Tyler Austin’s first real estate investing deal is a crazy story, putting it lightly.
The house itself was so disgusting Tyler had to step outside talk with the owner.
Watch as he describes how he wholesaled his first deal and made $15k.
Transcript:
Chris Bounds 00:02
What’s going on Tyler
Tyler Austin 00:04
What’s up Chris?
Chris Bounds 00:05
So you’re well immersed in real estate in multiple capacities sales and marketing active investor education but going back to your very first deal like when was that How did you find it and what kind of deal was it cool so
Tyler Austin 00:22
I’m gonna go I’m gonna go to the one the first deal that I’ve done on a contract not the first time I closed because between the time that I got the first one on our contract and closed it we’re had already done quite a bit in revenue between there because I have you know intense The deal was but um so my first deal came from first contract came from the $10,000 of direct mail that I had sent out here in for one time or over a period of time now just one time All right, this job 10 grand In fact, I didn’t do it in the right way when it comes to how I spent the money but at the time.
I was a government employee still traveling 50% of the year and they they have this card that they give you you know for travel and I travel a lot and I’m not gonna say what I did with the card but nevertheless I didn’t have the money for direct mail and I found the money Um, so I send it out and I didn’t get anything from this direct mail for about three months or so. And I’m traveling at the time I was in Beale Air Force Base in California i think is what it was called and when I sent out this direct mail campaign I use call rail tracking number and the base from my hotel is about our driver morning plus work time was 1215 hours and then get home so it was like good gap of time and I’m like itching the whole time you know at work wondering did I get any calls coming in whole time I was there for three weeks not one phone call came in oh it was especially you know since I was basically borrowing the money on the government’s die right and and you know that’s not legit and don’t recommend it whatsoever and I’m like do I gotta get a deal from this I just I heard that you know people sent direct mail they get calls in they get you know contract right away almost you know from everything I google and so um so yeah, so I got back home went to the post office and they had just a bucket full of mail for me and I was like so demoralized because I was like that’s like oh at least three grand yeah all return now.
My post office box itself was full which was like one of the medium size ones or whatever and then they had an additional like yellow and white bin that they handed me and I was like what in the hell could I have done wrong? You know, for this to happen and I was right there I was like I’m no longer ever sending direct mail it just doesn’t work. And that’s not true by the way. So anyway, let’s fast forward I had paused real estate for a little bit just to learn and implement and build systems in place which don’t necessarily believe someone has to do but it worked for me with what I was you know my travel I’m getting I’m getting a phone call at like seven o’clock at night and it just turned dark out here in Florida and this was in it was 2017 and so this turned dark I get this phone call and it’s like I couldn’t understand a liquor what this guy was saying like he was like the most southern of Southern mixed with Southern you know a tall boys like I couldn’t understand anything and so I call him back and he picks up and it’s broken I can I’m getting like a word every now and then and I basically say can I come over now and he’s like yeah, and I guess okay I got confirmation I can come over but I can’t understand anything he’s saying I asked him the address I kind of had it I’m pretty sure I had it he said come in through the back door and I basically through Google Maps I was okay I have the right place drove over there had to get got my buddy to come with me because you know it’s like dark out and go in the middle of nowhere so we we believe in carrying here in Florida so we did such and so I’m bringing back up and going back to the back door and it’s like cracked open and I mean from the street you can just smell something coming from this void of what was a house and lifetime engineer’s start this way Yeah, exactly. I was like this is weird man.
I don’t know if I’m doing the first thing I thought of was like okay might did this guy just call me because I’ve heard of some stories where people will call people before they do bad things Nick either himself or whatever. And like this was playing out to me that scenario because I opened up that I like kind of like push the door open a little bit and there’s an old man sitting in this chair toppled over like this. And I just see in Florida like that. I’m pretty sure everywhere that typically if you don’t have like AC or or coolers or anything, you put your You put a styrofoam cup paper in it another style foam cup, and then you’re tallboy in it to keep it nice and cool like an insulator. And there’s one of those sitting there tallboys a large beer for anyone, I don’t know. And it’s sitting there. And I’m like, the TV’s blaring, I’m yelling at top my lungs like trying to get ahold of this guy and he’s not answering so I start walking in and I’m like, waving my hand trying to figure out if like, something’s wrong, and all sudden he hops up like this, and just this big old smile was on his face, and he like stumbles over a little bit and is like, Hey, I’m like Hi, are you so and so um, and so anyway, that was the introduction to that we walk the house and it was to this day, the worst house I’ve ever been in in terms of like living conditions. I mean, there’s needles everywhere he used the whole house as his bathroom you just put newspaper everywhere and it was it was bad ended up taking about a year and a half to flip the property. But I’ll get into that. So anyway, here’s the here’s why it took so long to begin with.
Number one, he’s an elderly man, and he doesn’t have anywhere to go right he has no money he built this house back in the 60s himself. He’s a bricklayer and he built it all with brick and everything else there was a basement which isn’t normal in Florida and so we walked around it got all the numbers and everything and that night I had offered him you know, I think it was like 55 or 60 grand for the property he’s like I can’t do that or whatever I think he wanted like 84 or something like that. And so I was like well what do you plan on going and he’s like I have no idea how my brother I could go with them whatever I was like well you know figure that out. I can’t sign with you right now anyway cuz you’re hammered like there’s not gonna like no number one year old and I can’t take advantage of elderly there’s a lot of legal implications there number two you’re hammered I can’t like do anything with you I literally to get outside of the house I had to hold him to get him out to like have a conversation with him smelly inside we didn’t want to like stay inside the pantry of this place when you opened up the door there’s you know cans of food the bugs like if you lifted up a can came up a few inches and there was like a ring from above it was just so bad um and so anyway A few days later got on our contract you know had him meet me somewhere to verify he said we had a witness with me We got a signature on a contract and I was okay cool. Now we got to figure out what the next steps are here because I want to make sure that you have somewhere to go that’s a bit better more stable because you should not be living here especially in your condition. And so I did the stupidest thing that I will never ever do again and I bought a house in Crestview Florida for him before we close on the house that he could move into so I could buy the house and I didn’t do it in a way that wasn’t you know avoiding any risk I it was a it was a lot that had two houses on it that I bought for 40 grand one house we sold to him for 35 I believe and the other house I sold to somebody else for 40 grand so I actually made money from that deal. But the problem was is that you know it took another four months to close this other deal before I even recouped that difference. And two weeks before closing he was like I don’t think I want to do this anymore.
I’m like I don’t have a choice at this point like you need to move forward I got 35 grand still sitting in this house that I bought for you with no agreement in place or anything like that. Nevertheless, I made 15 grand from that actual house 10 grand up front on a wholesale to a friend of mine locally that I was like yo this is like beyond me you can take this I think they might have regretted that a little bit it turned out beautiful great portfolio property as far as like you know images of how good they are flipping but not a great experience. Yeah. And I made five grand on the backside. Yeah, so that was my first deal came from a direct mail piece.
Chris Bounds 09:07
worry though cuz now now in this what I tell folks, like if you get started out like and if it’s a hairy deal now whether it’s your wholesaling flipping, you’re doing like commissions, like representing clients, like if you can get through that. It’ll probably be a long time if ever before you top it, you’ll have other weird situations and challenging deals, but it’s gonna be a while before you actually top that so sounds good. Um, what are you doing now? And how can folks reach out to you?
Tyler Austin 09:42
Yeah, so now we do kind of a similar process except for we spend directly spend money on direct mail last except for our foreign markets being agent as well as an agent. underneath you actually in ESP somewhere I’m pretty sure Chris and so Basically what we do is we we have a full service kind of operation. We start with the cheapest marketing first reaching out to people and one off prospecting in our niche farm locations locally.
And then if we can’t reach anybody we send direct mail to those individuals in any return mail we really focus really heavily on so we have a sequential marketing thing and my real estate company side and then the most of my time is done at Rei Sif with all of our users in the education space and stuff like that teaching people that process and how to implement it in our product.
And other than that, I’ve just been trying to like relax and chill and spend more time have a baby that just came out two three months ago so I’ve been trying to you know, chill a little bit more and buy more properties, more rentals, invest in more things, diversify my portfolio and that’s pretty much it so other than that, people can reach me the best place is IE Tyler Austin original or we have a Facebook community RSF mastermind community just put that you heard from us and real estate hacking will accept you in there. Typically it’s only for users. And and that’s pretty much it, man.