Don Costa is an incredibly successful real estate investor.
He now operates virtual wholesaling in multiple markets.
Watch as Don talks about how he successfully expanded his wholesaling and flipping business to long distance markets.
Transcript:
Chris Bounds 00:02
You’ve not only been successful like going from like the rags, rags to riches or I guess, riches to rags to riches. But doing it in a really competitive environment, surviving over that time and not just surviving but thriving and then doing it multiple markets. When you went from like your just individual market to finally, jumping the border to a different market. How did you approach that?
Don Costa 00:31
Well, initially. California is a large state. When we started expanding from our main markets, we were looking at markets that are three hours North or South, or four hours or five hours South of us. In the same state, and that’s kind of our first iteration into going into new markets was within the same state. The second market I tackled was the Eugene Springfield, Oregon area.
The reason I chose that market initially was because I had family up there. I want to get comfortable with our processes and our systems, and still have some controls in place. The next day, we ended up venturing out into my dispo guy actually moved a few hours from the market we were looking at and it just made sense to tackle that state and that states in the Midwest.
Now we’re in states that we don’t have any control. But initially, I did a little bit more conservative than I would say, some people would. I made sure I had some relationship in the market that I was going into, to allow me to kind of establish systems and processes that I felt comfortable with. Like I said, I’m expanding. I’m trying to a country wide at this point in time. We’re setting up some marketing campaigns to just start tapping markets all over the country.
Chris Bounds 01:45
Cool. Really, relationships and boots on the ground that has been a key theme with other guests. You’ve had that whether it was family, an acquisition agent that moved, or it was relatively within driving distance, if you had to go there. But you also probably still knew had resources there.
You are now going into other places where you have much less resources. Let’s talk about those. How are you approaching? Like, going into an I don’t know what these markets are but unlike, let’s say Phoenix or Chattanooga, Tennessee. You probably know people there, but you don’t have any hard resources. They’re like, how are you approaching going into those markets?
Don Costa 02:32
One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that, people will talk about marketing and they’ll talk about markets. As if they’re all the same. They all operate the same way, they don’t. There’s a learning curve, there’s things that make sense in California that buyers won’t touch with a 10’foot pole and other state. There’s markets that are good for appreciation, there’s markets that are good for cash flow, I’m sure you’re relatively familiar with that.
You got to look at what buyers are gonna respond to they’re gonna wholesale, what buyer is going to respond to, they’re going to flip. The first thing we look at, is there any demand in the market? Before we even look at a market. Is there any demand? To tell you the truth is like we’ve lined ourselves up with institutional buyers, hedge funds in different buyers that are fairly aggressive across the country.
One of the things that I looked at is, where are my institutional buyers that if I’m going to go into a market, do I already have a buyer in place that I know their criteria. That they’re going to be relatively well versed in explaining what their parameters are. They’re not going to buy houses older than this age, they’re only going to buy in these zip codes.
If I have those buyers in that particular market, then I’m going to explore that market. Because there’s always this learning curve to like, what are sellers going to respond to? What are buyers going to respond to in that market. If I have a buyer that I know their fundamental buying criteria for a market and I could enter that market and shorten that learning curve? That makes sense, so we can get our feet in that market. Start picking up property to start getting momentum when we start branching out to other buyers.