From Tradesman to Real Estate Pro: Taylor Berg's Journey

In this episode of the Real Estate Game Changers show, we welcome Taylor Berg, a real estate entrepreneur originally from Michigan, now based in New York. Taylor shares his journey from being a union tradesman to becoming debt-free through the teachings of Dave Ramsey and diving headfirst into real estate during the onset of COVID-19. Taylor discusses the challenges he faced, such as lead generation and mindset hurdles, and how consistency and a strong work ethic helped him overcome these obstacles. 

He also explains his heavy reliance on cold calling, outlining the strategies and tools he uses, such as Mojo dialer and niche data lists. Taylor highlights his experiences working in an attorney state, where legal processes differ significantly from other states, and how he navigates these challenges. He shares unique stories from his career, including adopting a pit bull to secure a property deal, and provides valuable advice for aspiring real estate professionals. Taylor emphasizes the importance of being assertive and consistent, maintaining a strong mindset, and building an efficient and supportive team. Listeners interested in Taylor's strategies or looking to invest in Hudson Valley can reach out to him via Facebook or Instagram.

Chapters

• 0:32 Meet Taylor Berg
• 2:07 The Challenges and Grind of Building a Real Estate Business
• 4:28 Mastering Cold Calling: Strategies and Tools for Success
• 6:44 The Power of Niche Data and FOIA Requests in Real Estate
• 16:30 Building a Resilient Team and the Role of Personal Development
• 20:14 Navigating Real Estate Deals in an Attorney State
• 20:47 The Challenges and Strategies of Real Estate Deals
• 22:54 Leveraging Attorney States to Your Advantage
• 25:43 The Art of Negotiation and Closing Deals
• 31:06 Adapting Strategies in a Changing Marke
• 33:45 Building Relationships and Trust with Sellers
• 36:22 Key Advice for Real Estate Success
• 39:02 Connecting with the Real Estate Community

Transcript

Mike: 0:00

All right, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in Jacksonville, Florida, and each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate. All over the country. For anyone in Jacksonville, who's thinking about getting into real estate, maybe have some sales experience. We are hiring experienced salespeople for our team. So if that's crossed your mind, send me a DM on Instagram and let's talk. And this week on the show, we have Taylor Berg, Taylor. Welcome to the show.

Taylor: 0:29

What's up, Mike? Happy to be here.

Mike: 0:31

Awesome. For the people who don't know you. Could you share a little bit about how you got into real estate and how that's led you to where you are today?

Taylor: 0:39

Yep. Originally from Michigan, and then and I was a union tradesman. I ended up getting a job here In New York and the pay was quite a bit better. And I started doing the Dave Ramsey financial freedom, the payoff, the credit cards, auto loans, student loans, things like that. And so I've listened to his podcast on the way to work. It was about an hour drive each way. And so I ended up getting debt free and I kept listening to his podcast and But then it was requesting or suggesting other podcasts. And then it went to think like minority mindset to bigger pockets. And it basically just unraveled from there. I remember I was working with one guy and he told me that he was going to buy a mobile home park and it just broke my brain. I'm like, what? That's, you can't just do that. But he said it like it was no big deal. And. So between the two of those things through pot, through the podcast, I heard about wholesaling and I just was hypnotized by it. And so that was the beginning. That's how I found out about it. And that was 2020. That was right when COVID started. And it was, I went to the extreme actually, and I basically quit right away, not knowing anything about sales. marketing or real estate New fresh new to New York. I decided to move to New York at that point, too And I just dove in headfirst

Mike: 2:07

gotcha. And then I guess, now four years later what are some challenges that you faced along the way building your business?

Taylor: 2:14

So I would say the first two Two and a half years was just a constant grind just uphill battle A lot of it was working through mindset things A lot of it was acquiring all the mini skills that it takes, I think just to be able to handle the stress and the operation of everything. So lead generation has always been probably the most difficult thing on a consistent basis because it's always moving. There's always It's something, some wall that you have to bust through. That's not going to be easy. So the only thing that really I think got me through it was consistency. I just never ever let up. I just kept going and going. I don't know why. I think I was delusional about how easy I thought it would be. And so just the consistency and putting in the long hours because. I wasn't good enough at anything to be able to do it efficiently. So I just put in long hours. I called for the first year and a half, close to two years. I called six to 12 hours a day, coke on myself.

Mike: 3:15

Wow. Okay. And you said there were some like mindset challenges that you overcame along the way, like, how did you overcome those?

Taylor: 3:22

No diversity. It's just small town, small thinking. And I can't even move to New York and everything's a lot different. One of my, I ended up getting Brent Daniels TTP as my first mentor and he's really big about mindset, which is you have to do it really. And so I started getting into it. And at first I thought, Oh my gosh, this is such a big mountain to climb. Like I've never, I never really read books. I've never done anything for self development, but I had to put up, to deal with the stress and to achieve things at a high level. So I just dove into it and just like he suggested, not listen to music for a couple of years, just all podcasts and books and audio books. And that's what I did. It was limiting beliefs. It was, the tenacity and the grit to keep going, believing in yourself, the faith. And it's like a slow grind on, on personal development too. There's no quick fix, and from there, I did a lot of counseling and, excavated a bunch of issues that I grew up with that I never going to have just to. Yeah, just to be able to be the best version of myself and to be able to be successful.

Mike: 4:27

Yeah, gotcha. And then we were talking offline a little bit before, and I know a lot of people have moved away from telephone marketing and cold calling. I'm still a very big proponent of it and I know you are too. So you want to talk a little bit about how you use cold calling today in your operation?

Taylor: 4:43

Yes, I'd love to. So when my first mentor he a lot of the training was basically super beginners course it's almost like a big group of cheerleaders to keep you going because It's necessary. When you first start out, you'll get discouraged real quick. You don't know what's around the corner. You don't know what you're going to expect. It's way harder than you expect. So is that, and learning how to track basic KPIs and how to set up your dialer. And it was Mojo. So I set up with Mojo. It's a triple line dialer. Just how to use the DIDs or the phone numbers that you're going to call from and replace them, how to pull lists, skip trace lists and format the list and upload it. And so we started with Mojo and I wasn't making a lot of money the first couple of years. I wasn't really making much at all. So I was being really stingy with my list and I was trying to recycle the list and recycle the list and with a tripline dialer. If you want good contact rate, you really have to spend a decent amount of money, skip tracing and buying fresh data, recycling the data. I thought it would be a good idea that to try a different dialer that has 10 lines and that has some pros and cons, you'll fry your DIDs quicker. You'll chew through the list a lot faster and you can't squeeze all day. I don't think, I don't think you can really squeeze the juice out of the list as well. So we went to Zen call writing mode for a long time, probably nine months. And we also tried call tools briefly just to split test it. I didn't, I wasn't a huge fan of call tools at the time. And now we're back with Mojo and

Mike: 6:22

really?

Taylor: 6:22

yeah, we went back with Mojo once. A few months ago when things started getting real tough again and we just, it wasn't hitting, like we weren't getting our contact rates. And so we said, you know what, let's just put in all the high quality data and let's be more like a sniper than like a shotgun approach. And we've been doing really good. So

Mike: 6:44

say high quality data, like what's an example of some things that you're putting into Mojo?

Taylor: 6:48

I'll consider high quality or niche data. I'll even put absentee owners in there, maybe, maybe 10 year ownership or more, but that's like the least niche. It gets, we tighten up the filters from there. So mostly, so we have my virtual assistant, my executive assistant, Leslie. She's really good with this kind of thing. She's the whole backend beat generation. She's the one that gives my code call out the layups, that feed her good data. But so she, so we have every single niche lists. I believe that we can get around here. So that's fire damage, code violation, probate. And what do we got? We got, water cutoff. We have this whole list of them. What else do we have? Oh we have liens pre foreclosures. Default, judgment, divorce so we basically, we have all of them and the issue that we found with the really niche list is, it's super high quality, but the contact rate is really low, extremely low on these really ultra niche lists because if you get these niche lists, we get them from the city and the county, but if you buy them from a third party provider. It's usually not, it's usually outdated, and they don't go to the city level, they just get it at the county level and scrape the websites, where we're putting in FOIL requests, weekly, and staying on top of that.

Mike: 8:03

For people who don't know what a FOIA request is, you want to share what that is?

Taylor: 8:07

Yeah, it's a freedom of information, so we just have to fill out a piece of paper that says, that, so we're gonna be, we're gonna download this sheet of paper from the city or the county website, and we really specifically, requests what we want. So if it's fire damaged house we're going to say, I'm requesting a list, a complete list of all the fire damaged houses. From today's date back to six months ago. And I want that to include every single family, multi family house. And include phone numbers, email addresses and and physical address. Usually we don't get everything. And put it in an Excel file. We don't, we usually don't get all that. We usually don't get all that, but. What we get, we get and we'll take it Sometimes we have to get it notarized and then we send it in once in a while There's a speed but it's not it's nominal.

Mike: 8:57

Interesting. Okay. And you said you pulled that at the, Florida, a lot of stuff is done at the county level, but you said at the city and the county level. So is it different how the data is structured up in New York?

Taylor: 9:08

So I've only done it in New York But so for instance if so my main markets here are Ulster County Dutchess County and Orange County. If I want, if I want a code violation list for the city of Poughkeepsie, which is within Dutchess County, the county doesn't, record those code violations. That's at the city level. The county may have their own, but the city keeps track of their vacant properties. They keep track of their code violations. So you just got to learn through emailing and calling them both and who has which list and how to access it. And, talk to as many people. You get one nice lady on the phone and yeah. Get as much information out of her as possible. Every single email address you can get from everybody she works with, who may have this type list, who may have access to that list, and you just got to, you got to really do whatever you can to get as much information and because it's not easy. It's a, it's just like cold calling. You got to follow up. You got to be the squeaky wheel in a really friendly way.

Mike: 10:09

Yeah, and then you said that the contact rate can be fairly low on these lists. What have you tried to do to increase the contact rate?

Taylor: 10:17

Everything. Okay, that's the hard, that's the hardest part and I think that's why a lot of people, it doesn't work for a lot of people because it's, it's a challenge. So you know, the DIDs are the phone numbers that we're calling from. So this is when we call on somebody what shows up on their caller ID that's our DID. So the provider that gives us those DIDs. That matters a lot. So we got to try a few different vendors because it could have just came from some other cold calling company that just chewed up those phone numbers and spit them out and they're all spam. They're all really weak now. And then you gotta, we gotta figure out how many were, how often we're going to rotate them and how often we're going to replace them. So for us right now on Mojo, we don't have to, we were doing 50 every two weeks. Now I think we're at 15 every two weeks for Mojo and we get them, we're using Diopat right now for, to get our DIDs. So we do that and we figure out what works best and what keeps us from getting spam. We whitelist them and then contact rate, obviously you got to use a good skip tracing provider and so we split test so many different skip tracing companies. And then the ones that we don't contact, we'll take those out of the system. We'll skip tracing with the different companies and also where we're getting the data. So list source is pretty good. We've done batch, empower, prop stream. So we just test it all. They're all the same. I think, if I had to pick one, I would probably say list source, and. People always talk about the time of day to call. I believe it's any time that you can be consistent. We call nine to nine to five and it seems to work pretty good. At some point maybe it would be cool to get somebody to call in the weekends, in the afternoons, see how that works, but we really haven't done that yet. Let's see what else. And then obviously the contact rate really depends on the list that we're calling to because. We could get high contact rate, maybe 12, 15%, if we're calling owner occupied properties, nobody's calling them, nobody's going to sell their house, people who just bought their house a year ago, who live in the house, 500 million house, they're never going to sell to an investor at a deep discount. So that would, that's just a waste of time. So the broader the list. It seems like the contact rates a lot higher, the more niche, like I said, it's it's a lot lower. So we got to do like a combination and it's just, we're all, we're always testing, we're always, now this list didn't work, this one's not hitting, let's try this list, let's refresh this, let's try it. Let's, every two weeks get our new phone numbers. And

Mike: 12:51

what are you shooting for in terms of contacts per hour?

Taylor: 12:54

so that's pretty cool. About contacts, because that to me is really the only black and white. KPI that and closed deals or closed revenue, because a lead is very gray. It, so a lead could be a hot lead or it could be a really cold lead. It depends on how good you are at qualifying them. So a contact rate to me is, or a contact is, did you ask a homeowner if they want to sell their house? That's the contact for us. So we're looking at, 10%. Now, when I first started I think maybe we were getting a little bit more, but 7 to 8 percent contact rate, which is I think probably around like 10 contacts an hour. But it depends on how much talk time there is in there, too. But yeah, 6 to 8 percent contact rate is good for us. That's what we'll consider pretty good.

Mike: 13:48

So that's six to 8 percent of the people that are dialing and they do confirm that they actually own the property and that's a contact in your guy's world or

Taylor: 13:55

that's right. Yep. 100%. Yep.

Mike: 13:57

gotcha. You were saying making sure to whitelist the numbers. Can you elaborate on that?

Taylor: 14:02

Yeah, so Mojo does it right in their system, which is pretty cool. I know there's other websites where you can whitelist them, and that's just basically, verifying that we own The phone number and it's going to show our business name when we call. And so it, it will help it to keep it at a high quality score. So it's not like likely spam, even though all the different carriers. do whatever they want. So you register, you have to give your, like a website, I think a lot of times and your business name and verify that you're a real legitimate business and what your purpose is in business just so you can abide by all the rules. And that's and that really helps with contact rate for sure.

Mike: 14:45

Yeah, we're talking offline of this kind of joking, but I feel like it's got to be a little more brutal to cold call people in New York than the nice people down in Florida talk about that at all. How you

Taylor: 14:55

Yeah. Yeah. So now, So I don't cold call much really anymore. It's very rare that I do lots of followups. So I follow up on all the hot leads and if my pipeline's low and I don't have any appointments or anything, I'll hop on the dialer and try to fill up the pipeline sometimes. Yeah. But yeah, so I was new to New York anyway, and new to real estate. I didn't know what I was doing and thank God I really didn't care that much because I was so focused on just making this work that, and you hear it too, Oh you got to be tough and, you got to not really care and, let it roll off your back. And yeah, there's times for sure that. People go out of their way to be actually really mean to you and say mean things to you. And it's got, and it's for sure gotten to me a few times, more than a few times, a lot of times. And, but I just kept going. And then, I get good at my, you get put in so many reps that anything you get pretty good at. So you can deflect and still be pleasant and hang up the phone. There's no need to be rude, especially since I'm the one calling them. But yeah, I'm from Michigan. So everyone's super nice you wave to everybody, and now, I wave to my neighbor when he's mowing the grass and he wanted me, so So, so when you're cold calling somebody And they think that, and they're waiting on a phone call from their doctor and that's the only reason why they call, a lot of times that's how it happens. They're not happy about it. For my cold caller now, she's pretty cool. She's tough. And I told her too, listen, you, if you're having a bad day and you can't really put up with it, just hang up on them. You don't have to take the disrespect because people around here will. Eat you up

Mike: 16:30

so what does your team look like? Is it one call? Are you've got multiple, like, how is it structured?

Taylor: 16:34

Yes, I really love what we got going on right now because last year we scaled and we tried entering a couple new markets and we didn't get one really juicy deal out of it and That was Westchester County, but we also went to Queens and that was I didn't know I don't know the market It was really, it was tough. People in the city are even way more tough than they are here, because I'm 70 miles north of New York City. I didn't know the market, the values are so much higher, my phone caller didn't know what a deal was really, and, so it was really difficult. We scaled back and to just my original two girls, it's Karen. She's my cold caller slash lead manager. And she's really good. She, me and her have spent so many hours together and every week we have a KPI meeting. I'm usually on it a lot longer than I should be usually like two hours. We chat, like we're friends for a while and go over some personal stuff. And then. We get down to business and we put our heads together and we really strategize on everything. Like I would not be here if it wasn't for them. Like they're really good. So they're both from the Philippines. And. Cold caller, she cold calls pretty much all day, and we track all her KPIs, and she's talking, her talk time every day is like, around three hours, which is really good. So we got that way up there. Her English is great, she's done so many trainings, like Chris Voss, and Todd Tolbeck, and all this stuff, so she really, she knows how to read between the lines. She's not just her heart is at ease. Her heart is in it. So then she pre qualified as a lead manager, you pre qualify and, she's really good at pre qualifying and she she kicks them over to me when they're hot and I'll kick them back to her if they're not ready to go and she'll warm them up and decide what group or what bucket the lead goes into and when to follow up again, and we track all our notes right in the Mojo CRM, which we really like, we customize it. And then Leslie's my executive assistant. So she does basically all of the work that zaps my energy that I hate doing all the little meticulous things that I would stare in front of my screen all day and lose my energy for anything that would move the needle. And I just want to take a nap afterwards. But her main job, like I said earlier, is to really work our data and figure out how she can feed Karen the highest quality data that's going to get her the most highest contact rate and the hottest leads. And that's what she does most of the time. She pulls all the foils, she refreshes, skip traces, formats. She does, that's the hardest part. That's the hardest part of the business for sure. Yeah. And she's Really good job with that. And for me, I am the transaction coordinator, so I just connect all the ends, I push the sale forward and make sure I can get, I can drag it across the finish line. So attorneys, agents, if there's any agents involved, usually there's not. Sellers title companies. I'm just in there pushing everything really hard to get it across the finish line. And then obviously I do all the acquisitions. I really like face to face, belly to belly. I think that works best for me and I think that's why we've been able to get the big spreads that we do. And I've only done one big deal that wasn't face to face. So I'm really, I really love going on appointments. So I get them to sign the contract or to, negotiate the terms to, that they need to tell their attorney they have to be okay with, which can be difficult in an attorney's state. And then I do the disposition. So I sell, and sell the properties to the cash buyers or list it with a list on the MLS. Usually like a flat fee brokerless listing.

Mike: 20:14

Yeah, talk about like working in an attorney state, right? So like, how do you, that, that obviously creates its own set of challenges. It's a little different than most of the states in the U S you talk more about that.

Taylor: 20:26

Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to. So I don't know anything else. I randomly did one deal in Michigan and one deal in Massachusetts. Where I was visiting family and I ordered a box of a hundred bandit signs and I put them out while I was there. So those are the only two deals I did that weren't like technically attorney states. So I don't know any better. I don't know any different. So basically how it works is the seller's attorney has to draft the contract. So I can't just bring a contract to the kitchen table. Like like you guys might and get them to sign, and that would be nice, but I can't You know legally the seller's attorney has to draft the contract Because technically whoever drafts that contract is representing the seller. So so one big challenge for me when I first started especially was Getting over the mindset of everybody is like no 10 or 20 percent down payment I'm like I don't have that kind of money and it's risky and I don't even know how to read these contracts that are 17 Pages long plus a writer and then in addendums. I don't know what this stuff is. So it was super scary And I just asked a lot of questions and I was really humble. Like I, I got a whole, my attorney's paralegal. I, I'm Hey, listen, I know like I'm wasting your time here, but I'm really scared and I don't know what I'm doing. Can you explain this? And they usually took me under their wing and I learned a lot like that. But, so basically I have to negotiate a small down payment. Because I couldn't afford to put up a big down payment. Closing day. Whether it's going to be vacant or not, if I'm going to have access, if there's any contingencies and. And attorneys, man, they love to kill deals, they're there to protect their clients. So they're, so they say this guy's a cash buyer. He's buying it as is, why does he want an inspection contingency? And why does he only want to put a thousand dollars or a hundred dollars down deposit, it needs to be 20%. I ended up having to get good at telling them, Hey, listen, like these are the terms here that we agreed on and we do it for this reason. You're going to have to tell your attorney that's what you want to do because. Believe it or not the attorneys do what you tell them to do. It's not the other way around. So you gotta explain that. So then so then, yeah, so then we so once we agree on the terms and the attorneys go back and forth, maybe, oh, you said it was only a 10 day inspection and I wanted a 14 or, this has no violations, what you're buying it as is. So we go back and forth. And once, once we agree on the terms of the contract, then I'll sign the contract. I'll send it in the deposit. And once the seller's attorney gets that, then the seller will sign the contract and it will be fully executed. And I used to really think that, being in an attorney state was a disadvantage and it would be so easy to go to a place like Florida or Alabama or something or Michigan where I can just get them to sign on the kitchen table and that might be true, but there's also, but now I'm, now that I I can understand the contracts a little bit better and I just know what's going on, it can be used to my advantage in a way where. If somebody wants to back out of a contract in New York, that thing's binding. Like you can't just back out of a contract. Like I'm not going to strong arm somebody, to sell me their property if they change their mind, because that's not right. But if another wholesaler or investor comes in, And wants to, undercut me or cash wire wants to backdoor me, it's not going to happen in New York. It's just, it's, it's the contracts are really strong here. And I'm sure that in Florida and other states that it is too. But there's in 17 pages of a contract, usually you're, there's some language in there that where you're pretty protected. So I think that can, especially when you're doing bigger deals, like bigger multi families or mixed use properties where there's a lot of money on the line that kind of, I, I would almost rather it be with, attorneys and stuff, cause it's more solid and people are less likely to screw around too. So then then I'll assign the contract to a cash buyer or I'll double close on it to a cash buyer. So that would just mean, the contract process was the AB contract between the seller and me, and then either the assignment or the double close will be between me and the buyer. Or I'll take it down, I'll buy it myself and, the kind of flips I do are more like wholetails, which will be, I'll clean them out, maybe throw a little paint, maybe some carpet, just really, I'm not doing any gut rehabs. I'm doing grandma's house. Some in around here, the market's so hot that there's nothing under 300, 000, that's livable really. I'll price it low. I'll throw some lipstick on it. It's gotta be a good house with good bones without, that can get approved for a mortgage. That's why I'm not doing any gut job stuff, and I don't know much about construction actually at all. And so then I'll just I'll just use a broker list listing where I pay 200 bucks to list it on the MLS. And I get to choose how much the buying agent gets paid. Now, usually I'll put 2 percent for that. And I like that a lot because I'm the one who gets to negotiate with the buyer's real estate agent rather than relying on a different, a real estate agent that I have. So it seems to work out really good. And what's worked out really good too is putting it quite, really low so I get tons of people that are interested. Rather than putting it a little bit high where I only have a few people interested, then I have so many more people that I can work and I can stir up the frenzy and get them to, and I can get the price, really high.

Mike: 25:42

gotcha. So that conversation that like you're having with the seller about the attorneys and all that, is that kind of see in your initial meeting with them at the home, assuming they wanna move forward, you're preempting all that stuff? Or when does that all happen?

Taylor: 25:55

Yeah. So I, a lot of people, a lot of people will say how much will you give me? Or how do you give people an offer? And to me, the price is just one of the many terms that we have to agree on. Cause we can't close. Another thing is. It takes a couple weeks for the attorneys to get the contract straight, and things move a lot slower here. Our average deal takes four months, like three and a half months to close. It's a lot longer process. Title takes weeks to come back. So these are other reasons why I'm going to be advantageous, in New York because it gives us some elbow room to do what we have to do. If there's Bad tenants or whatever, we can, I'll, I'm sitting on a couple of contracts where it's I just closed one. I've been sitting on it for a year and a half. I finally closed. So once you're in contact, you're chilling. And but yeah, as far as the conversation with the sellers, yeah, if they're ready to move forward, really what I do, is I really just create a space for them by there's obviously some distress and some emotion. That was really good for them to let it out and to have somebody really listen to them and understand them. And it's just a really, I call it like a slow negotiation. Like it, I let it just take as long as it takes, they end up maybe talking about for a while, their interests and their hobbies, and they really start opening up and then we'll get into the issues and the problems that they're having. And they know that I'm not here to. Screw anybody over. I don't need this, this house, if it's a good fit, cool. But if not, it's, it's no big deal. So yeah, I just create that space, and for, because if I go in and I just start telling them what my price is and tell them the house is a piece of crap and it's only worth this and that, they're not going to listen because they haven't, there, there's no space for that yet. You create that space, I believe by letting them empty their cup by just talking and letting out all their issues. They feel really good. They start liking and trusting you. And then they'll, then that creates a space for me to then. Influence them or not influence it, persuade them into believing why the house is actually not worth full market value because their neighbor's house sold for 450, 000 that has an extra two bedrooms and a thousand square feet. And it's all fixed up, and so I can explain to them why my numbers would be like that. And I have to make a modest profit, and the construction is going to be this much. Okay. If it would make sense and it would, it's, you're going to either pay for it and, time and stress or money. Once they're in that space where, I know that they want to move forward, I will talk to them about, usually they want price first. And so I'll just plant seeds and Just dropped hints that like, the properties, my offer is going to be a little bit lower than maybe they expected. And then before I agree on anything, I tell them, this is, we're going to need this much time to close, you're going to have to tell your attorney that we need, 60 days to close and we're going to need access a couple of times. And I just need to make sure there's nothing crazy going on with the foundation The septic tank, if it's got a septic or the roof. So God forbid everything else, everything works out, then everything should work out fine. And we'll just do, since it's a cash deal, we'll just do a thousand dollar deposit to 10, 10 day inspection and we'll close in 60 days. So your attorney is going to wonder why. You're just gonna, are you okay with telling them that, this is what we agreed on? And then, so what I'll do is I'll just email them, the terms that we agreed on and I'll say, just email that to them and, there shouldn't be an issue. If there is just let them know that this is what we agreed on unless you're not comfortable with this, if you're not comfortable then, And we won't do it, but

Mike: 29:29

huh. Gotcha. And then do you ever run into like pushback from attorneys about having an assignable contract?

Taylor: 29:35

yeah, so, um, so typically I'll cut, I'll tell them, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll put that in the list and that's probably the number one that ended and the deposit amount too. They always want 20 percent down 10 or 20. But yeah. The assignable thing. And so typically I tell them, fine, if you don't want to sign it, just make it a one time assignment. And then they'll say, okay, it has to be an entity that you're the primary owner of. And so at that point I just have to double close it, which is cool. That's just the process to where you transfer the deed. The title company will transfer the deed of the house to my name without title insurance. Like a second before they close and I don't even have to use any of my money. But there is other fees associated with that with the title company and transfer tax and everything. So it costs more, but if I have to do it, it's a, it's there. So it's not a deal breaker as long as this, it's a big enough spread.

Mike: 30:31

Yeah, I guess transfer tax is significant in New York, isn't it?

Taylor: 30:36

Yeah, it's yeah, it's, yeah, it's on a high because things are pretty expensive here. A house is, easily three, 400 grand. And so it's. Five dollars for every hundred dollars. So whatever that percentage is. Is

Mike: 30:46

5 or so. It's 5%. What's that? It

Taylor: 30:49

that right? No, it's

Mike: 30:51

like it seems crazy.

Taylor: 30:52

yeah. No, it's not that much It's not that much. No, it's it's not that much. I think it's a tenth of that actually. I have to check

Mike: 30:59

oh, yeah. Yeah.

Taylor: 31:00

math

Mike: 31:00

fair enough. I was like, that seems brutal,

Taylor: 31:02

Yeah,

Mike: 31:02

Another realtor fee.

Taylor: 31:03

yeah, it's definitely not that I,

Mike: 31:05

yeah. What have you done? What have you shifted in your business? Besides just focusing on going back to just the 2 counties, right? As the markets change what else have you changed?

Taylor: 31:17

so for me, basically, I've learned that people don't really the pool of people who want houses that are on dirt roads and in farmland and vacant land around here is pretty small. You got septic tanks, you got wells. Things that, probably going to be really expensive to replace. So I focus more on like the city limits and there's a lot of old, distressed property, distressed multi families and single families in the city limits, they're obviously on city or town water and sewer. So that's a huge plus. That's what investors want. Inventory is super low. So I really focused within the city limits. That's one really big thing that is really hot because I used to go with just countywide. And it's waste of time, there's the being 70 miles north of New York City is not, it's not close to the city, it's a lot of woods around here. There's, it's not in the city. It's not the city where I live. so we got 4 or 5 little cities that are about 25, 30, 000 population each. And we hit them up and we tighten down on our filters and really, those, this niche list really have been doing it. But really what we've been doing, that's been working for us is we'll whittle down the list. That's what I call it is. So we'll take the list, we'll call it cold column a few times. And if they don't answer, then we'll take that list and we'll skip trace it with a different skip tracing call. We'll call them again, and we'll just track all the people, because the niche list is pretty small. Maybe altogether, 20, 000 maybe, for a good niche list. And, for my market, and then we find all the people that, that we can't get ahold of and we'll just keep re skip tracing them, re calling them, and then the ones that are hot, that ghosted us, or the ones who are stacked lists, so maybe they're pre for closure and it's vacant, or pre for closure, vacant, out of state absentee. When I don't have time, when I don't have a lot of things going on or I'm on an appointment in one of these four or five cities that I, my market, if I'm on an appointment or I'm doing something there, I'll, I have a list of the stack lists, it's my door knocking list, so I'll door knock, I'll leave something behind. And those little things just go in that little extra, things you don't really want to do and that take time and maybe it's a little bit uncomfortable, with not a lot of, I'm going to doorknock, 10 houses, 12 houses, and I'm going to get three people that answer and none of them really want to sell, but I'll hit one and it's worth it. So I just stay consistent with that kind of thing. So I'm not scaled up to the point where I'm so high level that I don't, I'm in the streets. I don't like being in the office. I have the girls are. Are in the office, setting everything up so I can be out in the streets all day on appointments and just grind in door knock at whatever I have to do.

Mike: 34:03

what's your criteria for them setting an appointment for you? Or I guess the one because the one's the lead manager.

Taylor: 34:08

Yeah. So she actually doesn't that I should probably maybe work on that. It would save me some time. She doesn't set appointments for me. She just in, in the CRM, she'll assign. A follow up call for me. And if it's really hot, if they're ready to go, then she'll message me on Slack and say, Hey, call them right now. They're hot. And so I'll call them. But yeah, she kicks them over to me. And that's one thing I never miss on my follow ups. Never ever. I never skip a day on that. Always get to clear out my follow ups. And I'll set the appointment Karen doesn't set the appointment and, basically, for me, I, by now I know, but really for the prequalification, even to if it's a good lead or if they're ready. So there's basically everyone, there's four obviously condition timeline, motivation, price, but we say there's a fifth one and that's vision. So do they have a vision of where they're going? If they live in the house, or when they're going to, Are you going to move out where you already have a place picked out, do you know where you're going to be moving to, what, what's this look like once you sell it, what's, what are you going to do with, do you have plans with the money, and if they don't have a vision, then, depending on the distress level, I probably won't go out there. I'll go out there if there's a lot of distress, but there's still a high price. Really, it only takes one, one pillar, but it's got to be a pretty strong pillar. So if the price is really good, but there's no other distress and their timeline, they don't think they want to sell it for another five years. And the condition is really good. It doesn't matter. It only takes one strong filler. So that's for me, that's all it takes. And I, by now I can read between the lines a little bit. You can hear it in their voice and you can tell if they're, if they're ready to go.

Mike: 35:45

Yeah,

Taylor: 35:45

yeah.

Mike: 35:46

I think that's a really good point. We do something similar with the owner occupied properties where they have to at least thought about where they're going to go next. They don't have to have it picked out, but they have to. It has to have been something that's crossed their mind.

Taylor: 35:58

Yeah. Yeah. That's super important. Because. A lot of the people that we deal with, they're in these situations that, they're in a bad situation because they've procrastinated a lot of times, unfortunately, and it's hard to get them to pull their head out of the sand, so sometimes they need to keep their head in the sand for a little bit of time until they're ready. You can't make them, you can't make a league hot, you just gotta, you gotta be there at the right time, I believe.

Mike: 36:20

Yeah, for sure. We're getting close to the end here, and there's always two questions. I like to ask towards the end of the show. And first is fun. It's what's the craziest or most uncomfortable situation you've ever experienced in a real estate deal.

Taylor: 36:34

Oh man, there's been a lot. This one was actually at the end of last year, so this one wasn't that long ago. It's in Yonkers, which they call, the sixth borough of New York City. Pretty, there's some bad parts, and this one wasn't in the best part. It was a hairy deal with the title and everything. But so basically, the son who was addicted to drugs was squatting in the house and he was the last issue that we had to get him out, but he wouldn't get out because he had a pit bull. And so that he never, it was sad because he never took the dog out to go to the bathroom. So the dog had been living there for a couple of years. And he'd just been going to the bathroom inside and so the only way to get the guy out and to get him some help to go to rehab and into a shelter, they wouldn't take the dog and he wouldn't get rid of the dog. So I had to I had to adopt the dog for a few months and it's a big huge pit bull that's never been trained and goes to the bathroom everywhere. And the first thing he did was he went into my office and peed on everything, all my paper, my printer, computer, everything. And so that was, and there was some more to it that some very uncomfortable situations I had to board up the house and he kept back and I taught him and he wasn't very happy about it. Yeah, that, that was it. It was at times it was scary and it was a really long deal, but it was to date it was the biggest deal I did. So it was worth it.

Mike: 38:03

It was worth it. The second question I always like to ask is if you could go back in time back to 2020 and give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for your first deal, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself?

Taylor: 38:15

You can't be so nice. You have to be friendly. It's friendly. It's not being polite. You have to be, you can't be so polite. That's the word being friendly. And, but you gotta be pushy. These people, they want somebody who knows what they're doing. They need the confidence in you. So they need to know that you know what you're doing. They need to know that you're going to get the deal done and that you're the right guy for the job. And I didn't have that back then. I didn't have the confidence. I didn't know what I was doing. So yeah, it would just be a little bit more assertive, be friendly. And. Be that squeaky wheel and, be assertive and just never ever stop. Don't let a deal die. Don't put any time between that deal and just keep going. Don't stop.

Mike: 38:59

Yeah, I like it. That's a good, that's a good piece of advice. If people want to reach out to you after the show, if they have questions or they just want to get in touch with you, or maybe they're looking for, to buy some properties in Hudson Valley, how can I go about reaching out to you?

Taylor: 39:12

Best ways. Facebook or Instagram, capital property buyer. There's no s on the end. It's just capital property buyer. And I'm also on there, Taylor BERG, Taylor Berg. So hit me up on either one of them. And I'll respond.

Mike: 39:26

Cool. Awesome. Thanks for being on the show, Taylor.

Taylor: 39:28

Man, my pleasure, man. I had a good time.