Axel is an active real estate investor based in Boston, MA, and the founder of Aligned Real Estate Partners, focusing on acquiring class B and C value-add assets across the United States. His company holds a GP interest in over 450 multifamily units and has been involved in transactions exceeding $62M. Axel has sourced, raised capital, and operated multifamily transactions in several U.S. markets, including FL, IN, NH, and TX. He co-founded Blue Door Living, a property management firm in NH managing over 300 units, and hosts The Multifamily Wealth Podcast, a top-rated show in the industry.
Here’s some of the topics we covered:
- Axel’s Path to Real Estate Investing Success 00:00
- Key Lessons from Axel on Real Estate Investing 06:06
- Nuances of Deals with Long-Term Owners 11:00
- Direct Mail Strategies for Securing Multifamily Deals 16:56
- Acquiring Multifamily Properties at Significant Discounts 22:54
- Expanding Your Portfolio from Smaller Deals 27:05
- Essential Tools for Identifying Multifamily Opportunities 35:14
- The Top 3 Critical Details Not to Overlook 46:36
To find out more about partnering or investing in a multifamily deal: Text Partner to 72345 or email Partner@RodKhleif.com
Full Transcript Below:
00:00:38:16 – 00:00:58:13
Rod
Welcome to another edition of Lifetime Cash Flow through Real estate investing. I’m Rod Cleef, and I’m thrilled you’re here. We have a very interesting guest today, a guest that I’m actually going to be doing business with. And he’s going to be helping coach you guys, on smaller multifamily deals. His name is Axel Magnusson, and Axel has tremendous amount of experience.
00:00:58:13 – 00:01:14:13
Rod
Actually has a course, around off market multifamily deals, which is smaller deals. You know, I pretty much focus on the larger deals on the show. So we’re like, hey, we’re missing something really important here. So we’re going to have a very interesting conversation you don’t want to miss. Welcome to the show, brother.
00:01:14:14 – 00:01:15:16
Axel
Appreciate it. Yeah.
00:01:15:17 – 00:01:26:21
Rod
Looking forward to really glad to have you here, my friend. Well, why don’t, why don’t we get started just by having you tell a little bit of your story? You know, where you came from. Why small or multifamily? Just kind of. Give us your.
00:01:26:21 – 00:01:51:23
Axel
Bio, give you the rundown. Yeah. So I live in Boston, mass. originally grew up in New Hampshire, so originally from New England. So life in New England, started buying small, multifamily properties back in college. the I guess the reason I got into real estate was I want to flip houses. But as I learned more about flipping houses at the time, I realized that, you know, doing the work and getting paid once instead of in perpetuity was was kind of a poor trade.
00:01:51:23 – 00:02:10:22
Axel
So as I was learning about that business, I was learning about how to find deals and go direct to seller and market prospect to owners and all of that, and said, well, let’s take all these strategies that people use to find single family deals and apply them to to small multifamily at the time. So this is back in the 2016, 2017 timeframe.
00:02:10:22 – 00:02:17:04
Axel
And, basically just started buying small multifamily properties that were 2 to 4 units in size. So residential, multifamily.
00:02:17:06 – 00:02:18:20
Rod
In the Boston area.
00:02:18:22 – 00:02:40:28
Axel
in southern New Hampshire, so about an hour north of Boston, for those that are unfamiliar with New England. But, but in general, at the time, I was growing a portfolio using a lot of private money financing to, to actually buy these deals. and a few years built a portfolio of, you know, 50, 60 units or so that, that basically paid for, for the lifestyle, paid the rent, all of that.
00:02:41:00 – 00:02:58:08
Axel
and then around 20, 20 or so realized that, I wanted to scale the business a little more, actually grow the business a little bit more intentionally, and, and, and kind of pour some gas on the fire. So around that time frame, we started raising some money. We made some hires internally to continue building out the deal sourcing side of the business.
00:02:58:11 – 00:03:21:29
Axel
And, and over the last four years or so, we’ve really grown the business into, something similar that I’m sure in terms of a lot of the folks you have on the show, who you chat with, who you coach, etc., who are raising capital to go out there and buy a value, add multifamily. But instead of focusing on larger deals, we really went all in on going direct to seller to find smaller deals, which I define as 10 to 50 units in size.
00:03:22:01 – 00:03:43:20
Axel
And we’ve done a lot of those deals. We found a lot of deals. We built a portfolio of, just around 500 units or so, that is entirely comprised of deals that are anywhere from 5 to 50 units in size. So we built a portfolio of roughly 400 500 units or so here, primarily in the last five years is where a lot of that growth has occurred.
00:03:43:22 – 00:04:02:14
Axel
we’ve been raising money from LPs to do so. We’ve, we’ve started a property management company, but basically the business has fundamentally been built around the idea of going direct to seller to find off market multifamily deals, as well as building our relationships with all of the key, deal finders is how I define them. in our target markets.
00:04:02:17 – 00:04:24:05
Axel
And, and that’s really where we found our competitive edge is being able to buy deals at a lower basis, at a lower cost than other folks are who are not doing everything that we’re doing and are just waiting on the brokers to send out their deals. And, and that’s enabled us to, to, to very rapidly grow the business in terms of taking down a number of deals and units in a short period of time.
00:04:24:08 – 00:04:46:01
Axel
and also, you know, that in conjunction with raising money has helped helped as well. But, but that’s really the core competency in our businesses is going out there and being able to find these 10 to 15 unit deals at a discounted price and leveraging all of the the systems and resources and basically tactics that we’ve, developed over the years to do that at scale or at some reasonable scale to where we can buy a couple hundred units a year.
00:04:46:03 – 00:04:46:20
Axel
predictably.
00:04:46:24 – 00:05:14:15
Rod
Nice. Nice, nice. Well, I think I think we I don’t know, we stumbled across you and your course, around off market multifamily deals that that you created. And I know you really don’t even market it that much. We just, I, you know, I think that’s how we connected. But, you know, I, we’ve come to an understanding and, you know, the plan is, guys, because, you know, I think that’s a niche that I really haven’t given any attention to or like, you know, how can we add more value?
00:05:14:15 – 00:05:41:20
Rod
It’s always how can we add more value? And, you’re the perfect solution to that. that gap in our, in our educational, programs. And so, talk let’s, let’s, let’s go a little bit micro as to the sorts of things that, you, you know, you teach and I mean, you guys, you’re going to you’re going to see interviews with just him doing 1 or 2 things, either interviewing a guest himself or around small multifamily.
00:05:41:20 – 00:06:04:21
Rod
You’re also going to see, segments where he’s just teaching for, for, a bit and, and educating you guys. So I, you know, be looking for those those episodes for sure. But let’s, let’s go a little micro right now. So what are some of the, areas of that, business model that people can expect to hear about?
00:06:04:23 – 00:06:25:01
Axel
Absolutely. So we utilize really three main strategies from a direct a seller standpoint. and then we also do a lot from a relationship development standpoint that’s outside of what I think a lot of multifamily investors do. So I’ll start with the actual direct to seller marketing and prospecting, which is really the meat and potatoes of what we talk about both in the program.
00:06:25:01 – 00:06:41:13
Axel
And I think just in terms of what folks probably want to hear a little bit more about is how do I actually get in front of an owner who’s interested in selling and establish a relationship, start a conversation before they either go out to the marketplace themselves or they engage a broker, etc.. So a lot of these strategies people are going to be familiar.
00:06:41:13 – 00:06:42:08
Rod
With, right?
00:06:42:11 – 00:07:02:19
Axel
But there’s a bit of a different flavor as relates to going to a directly to a multifamily owner versus going to a single family owner. So there’s a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram here. But but the actual approach and message is a little bit different. So in our business we leverage direct mail marketing directors, seller cold calling basically prospecting directly to owners.
00:07:02:21 – 00:07:22:14
Axel
And then we also, email and text owners directly. And it depends on who the owner is to, to dictate which of those strategies we use. But from a high level, the way that we think about it is there’s a lot of multifamily investors who have a desire to go to go direct a seller that do either one out of those three things or maybe two out of those three, but very few do all three.
00:07:22:16 – 00:07:28:21
Axel
and the way we think about it is we have our list of properties that we’d like to buy and maybe we can talk about, you know, what that looks like.
00:07:28:21 – 00:07:29:18
Rod
Yeah. No it doesn’t.
00:07:29:26 – 00:07:48:08
Axel
And, and then we’re actually going out there. And our objective here is not to go out there and buy a deal, but to establish relationships with the owners. And I think we all know in multifamily, we’re speaking to people who have a sense of what the property’s worth. They have a sense of the real estate investing game.
00:07:48:08 – 00:07:54:20
Axel
They I kind of understand, the best way to sell and market their property, even at a, you know, just at a fundamental high level, a.
00:07:54:20 – 00:07:56:06
Rod
Lot more than a single family, a lot.
00:07:56:06 – 00:08:12:00
Axel
More than a single family. Right. And granted that the it’s a bit of a different spectrum when you’re talking in the 10 to 50 unit, average owner versus somebody that owns 100 plus unit complex, those are two very different sellers, but they still have, you know, they they’ve done well enough in life to buy a 20 unit apartment building.
00:08:12:00 – 00:08:33:03
Axel
They have some level of understanding of how to best maximize the sale. But what we’re really trying to do is we want to get in front of these owners. We want to introduce ourselves, we want to do a few different things, which is, establish our ability to close establish some level of credibility. We want to make it as easy of a transaction on the seller as we possibly can.
00:08:33:05 – 00:08:54:15
Axel
which there’s some things within that bucket we could maybe talk about. and then we also want to, to put ourselves in a position where we are just top of mind and we’re in front of them throughout the cycle of their ownership. So and the inverse of that, which is what typically doesn’t happen, is we send a mail, or send an owner a piece of direct mail, and they immediately call us and say, all right, I want to sell it right now.
00:08:54:17 – 00:09:21:03
Axel
That’s typically not how it works in the multifamily space. So a lot of what we do is sending mail over the course of multiple years, you know, very long term approach here calling over the course of a long period of time, putting them on an email us and emailing them over a long period of time and methodically building that relationship so that when there is that triggering event, whether it’s I want to retire and move to Florida, I have I own this with a partner and my partner wants to retire.
00:09:21:03 – 00:09:36:24
Axel
And, you know, we figured we’d just sell it instead of me taking it over. you know, I’m getting divorced or I’m inheriting whatever the triggering event is. We’ve been top of mind with them for a long period of time, and then they call us. And it’s a little different than the the marketing in the single family world, which is which is.
00:09:36:24 – 00:09:37:10
Rod
More and more.
00:09:37:11 – 00:09:50:25
Axel
Buy your house fast for cash. That’s not really motivating the multifamily owner. So that is typically what we’re doing at a high level is leveraging those three approaches. And then if you’d like, I can talk about what we do on the actual relationship development.
00:09:50:25 – 00:10:10:28
Rod
So for sure let’s in fact let’s do that next. Because, you know, one of the things I talk about at my boot camps and with my students is, you know, targeting sellers that have owned a while, you know, that maybe have owned 20 years for several reasons. one, they’re typically retirees. typically they’re not going to take that money from that investment and put it into another high risk investment.
00:10:10:28 – 00:10:28:16
Rod
They’re going to throw it in the bank and live on the cash flow. So they’re ripe for seller financing. And, you know, and and you know, the relationship building is one of the most critical pieces, especially with an older demographic. It’s called seller bonding. You know, once and you’re you’re building that relationship. But and I’m sure you know this and probably teach it.
00:10:28:16 – 00:10:35:18
Rod
And that is if you’re in front of an elderly seller, focus on the relationship before you focus on the frickin deal because they’re relationship driven, right?
00:10:35:25 – 00:10:45:14
Axel
100%. And yeah, and in reality, the dollars in the sense conversation will come back. But it can’t it doesn’t come in the beginning because you haven’t built level of trust, a rapport.
00:10:45:15 – 00:10:46:08
Rod
That you got to build.
00:10:46:08 – 00:11:10:13
Axel
Rapport and trust is the other big piece of this too, where again, in multifamily, right, there has to be some mutual trust. And it’s specifically from a seller to a buyer to a potential buyer, where if I put this under contract with you, are you going to be able to buy the property? Right? I mean, that’s right. That’s a significantly higher concern for a multifamily owner than it is, you know, and Sally, who inherited her husband’s rental property, who just wants to get rid of it.
00:11:10:13 – 00:11:10:18
Axel
Yeah.
00:11:10:18 – 00:11:12:10
Rod
Who doesn’t understand the deal could fall through.
00:11:12:11 – 00:11:12:23
Axel
Existing.
00:11:12:24 – 00:11:14:23
Rod
Multifamily owner knows deals fall through.
00:11:14:23 – 00:11:32:20
Axel
And there’s and there’s a lot of and there’s another component to this as well where a lot of the owners that we buy from are individuals who are self-managing and have developed relationships with their residents and their tenants over the years, and they want to be extremely careful about approaching the sales process with with them, even letting them know that they’re thinking about selling the building.
00:11:32:22 – 00:11:36:25
Axel
So there are so many little hurdles that you have to overcome, and that takes time.
00:11:36:25 – 00:11:51:18
Rod
Let me explain. Let me explain. The one you just that you just mentioned. You know, if you’ve got residents that think you’re going to sell on, the rent’s going to go up, they could leave. And then that property goes under contract and falls through that. Sellers lost tenants because of, you know, a debacle with a, a failed deal.
00:11:51:18 – 00:11:52:16
Rod
So but yeah.
00:11:52:19 – 00:12:10:01
Axel
And a little micro point here and I’m kind of nearing down to the micro. But you know, something that we literally put on our direct mail and something that we include in a, in direct emails to owners is we are not going to disturb your tenants more than, you know, twice during the entire transaction period, physical inspections, appraisal.
00:12:10:03 – 00:12:27:19
Axel
And then sometimes we actually call out how many units are going to disturb, and we’ll just even come up and say upfront, we can be the insurance company, we can be the bank, we can write whoever you want us to be. We can be a partner of yours or something along those lines so that that process, as is least stressful for the owner as it possibly can be.
00:12:27:22 – 00:12:45:21
Axel
And a lot of the sophisticated investors out there that you know, that are maybe not worried about that, right, they’re looking at this is more of a financial transaction. They might think, well, what’s the big deal there? You know, why does it matter as you just outlined one of the financial reasons. But for a lot of the sellers that we’re speaking with, they may have owned this building, as you mentioned, for ten, 15, 20 years.
00:12:45:23 – 00:12:48:15
Axel
They may have individuals living there who have lived there for five years.
00:12:48:18 – 00:12:50:06
Rod
They may they may be friends.
00:12:50:08 – 00:13:09:19
Axel
Exactly. Friends. They have oftentimes financial relationships because they have somebody here at a discounted rent doing this, you know, mowing the lawn and doing the maintenance. And it’s oftentimes a very convoluted ownership situation as it relates to their relationship with the tenants. So and for them, that can be a real driving force behind who they decide to sell to.
00:13:09:21 – 00:13:10:04
Rod
Oh yeah.
00:13:10:11 – 00:13:21:29
Axel
Oh yeah. How they approach that that deals. So we you have to spend a lot of time making people comfortable, making sellers comfortable with all of this, your ability to close your what your plans are with the building after use, after you actually buy it.
00:13:21:29 – 00:13:47:08
Rod
Believe it or not, that matters. You know, a lot of sellers and as a lot of sellers want to know what you plan to do. And you know that’s their pride and joy and they don’t want to see it go down the toilet. And, and it’s it’s really interesting the level of emotion involved with a transaction like that, like in, you know, my world 100 unit, it’s it’s all dollars and cents, you know, and but but when you’re dealing with an owner, that’s, that’s their, their biggest investment in life.
00:13:47:11 – 00:14:15:16
Rod
you know, there’s a lot of emotion wrapped up in it. and so, you know, we talked for a minute about relationships and, and, you know, it’s such a critical piece. And you start with the rapport. You build rapport, you know, you find commonality, and and just connect and, and I’ll tell you some kind of interesting I learned from Tony Robbins and that is, you know, when two people are in rapport, the person that has the most certainty about the subject matter being discussed will always influence the other person.
00:14:15:19 – 00:14:38:11
Rod
Which is an interesting thing to to know. but, yeah, those relationships are critical. And, and you talked about ease of sale. I, you know, let’s circle back to that for a second, where you can ease a seller’s mind as it relates to the tenant communication. What’s going to happen to the tenants after you buy? What’s going to happen to the property after you buy, you know, deal with these emotional components that you don’t like.
00:14:38:11 – 00:14:58:01
Rod
I say you don’t typically encounter in my world. and so, let’s talk a little bit about some of the stuff that, that you’re communicating in that rapport building or trust building. not necessarily in person, like, like through your communications. talk about that a little bit.
00:14:58:01 – 00:15:15:25
Axel
Absolutely. Yeah. So, so the easy way to, to, to start this, I guess, conversation is to even just look at, for example, what we put on a direct mail piece. Okay. and oftentimes what we’re doing in there are other methods of communication is repackaging what we’re communicating in a direct mail piece, which is obviously written language. So it’s over the phone.
00:15:15:25 – 00:15:16:25
Axel
We may be just we’re trying.
00:15:16:25 – 00:15:18:09
Rod
To be the same message in every place.
00:15:18:09 – 00:15:32:18
Axel
Right? Message every place. Right. But we’re adjusting it slightly for whatever the medium is. Right. Direct mail piece you can have, you can put a lot of words on a piece of paper. Cold call. You got to be brief, right? But in an email you’re somewhere in the middle. But it’s all a different flavor text as well. We do we do some texting okay.
00:15:32:18 – 00:15:39:25
Axel
But we do it. yeah. We don’t we don’t mass SMS because there’s challenges from so 1 to 1 texting like off a personal cell phone will do you.
00:15:39:29 – 00:15:40:09
Rod
Gotcha.
00:15:40:12 – 00:15:55:19
Axel
But but that’s typically once we’ve come into contact with a seller, we’ll move it over to text, because most people like that. But, in general we think about in three tiers, right. The first component of our messaging is we need to tell them who we are and why it’s worth for them to speak with us. Why?
00:15:55:19 – 00:16:09:28
Axel
Why it’s not a waste of their time. Because that’s, again, we’re dealing with people who are probably successful in life, whether it’s the real estate investing, whether they had another business and they bought an apartment community, these people don’t have time to waste, you know, looking to just get on the phone with any old Joe here that’s just going to talk to you.
00:16:09:28 – 00:16:29:04
Axel
You’re off and not get anywhere. So it’s, you know, hey, I’m so-and-so with so-and-so. We don’t X amount of units in this market. If you own some units in that market. you know, we are local investors. You know, maybe you include the management company or you include your own management company if you’re managing the property. what have you bought in the last 12 months?
00:16:29:04 – 00:16:46:27
Axel
Have you been doing deals? Have you been active in the marketplace, some type of information that that’s going to say, okay, you know, this guy, clearly knows what he’s doing. he’s able to buy the property. He’s been active. He’s he’s he’s in the marketplace. You know, he’s not an out of state guy that’s never bought anything here that probably doesn’t understand what’s going on.
00:16:47:00 – 00:16:49:01
Axel
We’re breaking down some initial barriers.
00:16:49:07 – 00:17:06:02
Rod
Me interject something, if I may. so, one things I have my students do is make sure that they put the property address that they’re emailing or mailing about in literally the first line. So you got the owner’s name and address. The first line has there. So they recognize that it’s about a property that they own.
00:17:06:02 – 00:17:07:10
Rod
Do you do that or something like that?
00:17:07:11 – 00:17:16:20
Axel
We do right in the second paragraph, but we bold it and italicize it. So it draws your eye right to it. but but it’s really important, as you mentioned, to, to, to reference the property that they have.
00:17:16:20 – 00:17:17:20
Rod
Right.
00:17:17:22 – 00:17:32:28
Axel
you know, that second paragraph is just the reason we’re reaching out, right? I mean, it’s and it’s very straightforward. It’s, we’re actively looking to grow our portfolio. We would love to chat with you about your building. you know, X, right? We include the address there. We always put or any other properties that you may own that you’re interested in selling.
00:17:32:28 – 00:17:34:03
Axel
That’s a really key.
00:17:34:05 – 00:17:51:28
Rod
Oh, yeah. Let me tell you why that’s key. I, I did a mailer here of, of smaller multifamily here in Florida because I own a management company here. And, I mailed, I think I mailed, mailed 30 to 50, units because I didn’t want something small. Well, the guy called me and said, hey, I got this triplex you can just take over the payments on.
00:17:51:28 – 00:17:59:28
Rod
I tell a funny story about that. I encountered fleas there, but I won’t waste time with that now. But. Yeah, but no, just just to hammer home what you just said. Yeah.
00:18:00:00 – 00:18:19:15
Axel
Because. And that’s the thing again in multifamily, right. You have owners that own a number of buildings. They may really like this building that you’re mailing them about, but they may have this other one that they’re like, you know, I own it with a guy who I don’t really like, and I’d rather just sell that one. So you always want to ask for any other properties that you may have, and then quickly discuss why it’s of benefit to engage in a conversation with you.
00:18:19:15 – 00:18:29:29
Axel
Right. And this is where you can talk about, we can offer a flexible closing timeline, either short or long, if you want to go and identify a 1031 exchange. Some sellers want the idea. Sure. They like the idea of having a longer closing period of time.
00:18:29:29 – 00:18:31:06
Rod
Sure.
00:18:31:08 – 00:18:41:22
Axel
no financing contingency, sizable deposit. Some of the money stuff is what we’re going to talk about here. And then we get into the minimal intrusion to your tenants. which obviously speaks to a lot of folks.
00:18:41:22 – 00:18:43:18
Rod
You probably bring up the fact there’s no commission.
00:18:43:22 – 00:19:08:23
Axel
Yep. No. And that’s the big one and no broker commission, which will usually, you know, and then we’ll put in parentheses, you know, 5% plus, and if we can, if we’re mailing a targeted enough list to where we can put like an average range of, of what we’re going to be offering for, those will include a dollar amount there to really highlight that, you know, if you have a tight list of 5 to 10 unit properties, you might be able to and you know, that’s going to be 500,000 to $1 million types of deals in your market.
00:19:08:23 – 00:19:11:09
Axel
You can put in 25 to $50,000. Right.
00:19:11:09 – 00:19:12:20
Rod
And that you’re saving in commissions.
00:19:12:20 – 00:19:29:19
Axel
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And then third paragraph is is very straightforward as it relates to what we’re hoping to get out of our conversation. Hey, if you’re looking to sell, we would love to chat about it. But if you’re not, we would love the opportunity to just meet another active investor in our marketplace and get to know get to know your business.
00:19:29:19 – 00:19:50:01
Axel
That’s super simple, because our objective here is we’re not trying to rifle this out, whether it’s an email, a call, or a or a piece of direct mail and buy their property right then and there. You know, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier. We’re trying to build this relationship over a longer period of time, because that’s when you build that trust to actually go out there and, and earn the right to make them an offer when that comes time to sell.
00:19:50:03 – 00:20:03:26
Axel
So we close it out with that. Hey, if you don’t want to sell, that’s totally fine. We would just love to meet another person. Maybe we can exchange contacts or exchange vendors. I’d love to learn a little bit more about your goals. Right. And it’s almost like, reaching out to somebody on LinkedIn, trying to get on an introductory phone call.
00:20:03:29 – 00:20:04:10
Axel
and then we.
00:20:04:12 – 00:20:09:14
Rod
Personalize the letter a little bit to where it’s like coming from one person, like coming from you rather than a.
00:20:09:14 – 00:20:25:07
Axel
Company. Yep. I put my name on there. My face. we still have our company logo because it helps to establish that credibility. Right? Then they can go look up the company as well. And they go to our website. They see we own other stuff. And, you know, because the credibility thing is big, I really want to knock that out and touch on that right off the rip.
00:20:25:09 – 00:20:41:19
Axel
but then we close it out with a picture of my name, you know, personal cell phone number, all of that fun stuff. And that’s what we send out. And then it’s that messaging just repackaged slightly, depending on the medium. but it’s established credibility. Why? It’s why it’s of benefit to work with us if they do want to sell.
00:20:41:19 – 00:20:55:28
Axel
And then we rounded out with, even if you don’t want to sell, we still have some interest in just talking and getting to know you and learning more about your business, your objectives and all that. And most of the people that reach out, they’re like, oh, hey, it’s cool to meet another guy who’s buying multifamily. And you know, so-and-so, right?
00:20:56:01 – 00:21:08:13
Axel
yeah, I might be interested in selling this, you know? Hey, if you want to make me an offer, that’s fine. Maybe he’s not really a sell or the timing’s not right. But you do that over six, 12, 18 months, and then next thing you know, he’s he’s like, oh, he’s actually at a life event.
00:21:08:13 – 00:21:09:01
Rod
Yeah, he’s got a life.
00:21:09:01 – 00:21:09:13
Axel
I really do.
00:21:09:13 – 00:21:28:05
Rod
Want to sell. You always have to have motivation. I mean, you know, I tell people because I talk about mailing as well for a little bit in my bootcamps and, and, you know, you’ve got to catch them when they’re motivated. you know, I get I sometimes I’ll get emails or texts or DMs from people’s like, you know, I’m trying to get to sell or to sell.
00:21:28:05 – 00:21:41:16
Rod
And I’m like, you’re trying to push a rope, brother. You know, you’re not gonna you’re not going to get a seller to sell. You have to catch them when they’re motivated. So that’s why mailing is not a once and done thing. You’ve got to do it over a period of time. And we’ve bought deals where someone’s held on to one of our cards for months.
00:21:41:24 – 00:21:43:15
Rod
Oh, you know, that happens a lot.
00:21:43:19 – 00:21:59:29
Axel
All the time. Yeah. We’ve bought deals where I mean, we’re closing a deal right now or we contacted the first time we contacted the seller. It was six years ago. Wow. And, this was back when I was just, like, out of college. I was just calling people up, and, over six years, you know, send them an email, put them in a CRM, emailed them a couple of times a year.
00:21:59:29 – 00:22:14:18
Axel
We built, like a almost a friendship. Like there was some level of reverence there. And, and then when it time to sell, he’s like, time for you to buy it. Right. And it was the easiest transaction of all time. Well, because he knew the whole time that we had built this, this rapport over a really long period of time.
00:22:14:18 – 00:22:35:04
Axel
Yeah. And, and as you mentioned, right, a lot of people reach out to me, they’re like, how do I how do I convince the seller to a seller, negotiate a price with this? You know, you can negotiate. Obviously you can negotiate great pricing, but you’re never going to convince the seller to sell. And really, the objective fundamentally needs to be you just want to hang around the rim and catch the rebounds and be around when the time comes.
00:22:35:04 – 00:22:53:02
Axel
Yep. in terms of when they actually convince themselves to sell. Right. And then you’re in the position of actually buying a great deal. And this is why we’re doing this. Or we want to buy really great deals. We want to buy deals at 15, 20, 25% below market value. And you’re never really going to convince someone who’s not interested in selling to take a discount like that.
00:22:53:02 – 00:22:55:13
Axel
It’s going to be some other triggering event, as you mentioned.
00:22:55:13 – 00:23:13:00
Rod
Yeah. No, and you’re right. And we should have said that right out of the gate. This is how you buy deals at a discount. Okay. what? Axel will be teaching on the show here, and, his his, off market multifamily deals course is going to be available to my warriors. you guys know about my warrior program?
00:23:13:00 – 00:23:34:11
Rod
My coaching program? That’s just going to be a value add for them. That’s included in our program. But, you know, the, the, the the training around this is super critical because I don’t spend a ton of time on this on the on the off market. I’ve got students that came over from the flipping and wholesaling world that do it very successfully because it’s, you know, similar mindsets.
00:23:34:13 – 00:23:53:00
Rod
But, you know, I’ve never really trained it. And so really super excited to have you teach my peeps how to do this. now talk a little bit about, well, I talked a little bit about seller bonding. And I tell the story. I’ve literally, you know, where I’ve bonded with elderly sellers just trying to get seller financing.
00:23:53:00 – 00:23:54:17
Rod
Do you ever do soft financing on your deals?
00:23:54:24 – 00:24:12:21
Axel
We do. Yeah, occasionally. we’re doing one right now, actually. Okay. Small. It’s a small deal. 12 units, $1.8 million. But carrying a big note back and, again came with trust, right. Long period of time demonstrating that we were a worthy borrower. Right. That’s oftentimes the hurdle to overcome with a seller who’s looking to seller finance. Right.
00:24:12:23 – 00:24:13:27
Axel
so we do it.
00:24:13:29 – 00:24:32:01
Rod
Well, I tell the story. I’ve, I’ve got a couple of examples where I’ve bonded with sellers. One, allowed me to, make no pain, no down payment because he trusted me. Just wanted the payments. Didn’t want the big tax hit year one. And another one where I literally didn’t make payments for a year because the property needs so much freaking work.
00:24:32:01 – 00:24:51:28
Rod
I’m like, listen, I got to put the money into the property first. It was the truth. And I bonded with them and they allowed me to do it. So, you know that seller bonding piece is super important. so, so as you’re building this infrastructure in this business and, you know, there are a lot of other components to this, a lot of other relationships you need to build.
00:24:51:28 – 00:24:54:25
Rod
Why don’t we talk about that a little bit? Give me give some insight on.
00:24:54:25 – 00:25:17:04
Axel
That for sure. So direct to sell seller great for finding those really meaty deals. big discounts. Those are typically going to produce deals on the smaller end of the range we’ve been talking about. Right. 5 to 30, 40, 50 units. If you want to start finding off market deals where it’s not gone through a brokered process, right where there’s a broker attached, I’ve gone to their full marketing process.
00:25:17:06 – 00:25:31:18
Axel
and you still want to buy stuff that’s a little bit larger. Oftentimes those are still going to come through relationships. Somebody knows a guy who might be interested in selling. How do you become the person that that person is is, is thinking of when they have an opportunity like that that hits their desk or their network or what have you?
00:25:31:21 – 00:25:47:15
Axel
So we spend just as much time, building relationships with all the key deal finders as we do going direct to seller. And when I say key deal finders, obviously brokers are the big one, right? Brokers are still going to transact. The vast majority of deals in the marketplace. So they’re number one. But there are a lot of other people that.
00:25:47:15 – 00:25:50:01
Rod
So you’re building relationships with brokers to send you deals.
00:25:50:01 – 00:25:58:29
Axel
Yes we are. granted, it’s not a large percentage of the deals we do. It’s a small percentage, but it’s still that’s still how we’re going to get those bigger deals and stuff. That’s 50 plus.
00:25:58:29 – 00:26:23:19
Rod
Let me interject something here. Yeah. one thing, another thing that I talk about in my program as well is, is having a relationship with a residential agent or broker in that market because, you know, if, if a, if a person with a 10 or 20 unit or 30 unit is selling or even 100 units sometimes because I can tell a story about that, they’ll very often go to their residential agent or broker, not realizing they haven’t got a freaking clue what to do with that property.
00:26:23:26 – 00:26:44:03
Rod
And but they’ll take the listing because they want the freaking commission and they’ll throw it in the residential MLS because that’s all they know and have. And you can get phenomenal deals if you’ve got that’s kind of a ninja trick. If you got a relationship in your local market with the residential agent or broker and you tell them, hey, anything hits multifamily hits, let me know, brother, because our sister or whatever and we’ll hit it.
00:26:44:05 – 00:26:45:27
Rod
So 100% okay.
00:26:45:28 – 00:27:02:00
Axel
Totally agree. We’ve done a handful of deals like that where and it’s and it’s interesting. It’s it’s all about just being in the mix. Right. You just you just want to be around the hoop. I keep using that analogy. But for example, we had a residential agent reach out to us and I’ll back into how we developed the relationship with her and how you can do it at scale.
00:27:02:06 – 00:27:19:02
Axel
You know, right after this quick story. But she came to us with nine units. It was a very small deal. this and it was, a six unit, a three unit seller wanted to sell both of them at the same time. And as we started developing the relationship with the residential agent that brought us the deal, we actually found out that the seller might be interested in selling more.
00:27:19:02 – 00:27:37:06
Axel
And next thing you know, we’re buying 25 units off of the seller because we kept pulling the thread to pulling the thread and she went back and, you know, leveraged her relationship with the seller. And then a small deal became a decent sized deal that $3.5 million deal, right, is something of reasonable size in the way that we actually got in touch with her.
00:27:37:09 – 00:28:02:23
Axel
And this is just a quick little tactical tip, is if you go out there and you get all of the individuals who are playing in the real estate sector or the space that are involved in dealmaking, and get them on an email list and develop some level of relationship with them over time, just by sending a monthly newsletter, updating them on what you’re doing in your business, updating them on maybe some stuff that’s happened in the marketplace, so some value out information, rounding it out with where in the market to buy X.
00:28:02:26 – 00:28:21:25
Axel
if you’re a residential agent and you bring us a deal, the seller won’t pay a commission. We can help. If you’re a wholesaler and you know this deal doesn’t really work for your buyers list, we can pay you, etc., etc. doing that over time. Again, you’re starting to build mindshare, right? You’re starting to become the person that people think of when they’re looking in a when they’re in a specific marketplace trying to sell these deals.
00:28:21:27 – 00:28:43:25
Axel
And that’s how we actually got this one. And again, to define who deal finders are, because I think oftentimes people just think brokers. Right. And yeah, they are the ones that are doing the majority of the deals for sure. But the first person to typically know that a seller might be interested in selling a property is the property management company, because the seller’s probably going to try and squeeze that last little bit out of the rent roll, or squeeze the last little bit of value.
00:28:43:25 – 00:28:50:23
Axel
Do some clean up. Property managers are typically the first people to know that a seller is considering selling, because they’re doing all this stuff with them to get it ready for sale.
00:28:50:25 – 00:28:58:21
Rod
And they want to continue to manage that freaking property after it sells. Exactly. So if you’ve got a relationship with them. Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:58:21 – 00:29:18:14
Axel
And offer incentives to your PM to bring you deals, potentially pay them. Right. And I think sometimes people forget this. They they think that just developing the relationship is enough and in it oftentimes is right. But if you really want to kill it with a hammer and confirm that you are truly the first couple offers some type of buy side commission to a PM or incentivize them in some other way, you keep the business and we’ll compensate you.
00:29:18:14 – 00:29:19:21
Rod
Yeah.
00:29:19:24 – 00:29:35:29
Axel
title companies are sitting between sellers and buyers all day long, all of the time, or closing attorneys, depending on how they’re referred to in your state. Let’s just say that they see a seller who’s sold a couple of properties over a period of time. They might be a large owner. It might be an indication that they’re willing to sell some other stuff that they’re getting out of the business.
00:29:36:06 – 00:29:44:26
Axel
We incentivize title companies to go and at least give us a heads up or some information that a seller is in the process of selling some of their properties or, or, you know, you’re sitting on the.
00:29:44:26 – 00:29:46:13
Rod
Phone calls, you just call them and.
00:29:46:14 – 00:30:01:12
Axel
Yeah, call them up, call them up. And, you know, we work with a handful of title companies and this does get easier as you do a higher volume deals. But, but they are somebody, again, that has this information, GQ’s other vendors, oftentimes they’re going to be doing work for owners that may be looking.
00:30:01:19 – 00:30:10:26
Rod
For painters, landscapers, you know, general contractors, because a seller will fix up a place before they sell it. Definitely want to bonus them if they tell you about a deal.
00:30:10:26 – 00:30:36:29
Axel
And to a lot of folks, this seems like a ton of work. Well, there’s a ton of vendor, there’s a ton of electricians and painters, etc. in there. Are there? I mean, you know, I guess it depends on the size of your marketplace, but it’s likely that there are a lot of management companies and brokers and residential agents that may be brokering these deals and wholesalers, but you can hack the process of getting to know all of them by going to either the meet ups, you know, getting in the Facebook groups, asking your PM for who, like who are the vendors that you use, right.
00:30:36:29 – 00:30:42:27
Axel
And now you’ve got a big vendor list. You can you can kind of hack your way to developing a Rolodex of these individuals.
00:30:43:02 – 00:30:44:08
Rod
And an email list of these.
00:30:44:08 – 00:31:01:05
Axel
Individuals and an email list. And it’s not like you have to call them every week. Hey, you know, anyone who wants to sell, right? You put them on an email list, you know, introduce yourself before you do so. So they’re not coming out of the total blue here, right. And then on a monthly basis, you spend a couple of hours putting together a nicely worded value add, you know, thoughtful email.
00:31:01:12 – 00:31:19:26
Axel
And you send it out. That’s a 2 to 5 hour a week monthly commitment on an ongoing basis that most people don’t do. Hardly anybody does this, you know, consistently. And you’re basically putting your name, your face and what you want to buy in front of them on a monthly basis. And that is how you scale the relationship development.
00:31:19:28 – 00:31:31:12
Axel
and we do a ton of deals just through whether it’s a residential agent or our PPM company or, you know, the title company thing is big. And, you know, it’s funny, title companies aren’t really seen as like the A deal, so I.
00:31:31:12 – 00:31:33:07
Rod
Never heard that one before. honestly.
00:31:33:08 – 00:31:48:29
Axel
But they’re like, hey, you know, by the way, like so-and-so sold a few deals, like, you know, just a heads up and it’s okay. So now I know to go give them a call. you know, here’s this is also funny little tidbit, but again, you can go really deep within all of these different verticals. Once you’re in there and you’re getting your hands dirty.
00:31:49:00 – 00:32:01:03
Axel
Right. We know who the bad management companies are in our marketplace, the ones that take forever to lease up the units. They don’t do a good job, at least for two lo terrible, you know, service. we prospect directly to their clients.
00:32:01:03 – 00:32:03:14
Rod
Oh that’s smart. That’s actually really smart.
00:32:03:14 – 00:32:17:19
Axel
Yeah. And so, you know, I got a I have a virtual assistant. Every month she pulls the list of all of the units they’re leasing. We know that they suck at leasing. Right. And we just prospect directly to those owners because they’re probably in the process of my management companies. I fill in stuff quickly. I’m getting a little stressed.
00:32:17:19 – 00:32:36:08
Axel
Oh yeah, I changed. You know, most sellers don’t want to change management companies. They’d rather just sell the building. That’s oftentimes a decision, you know, fork in the road. And oftentimes sellers are like, I’ll just sell it and just get out of it. So we’ve bought deals from doing that. So once you start to to really get in there and you get your hands dirty, you start to really become familiar with who the players are in your market.
00:32:36:11 – 00:32:52:06
Axel
Then you can focus your relationship development on those types of individuals as well. and that in conjunction with all of the direct to seller deals, now you’re really starting to build the top of your funnel in such a way to where you’re looking at a much larger number of deals than if you were just waiting on the brokered stuff.
00:32:52:07 – 00:33:07:02
Rod
Yeah. You know, and and you might be thinking, wow, this seems like a lot of work. Well, okay, so do you want, do you want to have cash flow for life? Do you want to be able to retire? Yeah, you’re going to grind for a few years like most people want. So you can live the rest of your life like most people can’t.
00:33:07:09 – 00:33:25:11
Rod
And that’s that’s what this takes. You know, I will tell you if you if you’re in my email chain, either on the investment side or on the thought leadership side, you’re going to get an email from me literally every week. You’re going to see content going out on social every single week. And I’m trying to add value. And that’s exactly what Axel’s doing here, is just adding value.
00:33:25:13 – 00:33:30:00
Rod
And, you know, the most successful people on the freakin planet are the ones that add the most value. Period.
00:33:30:02 – 00:33:46:03
Axel
And to quickly touch on because so many people are like, does this really work? Is it really worth it, etc., etc., right? It seems like a lot of time, a lot of energy, right? okay. But let’s just say you’re doing a, let’s say you’re in a, in a market where a 20 unit property sells for 100 grand, a unit sells for 2 million bucks, right?
00:33:46:06 – 00:34:06:11
Axel
Okay. Let’s say you buy that just 10% below market value, which is incredibly achievable. That’s not that’s not that’s not a crazy deal by any means. It’s very achievable if you’re doing this for any reasonable amount of time. Sure. So you’re paying 1.8. That’s $200,000 in equity. That’s that’s real money. That’s a substantial amount of money. Let’s say you’re putting let’s say you’re just using your own money for ease of conversation.
00:34:06:11 – 00:34:23:22
Axel
You’re putting 25% down a little, strip the transaction cost. Keep it simple. You’re putting down 500 grand. Well, now your $500,000 at closing is now 700 K in equity. That is a really meaningful return immediately on your capital. And let’s say you find even a slightly better deal 15, 20% below, you know, you do the math at home.
00:34:23:22 – 00:34:37:22
Axel
It’s it’s very meaningful in terms of the impact that buying a deal below market value has on your returns and on the ability to compound your capital and scale your business. It’s it’s one of the most important components of the entire process, if not the most important component.
00:34:37:22 – 00:34:51:23
Rod
And if you don’t have that kind of cash on hand, you pull a deal out of the, you know, out of the woodwork. You’re going to find money to invest in it. Okay? If it’s if it’s a value add, you know, where you’re buying it below market like that, you’re going to you’re going to be able to find the money.
00:34:51:28 – 00:35:23:26
Rod
You’ll be able to raise the money to do the deal. And, and you know, hey, we just closed on one, 200 unit in San Antonio, about 40% below market value. Okay. So, you know, that’s starting to happen, and, so, yeah, no, that makes a huge difference in your returns and everything else. okay. So what sort of tools do you utilize in your, in your business and like, you know, speak to someone that’s just getting started versus obviously you’re going to have all sorts of things that you’ve, you’ve evolved into.
00:35:23:26 – 00:35:29:00
Rod
But, but give us kind of a, you know, maybe even a progression in the sort of tools that someone would need.
00:35:29:01 – 00:35:42:03
Axel
Absolutely. Yeah. And I like the word progression there because it does change over time. Right. Big three tools. to, to handle what we’re talking about here. You need some kind of data provider to pull all of the data so that you can start going out there and going stellar.
00:35:42:06 – 00:35:42:28
Rod
00:35:43:00 – 00:35:58:17
Axel
You need some kind of CRM or something around something that’s going to solve the follow up challenge for you. and then you should have some kind of email marketing service to do all of this stuff as it relates to building the relationships at scale in your marketplace. So we’ll start with data.
00:35:58:18 – 00:36:01:27
Rod
Yeah. we’re talking we’re talking about lists here.
00:36:01:28 – 00:36:14:06
Axel
We’re talking about lists. Yeah. Lists of properties with owner information. Now we can call them up and say, hey man, I want to buy a property. So list source is still a great source of data. Right. That’s the one that I think a lot of folks are familiar with. depending on.
00:36:14:06 – 00:36:16:13
Rod
No, actually I wasn’t list source is the name of list.
00:36:16:13 – 00:36:41:07
Axel
List source. Yeah. List source. They’re they’re a large data provider for single family data. Okay. House flippers, use them. Okay. But, but they still provide good multifamily data as well. Okay. The only again, a little asterisk here for all the for other listeners is sometimes when you start getting into much larger communities where you have a 100 unit community with, you know, call it 520 unit buildings and they have individual addresses, list source may pull those as five individual 20 unit building.
00:36:41:07 – 00:36:53:14
Axel
So you might get a little weird when you get large very large. But but for really 5 to 50 units list source is still going to be a pretty good data source for you. Okay. It’s simple is going on there. You filter down your list, you pay for the data, and now you have your list.
00:36:53:15 – 00:37:09:05
Rod
Let me let me add something here. There’s a lot of BS in the list business okay. There’s a lot of guys that will that will sell lists over and over and over again. And a lot of them are crap. So you definitely want to use a credible list list provider. Yeah. Okay. So list sources a good one.
00:37:09:10 – 00:37:20:09
Axel
List sources like straight to the data source. A lot of people that sell their list through, you know, some of their repackage direct to seller software. They’re just going to list source, list source as the source for a lot of those folks.
00:37:20:11 – 00:37:21:16
Rod
Okay.
00:37:21:18 – 00:37:31:21
Axel
if you want to spend a little bit more money, you can go, you know, go the Rihanna me route if you want to. Ongoing ongoing Brexit. Yep. Craxi. Rihanna me’s expensive. It’s a monthly recurring payments.
00:37:31:21 – 00:37:32:12
Rod
Right.
00:37:32:15 – 00:37:48:02
Axel
similar to like a costar, but you can pull lists every month. or if you want to, you know, really try to be frugal about it or just spend a little bit more time on it. Go out to the mortgage brokers in your space, the real estate brokers, and ask them if they can pull a costar list for you, right.
00:37:48:02 – 00:37:55:18
Axel
And see if they can kind of do that. And maybe they sell it to you, they give it to you or what have you. co-star’s the gold standard for multifamily data.
00:37:55:21 – 00:38:08:18
Rod
or if you really want to be frugal, get your ass to the county and go on the county’s website and pull yourself with that. Okay? I mean, we used to I used we used to do that, when I was looking up mobile home park. So I’d vas do it, but yeah, you can, you can, you can actually pull the list yourself.
00:38:08:18 – 00:38:10:17
Rod
But, there’s a lot of brain damage that you can do.
00:38:10:17 – 00:38:23:11
Axel
It can. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Again, if you’re on a budget, right. You want to just get a list, get after it. List sources is a great place to start. Now there are kind of sub tiers to this as well though. So list source is going to give you property address, the mailing address for the owner the owner name.
00:38:23:11 – 00:38:36:07
Axel
But they’re not going to give you their phone number, their email or anything like that. So then you need to go and do what we call is, what we call it skip trace. Right. You need to go out there and skip trace the data so that you can actually find all of their information. There are dozens of services that do this.
00:38:36:07 – 00:38:40:04
Axel
I’m just a shout out a couple. Okay. lead Sherpa is a good one.
00:38:40:04 – 00:38:41:07
Rod
Lead sherpa.
00:38:41:07 – 00:38:44:29
Axel
Lead Sherpa. batch leads is one that we’ve use.
00:38:45:04 – 00:38:46:04
Rod
Okay.
00:38:46:07 – 00:38:59:29
Axel
and then depending on how robust your CRM is, which I’ll get to in a moment, some CRM does have that ability as well built in. If it’s a real estate specific CRM. Oh really? But but lead Sherpa is a fine solution and that’ll get you, you know.
00:38:59:29 – 00:39:00:10
Rod
Most.
00:39:00:17 – 00:39:01:14
Axel
A good a good data.
00:39:01:14 – 00:39:16:27
Rod
Yeah I know, I know, I know Craxi does it as well because my son was using it for roofing contracts and I’m gonna go down that rabbit hole, but but I mean, he he was getting phone numbers from Craxi. I remember, but. Yeah. Okay.
00:39:16:29 – 00:39:34:23
Axel
There’s a lot of you just Google, you know, skip trace, ownership information. You know, there’s going to be a lot of resources, but they’re all basically the same flavor. lead ship is one we’ve used. Okay, so you’ve now got your list, right? You’ve filtered it down, etc.. You’ve got your phone numbers, your emails, and now you’re going out there and you’re doing everything we talked about.
00:39:34:23 – 00:39:51:02
Axel
You’re reaching out to these owners. but what do you do when the owner comes back to you and says, I am not interested, call me back in six months, which is going to be the vast majority of the conversations you have. You’re, you have to figure out some way to systematize this process or to capture all of this information.
00:39:51:04 – 00:40:03:09
Axel
if you’ve got a small list, 100 to 500 properties, you know, maybe in any given time you’re balancing 15, 20, 25, 30 conversations, leads you could probably get away with doing it in a Google Sheets or something.
00:40:03:10 – 00:40:06:15
Rod
You’d be stupid to do that because there’s free CRM is out there that could handle.
00:40:06:16 – 00:40:14:00
Axel
Exactly. You could. And I was gonna, but you could get away with it. But it’s not really it’s doesn’t make sense. You can use a Zoho, HubSpot. These are free resources.
00:40:14:02 – 00:40:34:07
Rod
HubSpot HubSpot has a free version. Zoho has a free version. Insightly has a free version. Really simple systems. As a free version, I would recommend HubSpot out of those four selections as well. Spot in a big use you as well. Yeah, we use them in a big way. I mean, we spent thousands a month with them, but but, they’re very robust and, and and so I’m going to highly recommend HubSpot.
00:40:34:10 – 00:40:36:07
Rod
and I get nothing for doing that, but,
00:40:36:12 – 00:40:48:03
Axel
Oh, fundamentally, all you got to do is really your objective here is you want to put the the opportunity in the lead, in with the address, the name you want to take some notes, schedule follow up tasks. That’s really the key. That’s the 8020 of what we’re trying to do here.
00:40:48:03 – 00:41:02:19
Rod
That’s it. And and you know, the notes are important to because when you talk to Henry Smith and he said his wife Mable is, you know, not doing well, you know, you’ll forget that. And you call Henry back in six months and ask how Mabel is doing. You’ve built instant rapport.
00:41:02:20 – 00:41:03:10
Axel
Exactly.
00:41:03:10 – 00:41:11:12
Rod
So you take personal notes on these people, you put them in the CRM, and when you follow up, you can use those two to instantly create rapport. Again, you.
00:41:11:12 – 00:41:25:11
Axel
100%. And also you need you need a place to store information that’s that’s not even related to the seller situation, but just the building. Yeah. Like like are the utilities separate? What are the rents like. Because you’re you’re going to capture some of that information as you have these conversations. It’s got to live somewhere.
00:41:25:13 – 00:41:33:05
Rod
And you may pull a report off line that you want to drop into the CRM as well, like maybe a car. Yeah, exactly. A tax card. Exactly.
00:41:33:07 – 00:41:40:00
Axel
as you scale and as you do more direct to seller marketing and prospecting, you’re going to you’re probably going to outgrow a free version.
00:41:40:00 – 00:41:41:15
Rod
Yeah. You’ll have to pay a little bit. Yeah.
00:41:41:17 – 00:41:55:13
Axel
So we use we absolutely love this tool. reassembly are simply that basically spell RSI imply okay. It’s a it’s a real estate investor focused CRM that has loads of integrations.
00:41:55:14 – 00:41:59:20
Rod
Oh okay. So I shouldn’t sell HubSpot. Okay okay. Sorry.
00:41:59:20 – 00:42:06:22
Axel
Simply yeah. It’s okay. It’s specifically and perfectly designed for direct to seller marketing. We’ve we’ve used them for years. We love them.
00:42:06:28 – 00:42:10:06
Rod
So instead of HubSpot you use Stead of hops. Okay. Got it. Okay. Well, but.
00:42:10:10 – 00:42:23:23
Axel
But their minimum plans a couple hundred bucks a month, right? So it’s one of those where it’s like you kind of you got to start sending a decent amount of mail. You probably need to be, you know, managing 50, 60, 70 conversations. You can call through re simply capture all your conversations. You can text through it.
00:42:23:29 – 00:42:33:08
Rod
Well, listen, listen, if it’s a couple hundred bucks a month and you’re serious about this frickin business, okay, bite the freaking bullet and do it the right way, right out of the gate. So go to RV simply for sure.
00:42:33:09 – 00:42:36:19
Axel
Exactly. Okay. we love them. There are other platforms that do.
00:42:36:22 – 00:42:39:15
Rod
Well, what do you like about them? Just out of curiosity.
00:42:39:18 – 00:42:42:25
Axel
All of our communication lives under that roof. So?
00:42:42:25 – 00:42:44:03
Rod
So we phone calls as well.
00:42:44:03 – 00:43:01:29
Axel
And phone calls as well. So we have a you can basically just assign a phone number. You can call through the platform call like, you know, off your desktop, your computer with a headphone and headphones on. You can text through it. so there’s there’s texting capabilities, you can email through it, and you can also order and send direct mail through it, and it’ll capture your direct mail spent.
00:43:01:29 – 00:43:02:19
Axel
So us you.
00:43:02:21 – 00:43:04:11
Rod
Order direct mail through it. Oh that’s.
00:43:04:11 – 00:43:05:17
Axel
Cool. They have an integrated.
00:43:05:23 – 00:43:09:12
Rod
Everything else you said HubSpot does, but but does dot do direct mail and.
00:43:09:12 – 00:43:21:28
Axel
You can upload your custom letter. Right. Because we use, we’re not sending the buy houses fast postcards. We’re, we’re, we’re sending our own custom direct mail piece and it sends through there. And then we can track when we’ve mailed all of these different owners, you.
00:43:21:28 – 00:43:23:05
Rod
Can actually send it through the.
00:43:23:05 – 00:43:24:16
Axel
Platform, send it through the platform.
00:43:24:17 – 00:43:26:13
Rod
Takes care of the mailing costs and all that stuff.
00:43:26:13 – 00:43:26:28
Axel
All of that.
00:43:26:28 – 00:43:28:28
Rod
Yeah, yeah. You can’t do that in HubSpot. That’s that’s.
00:43:28:28 – 00:43:35:24
Axel
Cool. And it helps. because now we’re tracking KPIs. We obviously want to know. We turn on direct mail spend, and we want to get a, you know, what’s our call back.
00:43:35:24 – 00:43:39:08
Rod
So it’ll track it’ll track that as well. All of that. Oh man, that sounds really good.
00:43:39:10 – 00:43:55:22
Axel
Oh okay. So it’s a it’s a great platform. And then lastly we have email marketing right. So you got all your vendors your deal finders, your service providers. You want to throw them on an email list. You want to start sending your, you know, monthly email to out to your list to build your credibility, become omnipresent. All that fun stuff.
00:43:55:24 – 00:44:04:09
Axel
there’s a million free resources here. You can do this with the HubSpot. You can do this with a MailChimp, find a free platform. You know, this is something where you really don’t have to spend, but you.
00:44:04:10 – 00:44:05:23
Rod
Want to look at the deliverability.
00:44:05:23 – 00:44:07:11
Axel
That’s that’s the one thing that matters.
00:44:07:12 – 00:44:20:03
Rod
Yeah, that that’s key, because even with HubSpot, sometimes we will hit the junk list. and then we end up mailing through a portal. I’m digressing here, but you, you know, you you really have to pay attention to that.
00:44:20:11 – 00:44:43:13
Axel
So the, the one real cool like inside hack to this, that we leverage because you’re right. one there’s a, sometimes you have deliverability challenges, but also sometimes people don’t like to open up a newsletter that feels like it’s coming from a marketing service. Right? You, your people mentally check out when they see that. Right? Compared to something that looks like a native email to the platform that they’re receiving it on.
00:44:43:16 – 00:45:09:14
Axel
So, a tool that we’ve used is called yam yam. It’s yet another mail merge is what it stands for. And basically it integrates with your Gmail only works if you have Gmail. Unfortunately, if you have outlook, I’m not going to be for you. But if you have Gmail merges with your Gmail and it sends mass emails through the Gmail sending wow platform, so when you receive it on the receiving end, it just looks like you’re receiving an email from a guy who’s sending it through his personal oh, wow.
00:45:09:14 – 00:45:33:03
Axel
That’s cool. so we spend a lot of time doing that, specifically when we’re reaching out to sellers if we want to send out a bit more of a mass email, that doesn’t look like it’s coming from a marketing platform, we will send important, you know, newsletters through that. If we want to send out updates, we send it to both, our LPs, and we’re raising capital for deals, but we’ll also send it, on the deal, finding side to other individuals that are in the marketplace that we want to get in contact with.
00:45:33:05 – 00:45:37:23
Axel
And it just looks like a regular email. So you’re not losing. People know what’s up and they see all this branding, right?
00:45:37:27 – 00:45:39:16
Rod
Right. That’s huge man.
00:45:39:19 – 00:45:56:22
Axel
so long story short, you just need a platform to do that again. You want to make sure that, you know, you’re not. And again, you want to be careful here, right? And without digressing too deep into email deliverability, but you don’t want to just buy a list of like a bunch of sellers, for example, and just throw them up and just blast an email out to a thousand people.
00:45:56:22 – 00:46:07:06
Axel
It’s going to murder your send a reputation, right? You want to put people on this list who you’ve had 1 to 1 conversations with. so that’s why we’re very careful with who we put on that list.
00:46:07:09 – 00:46:11:22
Rod
Because if you get a lot of people that opt out, it’ll hammer your deliverability.
00:46:11:23 – 00:46:36:26
Axel
Exactly, exactly. and oftentimes will send a lot of this stuff. And this is specific to us through a specific email address that will creates, for this purpose. You know, ours is acquisitions at aligned Rpcs, which is the name of our business. Right? You could do deals at so-and-so dot com. Right. Your company name.com. So that way you’re not you’re not doing this through your personal inbox and kind of mucking it up a little bit with a ton of inbound outbound emails.
00:46:36:29 – 00:46:48:09
Axel
but long story short, those are the big three you got. You need your data. Yeah. You need a system to to follow up with owners and a platform to help you do so. And you need something to help you send emails out at some level of scale.
00:46:48:12 – 00:46:52:28
Rod
Nice. Yeah. So speak briefly about follow up.
00:46:53:01 – 00:47:10:26
Axel
So the way we think about it right. And it’s obviously a little context dependent. And that if we have a seller that’s like I am not interested in selling now, but call me in 2025 or something like that. We have a pretty clear sense of how that’s going to go. But if we have a seller that’s like, yeah, I’m not looking to sell, but hey, stay in touch and it’s vague, right?
00:47:10:26 – 00:47:25:11
Axel
And we we don’t have a sense of how we’re going to follow up with them or no specific timeline given to us by the, by the seller or the owner. We typically just 30, 60, 90 days out, right? We’re going to reach out to them in 30 days. If there’s still no level of interest, we’re going to reach out to them in 60.
00:47:25:11 – 00:47:37:03
Axel
If there’s still no level of interest, then we reach out to them in 90. So we’re giving them a little bit more space over over a longer period of time, but we’re still doing so in such a way to where we’re staying in their world on an ongoing basis.
00:47:37:03 – 00:47:47:13
Rod
Are you are you you’re reaching out to them? Are you just adding value in some in some fashion, or are you actually physically reaching out and you know that where you’re trying to get a response.
00:47:47:13 – 00:48:01:27
Axel
So we’re typically reaching out and it’s going to depend on how much information we have from them. But if there’s a specific event that they outlined as something that they needed to do before they were looking to sell, hey, we still got to like turn this unit over. We got to renovate this unit. Perfect. That’s what we can throw in there.
00:48:01:27 – 00:48:06:07
Axel
That’s an easy thing to include, okay? If we don’t have something like that and we have something.
00:48:06:07 – 00:48:08:06
Rod
And basically you’re personalizing it is.
00:48:08:06 – 00:48:30:05
Axel
What you’re personalizing it. Yeah. That’s that’s that personalized like we’re you know we get that follow up task queued up in the CRM. We’re going into there, into that lead and actually looking at all the notes we’ve taken, etc., etc. and then we’re reaching out something that we’ll oftentimes try to do to really hammer home. The personalization is and this takes a little bit of time in the marketplace, both with your knowledge and then growing your own personal portfolio.
00:48:30:12 – 00:48:49:22
Axel
We have a few hundred units in like a very small area. Right. So we we know what’s going on on a street by street basis just with our own portfolio. We also want a management company. So we have all of that data as well. And we’ll typically reference like, you know, hey just by the way this building sold up the street or hey, by the way, this business is moving into this area down the street from yours.
00:48:49:24 – 00:48:53:20
Axel
If we can reference something that’s location specific to their property, we’ll do that.
00:48:53:22 – 00:48:54:20
Rod
That’s huge.
00:48:54:23 – 00:48:56:01
Axel
that takes some time to get there.
00:48:56:01 – 00:48:56:23
Rod
Sure.
00:48:56:26 – 00:49:14:17
Axel
But, we you gotta you gotta do something to make it personal to them. Building specific their own personal ownership. Story specific? when my kid goes off to college, I might think about selling at that point. You know, maybe you got something you can leverage there, or it’s just market specific, right? So we want to try to bring some value to.
00:49:14:17 – 00:49:33:17
Rod
Market specific easy market. You can just you can have swipe files with with local articles. And as long as you’ve got, you know, triggers in, you know, on Google or whatever, if anything pops up in Saint Louis or whatever, you know, the submarket is, you can add value that way. So-and-so is moving in so-and-so, so-and-so business is moving in or moving out or whatever.
00:49:33:20 – 00:49:36:25
Rod
Yeah, yeah. Market specific is is is fairly easy. You should do it.
00:49:36:25 – 00:49:55:18
Axel
And the last thing I’ll mention too is we put sellers who we have some good rapport. It’s just the timing is not right to, to actually buy their property. We put them on that same email list that we’re sending monthly newsletters to write, so that on a monthly basis, they’re getting just content from us. Right? Here’s a few articles that are relevant to the specific marketplace that we’re buying in.
00:49:55:21 – 00:50:12:20
Axel
Here’s a little intro email updating. Everyone that’s on our list about our business. And then we close it out with we’re in the market to buy X, right? So we’re reminding in that we’re in the market to buy their property that we’re reaching out to them about. Yeah. And again that’s possibly that’s 12 times a year right. That’s that’s that’s plenty of communication for them to remember who you are.
00:50:12:25 – 00:50:14:02
Axel
Sure. and then you’re.
00:50:14:02 – 00:50:22:12
Rod
Thinking that’s a lot of work, right? And you’re sitting there listening, thinking, man, that’s a lot of work. Well, I mean, it’s not that much work to simply not the newsletter.
00:50:22:12 – 00:50:35:07
Axel
Thing is, like, I like if there was one takeaway for everybody out there, it’s like, just do this newsletter thing right. It takes you five hours a month, right? It takes you 60 hours a year. It’s going to give you a deal. You’re going to. Right? You’re going to do a deal. Right. And, and and you’re.
00:50:35:07 – 00:50:54:12
Rod
And you’re building a reputation and you’re building connection and you’re, you know, you’re starting to become known and, you know, just, you know, or stay in your rat race job and W-2 that you hate and be miserable. I mean, those are your options, you know, do this side hustle. And this is really why I wanted Excel on the show now.
00:50:54:12 – 00:51:16:23
Rod
Now, guys, just to reiterate, Axel is going to actually do some podcast episodes because I want to really bring this to you guys in in a big way, because, you know, these smaller deals can be very lucrative. and, and, you know, very often you can take him down yourself. You take him down with one joint venture partner or something like that, and you end up with more of the deal than you would in the larger multifamily.
00:51:16:28 – 00:51:35:25
Rod
and the don’t get me wrong, you make a lot of money in the larger as well. But, so it’s just a different way to do this business. And it’s less zero. So it’s less scary, less threatening, which is really why I wanted, you know, this relationship with Axel. And if you’re one of my warriors, get excited because you’re going to get his course here in the near future, as part of your program.
00:51:35:29 – 00:51:55:27
Rod
So. And by the way, if you’re interested in applying to my warrior program, text the word crush to seven, two, three, four, or five. So, you know, we can help you crush it. Like we’ve helped my students, get over 200,000 units so far. So, well, this has been a lot of fun. Obviously, we can’t cover every aspect of this.
00:51:56:00 – 00:52:00:29
Rod
you know, and and I know you’re going to be doing these episodes speak a little bit about what you’re going to be doing in these episodes.
00:52:00:29 – 00:52:26:18
Axel
Absolutely. No. And I first of all, I look forward to doing them. This was a great conversation. You know, we’re going to touch on numerous different topics, but for example, how you can actually the simple five step process to putting a multifamily deal in a contract, direct a seller in the next 90 days in terms of tactically what that actually looks like from a sequencing standpoint, from a process standpoint, you know, I’m going to dive much, much deeper into becoming omnipresent in your local market, which is the key to finding deals through relationships.
00:52:26:20 – 00:52:44:22
Axel
Talked about that at a pretty high level, but you’re going to get very, very tactical into actually what you can do and when you should be doing and how you should be doing it. All of the, the real specific stuff, that somebody listening can actually just go and start doing immediately. So we’re going to get much deeper into a lot of these topics, in a real way.
00:52:44:22 – 00:52:45:22
Axel
And, you know, look forward to doing so.
00:52:45:22 – 00:53:01:23
Rod
Love it. Love it. Well, I appreciate you coming down here to Florida from mass. And, you know, I know some of these episodes you may just do at home on zoom, but but again, they’re going to be tactical. You’re going to need to take notes. So these are going to be the ones you definitely want to do when you can take notes and whatnot.
00:53:01:25 – 00:53:04:11
Rod
so, it’s great to great to have you down here, brother.
00:53:04:12 – 00:53:05:10
Axel
Absolutely appreciate it.
00:53:05:11 – 00:53:06:08
Rod
Yep. All right.
