Nick Lamagna (03:05):

Maybe the owner owed 75,000 on it initially. He say, “Hey, he give me 5,000.” If he goes and he buys this at the end of the 12 months for a 100,000, I’ll credit him back his 5,000. But if the market goes up, I don’t get to back on that appreciation. I’ve locked this guy into the sale price. And what I’ll do is over the next year, even though in this specific case it’s just the option to buy, there’s a tenant in there. So all the rent and everything is going to go to him. So he basically takes it over like he bought it, but it doesn’t actually have to go and qualify for a loan or anything in this specific case. At the end of a 12 month period, they would be responsible now to make the decision of, “Is this $5,000 going to go towards my option to buy it at that price and now I have to refinance or sell out?” Or what we did is put an extension for another $1,000. You can get an extension for another 12 months.

Nick Lamagna (03:47):

If it was somebody who was looking to get into a deal creatively, it’s a way to maybe get into a deal without having to immediately worry about getting your credit hit or getting approved for a mortgage. You’re going through into the full doc loan type of process, getting in for a small amount of money and taking possession of a property. You could technically turn around and resell it as a wrap, or it’s a good way to get into a rental. And if you did it in a market like Florida, even a year ago, two years ago, that’s appreciating like 22%. You’d be able to turn around a year, 12, 18, 24 months from then, easily pull money out from a bank of refinance and get that guy all his money back, maybe turn around and just flip it and take some equity out of it.

Nick Lamagna (04:21):

Just another way to get into a property if maybe you’re not looking great on paper right now for credit, or you don’t have a ton of money right now to put down as cash, but you want the control of a property with the option to lock it at a great price.

Robert Leonard (04:33):

If the property has appreciated a lot in value, can the seller just kind of negate that contract and can they just essentially buy them out and then keep the property and then sell it themselves for the profit? Or are they really locked into it?

Nick Lamagna (04:45):

No, they’re locked into it. So, and I’m sure there’s ways around that. I’ve seen them done a lot of different ways. I think your contracts, as far as lease options go, I think the contracts are the major thing of whatever kind of writing you’re put in there, whatever the people want in there. So I’m sure that there’s people that put something in there like, “If it X, Y, and Z, then I have to pay you whatever you would have made on there.” The ones that I’ve done and the ones that I’ve helped people do, we haven’t really done that because the way that I usually look at it is, by doing the lease option, you’re kind of saying, “This is what I’m okay with making on this property. When this guy goes and buys it at a 100,000, if I owed 75, I’ll make my 25. You gave me your five. I’m okay with that because maybe I just don’t want the liability or the headache of being a landlord right now, dealing with tenant right now. You’re kind of taking something off my plate. I don’t feel like dealing with the realtor. I don’t feel like putting it on the market. I’m basically accepting. I’m giving up whatever potential market appreciation I might have by having something solid in place.”

Nick Lamagna (05:35):

You also want to make sure that in that situation, like I’m always looking at a lot of times when people do it to put a homeowner in, they’ll say, “Okay, look, there’s somebody that maybe is in this property,” which I’ve done in the past when the market was down and it was harder to get approved for a loan, you could get somebody in and say, “Look, I’ll rent you this property with the option to buy. You gave me a non-refundable option deposit of $5,000. I’ll credit you back a $100 a month of rent at the end of the 12 months. But I’ll lock you in at, let’s say $150,000.”

Nick Lamagna (05:59):

That person should be on pace to work with a mortgage broker, work with a credit expert, to be able to be approved to buy that at the end of the 12, 18, 24 months, whatever those loan terms are. So I feel like in a situation with the lease option, what you’re doing is if you bank on, “I’m going to raise the price later on.” That person that you put in with the hopes of potentially buying that home now maybe they don’t qualify because they were only getting approved for 10. Market went up, now you want 200. So, I feel you’re kind of doing a service for somebody by allowing them to get into a property that maybe they wouldn’t been able to.

Nick Lamagna (06:27):

Crazy market. There’s no deals out there. They locked in a place that they might want to move. You know what I mean? You could, but I feel like it gets a little greedy if you do that personally, but I’m sure if you put it in your contracts that you have that option, you can.

Robert Leonard (06:38):

There’s still some liability there for the owner. Because most likely they have a mortgage still. So they still have that liability there, right?

Nick Lamagna (06:45):

Absolutely. So they do have that. What you’re basically saying is in the contracts that we did, they’re taking responsibility for everything. So if anything breaks in the apartment, any stuff comes up, like the lease liabilities get transferred over to the person who now is the lease option, but they’re still protected because if the person doesn’t exercise it, or if the person doesn’t pay the mortgage, they can just now cancel out that contract. Now the owner can take it back. So generally what I try and do is set up at least a one month reserve in there. So that way, at least if they miss a payment, there’s a payment in escrow and now that’s violated those contracts. And for some reason, there’s like a substitute type of thing like that.

Nick Lamagna (07:18):

In this specific case, the one we just did, the person took it over as a rental, not necessarily as somebody to go and move in. So it was like, “If you don’t pay me by this date, I still have to pay my mortgage. I still have to pay my rent. So you missed one month, you violated this contract, you ate all that money. Now I take it back and you’re kind of out.”

Robert Leonard (07:35):

How does it work with the due-on-sale clause?

Nick Lamagna (07:38):

So the due-on-sale clause with the lease option, when they go to exercise that they would have to get paid off. But because there actually hasn’t been any transfers to that point it’s not like a sub two. They just have the options. They haven’t actually bought it. I haven’t seen or heard of anything due-on-sale clauses being exercised on the lease option side of it. The sub two side, I have never experienced it. I’ve heard every now and then there’s somebody that you heard of that potentially went through that. I’ve never seen it happen to anybody that’s happened to, but I haven’t seen that with lease options at all.

Robert Leonard (08:04):

Yeah, like you said, the title’s not changing ownership, so there’s technically no sale. So there’s nothing to be due on. Makes sense. Before you were doing these options going way back, you got your start in real estate because you weren’t able to pursue your dream career anymore after an injury. And your mom forced you to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I think most people listening to the show today know why Rich Dad Poor Dad had an impact on you and led you down the path that you’re on now. But why did your mom want you to read it? How did she know about that book herself? Is, or was she a real estate investor?

Nick Lamagna (08:39):

No, she wasn’t. I’ve actually never been asked that question. I don’t know why she had that. Maybe, I don’t know if she’s actually ever read it, to be honest. I should really ask her that, I haven’t been asked that question. But they were doing the kind of stuff where we were dilly-dallying and we were going to local seminars and we were reading books about stuff, we just never really pulled the trigger on any properties at that point. And when I was kind of sitting around, I don’t know if maybe it came of one of the Carlton Sheets boxes that we bought, maybe the Rich Dad Poor Dad book was in it or something like that. Or I don’t know if she went, and she was part of a book of the month club at one point, I remember like the Robert Allen The One Minute Millionaire came, so it might have come from that, but it was laying around for whatever reason.

Nick Lamagna (09:14):

And I’m not really sure why she had pushed me to read that book. Man, maybe it was just one of those fake things, but I always joke around and I say, I fought her on it for like months. I was like, “Leave me alone. I don’t want to read the book. Stop asking me to read the book.” And eventually I was like, “If I read the book, will you leave me alone?” And then it changed my whole life. So I always go back to, moms are always right. No matter how much you think they’re pain in your butt or they’re bugging you, moms are always right. So if it wasn’t for her pushing that book on me and having things click, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. So that’s interesting though. I am going to go back and figure out where that book came from and why that specific book she pushed me to read.

Robert Leonard (09:47):

What does she think of where you’re at today and all that you’ve done from the day you read that book to where you are now?

Nick Lamagna (09:53):

It’s weird, because for me they don’t really act to talk any different. Every now and then they try and start up conversations, but I’ll hear them when they talk to one of their friends or somebody else will call me. And they’ll say how proud they are of me now. You know what I mean? So it is kind of one of those things where it makes me feel weird if they say stuff to me or ask me about real estate or things like that. But I will say, I didn’t come from money, but I always came from a very supportive family. And my mom and my dad and my brother have always been very supportive and really backed me up on anything I did. From what I can tell, they’re proud of me now. And I’m sure they’re happy that I’ve made that decision, because for some of the other people that know my story, there was some tough times over the course of the years following that.

Nick Lamagna (10:29):

And thankfully I had taken a leap into real estate and put myself in a position where I could take on some bills and some expenses that weren’t really something that I don’t think we would have been able to had I not gotten to my place in life where I am now.

Robert Leonard (10:41):

You mentioned that they’re supportive, but were they hesitant at all with what you’re doing? Was there any moment where your mom had handed you that book and then later you actually took action on that book and she’s like, “Ah, wait a second. This isn’t exactly what I anticipated for you. I can understand kind of what you’re doing, but I’m a little bit nervous for you. Maybe I haven’t done this before. I don’t know exactly what you’re doing. So I’m a little bit nervous.” Because that’s kind of what I’ve had in my family. Very, very supportive, always will back me and help me do what I need to do. But they’ve been a little hesitant on some of the things that I’ve done. Just because they haven’t done it, they don’t know a lot about it. So I’m wondering if that happened with your mom, dad, brother, or any family really?

Nick Lamagna (11:16):

Yes and no. So I remember the first time I read the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, I told my mom, I was like, “Hey, you were right. This is really interesting.” And then there was The One Minute Millionaire came that same week. And then the newspaper came, and the newspaper, like showing my age, this paper came with stuff before the internet and it was like, “Hey, two hour, invest with no money down seminar, Nassau Coliseum,” or wherever it was over here in New York. And I remember, I was like, “Hey, it’s fate. I can go to this thing and learn how to invest in real estate with Robert Allen or whatever.”

Nick Lamagna (11:45):

And so I signed up for it and then I remember me and my dad were going out and my mom, I guess must have gone and done some research about it. And she chased me on and she was like, “Wait a minute, don’t go. They’re going to try and sell you stuff.” The same kind of thing that everybody sees now. And I was like, “Well, I don’t have any money. They can try sell me whatever they want, it doesn’t matter.” My dad came to me to the first one, we wound up buying like a three day class and stuff like that. And they both came with me to that one. So they had showed up at a few different places with me and taken some courses with me. So they did have a background on some of the strategies and they had seen some of the credible people that I still keep in touch with to this day. I don’t think it was as blanketed, like we don’t understand it, never know what they’re doing.

Nick Lamagna (12:23):

They really like the people they heard it from. Because it’s different when I say it, but they heard somebody else saying the stuff and talking about the real estate and the successes and stuff. So I think they were a little bit more supportive. Not necessarily that they believe or didn’t believe in me, but I think they did trust the process and the people that at least real estate worked. But then I will say probably one of the biggest moments I had is when I was out in Las Vegas, looking at condos and properties one time, this buying tour. And I called my mom and I was like, “Hey, there’s this property. And I think I want to buy it. I’ll make a really good rental.” And I was almost hoping she was going to say, “No, don’t do that. It’s crazy. Let’s talk about it.” All the things that people usually say, but she was like, “Yeah, go for it.”

Nick Lamagna (12:58):

And I was like, “Oh, you’re sure?” And she was like, “Well, I mean, this is kind of what you’ve been working for the last year or two years, however long it’s been to do. Was to get to a place that you could learn enough, get enough confidence to buy a property. If you don’t buy the property, kind of what are you doing?” And I was like, “You’re right.” I tell people if she had not confidently told me, “I trust you, go for it,” I don’t know if I ever would’ve bought my first deal and I probably never would have done real estate. So that was a huge deal to me looking back.

Nick Lamagna (13:24):

Because she didn’t give me one of those like, “Hey, you can do it. But if this goes south, I’m going to say, I told you so, and we’re going to blah, blah.” Because there’s a lot of people that do that of like, “Do whatever you want.” And then they let you make the decision and if it goes great, they’re like, “I always believed in you.” But if it goes south they’re like, “I told you so.” Feeling that I didn’t get that. And it was just kind of like, “Hey, we’re on board. Do your thing, and I support you.” Really was the game changer for me pulling the trigger on that first property. So if she had not supported me to go out and pull the trigger and actually do that, I don’t know if I ever would have.

Robert Leonard (13:52):

Talk to us a bit about that first property. What was it? Where was it? What was the strategy? Break it down for us.

Nick Lamagna (13:58):

So it was like 2006-ish, so a totally different type of market there. But it was one of those ones where again, I’m coming in with like no money, no credit, no experience, no nothing. And we had these motivated sellers in Vegas that had condos with rentals or houses. And I was buying stuff in different markets like Michigan and Vegas and Georgia. And I think Indiana at the time, Kansas City, some of these smaller markets. But basically at that time you could go and say, “I’ll buy your property, state an income loan. You give me 15, $20,000 back at closing. And then I just keep the property on an interest only loan for 3, 5, 10 years or whatever it is.” I was able actually on those first couple of deals to get money back from the seller and then use that money to go and put it down as a down payment with a hard money lender for some other properties I was doing in some other markets.

Nick Lamagna (14:43):

It was a little bit of a kind of weird mix and match strategy that it was like, these ones are okay, but they’re not amazing deals, but they’re okay deals for me to get foot in. But they allow me to get some liquid reserves to put into some other deals that I could create some value in, on all those different long-term rentals. And then over the next six to 12 months all of those things just became nonexistent, you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t do cash or refis. So it became a little bit of a mess, but that was like a, I got into the tail end of when that was happening. A couple years before that people were just amassing six figures a year by just getting 20, $30,000 checks back and closing for these properties that they were buying with no money down.

Nick Lamagna (15:16):

And I was like, “That’s what attracted me to it.” I was like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Earn me money. I don’t need credit. I can buy somebody’s house. They’re going to give me money to buy their house.” And then I’m like, “The market’s just going to appreciate in six to 12 months.” So me being a young, naive, impressionable idiot was like, “Oh, this is like, I don’t have to do anything. I can do great.” And nobody warned you at that time about like, “Well, here’s the things that could happen.” So that’s why I’m always big now on the stuff like the podcast of just hearing like, “Yeah, here’s how things could go right. But here’s also how things could go wrong, and you should really know both sides and then head your own risk.”

Nick Lamagna (15:45):

Because at that time before the internet and everything was so big and prevalent and you could really just connect with people on podcasts and social media groups and masterminds, all you were getting was the bright, shiny Lamborghini girls and checks. You’re like, “Oh, there’s nothing could go wrong.” I suffered from that and made some bad decisions initially. But now I try and not do that to people when I tell them about real estate.

Robert Leonard (16:06):

As we all know, shortly after 2006 things did go a bit south, quite a bit south actually. And Vegas was one of those markets that was hit pretty hard during that time. So take us through that kind of next two, three years, four years for you as an investor. If you’re getting started 2006, you probably had a year or two that might have been good for you. But then after that, you’re still pretty new of an investor only in maybe a year or two before things got really, really sour. Talk to us what that experience was like as a relatively new investor.

Nick Lamagna (16:33):

I was getting a lot of people, especially, because at that point I was buying a lot of properties that were on market and I was literally just putting out offers on everything. Two, 300 offers. I was doing a lot of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, like bank own stuff. And I was dealing with a lot of negativity from realtors and from people just in general that were like, “The market’s bad. Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out.” But I mean, some of those properties I bought at the bottom, I’ve had tenants in them for years and they’ve appreciated over six figures easily and they’re almost paid off now. So I tell everybody, “As nervous as it was, and everybody was saying, ‘Run for the hills, run for the hills, run for the hills.’ Some of the people that I remember that were beating me out on all these properties were Blackstone and all these hedge funds.”

Nick Lamagna (17:09):

And I remember thinking like, “I don’t understand why they would pay all this money for all these houses in these markets when real estate’s supposed to be terrible right now.” And then you fast forward to where they are today. And it’s like, “Oh I see. They understood that when stuff’s not sale, you buy it. You buy a TV on sale, you’ll kill somebody on Black Friday to get a TV at 50% off. That’s never going to be worth more money. Real estate is going to come back up.” So they looked at it and said, “When it’s on the bottom, it’s always going to come back up.” But when you’re in a down market, like one of my buddies, Jim always says “When times are great, you think they’ll never end. When times are bad, you think they’ll never end.” So at that point it was kind of is like, “This market ever going to turn around?”

Nick Lamagna (17:43):

So I was trying to keep things for rentals, because I had gone through that accident. And my whole mentality at that time was, I had a plan in life. I was going to go do these jobs. Health was good. Everything was good. I could have taken my pick at literal a lot of these federal or state law enforcement jobs. And then after my hand injury, I couldn’t do any of them anymore. And I felt like everything was taken away from me in the blink of an eye. So, I had this mindset of scarcity, that I had to rebuild everything in a very short amount of time. And I felt every deal was the only deal. I started trying to whole properties as rentals. And then to kind of parlay into your initial question about getting into then wholesaling. One of my mentors at the time, I was like, “Hey, I just got another property. I’m going to fix it up. I’m going to rent it out. I got some credit partners, I got some cash partners.”

Nick Lamagna (18:26):

And he was like, “The money that you have, you’re putting in for these rehabs, but you don’t have any money really at all anyway. You need to be accumulating cash right now, because you don’t have any.” And I was like, “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I want to keep properties. I want to stockpile portfolio. I’ll probably never get another deal accepted again.” You think it’s the last one. And then he was like, “Hey, if you keep calling me and asking me for advice and not taking my advice, I’m going to stop picking up the phone.” So I was like, “All right, what do you want me to do?” And he was like, “Wholesale the next property you have on a contract, make some ashcan then take some of that cash and start paying down some of your rentals or using it to fund some rehab so you’re not paying out pocket for this stuff.”

Nick Lamagna (19:00):

So I literally started advertising the property as a wholesale property to show him that it didn’t work and it was a stupid idea. And somebody wound up buying it like that day. And that’s what kind of changed me from going, “Oh, I can make money pretty quick with pretty much no money out of my own pocket and start to establish cash without having to go through this whole thing of refinancing with banks and deal with contractors and doing all this other stuff.” And that’s when for the next couple of years I focused more on doing wholesaling because it felt like where the market was, it was one of the least risky strategies I could do, because I really wasn’t taking on any kind of liability or risk by just wholesale the property off.

Robert Leonard (19:38):

For those listening who haven’t heard the previous episodes we’ve had on the show about wholesaling, give us an overview of what wholesaling is?

Nick Lamagna (19:47):

So in essence, wholesaling is buying low, selling low. At that point I was getting deals again on the market, but there were deals that anybody could have technically bought, but because I put so many offers out and because I spent so much time training realtors to want to work with me and be patient to put those offers in, because a lot of realtors you’re putting offers out of 10, 15, 20 cents in the dollar, they’re working on a commission, you do that once or twice, they’re never calling you back again. That was a lot of part of the craft is like kind of getting people on your side and letting them understand, “Hey, I’m going to be putting out some pretty crappy offers, but we’re going to put enough of a mouth that we are going to get a handful in the next six months.”

Nick Lamagna (20:21):

And if you worked with just a home buyer, then maybe you’d get one deal. And then 15 years later they sell their house, they call you back. But I’ll be your best client with five deals in six months. Getting that then and getting properties that were at a discount, I could then turn around and maybe not sell it retail, but say, “Hey, I have this property. It’s under contract. I have the exclusive rights to buy it, so people can’t go around me and get it.” Let’s say in that situation I was into it for … So a real life example of one of them, it was $125,000 property. We would have rented for a decent amount. It was like a basic three bed, two bath. It would have made a good rental, needed a little bit of work. So I turned to somebody else and said, “Hey, I know you told me you’re looking for some rentals? You’re looking for stuff in this area, here’s this property at 125, it’s actually got an ARV of 225. And when you fix it up at all, whatever it might be.”

Nick Lamagna (21:05):

So it was either an upside for that person to now come in and do the work and make it a fix and rent or a fix and flip. That they would have had some equity and some cash flow they could have built in. I’m taking a small fee of maybe 235. In that case, it was $10,000. They pay me that, I walk away, I give it to them and now they can fix it up and make maybe 30, 40, 50, $60,000. I’m buying it low. In that case, I put the work in to negotiate the deal down and put all the offers out. In today’s market I’m going direct to seller and getting the deals there. But I’m basically locking the deal out at discount and I’m selling it at a discount to another investor that’s going to make a lot more money than me flipping it or today’s market, maybe Airbnb-ing it or keeping it as a long-term rental or refinance.

Robert Leonard (21:45):

With all the different strategies that you’ve done in real estate since those early days, why do you still wholesale to this day?

Nick Lamagna (21:53):

Fantastic question. One of the things I look at is, everything’s not a deal for me. So there’s sometimes buyers that have a different buy box. So I would look at it and say, “You know what? This specific deal, I don’t have a team in this market. I don’t have the time to find a team in this market. These margins are just a little bit too tough for me. Maybe I’m not looking to hold the rental there. Maybe I don’t want to pull up a flip right now.” So, at different times in my investing cycles, I’m looking to take on different things. So because for the last 15 years I’ve always just gone out and just said, “Hey, I’m looking for deals. If you have deals, send them.” People, send me stuff that, anything from a basic single family home in your average market to a hotel.

Nick Lamagna (22:29):

So I get all these weird things. And then there’s people that go, “Hey, do you want this property in Arkansas?” I’m like, “I’m not really looking for anything in Arkansas, but hang tight.” And then I’ll write to my buyers and say, “Anybody wants something in Arkansas?” And somebody goes, “Yeah, I’ll take that.” And I go, “Cool, that worked out really well.” So it just becomes that people send me stuff that not necessarily is in my buy box numbers wise, area wise, or I just don’t have the capacity to take it on at that point. There’s times I’ve done 200,000 plus dollar rehabs, right now I wouldn’t take that on, but there’s a lot of investors that would.

Nick Lamagna (22:57):

Second option to that is there’s always a good mix of you can make 20, 30, $40,000 cash like that on a wholesale. I’m going to take that and throw that into another deal. But I also started doing multifamily. And this is really where I started looking doing more wholesale stuff and bigger wholesale stuff was because I tend to do too much at once. I’ll over commit myself to stuff. I suck at saying no to stuff. But my business partner is really good at giving me that voice of reason and kind of being the tough love of like, “Hey, you might not want to do that. Here’s really what you need to focus on stuff.” So we were renovating a 100 multifamily units, it was between two buildings. And because I was doing a lot of this other stuff, I started dropping the ball a little bit because I wasn’t focused on that. Because I had always been used to wanting to buy like 5, 10, 15, 20 properties and have all these projects going on at once.

Nick Lamagna (23:41):

And I was pretty good at managing those. But then when you throw in a bigger project, it becomes like, well, you don’t really need five or 10 of those. You have one huge project that probably would have paid you the same as five or 10 of these single family homes. So she made me promise like, “Hey, if we have a big project going on, anything else that comes up in between until that gets stabilized or paid out or refinance, just wholesale the other deals that are coming in. So you don’t lose focus on this. Because I don’t want you to lose the opportunity because people are always looking for deals. But I also don’t want you to ruin the thing pays three or 400 grand this year, because you’re paying attention to something that’s going to pay you five.”

Nick Lamagna (24:14):

So I made a deal with her that anytime we had a big project and any other stuff that was coming in, instead of me buying it and holding it, I would wholesale it off. And that’s what got me into actually wholesaling commercial properties, which pays a lot more money, which funds all this stuff to get those other properties up and running.

Robert Leonard (24:30):

Is this still a good strategy today for new investors who are looking to get started with without a lot of capital?

Nick Lamagna (24:36):

I think whether you have a lot of capital, no capital, no matter what it is, learning how to wholesale is always an amazing strategy to have. Because what you’re basically doing is getting paid a fee because you were able to find a deal. And I don’t care what table market we are for the last 15 years, I’ve always wholesaled some deals. It’s not always not my main strategy, but I’ve always wholesaled at least some deals every year. Who I have wholesale those deals too changes over the years. People are looking for rentals. People are looking for flips. Maybe it’s a crazy market, so I wholesale a deal to a family that’s going to move in because they can’t find anything else and the husband’s in contracts. Being able to find a deal, I feel is a skill that will pay you off in any market for the rest of your life.

Nick Lamagna (25:13):

At some point in your investing career I always think it makes sense to get good at wholesaling to establish cash, because everybody talks about no money down deals. If you’re putting out offers consistently and you get a bunch of offers accepted, what I have found is it becomes a fester famine thing, where it comes in waves that you got nothing, nothing, nothing, four or five offers accepted, nothing, nothing, nothing, two, three offers accepted. Instead of maybe especially somebody new that’s coming in, they don’t have experience money or could initially, taking on four or five deals at once is probably not a smart idea. That’s something I did when I first started that I wish somebody would have reminded me like, “Hey, you don’t have to be rich on Monday, do one, focus on flipping one or getting one up to a fix and rent, and then wholesale the other three or four, make five or 10 grand on those. Use that to fund this one. And now you literally just did a no money down deal.”

Nick Lamagna (26:01):

So I always liked the idea of cherry picking the best one or two, wholesaling a couple others over, and finding a way to create cash. Because if you can have a skill of being able to come in and use what, I always use the term, you have it in the bank or you have it in the tank. So if you have it in the tank and you’re willing to put the work in and put the time in to call realtors or get on the phone and call, call or text message, you direct the seller campaigns. There’s always somebody looking to buy a property at a discount, I don’t care who it is or what’s going on in the market.

Nick Lamagna (26:27):

When you’re able to do that, you can always find a way to make money, regardless of what’s going on with your credit situation, with the market. Because when the market start to go down or up or whatever happens that people are worried about Russia or gas prices or the election, cool. You don’t want to take out any market risk, keep your pipeline going, keep your sellers and buyers in line, but just make money wholesaling it until you figure out when the smoke’s going to clear. And then we know what’s happening. The beginning of the pandemic was a great time that people were like, I get on one mastermind and people were like, “The market’s going to tank.” And then you get on another one and like, “The market’s going to be amazing.” And I’m like, “Well, very smart people are telling me both sides of that.” I feel very uneasy about what’s going to happen. So instead of me taking on a six, 12 month project, I’ll just wholesale it. Make a good 10, $15,000 and then wait to see what happens in the market and then make my next decision after that.

Robert Leonard (27:10):

Once someone understands the strategy behind wholesaling and how it works, the next logical question that I almost always get is, “Well, how do I actually find these properties to wholesale?” So breakdown for us the strategies that you use to find properties that you can wholesale. And maybe even some of the ones that you don’t use, but you know that do work.

Nick Lamagna (27:30):

The strategies for finding deals. I feel like it’s not necessarily properties that I find to wholesale, it’s all the same thing of I’m looking to find properties that I can buy at a discount. The exit strategy just becomes, am I going to buy and take it down myself for a fixer, for a rental, for an Airbnb, for a development deal, or am I going to turn around and wholesale to somebody else? But the mechanics of how I’m going to farm out there and try and get deals at a discount are all the same. Once I get it, then I’ll find out what my strategy’s going to be to sell it. That’s another thing that’s changed over the years. So when I first started doing this, it was just reaching out to realtors and I was buying a lot of stuff off market, bank on foreclosures.

Nick Lamagna (28:04):

In today’s market it’s really hard to get deals off the MLS through realtors. So I’m doing things direct to seller for the single family side, where I’m doing text messages, I’m doing RVM drops, I’m doing a lot of cold calling. I have people pulling all the typical distress list types of stuff that you see from PropStream and Listsource and public records and tax default lists and all those kind of things where somebody has some sort of motivation. And then I’m looking to try and stack those lists to see if they’re propping up on multiple lists and then having my guys call them first. On the single family side that’s been a big piece of kind of what I’ve done. On the multi-family side it’s come more from networking. And I do still get some single family stuff from networking, but from the masterminds that I’m in, from the Facebook groups that I’m in, if I’m out there looking for deals, I’ll have either my VAs or a couple of times a year I’ll go on and I’ll just bomb all these Facebook groups, or I’ll go on I’ll contact some people.

Nick Lamagna (28:55):

Because it’s like, if I’m in a few different masterminds and there’s guys in these masterminds that are like, “We have properties to sell.” And then guys in these other masterminds are like, “We’re looking for properties to buy.” I can literally just marry them together and go, “Well, you’re looking for this, here’s what I have. You’re looking for this, here’s what I have.” And we just kind of JV on those deals. It’s been a combination of me going directly to sellers that are coming off distress list and public records lists. Combined with social media groups, masterminds and networking over the years of people just sending me stuff that they think might hit my buy box or some of my buyers’ buy boxes.

Robert Leonard (29:24):

For anyone who heard Nick say RVM, might not know what that is, that stands for ringless voicemail. In case you don’t know what that is, basically it means that the person who’s receiving your call doesn’t actually get your call. It doesn’t actually ring on their end, it just goes directly to their voicemail. I have no idea technologically how that works. I just know that it does work. And you are basically able to leave them a voicemail without having to speak to them. So that’s what ringless voicemail or RVM stands for.

Robert Leonard (29:50):

Nick, the next question I usually get when someone is learning about wholesaling is, how do they find someone to buy their property? You mentioned that you have masterminds that you’re able to connect the two. You mentioned that you have the buyer’s list. But I find people that are onboard with the strategy and they might even believe that they can find under priced real estate. But once they have an under contract, what are the ways that someone who doesn’t already have a buyer’s list or isn’t in masterminds can find somebody to buy the property from them?

Nick Lamagna (30:17):

Right now we’re thankfully in a seller’s market. So it makes it a lot easier to sell a deal because there’s lack of inventory. So really the skill in a seller’s market is for the acquisition side of it. So for the disposition side, if I was starting from scratch and I got a deal under contract. The first thing I would do if I didn’t have a list in place is jump on as many Facebook groups as I can. And just start blasting that I have this deal, I have this deal. And I do a combination of either hitting the generic ones. So you look at the ones that have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. And I look for the ones that have a lot of recent activity, because you can see some of them, there’s a lot of people on there, but there’s really just not a lot of engagements. So there’s not a lot of active investors in there. And then there’s some of them that are just, crappy jump on it. And it’s all like international weird things and like sex pics and like work from homes. You know what I mean? So it’s like these ones aren’t good.

Nick Lamagna (31:00):

But what happens is, as you start to post your deals on those groups, I go to the big ones first and then I’ll niche down. Maybe I have a land development deal in Lakeland County, Florida. You can find very specific groups for almost anything too. So I go big to cast a wider net to attract some people that are just looking for deals all over. Because a lot of people, especially now just kind of open it anywhere. But then I’ll also go very specific and try and target and niche down where my property is and what my property is and what my strategy is.

Nick Lamagna (31:27):

And I’ll just post and post. And generally that’s enough to at least get feedback that I can tell, do I have a deal or not? Because overall, if you have a property and nobody’s putting out offers on it or nobody’s buying it from you, it’s probably because you paid too much for it, or it’s just in a bad area. Generally if it’s got to spread and it’s not middle of nowhere or a really dangerous area, you’ll generally find somebody to buy it. But social media is an absolutely incredible tool that I didn’t have initially. I’ll also use software and public records to find cash buyers in those zip codes. If you don’t have a budget that you want to pay to pull lists of buyers, or buy into things that you can network with that, social media would be the first place I go.

Nick Lamagna (32:05):

I used to use Craigslist a lot more. I don’t know how effective it is today with social media being on that. That’s another great place to do it. And I literally just sold two very small dollar wise, but good percentages on eBay too, which I haven’t done in years and years and years, which is like another cool thing. But I think of dispositions as marketing, like an advertisement. So if I have a TV show, that’s my commercial. The more places I can put that commercial, which is me saying, “I have a property, is anybody looking for a property at a discount that would make a good flip rental or Airbnb?” The more places I can put that, the better off I’m going to be. And I’ll literally just keep doing that over and over again. Every time I get in a new property, I just repost in the same places and I keep doing the same things, and you’ll start to see exponentially it’ll start to double. Then it’ll start to triple.

Nick Lamagna (32:49):

And then what happens is you have this large net of people that are messaging you, emailing you, Facebook messaging you, LinkedIn messaging you. And just hitting you on all these different platforms that you posted. And what I’m trying to do from there now is narrow it down to like, “Who are my bud kickers and who are my tire kickers?” Because you’re going to get a lot of people that are just wasting your time. Never going to do anything, never going to put an offer out. Completely unrealistic offers out there. And then from there I’ll find a handful of good people that I know, these are serious buyers, these guys will buy multiple properties from me. And I start to then nurture those relationships and just focus on the VIP buyers that I know are going to close and are actually in that market and kicking, but taking names.

Robert Leonard (33:26):

If you end up coming across any other deals in Lakeland, Florida, be sure to let me know, because I have somebody that will probably buy them. I know somebody that buys there pretty frequently. So let me know.

Nick Lamagna (33:34):

Awesome. Yeah, a 100%.

Robert Leonard (33:36):

So what happens if somebody gets a contract, a property under contract and they can’t find somebody to assign it to, or they can’t find somebody to buy the property from them? What happens then?

Nick Lamagna (33:47):

As long as you’re protected in your contracts, again, going back to the paperwork side of that you have clauses in there that say that for X, Y, and Z reasons you have X, Y, and Z timelines that you can pull out of that deal. Which a lot of the times due diligence, inspection, partner, approval financing. There’s things in there that you can use within seven, 10 days if it’s an on market property. Sometimes I’ve gotten 30, 60, 90 days on off market properties. But during that time, part of the reasons I’ll go right out and I won’t waste time going to try and find buyers. I’ll start hitting all my lists right away and get as much feedback as I possibly can on what people are willing to pay for that deal or what the feedback is on that deal. Because one of the things I always tell people is that deals are not found, deals are created.

Nick Lamagna (34:27):

If I have a deal in that sense that I send it out and let’s say I wanted a $100,000 for that deal. And I go, “Guys, here’s all the information for the property. I think it’s worth 200,000. I think it’ll run for 2,500 a month. I think the market’s great, X, Y, and Z. Here’s why I think it’s a good deal. Let me know what you think.” And then I get 10, 20 people that write to me and they go, Hey, “I saw the property. I looked up the property. I sent my contractor over there, your rehab budget’s off, your ARVs off the market’s off. All these things are off.” I’ll still push for, “Well, what would be your offer? I understand you can’t pay 100,000, what can you pay?

Nick Lamagna (34:57):

And generally, as long as it’s not like again, a really bad area, people will come back and say, “Well, I could pay you 85. I could pay you 82.” And I go, “Okay, cool.” So I’m always trying to get feedback on what makes it a deal? What makes it not a deal? What stuff I had gotten information from the seller for that might not be accurate. And then what that number would be. So now let’s say in theory I had a 14-day inspection period that I had to potentially back out if I didn’t find a buyer, when it comes to the end of that, I’ll go back to the seller and say, “Hey look, here’s all the information that we have on this property. I know that you said this was the condition that was in and this is the value, and this are the things that you thought were X, Y, and Z with the property. However, here’s what we actually came up with and here’s what our numbers are. And because of that, we can no longer purchase that property.”

Nick Lamagna (35:39):

And then people start to get, they’re really excited because they think they’re selling it. And now they’re down on the floor. “Oh my goodness. I was already spending that money.” So they go through that emotional rollercoaster and then you go, “However, if you still would like to sell that property, if you still want to go take your trip to Disneyland or pay off whatever back tag, whatever the thing you were going to do with the money you were going to get for this property, whatever financial thing that was going to solve or a personal problem that was going to solve, we can still do that and close next Friday as we agreed. However, I would need to close for it at 79,0000, 72,000, whatever.” But I have that number, knowing somebody else would have already come in and said, “Hey, Nick, I’d pay you 87, I can’t pay you a 100.”

Nick Lamagna (36:12):

Now maybe I can still solve this deal and get it at 82 and make $5,000 on there. And then when they come back and they’re emotional about it, I go, “I totally get it. I understand if you can’t do that. However, here’s the list of the things of why this property is not worth what we thought it was. And here’s what it’s going to take. And here’s all the things in there that you will now have to disclose if you put it back on the market. So if you don’t want to move forward, that’s okay. However, I will tell you, at some point these are just the facts and you’re going to have to face those facts. Whether it’s today, tomorrow, a year from now, I understand, but I’ve already sent kind of the top 10, 15, 20 buyers in your market to this property. And none of them are going to pay that $100,000. You don’t have to sell it to me, but at some point you are going to have to face this reality.

Nick Lamagna (36:50):

And sometimes they’ll tell me to screw off and I’ll never hear from them again. But sometimes they’ll say yes right there, or they’ll go and they’ll sit on it for a couple of days and they’ll call me back and they’ll say, “Okay, let’s do it at 82.” So if I can get them to agree to renegotiate based on a price that I’ve gotten from people that have made me offers, then we move forward. But if not, I’ll say, “If you can do it, I totally understand. Consider this the termination of that contract. Please refund my earnest money deposit. And I wish you the best of luck.”

Robert Leonard (37:14):

As I was preparing for this episode, I saw in your bigger pockets profile that you flip properties on eBay. Of all places, eBay. And you just mentioned that you’ve done some recently. Honestly, I don’t even know what question to ask about this, because I just have never heard anything about it. So just take us through that experience, how it all happened, how it works, what you’re doing and why the heck you’re using eBay?

Nick Lamagna (37:36):

I wasn’t for a very long time. But when 2005, 2006, there wasn’t all this prevalent social media stuff. So, eBay was really the big marketplace there. Because that’s just, Craigslist and eBay were two of the biggest things that you were like, “Wow, where are they going to go from here? It can’t get any better than this.” At that point I remember, I don’t know if it’s changed a lot over the years, but at that time the amount of eyes and traffic you would get on something you would post on eBay was crazy for the time. When you would look at the views, a 100,000 something views that was unheard of better. eBay was the only place that was getting that kind of traffic.

Nick Lamagna (38:11):

But specifically at that time, one of the regulations that they had was for real estate specifically, I believe it was the only thing that you could actually post on eBay that you could put an external link on. It was nothing else that you could post that you were allowed to put a link on eBay. But for real estate, if you had a website that you had other properties or you wanted to use it as lead capture, you could post a deal on eBay, post your link and really drive traffic for buyers there. Because anybody that’s on there is obviously looking to buy a property. That stuff starts to come in handy.

Nick Lamagna (38:40):

So what I would do there is I would post it and say, look, and I mean, it’s been a while, but it was like, “I have this property, it’s a $30,000 property in Georgia. It’s going to need $20,000 worth of work. It’ll be worth a 100,000 on a rent out for a $1,000 a month. You can bid on the rights to this property. So I hold the contract, I’m assigning the rights, but you are bidding on is the assignment fee.”

Nick Lamagna (39:01):

So basically what I would do is say, “You’re still going to have to pay $25,000 for this property when you go buy it. However, what’s the fee that you’re going to pay me for finding the deal and selling you the deal?” And then people would literally bid up the wholesale fee. I think I was making four grand, five grand, six grand just posting in there. And then again, what was cool was after somebody bought it for 3, 4, 5, $6,000, you got that money. That was your fee. The other person went and they came there and then they bought it. But you would generally be able to see who was bidding on it, who was watching on it. And then there was second, third, fourth, fifth chance offers. So you were going there and being able to qualify like 5, 10, 15 legitimate buyers that were placing offers and bidding on stuff.

Nick Lamagna (39:37):

And now you know they all want rentals in Kansas city in this area and they’re willing to pay X, Y, and Z for it. So it was a really great strategy at that time to wholesale properties. Or even if nobody wound up buying it at that auction, building up a legitimate buyers list of people that were actually doing real estate at the time was a huge thing. I did some of those then, and then I hadn’t done it for years. And then over the last couple of weeks, I just threw some tax liens on eBay and just sold them just to see if it worked or whatever, just to start to build up a buyer’s list again. You’re not making a ton of money on them, but when you look at their return, I think the last one was like a 308% return or something like that for three days that you just post something and somebody buys it and they send you a couple 100 bucks.

Nick Lamagna (40:18):

So it’s just something I was toying with. Because I was like, “If I can do this and you can make three, four, $500 a day, you could just start to stock up on liens and things like that.” And maybe now I’ll try and do the same thing. Maybe throw some stuff on eBay and see if I can run up assignment fee for it. I just started doing that again in the last two weeks and I hadn’t done it probably in 12 years. So I’m trying to play on a little bit now and see if maybe it’s an untapped resource that you’re still able to capture some traffic that maybe you weren’t before.

Robert Leonard (40:43):

I wonder if you could build the specific, like a real estate platform similar to eBay, but it’s specific for this? Maybe, I don’t know a ton about the tax lien process, but just wholesalers, you could just literally make a wholesaler eBay website that’s very similar to that, but it’s just wholesalers.

Nick Lamagna (41:00):

That’d be awesome. I mean, I would love something like that. And I think another thing that’s kind of been cool about eBay is eBay tends to bring in a lot of international buyers. So maybe you’re catching some things that maybe aren’t popping up on your generic social media stuff or just buyers lists, which is kind of cool.

Robert Leonard (41:14):

Yeah, that’s interesting. One of the other aspects of your investing, I mean, we’ve talked about a lot of different strategies. We’ve talked about lease options, wholesaling, flipping, rentals, out of state. I mean, we’ve talked about all kinds of stuff. The other thing you do is you’ve recently got into development. Why did you decide to start to do development? And then walk us through one of your deals kind of from the beginning to the end?

Nick Lamagna (41:36):

Sure. It’s one of those things where I go back and forth. Because I talk to people like my mentors guys in my masterminds, “Man, you got to focus on one thing.” But then it’s kind of I haven’t really been focusing on one thing. But that’s why I almost always have some sort of opportunity. But it’s always been something different. And that’s why I’m not amazing. We were talking about lease, I haven’t done a ton of lease options, but I’ve done some and I have all these little weird experiences and strategies from just trying different things. Because stuff comes across your desk and you go, “Man, this doesn’t really work for my current model.” But maybe there is a way to turn it into a deal. And then I start to look at all these other ways of well maybe if I did a substitute, maybe if I did a lease option, maybe if I did a wholesale, maybe novation agreements, all these different things.

Nick Lamagna (42:14):

I’m always looking for different ways to make money. And then you start to look at other guys who are going, “Well, you’re doing this, but I’m doing that.” And then you get the grass is always greener of like, “Well, that guy’s making three times the amount of money. And I want to do that.” It was an interesting thing where one of my buddies is really successful at buying land, subdividing land and developing on it. I moved part-time, I’m in Chicago, part-time I’m in New York and in New York there’s no land. And then in Illinois there’s land everywhere. And I was like, “Whoa, this is crazy. What is this? You can go buy land.” And it was really funny because I was looking at some of the stuff and I really wasn’t sure how to value it. And getting back to, trying to make sure you have the time to focus and learn something.

Nick Lamagna (42:55):

I was hesitant to jump in. I was just kind of dabbling and looking at stuff and just trying to feel it out. But I didn’t really have the focus or the time to really dive in and commit to it. One of my buddies tells people this story when they’re like, “How do you find deals and news?” He’s always like, “No, you go out and you jog. And when you go out and you jog, you find deals.” And I’m like, “Dude, that doesn’t work. Stop telling people that.” And then literally I’m out jogging one day and the season had changed, so the leaves and stuff came off of the trees. And behind it was a for sale sign on this vacant lot. And it was like, “Oh wow. I actually did find a deal, just jogging around.” So I was like, “I take a bag that actually worked.”

Nick Lamagna (43:28):

So my part is like, “Hey, call that number by the tree over there, that thing’s literally right across the street from where you live, see what’s up with it.” I called and the broker, it must have been an expired listing. He didn’t even remember the deal. He didn’t even know what I was talking about. And then when it clicked and he was like, “Oh, let me call you back.” I guess he called the seller. Realtor kept calling me, calling me, calling me, calling me, calling me. And I’m like, “Hey man, I was just kind of asking. I’m really just kind wasting your time here. I’m not willing to buy this. I don’t know anything about it. I have all these other projects going on. I’m probably not your guy.”

Nick Lamagna (43:57):

So he wouldn’t give up. And he kept calling, calling, calling, and I was like, “Look, man, she’s asking $700,000 for nine acres. The offer I would have to make you, if you’re trying to force me to make you an offer right now would be so low she would never accept it.” And he was like, “Well, just make me an offer, whatever it is.” And I was like, “300,000.” And the next day he’s like, “Approved, or she accepted it.” And I was like, “Oh crap.” I almost did it, trying to blow him off, she’ll never take that. And she did. So I was like, “Okay, well now I have to look into this a little bit.”

Nick Lamagna (44:23):

It was interesting because, again, back to people give advice and they really have no idea what they’re talking about. I always joke around that the guy you call doctor might be the guy who graduated last in his medical class. He’s still called the doctor. It doesn’t mean he ain’t good. But people go, “Well, this person’s a doctor, this person’s a lawyer. This person’s a realtor. They must be amazing.” It’s like, “Not really.” So I called and I said to the guy at the city, I’m like, “Hey man, I’m calling to find out what the deal is with this land. What can I do with it?” And I already know I can’t do medical and I can’t do multi-family and I can’t make it a coffee. And I told him all the things that everybody told me you couldn’t do with the land. And he kind of just let me go. And then he was like, “Well, I’m interested. Why do you think you can’t do any of those things?”

Nick Lamagna (44:59):

And I go, “Well, the realtor told me, the broker told me, and this investor told me.” All these things that the city shot down and he goes, “Well, I’m the guy who would make all those decisions. And I will tell you that nobody has called me with any of those things. So whoever’s telling you that is completely full of crap and just wrong.” He goes, “I’m the one who makes all those decisions. And I will tell you, if somebody’s willing to put the time and energy and to actually come to me with a proposal and show me that they’re putting some work into trying to fit something into where this land is, I’m willing to entertain almost any conversation. And even if it doesn’t work specifically for where you’re looking, I know enough about the city and the village and what’s going on all around here that I could find some place to probably fit your project if it’s good project.” He goes, “So, if you’re serious about doing something with this land, call a civil engineer, puts it out on paper, come into my office and I’ll see if you’re serious.”

Nick Lamagna (45:43):

And I was like, “Cool, fair.” That started the process of like, “Is there even any money here? What would you even do with it?” And at the time it was right before the pandemic. So we actually planned on buying the nine acres, subdividing the nine acres, and then building it and then either selling them off or keeping them long term as rentals. But the key here was that with land, the same way you would buy a house. And the house is distressed, maybe it’s not worth a lot right now. But you do granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, open floor plan, new floors, all this beautiful stuff like the HGTV houses. You’ve now increased the value, it’s worth more. You buy a multifamily property, you decreased the expenses. You increased the income. Now it’s worth more.

Nick Lamagna (46:20):

With land, the land that we had had sat vacant so long because this specific piece of land was considered county land. So the county actually owned it, not the village. People really weren’t interested in buying it from the developer’s standpoint because you had to go through the process of annexing in that land to make it part of the village. So we went through a process of going, “Okay, if we can get this land annex, and then we can get it entitled for a specific thing. The second they put that final plat stamp on there. And the second they put the annexations on there, it’s the equivalent of like a value add for land. So now that land, once you get that stamp is worth exponentially more.” So we were buying it like nine acres, I think we got it split eventually into 31 units. You’re buying them for like 10,000 a lot. But when they’re annexed in and they’re entitled, even just like raw land, lots are going for a minimum of $30,000 and up.

Nick Lamagna (47:09):

So you’re going, “Okay, cool.” And I’m talking to builders and builders are going, “If you take it through the entitlement process, if you get it annexed in, we’ll buy it from you for, 900, 950, whatever it is.” That process became really interesting and we decided not to build on it, because during the pandemic a lot of things changed. The situation changed. The market changed a little bit. So we decided to just turn around and sell it to another builder. But that really was what the process was, is taking this land that nobody saw any value in because you were going to have to jump through hoops. And again, like I keep saying, “You have it in the bank, you have it in the tank.” And I didn’t understand it at first, because there was a point where we were almost through the annexation process and I would talk to some builders and I go, “Look, we literally have a date on the calendar with the city. You could look it up on the county records. It’s next Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. And it literally says in the docket that we’re going to get the approval for the annexation. So why don’t you just buy it from me today?”

Nick Lamagna (47:58):

And they go, “Nope, we’re going to buy it from you after we get that stamp.” And I’m like, “I’m going to charge you like $75,000 more. Why wouldn’t you just buy it out?” Like, “We don’t buy it until we get the stamp.” And I was like, “This is so dumb. I don’t understand.” And my partner was like, “Well you know how to get deals.” And I was like, “Yeah.” She goes, “But you still buy deals from wholesalers sometimes.” I go, “Well, yeah.” She goes, “Well, why would you do that?” I go, “Because the wholesaler is saving me time that I don’t have to make those calls, knock on those doors, put those mailers out, call those people. So I’m willing to pay them five, six, $7,000 if they’re saving me months of time that I can go now and make 30, $40,000 on it.”

Nick Lamagna (48:29):

And she’s like, “That’s the exact same thing that these builders are doing. They build, they don’t want to go through all these processes with the county and do all this nonsense and all this paperwork. They just want somebody like you to go do that work. They buy and they do what they’re good at.” And I was like, “Man, that makes a lot of sense.” So then you start to see that, especially now I feel like it’s one of the best times to find the strategy where you can get land, do something to it. Either you get it at a discount, or you get it and you create value in it and selling it off to a builder. Because in a market where people have to build, shortage on houses, land’s probably worth more in more demand than it ever has. Because even construction crews, like there’s GCs that need to keep their subs busy.

Nick Lamagna (49:06):

So they’ll just buy something to build so don’t lose their guys, because there’s no houses to buy. So they have to build houses. It just opened my eyes to a really cool strategy for being able to do that. So currently we bought it for 315, a lot of hiccups just because of the pandemic, because in the middle of that it should have been like a 30, 60, 90, let’s even call it six months for taking it through that approval process. You got to talk to civil engineers, you got to work with the architecture, you got to get the Wayland study. You got to get the eco cat study. You got to do an environmental test. So there’s things that you have to do, money you have to put out. But when you go through all that process, now it’s worth more. But you need the city to be active to put the stamp and go through the approval process and have the meetings.

Nick Lamagna (49:43):

During the pandemic, no meetings. So everything literally sat on the shelf for like almost a year, which was kind of crazy. And then they started doing Zoom meetings, which are terrible. For anybody who’s going through that process, it’s like all the etiquette of showing up at a meeting in front of a panel of your peers. And there’s the cop there. And everybody says a pledge of. They would never get up in front of a room and say the things that they’re saying on a Zoom, but it’s like keyboard warriors. That was a whole crazy thing. We were literally the first people in I think the history of the county to ever have an online meeting for a city approval. So crazy process. But at the end of the day now, you buy it for 315, you put maybe 50, 60, $70,000 in to getting it to the point where now they’ll go and they’ll approve that project. And we have it under contract now to sell in the next 60 days for 750,000.

Robert Leonard (50:32):

I think my biggest takeaway from not only the story that you just told, but just this whole episode in general. Because we’ve talked about so many strategies is, Brandon Turner often talks about having a bunch of different tools in your tool belt. And if you only have a hammer, the only thing you can go do is really hit a nail. Versus if you have all kinds of different tools in your tool belt, you can find a way to make different stuff. And that’s kind of what you’re explaining here is that you don’t necessarily have to only focus on the hammer, but you could use your other tools if something comes across your table. And so, that’s my biggest takeaway from this episode, as we wrap up the show, Nick, I like to give everybody a chance to give a handoff to the audience as to where the best place is to connect with you, learn from you, find you, reach out to you, anywhere really that is the best place to find you on the internet?

Nick Lamagna (51:23):

I really appreciate that, man. So podcast wise and social media wise, if you go to nicknicknick.com/links, it has all the ways to subscribe and listen to the podcast. And all the ways to follow me on pretty much any social media platform. I’ve made the mistake of just telling people, “Reach out to me on any of the social media platforms.” And then I get lost in the messages coming in from all these different people. So, if somebody does want to have a conversation about me, I help them find a small to mid-size multi-family property or something like that they want to connect on, they can text me directly at 516-540-5733. That’s the best way, if you want to talk about connecting and doing some real estate together, that’s definitely the best way to do it.

Robert Leonard (52:03):

I’ve had a lot of episodes, but I’ve had dozens and dozens of guests on the show who come back to me a couple weeks after the episode goes live and say that our audience is the most active of any show they’ve ever been on. They say that they’ve had people reach out the most out of any show that they’ve ever been on. So, guys keep up the good work with that. If you like this episode with Nick, be sure to reach out to him. He was very kind and generous to give you his phone number. If you’re interested, be sure to do that. That’s how we’re able to continue to bring on awesome guests every week is from you guys showing them how much value they get from being on the show. So Nick, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for the generous offer to help out our audience. And we’ll be in touch soon. Thanks so much.

Nick Lamagna (52:45):

Man, I really appreciate you having me on, and just for everybody else that knows when I talk about bringing the A-game. The research you did ahead of time, the questions you had and the communications you had on this, man, you are an absolute stud and extremely impressive. So I really appreciate all the effort you put in and giving me the time to come on and talk with you, man. Anything I can ever do for you. You are on the top of my list, my friend. Thank you so much.

Robert Leonard (53:05):

All right guys, that’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (53:11):

Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires, by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday we teach you about Bitcoin. And every Saturday We Study Billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.