn't have a mortgage. Otherwise, the lender would pay the mortgage. So another inherent thing about delinquent tax deals is that they have much more equity traditionally because there's no mortgage in place.

Joe:   Yeah, a lot more room. So you're doing a lot of outbound marketing, let's say, for tax delinquent properties. What percentage of that marketing is going for residence, residential housing versus vacant land or businesses and things like that?

Logan:   I actually don't know. We start with the delinquent tax list and filter by location value, and there's a ratio of delinquent taxes to tax rate in the state. I want people to be at least two years behind. So we open funnel market that way. Now what? We actually get our end result. Be surprised a lot of property falls into this semi-rural category where it's not infill but it's not way on the sticks. It's within 45 minutes of an MSA. That is what a large percentage of this property winds up being and sometimes as a house or mobile home. Sometimes it doesn't. But we're shopping by distress channel, not asset class.

Joe:   Yeah. Makes sense. Cool. All right. So it sounds to me like the best way to learn how to resolve these kinds of issues is to just try and do it right, like dig into the weeds, talk to the title companies, talk to attorneys, try to figure out how to do it. But if somebody is new and just getting started, they're overwhelmed and intimidated by this. How do they find guys like you that are willing to take on those hassles?

Logan:   You know, there's probably a handful. There's probably half a dozen folks that are known for talk about it. Here's what I would tell them to do, though. Find a local attorney who, you know, I can trust and tell them that you want to look at these deals and ask them what their rate is, if you're just calling them for Q&A and commentary. Let your escrow officer know about that and start to try to look for a couple of them intentionally. But don't even manage your current business line. You need to pay the bills until you figure something else new out. But when you get involved in these things, just start asking the questions. If I have a problem, what does it take to fix that? We have an unreleased mortgage. How do you get a mortgage release? Has it been paid? Do you call the lender? Negotiate? You just are working through a process. But having an attorney, if you're not really well versed in this, a pretty good real estate attorney, they can connect a lot of dots for you to take you forever to research. And on $100 call, he'll tell you the answer to your move. Now, guys like us. I mean, you can look us up on the Internet. We do actually have a couple of Facebook groups where people just collaborate. There's no pitches where I sell or anything, but I'm a huge believer of community and I'm a huge believer that I will never run out of these deals. I talk about how I solve these. I have no hidden juice. I share it all out there. What that does is it brings people together in someone who understands something, thinks about differently than that other person can solve somebody else's problem without knowing it. So to me, community really matters for this lot.

Joe:   I like that. So being involved in the local investing community or in Facebook groups, letting people know, Hey, Alex, you've come across any of these kinds of deals, let me know. We can partner on it, right?

Logan:   Yeah, we do a lot of these with people. We do a bunch of JV deals. We offer guidance way more than we should.

Joe:   But it does a lot for everybody. Let's talk about some of the most common problems and how you go about resolving them. All right. One of the big common problems is leans judgments on a property that you're trying to buy. How do you negotiate? What are some of the things you say to the lien holder?

Logan:   So there's two ways to do this member you talked about earlier. Do you take title to it and then get the rest of the signatures? Once you start to understand what all the problems are on the property, that will help you make that decision. So sometimes I'll buy property knowing their judgments and liens, and I intentionally buy it without getting a resolve so that I can call an old lien older. Let me back up. A lot of these judgments and liens are indexed to the owners, not the property. So that are lean that you said was actually indexed to the owner, not the property. But title companies want all debts of the parties to be clear, so that there's no creditor that can come back and make a claim for the asset afterwards. So when you're stripping all of these judgments and liens, if it's not indexed to the asset like a contract or lean or a mortgage or something like that, if it's indexed to the individual, I want to buy the property first, and then I contact the creditor and say, Hey, there's some judgment that's clear that causing a cloud but has nothing to do with the asset or me. That's the first line to first to get things negotiated down really low or just completely removed. What they'll offer you a lot of times is it was called a partial release. It'll release that judgment or lien from the real estate, but not from the person that's free. Just like you call the IRS, Just call and ask.

Joe:   Call, let's say it's a

Logan:   Child support or big one.

Joe:   Yeah, that's a good one. Or if it's a judgment from a lawsuit that this person lost. So it's it could be attached to the. Property or it's attached to the person. Or maybe both. That's true. So you find out whether it is or not just by doing. How do you find out? Like you call it, does the title company explain it to you? And you have to get an attorney to explain it to you.

Logan:   So for the common person who is not used to this, they get their title commitment and they really don't look at it. I mean, they'll see, Hey, my name is the buyer. That's the seller. This is going to cover my lender. Me Let's close. If you look on your schedule, see, it's common in the United States across all title companies promulgated form. Schedule C shows the items that must be cleared before you close in judgments or liens will show up there. And a lot of title companies now have a hyperlink. So you can go right to that judgment or lean by clicking on it. Or if you look at it and it references them, the liens or judgments. But does it have a hyperlink? You can ask the title company to email them to you. And the first line defense before negotiating is once the title company emails, those first thing you do is you look at them and ask yourself, are they, quote, expired or beyond collectability? A lot of involuntary liens are beyond collectability. At the ten year mark and title companies throw them everything that's resulting for the title search, they throw them on the amendment. Half the judgments are liens that people complain about are over ten years old. I literally call the title company, say this ten years old. Can you please remove it?

Joe:   So does that like a state thing or county thing? Federal. State at state, yeah.

Logan:   You've got federal jurisdiction that has that criteria for the federal liens. And then you'll have state liens, which could be like, I don't know, text dot or there's a ton of different ones, but the most common when you're going to have or state, say, jurisdiction. So like contractors liens. DSU like you said in a lawsuit, if you didn't pay your vehicle payment and it gets repossessed and they send you a deficiency judgment, all that's state centric.

Joe:   Okay and so each of those different rules are how long it will last.

Logan:   Right and here's the key to that. If you Google search judgments, liens, lawyer, summary, PDF or some rendition of that, a lot of attorneys in their state will produce a cheat sheet about what all the kinds of lines are, how long they last and what their durability is and their priority. So every state has that. So you don't have to go digging through the statutes. You can find summaries almost every or Ohio one by some attorney.

Joe:   Interesting. Okay, cool.

Logan:  So that would be the first thing I would do. When you get your title commitment, get a copy of those judgments are liens and go straight to that cheat sheet. Half of them, you can get wiped off because they're no longer collectible already.

Joe:   So you can show the title company this is expired. The title company should remove it from them.

Logan:   Any time they will if it fits in that category. Yeah.

Joe:   All right. So, you know, let's say there's this judgment that's not expired yet. What's the conversation go when you call the defendant of the lawsuit who's owed this money, Who has this judgment against them? How do you go about trying to negotiate that down? Is there some negotiating tricks that you use or you know what I mean?

Logan:   So I don't want them to know the creditor. I don't want them to know there's real estate at play because they're never going to want to negotiate that point. So I do a little bit of diversion. Basically, I would call and say, Hey, look, I'm a small judgment willing buyer here in town. I ran a search in the land records and I bylines that are over five years old because, as we all know, leans over five years old, are very hard to collect and they transact cheaply. So I can buy a lot of them cheap. I notice you've got one against some guy here in town, actually have three of them. Would you be interested in selling them? So I don't ask for a negotiation or release. I asked to buy them. The moment you tell them you're buying real estate, it's attached to your ability to negotiate goes down. Your leverage is reveal. So judgments, rulings that are over five years old are so hard to collect. And most of these are against people that aren't strong financially. So 10,000, Arlene I can usually buy those for $500,000 like clockwork.

Joe:   That's fascinating. So you're making an offer to buy the lean.

Logan:   And then all that happens is that creditor fills out an assignment of the lien records of the lien records. So now I become the owner of the lean, and then I come back next week and file my release.

Joe:   That's smart. All right. I love that. Okay. I remember. I don't know. 15 years ago, I had a friend. They used to do that a lot on properties in San Diego. I remember him telling me that trick. Okay, so let's say another common thing is multiple owners. All right? Commonly there's one family member, the black sheep that hates everybody else. Everyone else hates him or her.

Logan:   And that's the one who stops and sale. It always is. That's always the one that prevents the sale.

Joe:   Yes. All right. What are some tips and tricks to get that guy to solve the things.

Logan:   So that guys only creates the problem, but he's also the one that's causing your opportunity. I usually take that person and put him at the back of the line, and I call everybody who I believe is easy to deal with or who rather relatives tell me is. And you'll find that when properties in this situation for many years, they've usually tried to sell it a couple of times. The owners have. So they've got some amount of camaraderie. A. Among these folks for this situation. So when I talk to an aunt and says, yes, me and all my siblings have this share and my brother doesn't want to sell, I can usually cut some kind of deal with that person. But they will also connect me with the others. So the ball gets rolling a little bit easier. But the one black sheep of the family during this process, I want to know everything about them. It's discovery. Who are they? How old are they? Where did they grow up? Why does the family hate them? What is their economic situation look like? What's their profession look like? And the reason I want to know those things is because if you're dealing with a CEO of a publicly traded company or you're dealing with a plumber, not that one's any better or worse or smarter or whatever, but you're going to handle it differently. You just do you expect a different result. So you get all the information you can about that person, and then I leave them to the end. And my call to them usually is, hey, I've been you know, I buy pieces of real estate. We're family. Can't get along. You know, I'd like to talk to you about your share of this one. And then they'll start to tell you about the problems of the family. And at that point, I try to disassociate that and say, Hey, John, you know, I'm not part of your family. I wouldn't be here for all those bad things over the last 20 years. So ultimately, you will punish me for the bad dealings of them. Things like that to help disconnect. And I'm usually polite. Treat them with respect, which is not what's been happening between their family, even if they're the bad guy. So treat them nice, be respectful and playing time. And I work through this and try to cut a deal. But here's the magic. If remember I told you, you pick up equity along the way in every share. Well, theoretically, we're doing 100,000 in our house, you know, And I bought all the shares, the four of the five shares. I bought them for 20 grand. All in. This guy owns the last one. Fifth that's worth one fifth of undergrad is 20, but I have 80,000 in equity for my $20,000 spend. I own 80%. Here was 20%. I'd like to buy his share, but if he won't sell to me on the cheap, I say, Look, dude, let's just go to market and sell together. You get your 20%, I get my 80%. I'm still making a lot of money. But if he says no, that's when I change a little and say in taxes. Section 23 of the Texas Property Code is partition of real property. Now, since you're an heir, this will be section 23 A which is partition of heirs property. The property code was amended 2018 or 19 to add the uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, which allows you to buy me out after your appraisal. So if you want to do that, we can do that. Otherwise, partition is a it's ultimate right Texas. A judge will order sale and you won't get to keep it. So let's play ball nicely or we'll do it that way.

Joe:   So you're saying since you could go ahead and since he's a 20% owner, you could go through with the deal, rehab it, sell it. He gets 20% of the equity, 20% of the profits if he if he wants. And then.

Logan:   Yes, but I don't like to do the remodels. I just want to sell it as is. And even if I sell it cheaper, that's where it doesn't matter. I got it so cheap. So I wouldn't want to be in business with him. Like I go to remodel because if he goes wonky on me in the middle, I'm up a creek and I just tell him, Look, I'll pay to mow the yard, hold the trash, let's just put on the market. You get take. Yeah. That's what a lot of people get hung up because I have a lot of experience doing this. I used to fight. I filed. I've probably done 100 lawsuits over the partition or equitable lien reimbursement lawsuit. There are two different kinds. But I got I mean, I get to the point where I have so many of them, and the problem is the time you're going to win. And they're not expensive lawsuits, but it can take a four month project and make it a two year project. And that's when I started saying, Look, partner, let's just go sell the other. I'm not trying to get one over on you. You get full shake.

Joe:   That's like a cash for keys thing with a tenant, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about the deceased owner. Right? There's a property that has a deceased owner. Whatever. For whatever reason, it didn't go through probate properly because person is dead. And the title company saying we can't do anything. Well, how do you handle those kinds of deals?

Logan:   So the very first thing I'll do is I'll go to Google and type in the deceased person's name and the city or county they lived in and put obituary behind their name. And many times you'll find an obituary that will direct you to the offspring or the relatives. And then I start calling them and attempt to build a family tree, basically. What? So you might show.

Joe:   By the time by the time I get the lead, I'm already talking to one of the family members. Right. They received my letter. They went in and signed the contract and sent it back to me. But there's a problem because the person who's actually a title has died. So I know every state and county maybe is different, but how do you like to handle those?

Logan:   So there's a big there's two differences. Master your jurisdiction. What's going to happen? You're either a probate state or an affidavit. Heirship state probate happens in all states, but some states require it and some states allow an affidavit of heirship in lieu of probate. That really matters a lot. So in this case, I would ask the relatives, who are the other owners, Let's talk about your genealogy and we'll flash out an affidavit of Heirship so that you can sign. And when you record that in the land records, that works in place of an heirship to best those owners. But you now need to go find those other owners and get. Them involved in the transaction. They have to be contracted. It has to be for a price you feel good about. It can take some time. So when that starts to happen, if this one owner has big enough equity share and title is clear with the exception of just multiple owners, that's why I go back to him and say, Why don't you give me. Help me with the affidavit or shit. I'll just buy you out now and then I'll go looking for these other people. Sometimes are easy to look for, and we know we still pinch this cause. It allows us to trade down and get them closed out this week.

Joe:   That's so crazy. You hire private investigator. I. We had a deal once. We were buying it, and the guy owned it in an LLC that had expired. So the new LLC wasn't registered anymore. It wasn't an official. It was like ten years old. And all we had to do was get the guy to just reinstate the LLC. So it took some time to figure out how do you reinstate an LLC in the state of California? And this was a deal, I think, in Tennessee that we're buying. But the LLC was registered in California, whatever it was, because it cost $300 to reinstate the LLC the owner didn't want to pay for. So we just offered to pay for it. But I think what we did is I don't remember exactly how we did it, but we finally got it done. Finally.

Logan:   We've done that a lot. Those LLC are usually in voluntarily forfeited because you just didn't do your annual franchise report. So if you fill out 2 or 3 years worth of them and submit them and pay the little fine, they're back in business. But the spirit of what you did there, though, is you didn't just say, the is closed, we can't do it. You said, What state is it? What do I need to do to get a corporation active there? Okay, I'm going to do that.

Joe:   Yeah, well, it wasn't me that was doing it, too, was my. My disposition. Yay! Okay, one more question. Scenario A late taxes. How do you negotiate with state taxes or county taxes or federal taxes?

Logan:   So there's taxes and then you'll find code compliance liens and other municipal liens. First, we'll talk about those. You can usually negotiate those down about $0.50 on the face dollar by just paying them immediately. So a lot of times I won't explain that to sellers because they'll tell me about all these problems and I'll try to get to a net price to them, that's like 100,000 for the house, 25,000 in taxes, 25,000 municipal liens, 50,000 goes to use. All right. The contract is a net to them. Then I go negotiate those municipal liens down by half and it's just called executed with the Fed or the IRS. Just call and make the ask and they'll send you a settlement. It's literally that easy.

Joe:   Do you still do that before you close on it? When it comes to taxes?

Logan:   Well, for the municipal leans and the like, yard mowing lines and stuff, I do it a couple of ways. One way I'll do it before closing, but if I think that the seller is going to get cranky about it and see that and get mad, I'll ask the title company to move those judgments and liens from the schedule C to the Schedule B, which is accepting from coverage on it. So the title company insures the title with the exception of these judgments, Allianz. And then I'll close and then I'll go to the municipality because I got credit on my HUD for 50 or 25 grand. Then I'll go to my settlement afterwards and I realize the benefit there.

Joe:   Okay, so that would work. Yeah. Give me some tips on how to negotiate the leans down to 50%. How do you approach that conversation?

Logan:   Usually I just tell them that these folks have been in the hole. We all know it. And you guys are racking up tons of fees and I don't know if they have the wherewithal to be able to handle this. And frankly, the business case for this property is really starting to fall apart. But I think if you're willing to offer me a settlement, we can start to add enough room in here to least get the thing to sell, at least get it economically viable again. And the municipalities are not tough, man. They want to get paid. This thing's been sitting for ever. They're happy to cut a deal and half of that price anyway, is enormous. Fees and late fees and penalties. So. So bad.

Joe:   Good. Good. Okay. Any tips and tricks and tools or software or data list providers that you use to find these problem properties? Let's say just tax delinquents. Start with that.

Logan:   Delinquent your best. You can go to your county and ask for a delinquent tax roster. Some counties are $50, some or 200. But getting it in your county. There are also some data aggregators that will offer a delinquent county list like a lot of them in your state. There's one down in Texas that does the four big MSAs for like a thousand bucks a year smoking deal. That is important, but your resources really matter. I'll tell you, the most important resource in my mind is going to be Tello.

Joe:   Tello. Talk about what that is.

Logan:   It's a credit level background and data verification service. TransUnion, the people that do credit and what you're supposed to be using it for is to verify background check information and tenant and credit applicant data. So I give Joe, you send me an application around my houses, I'm going to look at all the things you put on your application and I'm going to pull your Tello profile and say, Yep. He said his prior address is one, two, three. Main Street. Yep, that's what it says. He said his phone number is this. That's what it shows up here. Says you lived in Texas seven years. Yep. That's what it says that you're supposed to use it for. However, because it has all that information about people, it is the best contact info. Formation and all of the land.

Joe:   Yeah, I used to used to follow probably ten, 12 years ago when I was doing a lot of houses and I got it as a property management company. I was in my own manager of my own rental properties. That's how I got it. But it, it got really hard to keep. I don't remember what at the time. Like I had to verify that I owned rental properties every six months or something like. I don't remember what it was. And because they got really hard, I guess too many people were trying to get it and this is when it was hard to skip trace. Now there's a million companies where you can do skip tracing, right? But interesting, I maybe I should look into getting it again.

Logan:   The reason I like that one is because the data is so good. And when you're looking at folks that own houses and are connected to them and you're having to piece together data, this good information gets you there so much faster. I lost till about a year ago because they audited me and they asked for certain stuff and I didn't have files because we were just skip tracing delinquent tax people. I lost the audit, but I cut a deal with a local private investigator. So he got an account and I operate under his account and pay him. Yeah. So now we have it under a different authorization level that you actually have access to better data.

Joe:   Wow. Yeah, that's what it was. They were auditing me for.

Logan:   Probably just random audit.

Joe:   I think what they were looking for was I needed to give them paper applications, I think is what it was for my rental properties. And it had been a long time since I had one, or maybe my applications were online and not on paper, something like that. Okay, cool. Any tips that you want to give to people to wrap this up? And then I want to ask you, how can people get a hold of you or is there a website people can go to reach out to you?

Logan:   So, yeah, I would really encourage folks to find a decent attorney locally that's very creative, very willing to take your calls and let you pay them just for calls. That's one resource. Finding other people that do this. I mean, I always I like to promote myself, but there are people that you can find out here that do that, get involved with others. There's so many light switches that just go off and you're in a whole new world because you can now see my small piece of information. The last thing that folks here understand is it really isn't rocket science. If to sit down and think it through and ask the questions and put in a little more work and some people really want their business to move fast. But like us, in the beginning, we had far more time than we had money. So this was a small amount of money. It could go a long way and we had all this time to solve the problem, so we built our model around that. It's a great, efficient use of capital. If someone has no experience and not a lot of money, you can pick, you know, a very small price deal and make a lot. Our common avatar is a 120 day turn time. So from the time we are aware of it until the time we sell and you pay 220 days sales price is 250,000, purchase price is between 50 and $70,000 and there's usually less than five hours. That's the average avatar. So when we see things that fall in that criteria for 50 grand, you can make 150. It's better than borrowing 150. You make 50 on the House floor. So I encourage people to not be afraid of that. Give it a try a couple of times could change your business.

Joe:   Well, how can people get a hold of you, Logan? Where can they go to get more information about you?

Logan:   I spend most of my social media time on Instagram and Facebook. If you type my name in there, I'll pop up on the news yapping about messy deals.

Joe:   Nice. So just Instagram or Facebook. Logan Fullmer. You have a and we talked about this before, but I forget, to be honest, do you have a program that you teach people how to do this or you coach people how to do it? Or are you just looking to do deals with people that can bring you deals?

Logan:   I do all that. You know, I've got a coaching program. I keep it intimate. I only have between 20 and 30 folks at a time and I'll do a session a year. We are really good. Like most coaching programs have, 30% of the people do well and the other 70 kind of founder. We do pretty good interviews in the beginning and pick the people that we believe have it. We've got a 70 to 80% success rate. So guys, at our program, we're doing a J.V. deal with one guy right now, a lot in South Lake Dallas area. We're in this for 100 grand. We're going to market for a million bucks and we split 5050. They spent 30 grand to get this coaching program. Their first deal makes them 400. I'm so we have a very high success rate because it's me and my partners that run it. And we work the deals. So those are ways. But you know, I bet some real low cost stuff. I don't make a ton of money on it, but it's good information. Some online courses about distressed real estate, they just really help bring you up to speed with the practice. I guess you could say those are fine or really just started.

Joe:   I love it. I'm looking at your IG profile right now. It's just Logan underscore Fullmer. You got some links on there, some videos. I just did the follow back. You followed me. Thank you. So I followed you back and you got some good videos on here. It looks like you have a you produce content. You actually have somebody who follows you around with a camera.

Logan:   Two days a week or two days a month. I do that. Yeah.

Joe:   That's awesome. It looks like you actually are out on the street looking at deals.

Logan:   That's it. I try to get about 45 reels out a month, so it's one, one and a half a day of what's happening in the field. What are the problems? What do we do? How do we do it?

Joe:   A super committee.

Logan:   It makes it very relatable so people can understand, like, you could do this too, man.

Joe:   Yeah. Logan, thank you so much for being on my show. Appreciate you. Hopefully we can meet some time. I will be in Dallas, Texas next week at Investor Fuel Live. Have you heard of that?

Logan:   Yeah, yeah, I've been to a few of those, actually. But I didn't have plans to go to that one yet.

Joe:   All right. Well. Maybe somebody else listening to this. I'll see you there. Thank you, Logan. Have a good one. Take care.

Logan:   Absolutely. Bye, Joe.