Joe: What is up, everybody. Welcome. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast and as you can see, I got a great guest here. His name is Cameron Dunlap. Been in the business a long, long time and he’s a rock star and a legend and I’m excited about having him on this podcast, so welcome. I’m glad you guys are here.

Joe: This is again the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast and a lot of you right now are actually watching this live on Facebook or YouTube, maybe even Periscope. Just wanted to say hi to you guys. Most of you are actually listening to this later as a podcast, but I just want to say welcome. Glad you’re here. If you are watching this live on YouTube and Facebook and you have a question for Cameron during this podcast, please type it in the comments, type it in the comments of YouTube or Facebook, and then I’ll be able to show your comments and ask your questions to Cameron as we go here and if you’re watching again, just say hi. Tell us where you’re from. Tell us your name and we’d love to say hello to you and play with this really cool technology. I love this.

Joe: In case a lot of people are asking like, how are you doing this, Joe? You’re doing a podcast and you’re showing it live on different channels. I’m using a tool called StreamYard and it’s going through StreamYard to another tool called Restream and Restream is the one that’s sending it out, but I can see your comments if you want to say hello, type them in here and we’ll put them on the video. But let’s just jump right in.

Joe: By the way, this podcast is brought to you by a webinar that I’m going to be doing with Cameron Dunlap just a few weeks now from as I’m recording this and you can get more information. If you go to joemccall.com/cameron, joemccall.com/cameron. And that’s C A M E R O N and that’s a special webinar that Cameron and I are going to be doing real soon here where we’re going to be talking about his trifecta system, which is… This is going to blow your mind away.

Joe: I’m excited about this because we’re going to be talking about this on the podcast and what Cameron has created with his education, with the software, with his data. It’s unheard of. There’s nothing else like it in the industry right now and I know you guys are   going to really like it, so I think we should jump right in. We did get one comment from somebody. Keith says, look at this. Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Cam. How you doing, Keith?

Cameron: Good morning, Keith.

Joe: Alright. Hey, by the way too, if you’re listening to this podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Google play or whatever, please subscribe to the channel and give us a review. Give us a thumbs up, give us a like for this podcast. We really appreciate it and Phil appears saying, Hey, Cameron and Joe, what’s going on? Hey Phillip.

Cameron: Hey, what’s up?

Joe: Okay Cameron, how are you man?

Cameron: I’m great. I couldn’t be better. I’m down in Florida right now. My house down here and if I look a little distracted, there’s a huge boat going by right now and I just, I just love the boats. But anyway, I’m doing great. Up to my eyeballs in deals as always. In fact, I was just at one of my rental houses and just in the next town North that I’m going to list for sale. I sold a marina last week you and I talked about that, that that was a significant transaction to say the least. Then making offers on all sorts of stuff, doing the business every day. It’s what I do. I love it. I wake up in the morning thinking about deals. I go to sleep at night thinking about deals.

Joe: So, you wholesaled a marina?

Cameron: Sorta, not really. So, what I did, and by the way, I do commercial and residential obviously bought the marina as a redevelopment project. So, it was a rundown dump and stole it, you know, like fire sale price and started the redevelopment process, put in a new seawall, which is really complex and expensive and all kinds of engineering. And then Upland Concrete Work creating a deck that was strong enough to handle a giant forklift or travel lift to carry boats from the water to the land.

Cameron: And sort of out of the blue, a realtor reached out and this guy’s sharp. He dug up my contact information and he reached out to me and he said, Hey, tell me about your marina. And then a month later he produced an offer that we weren’t expecting, didn’t ask for, I   didn’t even know he was talking to a buyer and a super wealthy guy, tech guy basically bought it because he wanted it for his personal use for his own fleet of yachts. And you know, billionaires need a fleet of yachts. So, so he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was like, well no, it’s not for sale. And then yeah, it’s for sale.

Joe: Okay. So had you already done the work on that podcast? Not podcast… Marina. Had you  already done the work on the marina?

Cameron: Some, some we, you know, we were probably halfway through the redevelopment of it. Next week we’re gonna tear down some buildings and put up some new ones and soon as the, as soon as we got the offer, basically stopped the work and we, you know, it took a while. Commercial deals, you know, due diligence. All that took about four, four months, but we just closed it on New Year’s Eve.

Joe: Cool. Good for you. Congratulations. You’re making a lot of money on this?

Cameron: Yes. Relatively speaking. Yes, it was a good deal. I can’t complain. And you know what, here’s the interesting thing about it. It wasn’t something that I was searching for at all. It basically landed in my lap, which I think you understand, Joe, and maybe many of your listeners, viewers, understand that when you’re in the business to a certain degree, deals find you and when you’re in it long enough, they can’t help but find you. Especially if you have a reputation of doing what you said you would do. People bring things to you and just another day.

Joe: That’s good. Alright, cause I got a bunch of questions for you.

Cameron: Oh good. What was the, by the way, really quick, what was the second tool you’re using?  StreamYard, obviously I’m logged into now. What was the second?

Joe: Restream.io. Restream.io and that is what sends it out to Facebook, YouTube, even Periscope. And if you, if you wanted to broadcast your videos to those gaming channels like Twitch, I think you can. But anyway, Cam, a lot of people may not know you and maybe they’re new to real estate investing. Can you just give us a brief history of how you got started in the whole real estate?

Cameron: Sure. You know, like most folks, I was in a place in my life where I was really frustrated. I hated, I worked at, I was working in corporate America. I grew up the son of an entrepreneur. Then that changed because of a recession we were in and yada, yada. So, I went and got a job with this giant corporation. I had never worked for a big company and grew to hate it immediately. Was there a total of two years and knew that I had to do something else? So, I bought a get rich in real estate infomercial product at two o’clock in the morning from a guy named Carlton Sheets.

Joe: Love Carlton Sheets. I was just looking through my bookshelves the other day. I can’t, I’m backwards. Here we go over is a little book I bought from Carlton Sheets on the eBay and I have not gone through it yet. I want to, but anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Awesome.

Cameron: Yeah. and you know coincidentally we ended up becoming very, very close friends, he and I, pure coincidence. I wrote a letter, a testimonial letter, and it turned out he lived here in this town where I am now and they wrote to me and said, Hey, you want to be on the infomercial? And I said, okay. And we did some filming in his house and I met his wife and his dog and we just became really, really good friends. Pure coincidence. So, anyway, I bought the course and I went all through it. I tore through it and I did a rehab. And here was this, by the way, this was in 19 end of 92. So, quite a while ago. Did a rehab. I lived in Connecticut, did a rehab in Rochester, New York, where I’d gone to college, made pretty good money on it. And that was the sort of the catalyst that was when I said, okay, I know I can do this. Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t. I just made money. It’s a repeatable process. I’m quitting my job. And at the same time I proposed to my then girlfriend, now wife, and we moved to Florida to where we, to this town, much different house today than then, but, and I went into this business full time.

Joe: What was it about Carlton Sheets’ course that helped you get success? Did he, did he keep it super simple? Was it just a specific strategy that he taught? What was it, do you remember?

Cameron: Well, the program was primarily “Buy, fix and sell” or “Buy, hold, and rent.” And I quickly discovered that I couldn’t really buy, hold and rent where I lived in Connecticut because the numbers didn’t work. You know, he talked about a 1% rent ratio, so that’s rent to value ratio if you will. And I couldn’t get anywhere near there in that market, but I knew I could here. Plus, my mom lived here so I basically, I’ve always been trainable. Okay. So that I know about myself. I’m a pilot and as a pilot you, you have to be trainable.

Cameron: So, I just did what it said and started rehabbing houses and peeled off a few as rentals and found a private, a couple of private lenders that, you know… Cause I couldn’t go to the bank, I had my job and worked with partners, money partners. So, I was splitting rehab profits and then you know, on the ones that made sense, I held onto them as rentals and kept them for many years, but then sold them all and then bought them bought ones just like them, back again in 2010. And I’m actually in the process of selling some of them now. You know, what was it? I don’t know. I just know that I followed it.

Joe: Did you, did you feel like, because you know Carlton Sheets was a big famous guru. You  know, he’s on TV;

Cameron: Well, not anymore. Not anymore.

Joe: Not anymore. So, where did you go to get your questions answered or to get help when  you got stuck?

Cameron: Well, there was basically no internet then. And so books, that was about it. And then I eventually learned about a real estate investor association down here and I went to that and then it was a bunch of blowhards so I didn’t, I stopped going to that, a bunch of posers, to be honest, I think that’s a better way to put it. So, mostly books, trial and error and mentors.

Cameron: I mean, I tried to surround myself with people that were more successful than me at what I was doing and intended to do. And then purely by coincidence, Carlton ended up being one of those mentors. So.

Joe: Nice. Alright. So then what, you started doing a few deals here and there. How quickly did  you start doing real estate full time and quit your job?

Cameron: I did the one deal in Rochester and that’s where I mustered up the courage and quit my job right soon after and got married and moved down here. So and then, but what made it work was that, you know, I was pretty, pretty young and my then new wife had a pretty good job and she agreed that for some period of time she’d be willing to support us on her income until I could get my legs under me. So, I had that going for me as well.

Joe: This was about 28 years ago?

Cameron: Yeah, we moved down here and, in the fall of 2000, I’m sorry, of 1993. I still have the same bank accounts that I opened with the same bank or but it’s been bought and sold two or three times. But yeah, I still go to the same branch when I’m down here, you know, I’m not down here that often. This time of year I am, but most of my time I spend in upstate New York in the Finger Lakes.

Cameron: So, we’ve left here, moved up North when my daughter was two cause we wanted to raise her up there and then bought this house, which is in the same neighborhood where we lived. But on a very different street in 2013. So, we’ve been sort of easing our way back down here and using this place when we can. And Nicole, my daughter’s off to college now, so we’re trying to spend a little more time here. In fact, they all just left yesterday, my wife and daughter.

Joe: So, you mainly live in upstate New York? Okay. For some reason I thought you were in  Charleston.

Cameron: Nope. That’s Josh, who’s on my team. And that’s where we met. It was in Charleston.

Joe: Okay, cool. So 28 years ago, you started in the real estate business. Does that, when you  look back, has that time flown by or has…

Cameron: Really unbelievable. I mean, just beyond belief and part of 20 of those years we spent  raising our daughter, which accelerates time, I think.

Joe: Sure. I have four kids and I’m wondering is it going to be four times as fast for me?

Cameron: It’s going to be four times as expensive.

Joe: One time I counted up, Cameron, all the diapers that I changed. Oh, my wife and I had changed because we, the way our kids were born and we, by the way, we’ve adopted all four of our kids.

Cameron: Oh wow. Good for you.

Cameron: We adopted them all as infants. So, the birth mothers selected us. But anyway, for 10 years straight, every day we changed the diaper, the way that they were all born, 10 years   straight, changing diapers. So, I figured it out one time. I don’t remember all the exact numbers, but it was like four diapers a day, how many thousands of diapers that was total.

Cameron: Can you imagine if you had strung them all together in one diaper genie, one continuous,  how long that would be?

Joe: We always bought our diapers at Sam’s Club so I figured out what the total cost was. I figured out if each diaper was about this size, you know, how much volume would that have taken up? How much it was, just ridiculous. I forget the numbers. I should do that again cause it’s funny.

Cameron: You probably filled an entire landfill yourself, too; you know, it’s quite an amount.

Joe: We tried the cotton diapers too, at one time.

Cameron: Oh, we did two. They’re, they’re horrible.

Joe: So, okay now you’ve been in the business a long time. A lot of things have changed but some things haven’t. Right, Cam? Like some things are just the same. I mean if somebody were to go buy Carlton Sheets course today, you know, he may be saying go to classified ads in newspapers and maybe they don’t have that anymore. But what are some of the things, Cam, look at you and all your experience, what are some of the things that have not changed, that are still the same today?

Cameron: Well, one for sure is that this is a relationship business. There’s no doubt about it. So, if you go into this knowing that and taking care to nurture your relationships, I think you’ll be more successful. So that’ll never change. So it’s a face to face business. I think, you know, I, you know, I wholesale houses I’ve never seen before in other states and with people I’ve never physically met and shook their hand. But we do, you know, we do stuff like this where we’re meeting online and so it’s, it’s a relationship business for sure. That’s one thing.

Cameron: Another is negotiating, that’s part of it. And that hasn’t changed and you don’t, you don’t do that online. You, you do it person to person, somehow one way or another. Maybe through a conduit like a realtor, but there’s negotiating going on. What else? We’re still, you know, obviously dealing with the same product. In fact, it’s amazing to me how the,   how little the construction industry has evolved during those years. It’s still, you know, laying cinderblocks or stick building houses on site for the most part.

Cameron: You know, modular homes are interesting to me. They’re very economical and they’re very well-made cause they’re made in, in you know, inside, in a jig. And so they’re straight and they’re plum. But you, and you’d think that the construction industry would have evolved dramatically with technology and everything over the last quarter of a century. And it hasn’t, it really hasn’t, which I think is interesting.

Joe: Yeah. What about market conditions? Are you seeing prices go up rapidly drop quicker because as the population of the U S has grown, what have you seen, because you’ve been through a few different cycles, so like have they gotten more intense? You know what I mean?

Cameron: Definitely. I think so. I mean, well in South Florida for example, and this was a market that, you know, it was not a big appreciating market until the last cycle. So, prices down here would go up to 3% per year. You’d get no big run up and you’d get no big crash like you would in other major, you know, metros Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, places like that. But in the last run up this South Florida in particular boomed and then crashed hard. I, I’m not, I don’t fancy myself a market timer, but I also, I feel like I know when you know I’m selling some houses right now, rentals I bought in 2010. I’m selling them for four and five times what I paid for them and they’ve been rented the whole time at a like a 2% rent ratio.

Joe: Well, why are you selling them? You feel like you’re, you’ve reached the top of the market  now?

Cameron: I think, you know, I know. I don’t know. I’m not a market timer, but I don’t, I don’t know that they’re going to go much higher. The profits are dramatic and I’m sort of, I don’t, for whatever reason, it feels good to me to pull some of my chips off the table. Okay. I got very lucky at the last crash when it happened. I owned the house I lived in. I had sold everything and it wasn’t because I was smart and saw it coming, although I knew what was going on couldn’t be sustainable. But it was because we moved up North. We wanted to raise Nicole. She’s why we moved.

Cameron: I sold the houses because we moved. I did, I had a great property manager, they were a thousand miles away, but I felt like it was time and that and so I started selling houses, we moved in 2001 to New York, upstate, and 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, I think, the last one was, I sold was, in 2006. Arguably a little early on some, I mean if you were trying to be a market timer, but I made redonkulous profits on them and I felt like pulling, I just, I felt it felt good to me to pull my chips off the table. And I ended up when the market crashed in an incredible cash position. And you know, once I felt like there, the ground had stopped moving under my feet, I started buying in the same dang town, the same exact houses. I mean, not, not the same addresses but the same exact houses for what I had paid for them in the 90’s I was buying them for that in 2010.

Cameron: So, I’m not a market timer, I don’t have any, I don’t have any real strong predictions in terms of what I think the market’s going to do or when it’s going to do it. I just feel like now’s a good time for me to take some, some profits and, and you know, there’s taxes involved in that, but there’s ways to offset those taxes. So yeah, this, this’ll be a year where I have an inordinately high tax appetite is the term that I’ve heard bantered around and I will respond accordingly.

Joe: Let’s not talk about taxes cause that that’ll get me in a bad mood.

Cameron: Oh, I know, me too. April 15th is the day everyone in my world knows to stay the heck away from me because, and I don’t ever file on April 15th but you have to, you know, pay in and you have to do your extensions. And so, you know, you, I need to know exactly what I owe and I just hate that day.

Joe: Okay. So on a brighter note you know, over the last 25 years or so, how you evaluate deals changed, let’s talk, let’s keep it with houses. How you evaluate houses. Has that changed at all?

Cameron: Nope. I don’t think so. I mean, the tools I use certainly have but how, the process, hasn’t changed. I mean, shoot, used to be to get comps, you had to ask a realtor or you know, have a friend who was an appraiser and have access to whatever the thing was. I forget what it was called back then, but basically you use realtors. Today there’s, you know, online tools.

Cameron: We have an amazing tool. It’s called Custom Comps that it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. And it includes every transaction. So when you go to a realtor for comps, you’re almost for sure only seeing stuff that’s sold on the MLS where our tool and others, you know, have every single transaction. And there’s an awful lot of stuff getting sold that isn’t going through the MLS. And those numbers are important. Those comps are important.

Joe: Yeah, I’ve been impressed in some markets with tools like Redfin or Zillow, what you can  get now with sold data. That’s amazing.

Cameron: I just don’t trust AVMs. So, Zillow’s… An AVM is an algorithm valuation model or modeling. It’s either a noun or a verb, I don’t know which, but it means that an algorithm came up with this value, like Zillow, Zestimate. I don’t trust any AVM from any source, especially Zillow’s, I want to come up with my own number and that’s the beauty of this tool we have and created is that you do that, you come up with your own number, you choose the comps that the algorithm uses. This tool actually requires your active involvement. Right?

Cameron: So I think AVMS have made investors lazy and have caused investors to make a lot of mistakes. Homeowners too, you know, homeowner looks on Zillow and says, Ooh, my house is worth that and it isn’t. That’s a problem in the market. I think AVMS in general are a little bit like an enabling crutch. It’s sort of like a scourge actually, AVMS, on our business as I see it.

Joe: Wow. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a really good point. I think people, investors especially have become lazy with just looking at those numbers and come up with values and ignoring the stats, what the numbers really say. A.

Cameron: And I mean, here’s just a real simple example. An AVM is going to use however many comps that are similar in square footage, beds, baths, you know, whatever attributes the, the algorithm has been created to utilize. But what the algorithm doesn’t know is if one of those houses that matches all the criteria is on a four-lane road next to a Walgreens. You and I know that and we take that into consideration. I mean, that’s just a real basic example.

Joe: Yeah. Okay. So, I want to talk, I know we’re running out of time already because you’re, you’re super busy today, but I wanted to ask you, you like maybe you’re not, you’re looking at, you’re looking out your window at the ocean and so…

Cameron: Actually, the river; I’m on the river. Yes.

Joe: Well anyway, you created a software that is pretty amazing and I want you to just talk about it like what does it do and why did you create it? Maybe you can start with the why. Why did you create this software and then what does it do?

Cameron: Well, so, are you asking about our latest greatest tool, the motivated seller data feed?

Joe: Yes, that, yeah. Well mainly that, but you’ve, I want to talk about the trifecta thing that you  have as well.

Cameron: Sure. So, the motivated seller data feed. So, I’ve always been like a tech nut. I, you know, I had an Osborne computer back in the day. I know I’m dating myself and I had a, I had an Apple computer, one of the early Apple computers and I’ve just always sort of loved technology. And so all these years I’ve built a technology business, right? Right alongside of my real estate business. And so what I wanted was a tool that just completely scours the public record and looks for clues that lead to conclusions about the property and the owner’s situation, right? So, that’s why I call it the motivated seller data feed. The term data feed, meaning it’s constantly updated and you’re being fed data and leads, right?

Cameron: So, you know, “if your phone’s not ringing, neither is your cash register” is a saying I heard recently. So, we need motivated sellers all the time regardless of what the market’s like. You know, right now people complain about they can’t find motivated sellers because it’s so competitive and prices are up and you know, I agree. It’s, it’s a challenge. It’s a sellers’ market. There’s no question about it.

Cameron: So, I wanted a tool that sort of cut through all of that and got me to the most motivated sellers quickly and easily using public data. And so, what we don’t do with the motivated seller data feed is go and buy a bunch of data from CoreLogic or First American and, and just sort of put a skin on it and hand it to you.

Cameron: What we do is we actually go and triangulate and find the things that matter to you and me as investors ourselves and verify that what we think is the case is the case. Because this was a big deal for me. I didn’t want a bunch of leads that were bogus because chasing leads costs time and money and time is money. So, that’s what we call and is typically called a   type one error. You think it’s a lead and it’s not. What we do is we err to the side of caution and knowingly accept more type two errors than type one errors. Right?

Cameron: So, a type two error is when there’s a lead that’s not in the list, we would rather have a lead that’s not in the list then a bogus lead in the list. Yeah. And that’s a philosophical approach that makes us very different. And then of course the interface, you know, sort of this, if you ask my programming team and they’re all domestic, I don’t offshore, I’m a pain in the neck because what I want is hard for them. But what we end up with is awesome because of it. So yeah, that’s the latest greatest and it’s, it’s really making a difference for in my business, certainly enough first and foremost, but in, you know, the, the folks that utilize it as well.

Joe: So, the data, explain what it actually gives to you and what you can search and what it  gives back to you.

Cameron: Okay. So we, I came up with this concept of a couple of concepts that were really important to me in this tool. One is motivation stacking. Okay. So the old saying, the straw that broke the camel’s back, right? So, what we do is we look at each, we look at present 19 different motivations. Okay. And then we will, we have a little visual graphical interpretation of that. These little colored bricks we call them internally. And the more bricks there are, the more motivated the seller theoretically should be, could be. And we present them to you in that order. So, motivation stacking… that’s a thing.

Cameron: Then we get you end up with just completely off the chart market intelligence through heat mapping so you can see where the activity is, where the pockets of activity are, where the buyers are buying. That’s amazing. Unbelievable information about the property owner; phone numbers in the majority of the cases. We can tell you other properties they own. We can tell you if they have other properties with motivations and exactly, you know, what those properties are and their motivations and you know, you can look at the detail about those properties right there.

Cameron: Oh, another thing is you can draw on the map. So, if you want to search an area, a one- mile radius around that, you can do that. Just click on the map and choose the radial search, click on the map and then drag a little dot to create the radius that you want. Right? That’s cool. But what I wanted was to be able to draw on the map so that I could draw what we would technically call a polygon and create a, I can look at a specific   neighborhood or a specific street for that matter, and then I can set up alerts so that the saved searches that I have, the system will send me an alert when there is a new house with motivations.

Cameron: New meaning wasn’t previously there were no motivations on it previously or there’s a house that is in the system that has an additional motivation and we’re constantly updating the data. So, you’re getting these notices by text or by email. And effectively what that does for me and you is that’s like having a full time VA scouring the market and watching specific neighborhoods for you on your behalf without any human involvement at all.

Joe: So, you get the, what is the data that it gives you then? Does it give you the name, the  owner’s mailing address?

Cameron: Well, it gives you all the data on the house itself. That’s the tax roll information, square footage, you know, tax ID, school district. That’s something I wanted that because school districts are, you know, critical. But on the owner, we’re going to get you their name, their current address, a phone number when we can, all the information about the property, the most recent trends, transfer of title, liens.

Cameron: So, there’s lean stacking as well. So, you can look at what mortgages are on the property and then quickly realize whether or not there’s equity there. And you can filter this thing. I mean you can set, you can create a filter set and then save it because you know, you make a bunch of choices. So, I want to include this, exclude that, I want three bedrooms and you know, not two; I want more than X number of square feet. I want it built after a certain date, before a certain date. Length of ownership, how long it’s been owned.

Cameron: You know, some sellers, there’s a belief that, you know, absentee owners who are out of state, who’ve owned their houses for more than seven years is a great lead set. You can create a filter for that, you know, a filter set if you will. And then you can go and you can look in a neighborhood and apply that filter set to that neighborhood and, and you have nationwide data. So, there’s no reason to feel stuck in your market. You can do business anywhere in the United States.

Joe: That’s huge. Gisele is saying yes, lean stacking is key. It’s really cool.

Cameron: Oh yeah. So, you know, I basically, when I said, you know, I’m basically, I’m the architect of the tools that we create and when I sat down in front of a blank slate, if you will, whiteboard more like it, I said, okay, what’s everything I could possibly think of that I want and let’s put it in this, this tool. And my programming team spent two years building this thing. Two years. And every time they brought it to me, I was like, well that’s good, but you know, it’d be better if it did this. Which by the way, is a little bit of a trap for a software developer. You have to…

Joe: It’s called scope creep.

Cameron: Yeah, exactly. Mission creep, scope creep, code creep. So, we had to draw a line at some point. But the nice thing about drawing the line is that we have this amazing tool and one day in the near future we’ll come up with something else because I just never, I’m never satisfied.

Joe: This is a cool tool to get the seller leads that you need, right? Now somebody’s got the leads that they need, then maybe they now need the money to buy these deals, and this is what’s really cool about what you do. I’ve not seen anybody else do this in the industry. Talk about how you provide the money. Right?

Cameron: So, we do a very specific type of funding. It’s called, technically called, transactional funding. Okay. So, it’s same day, next day, sometimes it’s three or four days and we don’t care, for wholesale transactions. Okay. So, we don’t do buy fix and sell financing, that’s another animal. We do transactional funding for use when you’re wholesaling. And by the way, you can create a big business wholesaling houses or you can create a big real estate business where wholesaling is one of the things you do. It’s one of the things I do. And so that funding, what makes it especially unique, which is what you were getting at, Joe, is that we don’t charge any fees for the use of that money.

Joe: What?

Cameron: So, you know, yeah, I know. I know. And there are people watching or listening right now and they’re like, alright, forget this. This is too good to be true. I’m done. I’m out. Well, don’t leave because it is true. And I’ll explain why very briefly, but I will, there’s a, there’s a longer explanation, but I’ll give you this super short elevator version. We don’t charge any   fees. And the reason we don’t is because I am afraid of the Dodd Frank Act and in particular, I’m especially afraid of the federal government. I think you should be too.

Cameron: So, I take laws like Dodd-Frank very seriously and you know, there’s, that’s a very broad overreaching gargantuan disaster of a law in my opinion. I mean we got all sorts of unintended consequences like anything, you know, government does, but part of it addresses very specifically lenders overcharging borrowers. And we were charging two points, which is the going rate. And nobody ever complained that that was too much. But if you annualize that interest rate at 2% of what you, you know, of the money you’re borrowing in effect for a couple of days and annualize that and all of a sudden, it’s a very high rate of interest. So that’s the why.

Cameron: The how we’re able to do that is pretty, I had to reverse engineer it. Pretty simple, by the way. The how begins with the fact that every deal we fund is with my money. Okay. So, I didn’t go and create a private placement memorandum, you know, a PPM and a 506C, you know, fund. I didn’t do that. If I had done that or if I had to do that and I had investors I needed to pay, I couldn’t, I couldn’t possibly fund your deals without charging you fees. So, there’s the big part of the house.

Cameron: The other part of the house is how do we stay in business is I created a plan. I said, okay, well if I charge my clients nothing, no one can ever accuse me of charging too much. So, I reverse engineered that and I created a package of tools that will help you do more deals, cutting edge tools that you can use yourself or have someone on your team use for you. If you’re not a tech person, if you don’t like, you know, if you’re computer challenged, you can always have someone help you.

Cameron: So, a very compelling package of tools, including the funding for a limited period of time,  one year, and asks you for a very easy to afford onetime setup charge.

Joe: Which is less than what you would pay if you were to go out there and get normal  transactional hard money.

Cameron: It’s less than what you would pay to get transactional funding on one deal. Yes, yes. And we will fund an unlimited number of deals for you for a year. So, if you have us fund one deal, you’re way ahead.

Joe: You’re already saving a ton of money.

Cameron: Yeah, exactly. And if you have us fund 10 deals, it’s a big deal. It’s a lot of money and I  know.

Joe: Talk really quick about why funding is important or transactional funding. And I think a lot of people maybe who are new to the business or watch too many YouTube videos or listen to too many podcasts, okay. Don’t understand the importance of licensing, right? Brokering without a license, and this is something that I’m harping on all the time. If you don’t have the intent to actually close on the deal or the means to actually close on the deal, you could be accused of brokering without a license, right? And so sometimes a lot of people can get, people can get in trouble if they’re doing wholesaling the wrong way, if they’re going in there with the intent of trying to find a buyer for a seller and putting them together.

Joe: But when you can go into a deal rather instead with knowing that you’ve got millions of dollars behind you, that you could actually close on the deal and you will close on the deal, right? Then you can sell it after you close on it. That avoids all of the licensing and brokering issues that everybody’s freaking out about right now. And this is so important, I think for all of the listeners to understand, you’ve got to have transactional funding available for you when you’re making your offers and when you’re marketing your properties so that you can actually close on the deals because the real estate commission, they can come after you and they can say you are brokering, you need a license to do that, but when you can close on the deals and turn around and sell them… totally different. Right?

Cameron: Exactly. And I think what you’re speaking to is the law in Illinois.

Joe: Well you know, Illinois and in every state everywhere.

Cameron: I mean it’s looked at, you know, similarly and the sort of line in the sand is assignments and double closings. Right? So, with an assignment, you may have had the intent and you may have had the means, but that’s now getting very unpopular amongst, well, I’m a little cynical, I wrote a blog post about it. I think it’s getting very unpopular amongst realtors and they’re pushing legislators, law makers to address it. And that’s done through political contributions. So, you know, whatever.

Cameron: But you are spot on, Joe, you need to have, and I wrote it down because I wanted to read it back. Basically, is you need to have the intent to buy and sell and the means to buy and sell. Now the means doesn’t mean you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank and sitting in cash. Means could mean that you’re part of our program and have our funding available to you as a result. You’re prequalified, right? So, part of the funding is proof of funds. And we do that. We provide verifiable proof of funds for our clients so that when the realtor or the seller wants to know more, or they want to see a bank statement, we provide it. And so they’re testing if you will, the means, and we’re confirming that you have the means.

Joe: Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so good. Let’s, you’ve got the leads, now you’ve got the cash to close on these deals, do transactional funding. What else do you have? I mean, what about the buyers? That kind of stuff?

Cameron: Okay. So, the third tool or the third component of this trifecta, if you will, is cash buyers. So, you know, if you’re wholesaling houses, the best type of buyer is cash buyers. I mean, frankly it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. The cash buyers are the best. You know, when you take the lender, take a lender out of the equation, there’s just less to go wrong. There’s less to fall apart and there’s less deals that die at the 11th hour when your fingers are just an inch from your paycheck. You know, that’s the worst feeling in the world when that happens, right?

Cameron: So, we love cash buyers and we provide a tool called the cash buyer data feed, like the motivated seller data feed. It’s constantly updated and you have the freshest information. And when you’re wholesaling in particular in this market, the people who have a documented history of paying cash for houses is a good thing. Because if there’s, you know, in our market, motivated sellers are the scarce piece of the puzzle. Buyers are not.

Cameron: And, but unfortunately what you either know or may learn the hard way is there are a lot of buyers who are posers who do not have the intent or the means to buy, but will string you along and potentially cost you your deal and your profit. So, to know who the real buyers are becomes very important. To know what they bought when they bought it, the characteristics of the houses they tend to buy based on the history that we’re able to present to you. Now you know what to go and buy.

Cameron: So, I have a great, this tool effectively came out of a saying that a friend of mine who sadly passed away a while back always said to me, he said, it’s a whole lot easier to find a house for a buyer than it is to find a buyer for a house. And you know exactly what I’m talking about, Joe. I see you nodding. I have to look down to see you, but I see you nodding.

Cameron: So, what the cash buyer data feed not only tells you, it doesn’t just tell you who the cash buyers are, but it tells you about what they’re buying, where they’re buying it specifically. And then we have the data available to you. You can export it, crunch it in a spreadsheet if you want, but we have heat maps too, right? So you can visually see on a map where the cash buyers are focusing, where they’re buying. And so if you’re going into a new market, say you want to expand because you’re in San Diego, you want to start doing deals in another market, go to the heat map and in two seconds flat you know exactly where to be buying houses

Joe: And what they’re buying, what price they’re buying it for.

Cameron: That’s another thing. You can see what investors are paying. It’s a really, you know, having the data is critically important. But the insight, the market intelligence that you can gather with this tool is like off the chart. I mean we were talking about when I got started, what, what stayed the same? Well, not this. Holy smokes! To get to know a market like you can by looking at a heat map could take months or years maybe, you know?

Joe: Yeah. That’s cool. So now you’ve got, this is important guys. I want you to understand that we’ve got the seller leads, the seller data, which is important and you can, you can filter out by motivation factors or bricks, which is really cool and stack them. So you see the sellers that are most likely to be motivated to want to sell, right? Then you’ve got access to the money so that you can, cause I think that so much of that is just mentally…

Cameron: You’re talking about the confidence knowing you have the means gives you, yeah, it’ll change the way you think, the way you project your, your thoughts and ideas. I mean it’ll, it’ll have a profound impact.

Joe: Makes a huge difference. Now you’ve also got the buyers so you can wholesale your, your houses. And I got a quick question for you on the buyers. If I were to go to CoreLogic or DataTree or ListSource right now and say, all right, show me all the buyers who bought in a certain area in the last 60 days. If a buyer, if a cash buyer or an investor bought a property,   held it for a couple months and then sold it, I’m not going to be able to see when I pull a list of recent buyers, they’re not going to show me who that buyer was. So does your database, can you see like history, history? Does that make sense what I’m saying?

Cameron: Yes.

Joe: That’s huge. By the way, guys, just so you understand that that’s huge because you can’t get that on your own unless you’re going into ListSource and every week downloading a new list or something like that. Right?

Cameron: And then you have to manage all of that yourself.

Joe: Oh yeah. Yeah. This is the critically important, because you’re going to be missing the buyers that are buying, that have bought properties and already sold them. You’re gonna be missing that data.

Cameron: And when you’re wholesaling houses, your best buyers are those buyers. The ones that are buying and reselling quickly, you know, they’re rehabbers and that sort of thing. You know, landlords good to know. Yeah, but you’re right, it’s there… That’s a giant blind spot in the data that you can, you know, get through normal, typical means. But this, no, we have history in there. In fact, I’m trying to remember how far back we go. It’s quite a ways. At least a year. It might be more.

Joe: That’s good. Really, really good. Okay. Cameron, appreciate you taking the time to be on  here. We started a little late. I apologize. I’ve been really great show.

Cameron: It’s all good.

Joe: And we had a bunch of comments in here from folks on YouTube and Facebook and when I accidentally hit the backwards button, I lost the comments. So, I apologize. Some of you are asking, will this call be recorded? Yes. It’s going to be on YouTube. It’s on Facebook and it will be a podcast real soon, will be released as a podcast.

Joe: Seth is asking here, Cam, or saying thanks for the transactional funding. I don’t know if Seth  is…

Cameron: My pleasure. And by the way, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s someone on one of these platforms right now that we’ve funded a deal for. It wouldn’t surprise me. You wouldn’t believe how many deals we fund. A bunch and we are the best in the business at it. And here’s the best part. You don’t have to be the expert on this. We are. My team becomes your team. We work directly with the closing agent, whether it’s a title company or an attorney, and are your advocate through the process. We’re going to review the closing statement and make sure there isn’t something weird or an error on your behalf.

Joe: And if Cam’s not going to lend on the deal, it means it’s not a deal you should be in in the  first place. This is going to protect you.

Cameron: True. And by the way, we will fund any, any wholesale deal you’re doing. It could be raw land, it could be a commercial property, it could be multifamily property. It doesn’t have to be a house. As long as you’ve got a buyer lined up and ready to go and there’s a deed, we’ll, we’ll fund it. And although I will say for any international viewers that, or listeners, we only fund deals in the U.S. We do have clients outside of the U.S. but we only fund deals in the U.S.

Joe: That’s really good. Ralph says here, ditto, Cam, thanks for the transactional funding. Gisele,  I hope I’ve got your name right. I’m sorry. Any requirements to be funded?

Cameron: Only a couple. One is we will only fund one deal for one client at one time. So, if you have two deals and they need to close on the same day we’ve done it, but it’ll help if you’re in the Eastern time zone. Otherwise schedule so they’re on back to back on, you know, sequential base. So one money for one client at one time.

Cameron: The other is that, two others: you must be buying and selling in the name of a corporation or an LLC. Okay. We can’t do it in your personal name. And the buyer’s funds, your C buyer…. So, there’s A to B and B to C to transactions lined up back to back. Your C buyer’s funds have to be in escrow before we send the wire on your behalf. We don’t fund the deal until your buyer’s money is in the closing agent’s hands. And they evidenced that to us.

Joe: Yeah, that’s not a big deal.

Cameron: No. And that’s really it. And you’d be a member. We don’t, we do not do transactional  funding unless you’re part, unless you’re a member of our program.

Joe: Seth here says he’s been a member for years.

Cameron: Nice. Hey Seth, glad you’re on.

Joe: Giselle.

Cameron: Giselle, yeah, like what’s his name’s wife, the quarterback for the New England. His wife’s  name is Giselle.

Joe: I did not know that. Okay. Allen is asking here, how do you sign up for the motivated seller data feed? Good question. Glad you asked. We’re doing a webinar, right? A webinar.

Cameron: Yes. So, if you head over to the website there on your screen…

Joe: joemccall.com/cameron.

Cameron: That’s going to, I guess, put you on Joe’s list of folks that are interested in the webinar. And  as soon as we have it together, you’ll hear about it.

Joe: So, when you go to there, put your name and email in joemccall.com/cameron even if you’re listening to this after we do the webinar, we’ll make sure you get a replay of the webinar. But joemccall.com/cameron. It’s going to be a live webinar. Cameron and I will be there. We’ll answer your questions, we’ll talk about this stuff. Cameron is actually going to go behind the scenes and demonstrate this stuff, show you pictures of it, walk you through it step by step. It’s an insane value.

Joe: I’ve been wanting to get Cameron on my podcast for a long, long time and we’re in a mastermind together and finally got him and I said, let’s do this. And he said, yes. Okay fine. And so I’m excited about this. This is a really, really good tool and I only recommend tools that I know and trust from people that are good people in the industry, right? So, Cam is one of the good guys. This is a software; I know his team and there’s a lot of horsepower behind this and we’re gonna be doing a webinar talking about it.

Joe: So, go to joemccall.com/cameron; not sure on the date and time yet, but if you put your name and email in that on that page it will automatically register you for the webinar when it happens. I will send you a link to register for it again if you want, and we’ll also send you   the replay as well. We’re getting a lot of comments here now. Phillip says, Joe, you and Cam are amazing. You both genuinely have your students’ best interests in mind. Thank you. Appreciate that. You are correct. Yes.

Cameron: By the way… on that note, at the risk of making this 30 seconds longer, I don’t have a big business, I have a great business, and you’ll hear me mention that again if you come on the webinar… by choice. I could have a huge business, you know, doing seminars and all that, you know, I don’t want that. That was a conscious choice. So, what that means is I don’t have a huge funding team. And I don’t have a huge, I have an amazing funding team and I don’t have a big client support team. I have an amazing client support team.

Cameron: And so when we do the webinar, you’ll hear me talk about a limited enrollment. We only do small enrollments because I’m unwilling to overwhelm my funding and my client support teams… That would be rude to them and might negatively impact your experience. So when we do the webinar, you’ll hear me talk about a limited enrollment. Yeah, that’s why.

Joe: But it’s because he doesn’t have a huge team and the support has to be able to support the  people that are there in terms of the coaching and all of that support.

Cameron: Right. And I don’t outsource my client support. We don’t use the support ticket system, which is very common with tech companies. We don’t hide. You don’t have to dig to find a phone number or start a live chat with us. In fact, we put that in front of you because we want to help you and, but I don’t have a big business. So just be advised.

Joe: So some people are saying, Hey, I’m getting an error. I’m sorry, the cameron name, Cameron is not capitalized. No offense Cameron, no disrespect, but you have to, the “Cameron” has to be all lowercase. I’m sorry about that. joemccall.com/cameron and keep, keep the whole thing lowercase and that’ll get you in. Alright, so thanks so much Cameron. How, how can people get a hold of you? Do you have a main website that you can send people to or a YouTube channel?

Cameron: You can find me camerondirect.com and also realestatewealthnetwork.com.

Joe: CameronDirect.com and realestatewealthnetwork.com. Realestatewealthnetwork.com.  Very good. Thanks again for your time. Thank you for being here.

Cameron: My pleasure.

Joe: I appreciate it, Cameron, and we will see all of you guys later. Listen, if you like this podcast, leave us a review in iTunes or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever it is that you listen to us. And if you’re watching this on YouTube and Facebook, please give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, share this. We’d really, really appreciate it. And we will see you guys all later. Thanks again, Cameron. Bye. Bye.

Cameron: My pleasure. See ya.