Speaker 1: All right, you can go in there lock at a house
for a great price. You solved their situation, so it's
a win win for both sides. Now there's code violations
that you can target. You with code violations, you can
target people that go through probate and are inheriting a house.
Those are all great, but there's three that have been
very successful for me and my business over the years.
And I teach our mentees. I teach ours two as
this all the time to just target these three and
you can build a very successful real estate business.
Speaker 2: You are listening to Carrie. Let'sa's Financial survival Network where
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Speaker 1: And welcome.
Speaker 3: You are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your host, Carrie. We're still in the first week
of December. I can't believe that this year is almost gone.
And met some amazing people, one of which you're going
to hear from now. And basically we have similar backgrounds.
We both started out in New Jersey and we both
fled to Florida and have no regrets about it. His
name is Siam Ibrahim, and Siam, it's great to have
you on the show. Man. I had like the best
pre call with you. Inspiring story. Here a family child
of immigrants, basically dedicated yourself to education, graduated from a
near Ivy League school, some would say better than an
Ivy League school, and here you are doing real estate.
The last person, my last guest on this show. He
is a petroleum engineer working for Shell Oil and he's
in real estate. So how did that in? My friend,
how did it happen?
Speaker 1: Yes, So I thank you for that amazing insure and
I really appreciate being on the show. You know, I've
been in real estate now for fifteen years, but I
didn't always do that, So, you know, grew up in
New York and Jersey as a kid raised by two
immigrant parents. My mother is from the Dominic Republic, my
father's from Ethiopia, and they both met in New York City,
right the melting pot of the world. And growing up
me and my two younger brothers, we were always forced
to put our heads in the books. When friends were
outside playing basketball are on their bike. My dad was like, no,
take out a book and read the book. And at
the time I hated him for it, all right. I
remember so many times crying, not wanting to do it.
But it paid off in the end because it got us.
It got me a full scholarship to college. I ended
up going to Georgiana University. I became a Jackie Robinson
Scholar as a result, which ended up leading to me
getting a job on Wall Street. I'm working for one
of the major you know, investment banks on the Street.
I did that for a bit, but I absolutely I hated.
I worked eighty twel hundred hours a week and I
just didn't like the vibe and in the lifestyle there.
I mean I had to be there five am, but
winning leave before eleven pm. Money through Saturday, and then
they asked me after a year to come in for
short ten hour workdays on Sundays. So those about that
time that I knew this is not how I wanted
to spend the next twenty thirty years of my life.
But it really came down to one moment where I
wanted to get married to my now wife and I
gave my boss a few heads up notice a few
months has up noticed that I was going to take
a couple of weeks off to get married, and he said,
no problem. When the time came, he said, hey, I
think I need you to reschedule your your wedding because
we have We're way too busy right now. It's busy season.
My god, yeah, brilliant exactly. So I literally sad a
step back and I said, no, I can't do that, right.
Speaker 3: He wanted to kill this guy or what I was like,
ge hen kill one on the verge of it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't do that. So I literally
quit Wall Street cold Turkey. Right. My parents, my dad particularly,
told me, you're crazy. You give up every opportunity to
becoming a millionaire. You had every two thing laid out
in front of you, and you left for a woman.
That's what my Chad helped me, right, And so you know,
we kind of lost touch about a year where he
almost wanted to sell me. But I think the result
was the right thing. I think it was the right
action at the time because fifteen years later, I've not
only you know, bidden real estate, but I've purchased over
one thousand and four in real estate on properties. I've
transacted over a quarter billion dollars in real estate and
built a rental portfolio of over six hundred doors in
various states, including a hotel and the Dominican Republic. So
you know, I think it was the right decision.
Speaker 3: Right And now your times and I bet you're not working,
you know, one hundred hours a week. And if you
do it's it's something you love and you're happy doing it, Zach.
Speaker 1: I'm doing it for myself if I do right. So
beautiful thing about real estate it gives you time freedom.
So what if I want to put the time in,
if I want to go hard, if I want to
go aggressive and grow and stretch and really you know,
grow business, I can do that. If I want to
live a nice lifestyle, I can do that as well,
and take the time and spend the time of all
the things I want to do. So real estate's been,
you know, very fortunate for me and my family.
Speaker 3: All right, So you think anyone can do this or
you just a genius.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely everyone can do it. Real estate is actually
very easy. A lot of people that are in real
estate that are you know, at the big the big
guys in the top. They try to make it sound
complex by throwing terms out like cap rate right, you know,
accelerated depreciation, and it's there to keep regular people scared
and confused about real estate. When you break it down,
it's very simple. You need to buy a property at
a good price, you rent it the property, and you
can sell it or rent it and make cash well,
and all the other details in between it are just
noise right that you can figure out later. Your main
focus as a new person wanting to get into real
estate should be on acquisitions. How do I find my first,
my second, my third grade property? The money everything thing
else will kind of fall into place because money follows
deals in real estate.
Speaker 3: So where are you doing your deals? Mostly in Florida
or Mitch Mart if you like. We do quite a
few deals in South Florida. We've done deals in Central Florida.
Speaker 1: We do a lot of deals in the Atlanta area,
and and the bulk of our business has been in
in throughout Ohio, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Lima, Toledo, Ohio has
been phenomenal. The Midwest is great because the the yields,
the rois are just phenomenal. Compared to other parts of
the country. Your entry point versus what you get on
rent or what you can return and we would sell
that property is just the gap is huge, which you
don't see in many of.
Speaker 3: The markets, right, So better than in Florida, which has
been a very hot market as of late. What do
you feel about the condos now in Florida? They're getting killed,
aren't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've done some condos, but I wouldn't recommend new
investors to go out and buy condos. There's a lot
of there's a lot of regulations that come with that.
They have the condo commandos right that think they have
all the power and tell you what to do. I
actually have a funny story if you're okay with me sharing,
bring it about like condo I did here in South Florida.
I bought a condo a couple of years back in
western Florida, and I bought it in October and I
went to go start the renovations, and the condo commando,
the condo president, said you can't do any renovations from
October to April because the snowbirds are here. We don't
want to disturb them. And I was like, so I said,
no problem, I'll send the guys home. I told them, hey,
come back tomorrow. We're doing this all with hand tools,
no power tools. We're going to keep the noise down.
It costs me a little bit more, but I got
the job done, sold and make their profit. But you know,
things like that, you have, you know reserve issues for
your end buyer financing, you have, you know, credit score requirements,
you have all it make it very tough to make
a deal work when it's a condo. And I'm not
saying you can't make money with it, but as a
new investor, like single family homes, they're easy, they're liquid,
there's a huge demand for it, and you limit your
your your restrictions on your resale.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So because all the problems with insurance and everything else.
So how do you find the properties? And I know
that's what all of you out there want to hear. Yeah, exactly.
So there's a lot of ways you can find properties.
The main thing is you want to find a situation
that will make a seller motivated to need to sell
and as and due to their motivation, due to their
level of distress. All right, you can go in there,
lock the house for a great price, you solve their situation,
so it's a win win for both sides. Now, there's
code violations that you can you can target people code violations,
you can.
Speaker 1: Target people that you know go through probate and are
inheriting a house. Those are all great, but there's three
that have been very successful for me and my business
over the years, and I teach our mentees. I teach
our students this all the time to just target these
three and you can build a very successful real estate business.
The first is one that nobody else is doing, and
it's something I think your listeners would do very well with.
Is you go to your local water department where you
pay the water bill for your house, right and you ask, hey,
do you have a list of delinquent water bills that
are published that you guys you share. If they do, great,
get that If they don't. You can also to the
recorder's office for your county and look up recent utility
lians filed. Same thing, okay, because if a utility bill
goes gets high, the county will file a lien to
make sure to get paid, and you resell it or
refinance the house, and you target that list people that
are three thousand, four thousand, or five thousand dollars behind
their water bill. Number one, it means that they're financially distressed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Number Now, if the water bill is four or five
thousand dollars, it probably means that the water's off at
the house, all right, And if the water's off, it's
more like.
Speaker 3: People means nobody's there, right exactly.
Speaker 1: Exactly, all right, this is open water if you go
fishing with because nobody targets this list of cellops. Get
this list, you'll skip trace this list. There's a lot
of software you can do.
Speaker 3: Beneverda expert in that man recovering attorney.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's not that hard. People think it is been
she very easy. This software been verified on bad skip
trace depending on if you're doing one or multiple that
you can get the owner's contact information and then you
reach out to them and make a deal. So de
linkud war bills the second best one. And I know
you did a deal that was from a tax deed
right past? Is you target that the lake went tax list?
All right? Sort Now you might be thinking, I'm gonna
go wait at that auction and I'm gonna bid I'm
gonna buy that property for cheap, and yes you can
get a deal, but guess what, there's a lot of
other people just like Harry, they're bidding on those properties.
Speaker 3: Ors I know tell me about have been out bid
dozens of times. Here map exactly.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of competition. You can get a
great deal, but there's a lot of competition there. I
like to get that the Linkelin tax list and market
to those people six weeks eight weeks before that auction date.
Try to get them on the phone, have an conversation,
strike a deal that will allow them to pay off
the taxes and put some money in their pocket so
they can move on to the next situation in life,
all right, with some money in the pocket and stress free,
right now? What's nice about this is an eighty conversation
and all those people waiting for the auction never get
she'd been on the house. You get to buy pass,
so should be beat them exactly?
Speaker 3: So, uh like, what's your what's your batting average for
these because I assume a lot of people are doing
similar things. I know for the tax deed list, the
tax deed foreclosure list, you know everybody's after it.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, there's quite a few be going after the
tax ded list, but for the dilemma water list, there's
no one going after that, right, I mean I did
this list and called one hundred people with a span
of thirty days, and we're able to host or deals
off of one hundred of the delinquent water lists in
the thirty days. Right, So if you want to buy one,
you could, you can, you can, you can bat very high, right,
you can do it. I have a great you know,
a great ratio of accepted offers to to offers made
if you on average, on average, if you're dealing on
a property on the MLS, my numbers have been I
make twenty five offers on average to get a deal
if it's on the MLS on the open market, when
I'm direct to owner, we had a tax d list.
The delinquent water list or retiring landloads is when we
love to target as well. That drops to below ten
offers on average to get a deal. Now I may
do marketing to two hundred owners to speak to ten
to fifteen owners to close a deal. So the numbers
work very well in your favorite all right.
Speaker 3: I like it. I like it a lot. I like
the water thing. I never thought of that one. But
that's pretty cool. Yeah, so all right, and then you
get it. Obviously it's going to be a fixer upper,
right more times than not, but not always. Sometimes you'll
get a great deal, but usually yes, you've got to
do some renovations to get it to the full retail better. Right,
But are you buying its sight unseen?
Speaker 1: Mostly no, I always look at these properties. That's the beauty.
That's the beauty of doing it before the auction. If
you buy the auction, got to buy its sight unseen.
You can't get inside, right. But if you do a
deal before the auction, either you or someone that you
sent can actually walk the property, get a good repair
estimate on it all right, and be able to know
where you where you need to be to make the
deal work. So if you if you do it in
a city or state that you're not in, what I
would recommend is you employing realtors to be on your
team and say, hey, miss hey, miss realtor, I negos
in this deal right with Kerrie Lutz okay in in
New Jersey? Okay, uh? And would you be able to
walk the property, take a video and give me a
list of repairs you think are needed to get so
you can sell this property and get top dollar for it.
You'll find that most newer realtors that are hungry for
business are willing to get this up work hoping to
get the business. And you know, and you'll you'll still
be alt to lais these properties and get a good
idea of it you need. I love it, so yeah.
Speaker 3: I for a while it was consulting to a guy
who was teaching a course and foreclosures in Florida online
foreclosures back in the earlier part of the decade, before
anyone knew you could just go on and we would
go to Lee County and look at these and the
you know, like they always left the door open somehow, right,
We always managed to get in there somehow and take
obviously nobody. They were empty structures. We weren't going into
people's homes. Well that's pretty cool. Well, I know that
if you're listening here, you're going to want to get
in touch with Sam and you're going to want to
find out how you can do this. So where do
we find you?
Speaker 1: Sam? Absolutely so. Look, I'm on ig so on Instagram.
It's I am dot period sim sa ym all right,
that's my ig name saying for TikTok, and I also
have a YouTube page that we recently started, so we're
still growing it. All right, it's Professor Siam Ibrahim. But
what I want to do for all of your listeners
is I'm to give you got the phone number. I'm
gonna give all your listeners a free class right on
funding the different ways you can strategically and creatively fund
your first real estate transaction because you don't need a
lot of money to do real estate, because there's a
lot out there for real estate. So all your listeners
all they need to do is text hero h g
R to six eight nine two one five seven six
sixty four and you're gonna get to get access to
our free course on funding, our millionaire funding course, so
you'll understand how you can fund your first, second, third,
and your tenth real estate deal without avingues all your
money to do it.
Speaker 3: All right, sounds great, It's in the show notes, and
take a look. While you're on the site Financial Survival
Network dot com, sign up for our free newsletter, like
over sixty thousand other FSN community members have, and Sion
will definitely have you back on again. There's a question
for Siam myself. Shoot me an email, kl at care
dot com. Appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's
Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For
the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival
Network now more than ever,