885: How to Win Investor Clients and Maximize Repeat Business with Matt Bell

Aaron Amuchastegui: Real Estate Rockstars. This is Aaron Amuchastegui, back again, to talk to you about real estate. Today, I get to talk to Matt Bell. I’m so excited. I’ve talked to Matt several times over the last few months, talking about all these new things that he’s doing in the real estate world. He was an agent, he’s been a consultant, he’s been an investor. Now, he has this new product that’s going to help all of you agents out there to be able to help your buyers or help really expand different parts of your business. I’m excited to talk about that with you guys today. Matt, thanks for coming on. How’s it going?

Matt: Great, man. Appreciate you having me. Looking forward to it.

Aaron: Me too. Where do you live? Tell everybody where you’re calling in from today.

Matt: I’m based in Charleston, South Carolina. The Southeast region is where I’ve been focused over the last half dozen years or so.

Aaron: Awesome. Where were you born? Were you born out there?

Matt: I’m a bit of a mutt, to be perfectly honest. I was born in Colorado and lived in Wisconsin for a dozen years, and then I actually Louisville Kentucky for about 20 and change until coming down South.

Aaron: Is Charleston your favorite place of all those so far?

Matt: They all are really special in their own way. It’s hard to beat the Rockies. I was in Loveland, Colorado, and it’s gorgeous out there, but, as far as living in a culturally rich environment, Charleston is hard to beat. Cobblestones and the French Quarter I think it was rated the number one foodie city in the country. It’s fantastic eats and I’m a total foodie so that’s good. Obviously having the ocean and all things vacation right at your fingertips is nice too.

Aaron: We’re going to have to add Charleston to our list. We’re recent transplants out to Austin, Texas. We’ve lived in several different places and all of them have different things to offer. That sounds very cool. We’re on here. I wanted to talk to you. There’s so much stuff we’re going to dig into today, but I’d love to start with as a real estate agent, when did you start your career as a real estate agent? What did that first year look like? You told me that you had actually been licensed over several states. What was the first year like? How did that transition into being licensed in several different places?

Matt: I have a best friend also my first mentor who owns a turnkey brokerage in Augusta, Georgia. I’d had, over several years, conversations with him about his business and what he was into all the while being miserable in my pharmaceutical sales and medical sales jobs. Eventually decided that I was going to move down South.

First task he gave me was to read Rich Dad Poor Dad which so many of us can say is a genesis point. Then he said, “Get your license.” I was licensed in Kentucky and then I relocated to Georgia and ended up getting licensed in Georgia functioning as a buyer’s agent for his turnkey investors and for his brokerage.

Aaron: Awesome. Was it mostly investors that was your pipeline and your specialty when you became an agent?

Matt: 100%, yes. I did not fall into necessarily the traditional agency role good and bad. I think I saw parts of the agency role, but not all of it. That being said, it prepared me to jump into investing myself which is ultimately where I had wanted to end up. My first year, at least maybe a year and a half, I functioned as an agent just trying to find the next good investment property for his investors which were not just local. He had built up a regional profile and had a lot of people ready to buy. I just had to keep them fed.

I was bird-dogging everything looking on HUD Home Store, HomePath, and HomeSteps. All the wholesalers were beating the door down and I was trying to build that network. It was pretty exciting time, drinking from a fire hose, but fun, nonetheless.

Aaron: I think there’s a lot of real estate markets out there like that right now where there are a ton of investors, a ton of people that want to buy properties. They want to get them for a deal, they want to get them for opportunities to flip or hold as rentals. There’s a lot of people willing to spend the money right now, but there isn’t as much product.

You were living that where these guys just needed deals, so you ended up having to search all over the place. You were their agent, but you were searching on MLS.

Tell me about what that was like. How did you stay motivated in between spots when it was getting harder and harder to find deals? Do you have any secrets out there other than just working super hard and finding all those different places?

Matt: As it relates to supply-demand that you’re alluding to, I was lucky in that it was the end of 2012 and ’13, supply outweighing demand, and then in the end demand outweighing supply which is definitely the case now. In 2012, 2013, we still had a lot of supply. It wasn’t as hard as it is now. I was able to find plenty of deals on HUD Home Store and HomePath and HomeSteps. Those are Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and HUD. There was a lot of inventory. It was like shooting fish in a barrel so to speak. I had to adapt as it began to tighten. That’s where the wholesaler relationships came in and trying to source deals that were not necessarily available from other agents.

Aaron: When you were an agent, you were focusing on deals for those investors, HUD Home Store, that one’s still out there, still all sorts of websites out there to be able to do that. How long were you an agent before you started transitioning into actually buying some houses for yourself and becoming an investor? What was that transition like? Did you know from the very first deal you did as an agent that eventually you wanted to be an investor? Or did something happen that you made that shift and change your mindset?

Matt: I was actually lucky enough to get into some deals early. My mentor and/or first business partner who owned the brokerage in Augusta got me into a few different deals. I did a creative financing deal on financing. For one of my first deals I bought and flipped a couple of houses. I was starting into the investor world within the first few months. The goal, originally, it was to learn the game and then go back to Louisville, Kentucky and do what he was doing but with my own spin.

Generally, I was walking houses from a construction and an agent perspective and was just trying to learn. I think that was the big thing early on was just trying to get my bearings, trying to get to a place where I could add value because when you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s awfully tough to help others much less yourself. It was a big invest-in-myself period which catapulted me into some other opportunities.

Aaron: Agents out there should always be taking those opportunities to learn, invest in themselves, going through that process. We probably have a lot of agents listening out there that either represent investors or want to represent investors. What advice would you give them? What are the things you think of, “If you’re dealing with an investor, here’s something you need to think about, here’s a way to get more investors, here’s a way to keep investors happy.”?

Matt: Sure. The first thing is what I was just alluding to is being prepared for those conversations. Most of the investors I know are very blunt, very to the point, very experienced frankly. You’re going to shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t prepare adequately to have a real brass tax conversation about investing whether it’s flipping or holding rentals or whatnot. You have to be fluent because a savvy investor is going to sniff you out in a heartbeat.

The very first thing I did, I’ll never forget this was, I remember, I burned through a bunch of the money that I pulled from my 401(k) to move down to Augusta and take a shot. I’ll never forget just being on the brink of giving up. There’s a couple things that I remember vividly. One was staying the course and choosing to push through being uncomfortable, I think that’s really important in any walk of life, and then secondly, I’ll never forget Tyson, my mentor, saying, “You need to start to invest in yourself beyond reading some books here and there.” I ended up going to an event called Family Reunion. I don’t know if you’re familiar. It’s a Keller Williams-

Aaron: Huge event. He just had it last week.

Matt: It’s a Keller Williams gathering. It’s 50,000 agents and they have all kinds of breakouts and really good content, whether it’s from lead gen to contracts, to investing, to building teams, or whatnot. That was a real eye-opener, just being around people that weren’t messing around, pros. There’s $10 million agents with KW all over the place. There’s a reason why they stay with Keller Williams. It’s because the support, education, and resources made available to them is second to none from my experience.

Again, I don’t have a very robust agency, years of experience, and/or contracts. I think I ended up writing about 150 contracts as a buyer’s agent, purchasing 150 homes. I should say, I wrote probably 300 or 400 offers. Anyway, that was the other thing early on that I vividly remember was pushing myself saying, “Man, I don’t have, whatever it was back then, $1,500 to buy a ticket and fly to– I don’t even know, it might have been New Orleans or something like that, years and years ago,” but I did it.

Again, I was uncomfortable, but I pushed through it, and it once again catapulted me a little bit from a development standpoint, from a fluency standpoint, and just general real estate knowledge standpoint. Definitely, the big things early on are to reinvest in yourself and reinvest in your business. I’ll always say that to the face.

Aaron: As an investor too, when agents would bring me things, the extra things I would add, you were talking about being prepared and knowing your numbers, or they’re going to sniff that out too. It’s okay just to ask the investor, “Hey, how do you look at deals? What’s the most important thing for you to see?” Because, like you said, some of them, they’re in a hurry or they’re seeing a bunch of different deals.

Being able to package that with CliffsNotes, whether it’s an email or a text or whichever, if you send an investor something, the next time they’re going to– Somebody sends me something, I go, “How much will it rent for? What year was it billed? What’s the bed/bath count?” Then they reply back. You can figure out that first conversation with that investor to see what was important and then the next time, if you’re an agent, now you repackage that too.

For me, I totally agree with your point that it’s about having the knowledge and having the answers, but then also, how can you figure out which answers they really want quickly and easily to get your foot in the door or to get past square one?

Matt: Then setting appropriate expectations. That’s a great, great point you just made, is understanding the buy box of any single or group of investors. It’s critical because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to put things in front of them that fit them. That’s a very fundamental way to bring value. Even if you’re not super savvy and haven’t done hundreds of deals, as long as you understand what somebody is looking for and can provide some opportunities within that buy box, you’re definitely ahead of the game. That’s a big part of it, for sure.

Aaron: That’s great advice for agents when you represent investors or just agents representing people; really, truly understanding what they want, what they need, how you’re going to get there, what they’re looking for. An investor buy box is a fancy way of saying, “Oh, he wants to buy houses that are this age or this size or this price,” but buyers have a buy box too. Now, for them, it’s a lot more personalized. They want a three-car garage. They want a yard big enough for this. They want this in their kitchen and that sort of thing, but it’s really understanding what that buy box is, helping them find it, and then being able to quickly source through it because there’s only so much stuff that’s out there.

Aaron: You were an agent, you’re transitioning, and then you talked about you got from a couple states, and you’re licensed in more than four states. That was all as buyer’s agent for investments?

Matt: Primarily, yes. About a year and change into agency, I was living in Augusta, Georgia, and in walks a hedge fund. A couple of different things happen. I was prepared for the conversation, number one, just a big part of it, but they had called around to a handful of brokerages trying to find somebody to represent them and thankfully, I was fluent enough at the time to have a conversation. We set the appointment. Two of the principals came into the office. Tyson, my mentor and business partner, and I sat down with them and won their business.

It’s a funny scene because the buyer’s agent, who’s not as experienced is chomping at the bit and then the savvier of the two of us, Tyson was definitely, exercising some doubts and restraint. They came in and said, “We’re buying 100 houses from you this year.” Of course, I’m just like, “Yes.” Tyson is, “Cue the eye roll, I’ll believe it when I see it,” because he had heard this from others that had come to town before.

Anyway, they did. I think we bought 130 homes that first full 12-month cycle with the fund. I shot out of a cannon into earnings from good commissions, but also learning the investor world, specifically from a institutional standpoint.

Aaron: I had some of those same conversations in Northern California, 2013 of the guys coming in going, “Hey, I want to buy this many houses,” and they bought thousands. They came in, they put us out of business back then and everybody had to change their plan and be nimble. You got to represent a lot of people like that, multiple states, multiple things, then you start doing investments for yourself. How many investments did you do in the last year? What type, what do those investments look like? What was the price? What are the cities, rentals flips, that sort of stuff?

Matt: We believe primarily in an asset-based decision-making model. I firmly believe that sometimes, it’s a better rental than it is a flip. Sometimes it’s better to assign a contract and let someone else buy it or take it down and list it for instance. There’s just a bunch of different things you can do with any given asset. It’s a mix of the asset itself, but also where are you as it relates to your cash flow position?

If I’m going to take on a flip, that could be five, six months down the road before I see a payday versus assigning the contract or listing it immediately or whatnot and accelerating that a little bit, but sometimes the bigger spreads come on those flips. You really have to weigh out the pros, cons of that. Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina, were primarily where we focused the last couple of years. I left the fund about two and change. I had started an operating business in the last year that I was with the fund, primarily to be a feeder for the fund.

As we start to see those MLS’s tighten up, we knew we were going to have to start sourcing properties elsewhere. It was nice to have a company to go to when I left the fund and a company that already had a little bit of a footprint and a little bit of a business model and a little infrastructure, but the last two years have been a challenge man, going from never-ending money and overcoming any mistake with just throwing some more dollars at it to pay. Now, this is on my dime. Those lessons get a lot more painful.

I think we had 73 transactions last year, which was down significantly from the year prior. We were in the low 120s last year. It was a really good year, two years ago, and then last year, we ended up having a hard reset in October, we parted ways with our CEO and needed to head in a different direction. We are in process of rebooting the system, very much burn it down, and try to rebuild it the right way this time, something that’s a lot more sustainable and a lot more consistent.

When you say, “73,” and feel defeated, I know there’s a lot of people out there that think very differently. Maybe that’s just one of the things that I’ve taken from the fund experience was just how I view scale is definitely different than it once was.

Aaron: Every agent out there should try to think of, you want to set goals and realistic goals, but you also want to reach for the sky. That’s why I tell people you come in with that five-year vision, don’t let 73 feel like, “Oh, I’ve got nothing I can learn from this guy.” Maybe that’s your three-year, maybe that’s your five-year because this year you’re doing 10. I’ve had to tear down and rebuild my businesses several different times and you’re going through that now.

It’s also about every time learning. If you lose a listing appointment, you can take that and say, “All right, now I’m going to learn and go to the next one.” If you lose a deal, you can figure out what that is and move to the next one, and when you’re getting up to so many deals. We also tell listeners that are super experienced real estate agents that are doing just that. They’re taking the things that go wrong, they’re learning from them, they’re seeing how they can excel.

One of the things you said was, you look at an asset, you look at a house, and sometimes you say, “This one’s a good rental,” sometimes you say, “This one is a better flip than a rental,” other times you say, “Let’s just wholesale it.” In just one minute, try to explain why you would pick a rental, why you would pick a flip, or why you would pick a wholesale just an example of what that really means around that $120,000 price point.

Matt: Time and money are the two big factors in the decision making. We’re in a position where we spend lots and lots of money on marketing every month and so it’s tough to go a couple of months without a significant business, a couple really good deals. Sometimes we need to take a contract that we put under contract with a distressed seller, for instance, sometimes we need to go ahead and sell that contract because it’s a much quicker turn. I could put something under contract and wholesale it to our buyers list generally in 30 days or less. We will definitely go in that direction with an asset if we are in a cash flow-light position that we need to recap. That’s a time and money component.

Rental, I believe is when we have a lot more capital and aren’t necessarily pressed and we can hold or we can allocate some of our resources to a long-term hold. I definitely want to have long-term holds as part of my business plan is to build a retirement essentially for me and my family. Then the flip is, “Hey, the spread is too sweet here, are we in a position where we have time in order to maximize the dollars in the deal?” We’re trying to get at about the same price point across all three because you definitely make your money on the buy. It depends. It depends on where you are cashflow wise, where you are from a need standpoint on both time and money.

Aaron: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. For you guys, if it’s a deal, then it’s looking at it and saying, “Can we buy more right now? Or should we flip it? Or do we need money?” Something to add, I’ve had the same experience but some different things for us too some houses just aren’t getting cash flow as good rentals. As houses getting nicer and nicer and price points get higher and higher, the ROI to make it a rental is a lot less.

It could be like, a $1 million house rents for $5,000 or $6,000 a month, but $100,000 house rents for $1,000 a month. There’s also some decisions like that that happened with us. Now, if you’re buying on that same price point, it’s all the same deal that helps you get your focus, and it’s about time and money, but that makes a lot of a lot of sense. I was expecting maybe some of those other answers but as we jump around, that’s probably why you started your new thing.

The new thing you’re focused on you were telling me about is really, from that problem. You wanted to solve a problem about, what about these deals that people had that they couldn’t fund, they didn’t have enough cash or they’re worried about time? Tell us about your new gig. What are you launching? Why is it going to help an agent out there?

Matt: We’re just out of the gate with our most recent business venture. It was definitely, to your point, born from some of the frustrations as an operator that we experienced in different states. Easy Button Lending is the name of the company that we’ve just launched. We can do lending in all 50 states all deal types, all credit profiles. I believe it’s, if not the most comprehensive, certainly one of the most comprehensive offerings that’s ever been out there, like the lending tree of the private money or hard money world, if you will. One of the big challenges with private money or hard money is that it’s fragmented.

Somebody’s trying to find hard money for a flip in North Carolina is going to find a different answer or available answer than somebody in Indianapolis, Indiana. A lot of the lenders out there only do several states, they only do certain types of deals. For instance, I worked with LendingHome, who’s a large fix and flip lender based out of California, and they only did fix and flip. They only did 26 states yet they did 1.4 billion in underwriting last year. It’s a massive opportunity but when I asked them if they had any desire to go national, to be in all 50 states, the answer was, “Maybe sometime down the road, I could see it, 5 to 10 years or something like that.”

The need is now, especially for people that are trying to execute deal flow in different states. I don’t want to have to go to 4 or 5 or 10 different lenders to try to find a different deal that will be funded, a different state that they can fund in. That’s what we’ve tried to do is build a platform for investors by investors, where it’s a one-stop-shop, and you can come to one place and have access. We have 132 lenders on the platform, and they bid for your deal, essentially.

Aaron: It’s just going to grow. That was the way you described it to me. For agents out there, LendingTree is probably a place you’ve heard of, and if not, some of your clients are going on there and they’re saying, “Hey, I want to get a loan.” Their slogan is, “When banks compete, you win.” You put it on there, then all the lenders are going to compete against each other for the lowest price and that sort of thing. You’re doing a similar thing, but you point with hard money lenders, there’s some lenders that are only going to lend 5 or 6 million at a time nationwide, but they have certain parameters.

If they have all their money, right now, they might offer lower rates, and if they don’t have as much to lend. I used a few hard money lenders, but right now, I’ve got to reach out to them individually, if I’m going to a different state, I’ve got to reach out to my other ones. It’s just like that problem you said with LendingHome. You guys want to be the guy that you’re the only one they go to that they say, “Hey, I need a loan on this,” they send it to you, they put in the information, all the other lenders get together, and then they feed quotes back through you. “Here’s your three hard money lender offers and here’s your best one,” and you’re going to go with that.

Matt: That’s right. The process would be you input, “123 Main Street, Dallas, Texas,” and one of our loan intake specialists will call you and say, “Hey, all right, based on your deal type and your state, these are the four or five lenders that will normally loan on something like that, or lend money on something like that. These are their normal rates.” You might see a lender that’s offering 70% loan to cost at 7% in one point, which is really cheap money, but you have to put 30% down, and that’s a lot of money to put down into a deal, all the way up to 90% or even 100% loan to cost where it’s maybe 10 and three, or let’s just say 10% of interest and three points.

As an operator, a lot of times it makes sense to be able to choose. The same thing that I was talking about the time and money thing a minute ago, is look, if I’m cash-flow light, I’m going to go with the more expensive money because I don’t have to put 30% down, but the flip of that is, the converse of that is, sometimes I’ve had a couple of really good closings that came up in a given month or whatnot that, it makes sense to get cheaper money because I’ve got the 30% to put down. It allows the flexibility to choose based on not only the deal on the state, but also your circumstances.

Aaron: Man, I think that’s going to be so helpful for so many people out there as the world is continuing to evolve, and being able to find that technology where you can plug and play and submit it, now here’s your options. The investor can now plug-in those deals in their spreadsheet and go, “With this loan, I make this much money, with this loan, I make this much money,” because just they all have their own box, which could be a pro and a con. “Everybody knows I usually do 90-day holds or 60-day holds or whatever.” You could plug those in, figure out what’s best for you.

For agents out there, this is another option for your buyers. Now, your buyers, especially if you take somewhat Matt said at the beginning, you start to learn to represent investors and get to go do deals and find deals, this happens all the time where they get there and you go, “Hey, I found you a great deal.” Agents, you may say, “Hey, I want to buy this myself,” and that’s the point where now there’s a lender out there that could they could say, “Hey, yes, you can and this is how. Let’s go through it.” Or they can show you what your options are if you’re able to get it yourself or you can present it to your investors that are making the offers that, “Hey, here’s another option for you guys,” because they may say, “Oh, I can’t right now. I’m out of cash.” “Oh, have you thought about using some of these other sources, whichever?”

I really think what you’re doing, it’s really cool that you took a problem that you solved that you went through and learning through an agent, an investor to see what people really needed. Now you’re out there and you’re providing this new one. For listeners out there, to get a special link to get on there and check out what Matt is doing and give it a try, go to hibandigital.com, it’s H-I-B-A-Ndigital.com/easybutton.

Now that’s going to have the link to this interview, it’s going to have the YouTube link if you want to see us on here. It will have some extra tips and things on there and but there will be some special links inside there too. You don’t have to write any notes right now. Go to the special link, go find it. You can go check out Easy Button that way. You can go submit stuff or at least see what they have to offer and then we’ll figure out what else we can share with you on there. If Matt sends me anything else that we think is going to be interesting for you, we’ll put it on that special link and you guys can see it. Matt, anything I’m forgetting, anything that people should be thinking about when they come find you?

Matt: Because it’s such a unique offering, I do want to point out one thing that we do have 10,000 plus loan types. For the agents that represent buyers in all walks and all kinds of different industries and niches, you can buy hotels, gas stations, multifamily, retail space, fix-and-flip, 50 rentals, one rental. As long as it’s business purpose, we likely can fund it. I just wanted to throw that in there as just an additional thought that it’s not just the traditional fix-and-flip or the traditional rental, it’s really anything and everything out there. We’ve got some funny things on our list. I don’t even know why we have it on the list, but a marina. If you want to buy a marina, marina guy.

Aaron: That’s freaking awesome. Real Estate Rockstars, this will be an extra tool in your tool belt, being able to have something like this to be able to present and be able to represent your buyers better. It’s just more options, is good. When banks compete, you win and being able to go in. Now when you’re competing against other agents you’re like, “Hey, I’ve got some great sources for you to do this.” Go to hibandigital.com/easybutton, check it out. Check us out on Facebook and Instagram. As always, come chat with us. Give us some reviews. Let me know how we’re doing as we’re sharing content. We are committed to providing content for you out there.

Real Estate Rockstars was the first podcast for real estate agents. It’s the best and the biggest podcast focused on real estate agents. We want to keep providing you great stuff. Hopefully, you learned a lot from Matt today. Matt, thanks for being on and sharing so much knowledge. I’m really excited to see what you get to do with your new venture.

Matt: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Aaron. It was a pleasure and I look forward to doing it again here in the not too distant future.

Aaron: Awesome. We’ll definitely have you back.

Matt: Thanks.