In our latest episode of the Raising Private Money podcast, we delved into the world of virtual wholesaling in real estate with special guest Jerry Green, an experienced real estate investor.
Jerry shared invaluable insights and strategies for success in virtual wholesaling, including his approach to property acquisition, marketing, and operational management.
Here are some key takeaways from the episode:
- **Wholesaling Methods:** Jerry discussed two primary ways to wholesale properties: controlling the deal and assigning the rights to another party, or conducting a double close. He emphasized the importance of leaving enough profit for the other real estate investor in the deal.
- **Marketing Strategies:** Jerry’s team is aggressive on the marketing side, primarily using direct mail to absentee homeowners. They also utilize strategies such as cold calling and specialty lists like probates and delinquent taxes.
- **Operational Management:** Jerry’s business follows a production line process, involves virtual execution, and utilizes local inspectors for property evaluations and detailed reports.
- **Triggering Home Inspections:** Jerry explained the criteria for triggering a home inspection during the property acquisition process and emphasized the simplicity and efficiency of their process.
- **Get in Touch:** Jerry Green is open to further conversation and offers training opportunities in real estate acquisitions. Connect with him through his website, Facebook, and Instagram.
This episode provides actionable insights for both seasoned and aspiring real estate investors. If you’re looking to master virtual wholesaling and gain a deeper understanding of real estate acquisitions, this podcast episode is not to be missed.
Here’s to your success in the realm of real estate investing with Private Money!
Timestamps:
0:01 – Raising Private Money Without Asking For It
0:53 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now” – https://www.JayConner.com/Book
2:03 – Today’s guest: Jerry Green
4:21 – The Jerry Green Story
7:45 – What is a wholesale deal?
10:48 – How do you find your deals?
12:08 – How do you find sellers?
12:35 – What type of lists do you use when using the direct mail strategy?
13:55 – Secrets in writing postcards to receive a good response.
17:18 – Getting to know your acquisition agent.
19:32 – Step-by-step guide to running a successful virtual wholesaling business
23:44 – What is your arrangement with the home inspector when they estimate repairs?
29:08 – https://www.TheJerryGreen.com – connect with Jerry Green
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Real Estate Success Secrets: Virtual Wholesaling Tips from Jay Conner & Jerry Green
Jay Conner (00:01):
Welcome to Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner! I’m Jay Conner known as the Private Money Authority. I want to welcome you to another episode. If you’re brand new, a very special welcome to you here on the show. We talk about all things real estate investing from finding deals, to getting your deals funded, to automating your business, to selling houses fast.
We talk about single-family houses, commercial deals, self-storage, and land. You name it. Before I bring on my special guests today. I’ve got a gift for you for tuning in here to the episode.
I just recently released my brand new book, entitled “Where To Get The Money Now.” The subtitle is, “How and Where to Get Money for Your Real Estate Deals Without Relying on Traditional or Hard Money Lenders.”
Jay Conner (01:14):
You can either go to Amazon, get it, and pay 20 bucks, or you can get it from me for free. I’ve got a special website for you. After the show go to www.JayConner.com/Book.
I’m going to be transparent. I am going to ask you to cover a couple of bucks for shipping and handling, but the book is free. I think you’ll get a lot out of it.
Well, if you’ve been tuning into the show for any length of time, you know that I have amazing guests that come here onto the show. By the way, if you are tuning in on YouTube or Facebook or whatever for this live episode you’re welcome to type in any comments or questions in the chat for either myself or my special guest.
Jay Conner (02:05):
My special guest today is a native of Ohio who currently lives in Germantown with his wife of 17 years. They had four wonderful children when he started in the real estate investing business back in 1994, after going through bankruptcy.
Jerry Green began in the real estate investing business by wholesaling properties. Then he merged into fix and flips. Since that time he’s been involved in over 1500 deals, including fix and flips of single and multifamily rentals and commercial properties as well. They soon realized there’s a big difference between just being in real estate investing and running a real business. After multiple failures, millions of dollars in mistakes, and personal tragedy, he was able to now build a true, scalable real estate investing business.
The CEO of his real estate investing business, he does a very high volume of wholesale deals, which are all done virtually. He now spends his time helping others learn the real estate investing business, teaches them how to build and scale businesses, and shows them how to master their acquisition skills.
With that, I’m excited to welcome my good friend and fellow Mastermind member, Mr. Jerry Green!
Jerry Green (03:33):
Jay, What’s up, man? Thank you, Jay. Thanks for letting me come on, buddy.
Jay Conner (03:39):
Jerry let’s start. I want to talk about wholesaling virtual deals with you because you’re an expert at that. You’ve done a lot of fixes and flips. Of course, I’ve done a lot of those as well, too. We’ve got a lot in common, but first of all, let’s let everybody hear your story. What is the Jerry Green story?
Jerry Green (04:27):
Let me take it back a little bit, Jay, on things. As you said there, I started in the business in 1994 going on 27 years. I was cut out. I always say I was put into the business and I was put in a position where I went through a bankruptcy back in about 1993.
I was in a place where I had zero income on things. If you remember back in those days Jay, we didn’t get notices on our phones and social media sites like Facebook or anything else about events or anybody offering anything. It was pretty just well on TV and in the newspaper.
Jerry Green (05:18):
I heard about a real estate seminar in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was Charles Gibbons back in those days. I went to that event and sat there for three days. I listened to a lot of different things and realized that I wanted to do this business.
But at the same time like anybody else in this business when you first get started you wonder how can this be true. How can you do this? I left that event trying to think of what I wanted to do. One of the things I went back and did was ask my family what I should do. What do you think they told me to do? “Go out and get a job”.
Jay Conner (05:56):
Right? That real estate investing thing is a scam, nothing to it.
Jerry Green (06:03):
A hundred percent.
Jay Conner (06:03):
You’re gonna lose your money and we call them the “naysayers”
Jerry Green (06:07):
Hundred percent. That’s exactly what they said. “Go out and get a job.”
Then I said, “Okay, other people can do this. Why can’t I do it at the same time, I thought, what do I have to lose? I just lost it all.”
I decided to try to drill down on this. The interesting thing too Jay is I ended up hiring a mentor right after that when I met at the three-day event. And that’s how I got started in the business.
Jerry Green (06:49):
Then I started focusing on how to generate cash cause I’d take care of my family. I need to put food on the table. I started going out and wholesaling. This was over in Springfield, Ohio. I went out and just started hitting the ground, running from real property, the property on things. I’m in total grind mode.
I was just finding deals, wholesale them. Cause I had to always call it chunk money. I had to put those chances to the bank so I could take care of my obligations. That’s really how it all started. I started building from there and just continued to grow. Then I got into the rehab side of the business, continued to grow that, and went through a lot of different developments over the years as I moved forward. I’m evolving and making a lot of mistakes.
Jay Conner (07:42):
I can relate to that, Jerry, for sure. Let’s go ahead and start diving into virtual wholesaling just to make sure everybody understands what we’re talking about because some people have different definitions of wholesaling. What is your definition of a wholesale deal? What does it look like?
Jerry Green (08:00):
A wholesale deal to me is just looking at acquiring the deal. Now, a couple of different things in this Jay. One, I can turn around and just control the deal with a contractor purchase or option to purchase. Then I can assign my rights in that agreement to another party. If somebody just steps into my shoes and takes over that and all they do is pay me basically what we call an assignment fee for putting that deal together. The second way that we can call wholesale too, is we can do what we call a double close.
Jay Conner (08:38):
Right.
Jay Conner (09:16):
The buyers of your wholesale deals are other real estate investors. That may be a landlord. It may be a rehabber. As you said, you’re gonna leave enough meat on the bone. The words are enough profit for the other real estate investor that you’re either assigning to or selling to. For them to do what we call taking the deal down and seeing it right on through to the end, is that right?
Jerry Green (09:42):
In today’s market, we’re finding a lot of our buyers to be our owner-occupants.
Jerry Green (09:49):
Because everybody thinks the owner-occupant doesn’t have that cash. You gotta throw that out of your head. There’s a lot of them walking around with a lot of cash and I love them even better than the investors because they’ll pay more money.
Jay Conner (10:06):
Exactly, the area that you’re investing in when you’re doing the virtual wholesaling, how many different markets are you in?
Jerry Green (10:17):
We’re in Ohio and Kentucky. We’re also doing some deals in New Mexico and some in Indiana as well. Our goal is to add two markets per quarter.
Jay Conner (10:35):
Wow. You’re going to be scaling this business. In a moment, I want us to talk about the steps involved in doing the virtual wholesaling business.
But before that, whether you’re wholesaling, staying in the deal, rehabbing whatever you’re doing, regardless of the business model that you’ve got, you have to find the deals.
Jerry Green (11:00):
Absolutely.
Jay Conner (11:00):
Right. Somebody’s got to find the deals. I’ve been full-time since 2003, you’ve got nine more years on me. But from 2003 until today, I don’t recall it being as challenging as it is today to find deals because of low inventory. Right?
Jay Conner (11:25):
I don’t know about your market, but I assume you’re facing some of the same challenges on low inventory, right?
Jerry Green (11:29):
Supply and demand are affecting things. What’s interesting Jay too though, is that we are very aggressive on the marketing side. We are constantly pulling those leads out. All the different markets we work with them. We’re heavily hitting the marketing component over and over again. That’s one thing we’re good at. Also, we’re very good at the follow-up. My acquisitions team is constantly working. We have a marketing side of the business too.
Jay Conner (12:08):
What’s working the best for you and your team these days on finding sellers?
I want to make sure all the listeners understand this too, you’ve got to test each market. They are a little bit different. But for the last 20 years, the best producer for us has been direct mail.
Jay Conner (12:34):
Interesting. What type of lists do you like to direct mail to?
Jerry Green (12:40):
We do absentee homeowners. What worked well for us and I teach this to a lot of my students so as not to complicate things. Don’t put a ton of filters on things, keep it very basic.
We do the absentee homeowners and then that’s our big bulk list. We’re hitting that every single week. We do two mail drops per week. It’s constantly boom, boom, boom, over and over again. That becomes our foundational piece of marketing.
Everybody has to have a foundational piece. On top of that, we’ll do cold calling. We also do additional specialty lists, like probates, inherited type lists, or delinquent taxes. We do those more with letters going out and the rest is all postcards. That creates a pretty consistent flow we’re averaging probably right around a hundred leads or more a week.
Jay Conner (13:50):
Wow. That’s a lot of leads. Fantastic. Any secret sauce to share on the look of your postcard or what the postcard says? How do you get such a good response to it?
Jerry Green (14:07):
Keep it very simple and work off of principle. When it comes to marketing like this, you have what we call controllers, and you don’t want to go in and change something completely. Like some people go and they say, well, this postcard doesn’t work. Some change everything. Well, sometimes it might be just changing color a little bit, not changing everything.
The whole message is to get more attention. We rotate about four or five different cards through the cycle. Don’t get to the point where you become too complacent, anywhere from three to five different cards. Do a rotation around things, and then try to use something different that sticks out. One of our best-performing cards, and a lot of people wouldn’t believe this, it’s a black postcard with white letters and it sticks out from the rest.
Jay Conner (15:07):
I got you. You mailed to the same list. You say three to five times, is that like one drop per month to that list?
Jerry Green (15:16):
We do something unique on this, Jay. We do a rotation around what we call “a zone”, different zones. Picture this, and this is great for anybody. We go into any market. If you’re doing this in your backyard, that’s fine. You create that to be your farm area. Then we break that farm area up into zones. What we’ve learned is we do a rotation of our mail around those zones. What I’ve found is that a lot of people, especially people that are on limited budgets on marketing, we’ll tell them, mail the same list over and over again.
Jerry Green (16:11):
How do you know the list is even a performing list and they can burn all the marketing budget? We do a rotation and when we see that the rotation works well because then we can see some traction of which zone is performing. Whichever one is performing the best. We hit a second round on that one and then it goes the same way. We’re just working around like a clock. And it works very well. We’ve been doing that for over 20 years. We have consistently stayed close to one and a half to 2% response rate.
Jay Conner (16:44):
When you are using direct mailing to a market, how many would you say you need to be able to have in that market to mail to, for the numbers to work?
Jerry Green (16:58):
I think that you’re looking at, if you can get up somewhere on a list of around, even on the small market 15,000 to 20,000, that’s when you can pull some deals out of that.
Jay Conner (17:16):
I got you. Very good. Now, one thing that you mentioned in your bio as I was reading over that, is you have mastered working with an acquisitionist. Finding acquisition is getting acquisitionist trained. How about telling everybody what is an acquisitionist and what kind of responsibilities they have?
Jerry Green (17:44):
Absolutely. We hire people to come on as what we consider to be acquisition reps within our organization. Those acquisition reps, when they come on board, their whole focus is to bring deals into the pipeline. We have metrics that we look at daily. My COO Ashley, meets with the team on a Zoom and she gets on there every single morning. She looks at the metrics and looks for acquisitions.
We’re looking at the number of calls, in the number of connections and offers that they’re making. Our success formula is following a sales process. If they are following my sales process and they’ve been trained in that, then they should average one contract out of every five offers.
Jerry Green (19:09):
Then what we can do is reverse engineer that. Based on that, they should start looking at the number of contracts per month. So it’s not uncommon for us to bring in 30 contracts in a month.
Jay Conner (19:26):
I got it. Fantastic. What’s the checklist or what are the steps to having and running a successful virtual wholesaling business? What are the integral parts and moving parts?
Jerry Green (19:46):
I think the number one thing, Jay, right out the gate is first of all, it’s the mindset piece. People are willing to understand that you can put deals together right over the phone with somebody which is a big limiting belief for a lot of people.
I was in the same boat for many years because I did all the acquisitions myself. I went to thousands of appointments. And I realized something, if I can do this in the field, why couldn’t I do this virtually? What tied it down to this whole virtual side of things was that when you go into a sales process, the biggest problem with most people is they stop the sales process.
Jerry Green (20:45):
If you think about it, we’re talking to a seller on the phone and then we have a great connection with them. We’re flowing through things. Then also we pull back to set up an appointment to take a look at the property. What I’ve learned and I teach my team as well as others about this is to continue the flow of the sales process. What we do then is continue meeting with you in person. And we just do that virtually.
For me, that’s one of the key things right out of the gate. The mindset is going. You’ve got to change that. Then you’ve got to understand your metrics too. That’s a big component of things. And I know some of you listeners on here might just be doing nothing themselves.
Jerry Green (21:38):
That’s fine. Still, measure your results. Because if you measure those daily, you’re going to understand where you need to improve. What I find is most of the time it’s tied into just either not enough leads or it’s a lack of something in the sales process that you’re skipping a step. But if you work on that, you can do this from anywhere.
Then the other component I look at is understanding the operational side of the business. When it comes to wholesaling you think that it’s just a matter of executing everything on a virtual basis instead of doing it in person. I look at it as a production line process. That’s how we look at our business. We look at it, here’s an assembly line that we have to keep going.
Jerry Green (22:37):
We look at anybody that’s starting on the virtual wholesaling side. You just start looking at all the different moving parts within that business. What you started looking at is how we can execute that without us personally, being involved in every area. We just start assigning out to me, but we have some BA’s maybe we have like if we’re doing a completely different market, we set up somebody else to be boots on the ground. Where they’ll go out to the properties we have found. One of our big things is we just hire local inspectors, wherever we go. They go out and they become our eyes for the property.
Jay Conner (23:23):
You hire home inspectors, but you’re not ordering a home in a traditional home inspection. That’s a brilliant idea. I mean, who else better to look at a property than a home inspector?
Jay Conner (23:43):
But what does your arrangement look like with the home inspectors? When do they become your eyes for something like estimating repairs?
Jerry Green (23:52):
We have a report already made up: they just fill that document out. We have a whole inspection process that we share with our students. As they go in, we give them the ad that they run. They find people that way. Then we have a little agreement with them that they sign with the inspector and then we have a document they fill out. We also detail there, how many pictures and what pictures to take. We require a minimum, of a hundred photos and everything is submitted electronically. This is done through that process over and over again.
Jay Conner (24:40):
What are your criteria? What has to happen for it to now trigger and say, okay, we need our home inspector to go look at this house?
Jerry Green (24:59):
We use a house inspector to do that on every single deal, Jay.
Jay Conner (25:03):
Whether the numbers look like they make sense or not.
Jerry Green (25:05):
We have an acquisitions team that uses a range calculator in our system. All we do is they go in, they get a lead, come in, they pull up the evaluation.
For example, you’re the seller on the phone and I’m talking to you right now. I’m pulling up evaluations. All they do is plug the number into our deal range calculator then it spits out a range. When that deal falls in that range, they have a green light to lock it up. Then my COO never looks at anything until it’s under contract. If she approves it, then it goes to the next step in the production line, and an inspection is dispatched. For those inspections, Jay, typically our average pay is $75.
Jay Conner (25:56):
Okay. Well, you read my mind. I was gonna ask, how much are you paying the home inspectors to do this? This report? My guess is they’re probably not there at the property or the house for more than 30 minutes, less than that.
Jerry Green (26:11):
Right. Typically its total time in and out is about 40 minutes.
Jay Conner (26:17):
Yes because it’s pretty easy to determine once your home inspector understands what you’re looking for. It’s pretty quick to assess. Does it need a roof? Does it need an HPHD? Does it need flooring? Does it need interior paint? Doesn’t need exterior paint, right?
Jerry Green (26:34):
Yes, absolutely. Then what happens is once that comes back in it’s now a deal. It comes back in after an inspection and then it’s notified to my transaction coordinator. Then what Ashley does with the team is she reviews two or three deals a week. Whatever is set in the pipeline she does a review of each deal for about 15 minutes then if it’s okay, it’s now pushed out to our buyers.
Jay Conner (27:03):
That’s awesome. Let’s see, here Dan asked a question and I think you just sort of answered. His question is “Jerry, are you using the same specifications, that your inspector that he or she would have used with mortgage companies”.
You just answered that they have a different report that they fill out.
Jerry Green (27:21):
Yes. We keep things simple.
Jay Conner (27:23):
And it won’t probably take nearly as long for them to fill that report out.
Jerry Green (27:29):
And it works. I always tell people too, that it doesn’t matter if you’re buying the whole, if you’re buying the fix and flip, the initial part of the process is all the same. Just your exit strategy on the other end is your decision.
Jerry Green (28:29):
Here’s something I’ll do for you and your listeners, Jay. I’ll provide you with the information for the home inspector of our little package. Would you like that?
Jay Conner (28:49):
Wonderful. Sure. That would be very valuable. Well, with that in mind, Jerry for those who want to continue the conversation with you about virtual wholesaling and all that kind of stuff, and to take you up on your offer of the checklist that your home inspector uses, how can they continue the conversation with you?
Jerry Green (29:09):
They can reach out to me through my website. It’s www.TheJerryGreen.com
I do acquisitions training and I do systems and operations of that too. I’m doing one next week here, right in my office. I have a group of people come in. We take two days through a complete setup of how we do our business on a day-to-day basis and a kind of complete immersion.
Jay Conner (29:42):
You can also reach out on Facebook. It’s Jerry Green here in Germantown, Ohio.
Hit me up on that or look for me on Instagram @TheJerryGreen.
Jay Conner (29:51):
For those of you who are only listening Jerry spells his last name, G R E E N. There’s no E on the end of it.
Jerry Green (30:01):
Yes.no E.
Jay Conner (30:03):
www.TheJerryGreen.com Jerry, thank you so much for coming on the show and offering the training and the gift to everybody.
Jerry Green (30:16):
Absolutely. I’m always willing to help and that’s what I enjoy doing, my friend.
Jay Conner (30:21):
That’s awesome. Well, thanks again, Jerry. I look forward to seeing you at one of our upcoming Mastermind meetings.
Jerry Green (30:27):
All right, buddy. Sounds good.
Jay Conner (30:29):
All right. Well, there you have it folks. Another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner.
It’s Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority wishing you all the best, and here is to take your business to the next level. We’ll see you on the next show.
