Making $60K Per Month with the Repeatable, Low-Risk Real Estate “Formula”

Henry:
Did you know that every real estate deal is a flip? Even if you’re a hardcore buy and hold investor, you’re going to buy a house, you’re going to renovate that property and eventually you’ll sell that property. So whether it takes you three months or 30 years, it’s still a flip. At least that’s the strategy today’s guest used for the last 12 years to build a portfolio that generates $60,000 in net income every month. Let’s hear how he did it. Hey everyone, I’m Henry Washington filling in today as host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast. Today’s guest on the show is Wellby Elli Wellby’s, an investor operating in the New York and Connecticut markets, and you may have heard him on a few shows around the BiggerPockets network, including episode 4 64 of this very show. Usually when we have investors back on the show, it’s because they’re doing something new and different, but I wanted to have will be back on the show because he’s still doing the same thing now that he was on the episode four years ago.
He’s buying properties on the market, he’s putting down 25%, he’s adding value and he’s selling them at a profit or renting them out for monthly cashflow. We’ll be still doing it now because it still works. Even for someone like him with more than $10 million in equity, it’s all about the basic fundamentals of good real estate investing. If he’s still focused on buying at the right price and correctly projecting his RV after 20 years in the game, you can too. So today Welby is going to tell us why he views every deal as a flip and why he likes putting money down and so much more. Let’s bring on Welby. Welby, welcome back to the show.

Welby:
It feels like it’s been forever, man. Thank you for having me back, man.

Henry:
Oh man. Good to have you back, man. So for the people who don’t know you, can you give us a little background, quick summary of your investing career?

Welby:
Yeah, so my name is Welby Elli. I started buying real estate in late 2003, early 2004. I live in New York and the first piece of property I bought was a four unit property. And what I talked to people about is about the major pitfalls that I’ve experienced in the business, my ups, my downs, the losses that I experienced, and ultimately how I overcame them to be where I’m at today.

Henry:
A lot of people have pivoted strategies or change what they’re doing over the past five years as the market shifted, but you seem to be doing exactly the same thing you were doing before.

Welby:
I’ve thrown some gasoline and fire on it exactly what I’ve been doing before. My story’s the same when I started out, going back real quick in 2003, it took me over 10, 11 years to figure this out.
So I got wiped out in 2008, 10 and 12. I got wiped out. And then what I realized by the time I got into the business around 2013, again, it took me about 18 months to be a millionaire. This is where I realized that the entire business of investing in real estate is a flip. And once I put that in my mind and understood that concept, my approach, I stuck with that. That’s what I’ve been doing. So regardless of what’s going on with the climate interest rates, high or low, slow market down market, it don’t matter to me. It doesn’t matter.

Henry:
I have a very similar business strategy. I’m doing the same things I was doing when I first got started in real estate because real estate is very simple. You have to buy property at a discount, you have to add value to that property and you have to monetize that property at its new higher value. And it doesn’t matter what interest rates are doing, it doesn’t matter what all the other expenses are doing all that just tells me that I need to buy it cheaper, right?

Welby:
Here’s the third part is Henry, most people will hear you just saying that and they don’t appreciate it enough what you just said. So people have this concept of buy low, sell high, but then there’s a threshold of buying low enough to be able to add the value that you just described to that property to ultimately sell that property or even refinance that property to keep that property long term for cashflow.

Henry:
So let’s elaborate a little bit. When you say every real estate deal is a flip, even if you’re a long-term buy and hold investor, every deal is a flip.

Welby:
I don’t care what you’re trying to do in this business. Everything about this business is a flip everything about it.

Henry:
Tell me what you mean by that.

Welby:
Alright, so I don’t care if you looking to wholesale, I don’t care if you’re looking to do subject two, I don’t care if you’re looking to flip like HGTV, I don’t care if you’re looking to do buying holds. I don’t care if you’re looking to buy foreclosures, who cares? Everything about this business is a flip. But what people need to understand is that there’s three major entry points of investing in real estate that the majority of people like to talk about. The first one is a wholesaler. What does a wholesaler do? A wholesaler gets a property under contract at the right price point to ultimately flip that property to somebody like me or my brother Henry. You agree or you disagree.

Henry:
That’s facts.

Welby:
Okay. Second is a flipper like HGTV. What does a flipper do? A flipper gets a property under contract at the right price point, renovates that property to put that property back on the market to ultimately flip that property to an end buyer. Typically retail. You agree or you disagree with me?

Henry:
Absolutely.

Welby:
Okay. Last but not least, is a buy and holder. What does a buy and holder do? A buy and holder gets a property under contract at the right price point, renovates that property, rents that property out to ultimately flip that current mortgage into a long-term mortgage for passive income. You agree or you disagree with me?

Henry:
Absolutely.

Welby:
The entire business of investing in real estate is a flip. Once I understood that concept, it simplified my approach of investing in real estate. So it didn’t matter if I was looking to build new build construction or if I was looking to wholesale a deal to somebody or if I was looking to keep that property for long term. There’s a fundamental approach that you must have regardless of the market that you in the style of investing that you want. And once I understood that concept, you could drop me in any market on this planet and I’m going to make me some money.

Henry:
Yeah, man. So essentially what you’re saying is you have to know how to buy properties the right way because at the end of the day, you got to be able to exit that property even if that exit is you refinancing the loan to yourself,

Welby:
Who

Henry:
Cares? It’s still selling the property, you’re selling your equity, you’re just selling it to yourself.

Welby:
Exactly. And one of the most important skillset that an investor needs to have is the ability to evaluate.

Henry:
Tell me more about that. How are you evaluating your deals?

Welby:
Well, for me, any property I’m looking at, it has to fall into one of two categories. But normally most of my properties fall within both. Any property I’m looking at, it must be a distressed and or underperforming property. I have zero interest in buying anybody’s turnkey property. I must have the ability to add value to the property. If I can’t add value to the property, it’s not a deal for me. So with that approach, let’s just talk about rentals. I’m looking at properties that are distressed, meaning that the property is beat up. It’s the same material, same kitchen, same bathroom that was built in the 1980s, or I’m looking for a property that the landlord is getting is tired. The rents are currently $800 a month. But in reality, if you would give this property some love, I could double the rent. So I must be able to add value to the property.
What most people don’t realize now is that most people are playing the waiting game while Henry and I are playing the forced appreciation game. So the same property that somebody’s going to buy hypothetically at the top of the market and they’re so excited to get to the closing table, you bought that property for $300,000, me and Henry is going to fine negotiate and purchase that property for maybe 120,000, $120,000. We’re going to then now maybe put in another 60,000 to fix it. We have $120,000 of immediate equity that was forced appreciated in the same timeframe of how you purchased your property. So now we accelerate in our wealth way more quicker than when you buying at the top of the market simply to be excited to buy and then wait for appreciation.

Henry:
So you look for distress or underperforming. So distress meaning the quality of the property may be under distress and underperforming, meaning it may not be producing the income it should or could be producing because a million reasons. Sometimes landlords just don’t like to raise rent. Sometimes a lot of landlords are just bad landlords

Welby:
Most of the time.

Henry:
Most of them are, and they don’t do the right things about making sure their properties stay up to date. And so typically when people talk about buying distress or underperforming, that typically means they’re buying everything off market, right? That’s what you do.

Welby:
Oh, absolutely not.

Henry:
You’re not buying off market.

Welby:
Listen, 85 to 90% of the deals that anyone ever sees me purchase, I purchase right off the MLS Zillow, redfin realtor.com.

Henry:
So 2025 right now when everybody thinks they can be a real estate investor, you still buy 80% of your deals on the market off the MLS and you distress and underperforming

Welby:
A hundred percent. Now that doesn’t mean because I don’t want anybody to think they’re going to box me into a corner and say, oh, he only buys in that manner. 80 to 90% of my deals come off the MLS. But of course, given the fact that we’re out there actively investing off, off-market deals will be presented to you eventually,

Henry:
Right? But you’re not spending a bunch of money on off-market acquisitions.

Welby:
I spend zero money on off-market acquisitions. I’m just active and I get opportunities. People contact me or people knows me. I have a reputation in the area and it gets presented to me.

Henry:
Alright, we have to take a quick break, but when we come back I’m going to ask Welby to give us some secrets on how he’s finding these great deals on the market. We’ll be right back. Alright, we’re back with Welby. Let’s jump into finding deals on the market. Alright, Welby, we want to make sure that we give some people some actionable information. You are claiming you’re buying the deals on the market. Most investors would love to just open up Zillow or realtor.com and find a property to buy and go and buy it, but they struggle to do that. So what are you looking for that maybe other people aren’t that helps you find some of these distressed or underperforming properties?

Welby:
Well, doing your recon work in the environment that you’re looking to invest in is vital because I’m sure Henry, if I were to ask you the areas that you are investing in, I bet you that you have your finger on the pulse and when a new property pops up on the MLS, you are aware of it.

Henry:
Absolutely.

Welby:
And then if something lingers on the market longer than usual, you are aware of it as well. So that’s what I do. So I invest heavily in multiple areas in the Connecticut market. I utilize notifications on these apps like the Zillows order redfins or realtors.com to let me know when new properties pop up. And then I have relationships with realtors as well. When new opportunities pop up, I usually get notified and say, Hey, did you see that property there? And then within a few minutes I’d be able to tell you how much I’d want to pay for that property and how fast I can close on that property.

Henry:
Okay, so a new property pops up on the MLS, it hits one of your email notification lists. You get an email. How long does it take you between when you get that email to submit your offer? I think a lot of people think, well, I got to go see the property, I got to evaluate it, I got to figure out what I want to pay for it. I got to submit my offer. So if you get a notification right now, how long until you make your offer,

Welby:
I would have an offer in within five minutes I’d have an offer.

Henry:
So you’re not seeing these properties before you offer,

Welby:
I don’t want to be extreme, but I would say almost a hundred percent of my properties that I put an offer in, I do it site unseen. What happens is, is that you build up enough of an experience to understand because you’ve done enough of these type of properties in the environment that you already can have a strong estimate of what the cost is going to be for you in to that you understand how to evaluate based off of what you project the cost of the rehab is going to be. You understand the maximum of how much you’re going to be able to buy that property for in relations to what it’s going to cost you to fix it, right? So given the fact that I already understand that I already have realtors in my Rolodex, I’ll contact them and say, Hey look, I need you to put an offer in. Here’s my proof of funds. This is how much I want to submit. You will miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take. I already understand that the odds are of me winning a bid on a property is extremely low. That’s just the nature of the business. So you want to cast out as many fishing lines as possible because eventually somebody’s going to bite or entertain your offer. So when I submit my offer, I give my proof of funds, I leave it to the wind and move on to the next opportunity.

Henry:
Okay, I love this. Well, because I think you’re dispelling a lot of myths for people. I feel like people think you can’t find deals on the MLS, but right now in 2025 you’re still doing it. And I think that people think that if you’re going to make offers on the MLS that you need to go see every property. I don’t do that either. We do make offers on MLS deals and we don’t see them. And I think what I want people to understand is the two things that you need to be able to make an offer on a property if it’s listed on the MLS, is you need to know what’s the A RV. And just because it’s listed at a price does not mean that price is the A RV. You need to do your own research and run your own comps or have your agent do their own research and run their own comps so that you know what the A RV is.
The benefit to somebody like Welby or myself is we’re experts in our market. I can see a property and see the address and pretty much ballpark the A RV because I’ve been investing for long enough. But until you get there, you can’t do that. So you need to be able to comp the property yourself. The second number you need to know to be able to make these offers pretty quickly is you need to know what it’s going to cost you to renovate that property. But in order to make the offers on the MLS, you don’t have to have that number dialed in down to the penny.

Welby:
No,

Henry:
You don’t. You just need to be able to ballpark it. We’re not saying buy properties without seeing them. We’re saying make the offer

Welby:
Thank you

Henry:
Without seeing it.

Welby:
You give me goosebumps, bro.

Henry:
Once you get that person to respond to your offer, maybe it’s a counter, maybe it’s an acceptance, then you go see the property and you dial in your numbers to the penny and then you can modify your offer based on what you see at the property. But if you spend your time seeing every property before you make an offer, it’ll limit the amount of offers that you make and it’ll take you forever to get a deal. But what Welby is doing is he is making an offer on everything that pops up that it fits his buy box. And here, lemme tell you another secret. You know what the least important number you need to know is what it’s listed for. I could care less what a property is listed for. What you want to sell your property for is between you and God ain’t got nothing to do with that. I can only offer what I’m willing to pay for it.

Welby:
You know how many people put themselves out of the game because they’re so focused on what the list price is versus understanding your price. Your price is most important to you so you know your price and forget about the list price. What’s also important is within your offering a contract, you want to put contingencies in the contract which will automatically protect you. So then when you do decide if they are entertaining the offer that you put in, when you do decide to go physically, go look at the property. If for whatever reason it blows the budget that you projected because of the contingencies you put in the contract, it allows you to pull out and not get penalized financially.

Henry:
Absolutely. And your agent can help you with those contingencies. An experienced agent, especially one that’s worked with investors before, will know exactly what contingencies need to be highlighted in that contract.

Welby:
That’s right.

Henry:
So I want to give everybody a quick formula that they can use when they’re evaluating these deals and making their offers. This will help you be able to make more offers on deals on the MLS or make offers in general. So what you need to know is what’s my max allowable offer? How much can I afford to pay for this property to hit the numbers that I want to hit? So MAO max allowable offer equals the after repair value or a RV minus your real estate commissions that you’re going to pay. So minus 6% for real estate commissions minus your closing costs. But it’s not just closing costs on the sale, it’s closing costs on the buy and the sell because you got to buy the property and you’ll pay closing costs and then you got to sell the property and pay closing costs. And I like to pad this number because right now buyers are requesting more from you.
When you sell a property, buyers are wanting you to pay their closing costs too. And so I’m padding that number a little bit. So MAO equals RV minus commissions, minus closing costs, minus holding costs. This is what does it cost you to borrow the money? If you’re not paying cash, you’re going to borrow the money. That means you’re going to pay interest. You need to estimate how much interest you’re going to pay. If you’re using a bank, it might be seven, eight, 9%. If you’re using hard money or private money, it might be 10, 11, 12, 13% minus your renovation costs. So that’s the estimate of how much it’s going to cost you to renovate that property and then subtract how much profit you want to make. Once you subtract how much profit you want to make, that’ll leave you with your max allowable offer. And so you can quickly do this math for every property that’s listed that you want to make an offer on, and then you can present that to your agent. Your agent can write that offer. And then when and if somebody responds to your offer either by countering it or accepting it, then you set the appointment, see the property, and you can adjust your numbers accordingly after you see that property.

Welby:
And the reason why what you just described is so important is because you want to avoid burning yourself out. And if you are going to attempt to make appointments and view every single property that you have interest in before even making an offer, you’re going to spend one weekend doing that and then you’re going to say, I’m not doing this anymore because you burnt yourself out. But what Henry just finished describing is pretty similar to what I do and I could make 10 offers in a day in my sleep and never be burnt out.

Henry:
You’re also not burning out your agent when you do it that way because your agent doesn’t have to meet you at every single property.

Welby:
That’s right.

Henry:
It’s a big pain in the butt. Your agent does need to write the offers, but you can have your agent set up a template for this format so that all they have to do is click a few buttons every time you want to submit an offer and not have to write it up fully every time. So I think this is great information for people. Welby. Alright, we have to pause for one more break, but on the other side, Welby gives us more insights to how he’s built his real estate portfolio. Alright, we’re back. Here’s the rest of the conversation with Welby a seller. Alright, Wellby. So you’re buying the majority of your deals on the market, you still do some off-market deals. What kind of volume are you doing, let’s say on a yearly basis?

Welby:
Well, at a peak I was doing 20 to 30 flips a year. To be honest, it’s slowed down considerably, but the returns are astronomical. So that’s why I say that it’s not about the quantity of the deals, it’s always going to be about the quality of the deals that you do.

Henry:
You’re saying you’re doing less deals, but the deals are more profitable. Does that mean you’re flipping more multifamilies or bigger properties?

Welby:
My business model is if it’s a single family property, I’m flipping it to sell. If it’s a duplex, I’m flipping it to sell. If it’s a three unit or more, I’m buying that property to keep long term.

Henry:
So what do you think about investors who are wanting to do this and not putting any money down? How has that been as a growth strategy? Is that something that you did typically?

Welby:
Well, I want to put money down.

Henry:
Okay, why?

Welby:
I like the idea of putting money down because the strategy that I approach with buying these properties, I’m usually able to recoup all my money back within on average less than a year. But if I have to be an extreme 18 months, 19 months, I’m able to recoup all my money back in the meantime. I’ve never stopped flipping, so I’m still generating money elsewhere. So the goal for me is to be able to acquire these properties, put as much money down as I possibly can, or even buying outright if need be, to then ultimately be able to generate enough cashflow that I’ll be able to recoup all of my actual money out of it so I can get to a point of what they call an infinite return on my money.

Henry:
One of the things I like about you as an investor is you do things the old fashioned real estate way, and I think a lot of people try to accelerate things. They try to do more deals than maybe they’re financially prepared to do because they’re not putting money down and then you get over leveraged or they’re trying to find deals without putting in the time or effort or work that it takes to find the deals. And then what really happens is the opposite. You end up having to go really slow or you end up putting yourself in a tough financial position. So I like that you take the approach of, look, I’m going to buy a property, I’m going to find value. I’m going to put my 2020 5% down, I’m going to add the value, I’m going to pull my 20 to 25% out and then I’m going to do the process again. And if you can only afford to do one deal a year that’s right, doing it that way, that’s okay.

Welby:
That’s

Henry:
Okay because you’re doing it in a safe manner that will allow you to over time, be able to do more and more, right? You don’t have to come out of the gate and do 20 deals in your first year. You can come out of the gate and do one or two and then as you build up, you can do three or five or 10 the next year.

Welby:
When I started out, I did exactly how you described after the 10 years of losses. I said, let me do this one deal. Let me do this one deal. Let me do it right. And I followed the steps, I did the one deal and I made $25,000 almost I cried like a baby. I was like, I know I could do it. I said, you know what? Let me do it again. And then the next deal, I made 45,000. Okay, well be it work. Let me do it again. And then before you know it, I’m building up my team, I’m building up my own system, my own strategy, and then next thing you know, I started doing four or five deals simultaneously
And then before I realized it, I flipped my way and I had over a million dollars of liquid cash. I’m a guy from Brooklyn, New York, Queens, New York. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Then I realized that okay, I’m making this money, but if I don’t find a way to put this money somewhere that’s going to generate passively, I’m about to hit a brick wall. So I started taking that money, started buying me rental properties, but I said I’m going to approach it differently. The conventional way that most people tell people to do is find the cheapest way of acquiring the real estate. That could mean doing FHA, that could mean doing va. That could mean doing a whole bunch of other different programs. And I found that it was dangerous for the majority of people. So I said, let me approach it differently.
Any property I buy, especially if we’re talking about long-term, I’m going to put down 20 to 25% on the acquisition. But here’s the big difference. Your 5%, three and a half percent you’re going to put down on that property is going to be equivalent to the 20 to 25% I’m going to be putting down. It’s the same amount of money, but we bought it differently. So now I don’t have no intent of refinancing out. I got me a long-term 30 year mortgage that is set Now all I got to do is make this thing beautiful. By the time I finish making it beautiful, I’ve already factored in how much I’m going to be able to generate. Then I could time how long it will take me to recoup back that 25% plus the rehab. And then don’t forget, Henry, we forced appreciated the value. So now we got the equitable increase. Your actual money that you put down is almost removed if not already removed, and now you got this property for the rest of your life if you choose to giving you a net positive income substantially. And I just did this over and over and over again.

Henry:
Yeah, man, it’s called real estate 1 0 1 man. I think there’s a lot of distractions out there. People are trying to get super creative. Speaking of trying to get super creative, a lot of people are trying to get creative and get fancy right now because interest rates are high, because taxes are high and insurance has gone up. As we’re in this cycle where the perception of interest rates are high. I say the perception because history would tell you that these interest rates are pretty normal. So how has that impacted what you do? Are you still finding deals that cash flow in 2025 regardless of the interest rate?

Welby:
A hundred percent. If you’d like, I could break down a deal for you that I bought

Henry:
You. Read my mind, that’s what I want to hear. Tell us the

Welby:
Numbers. So this particular property, I’ll give you an example of. I recently bought, I bought about eight months ago.
I bought me a four family property. I ironically, that four family property is down the street from a six family property that I own. That property actually was listed on the MLS. When I saw the property, I wanted to put an offer on the property. The owner listed the property for 190 something thousand if I remember correctly. And now I knew already that the property was worth at least $450,000. When I had my realtor reach out to the gentleman, the gentleman put in the description, he had no interest in hard money, no interest in FHA because he knew that it would not be fundable because it was a distressed property, the condition of it. He only wanted cash. That’s it. So it knocked out a lot of people in this industry. That’s already happening now with a lot of people. That’s why we want people to get themselves ready.
So when I met the person, I offered him 150, 1000 all cash, and I told him I can close in the next seven days. He jumped on it and he sold me the property. So now the A RV as Henry was describing a few moments ago was the number one important question that you must determine because that’s the starting point of an evaluation of a property. I already knew the property was worth 450,000 because I already owned multiple similar properties in the area. I was able to negotiate the purchase of that property for 151,000, and I was able to rehab that property for approximately $60,000. So that meant that I was going to be all in on this property for 211,000. The 151,000 came from a home equity line of credit, and the other 60,000 rehab came from one of my American Express cards. I renovated that property, it took me about a month and a half to two months to get that property fully renovated.
Upon completing the full renovation, I doubled back and I went to the bank for A-D-S-C-R loan. Now for those that don’t know what A-D-S-C-R loan is, that’s what they call a debt service coverage ratio. So now in a type of loan like that, they don’t care about your credit too much, they don’t care about your income, they care about the performance of the property. Now the majority of people in a circumstance like that would’ve refinanced to max out what they could pull out of that property. So they would’ve taken over $450,000. They would’ve taken 70 to 80%, which meant they would’ve pulled out around $350,000 on that property. With the interest rates today, the mortgage on the property of 350,000 in my area, because the taxes are pretty high, would’ve been about 32, 30 $300 a month. Now the property is a four family property. What I decided to do is I only wanted what it cost me buying it and fixing it.
So I got me a mortgage on the property for $206,000. So I pretty much got $206,000 out. I still was left with about $60,000 in the property from the American Express card. The mortgage on the property today, only eight months ago, is $2,006 per month. First apartment I get $1,550. Second apartment, I get $1,550. Third apartment, I get $1,900. Fourth apartment, I get $1,900. This property after expenses is all paid. I’m netting, netting, everybody. Netting well over $4,300 per month, almost $50,000 per year. Since the time I’ve owned the property, I was able to recoup the balance from the cashflow that I was able to pay the American Express card down to zero. So for a property I bought eight, nine months ago, I don’t have a penny of my own money in this property. I have a debt to the bank of 206,000 and a value of $450,000 on the property, which gives me an equitable increase of $250,000 that I can add to my wealth.

Henry:
That is fantastic numbers. That’s great Cashflow numbers. I think what’s important for people to hear about this is the reason that you’re able to, cashflow has nothing to do with the interest rates,

Welby:
Nothing to

Henry:
Do and has everything to do with finding. One of the two things that you mentioned is you found distress and underperforming. In one of the situations. You were able to meet the seller’s needs, the seller wanted a cash sale quick and you didn’t care what that seller was asking. If I recall, you said the seller wanted 190 5K and you paid 151,000, and a lot of people are scared to make their offer because you essentially offered him 40,000 to $50,000 less than what he was asking. And a lot of people see that. They go, oh, well he wants 1 95. I couldn’t pay more than one 50. So it’s not a deal. It’s not a deal. I can’t do anything. What a seller wants for a property has nothing to do with you or what you can pay, and we need to stop making decisions for other people because what most investors do, or what most people do is they say, ah, he wants hundred.
I can’t pay one 50. He’s not going to take my offer. Why did you make that decision for him? You have no idea if he’ll take that offer or not. You don’t know what the most important deciding factor is. The difference between going direct to seller and going on the MLS when you find a deal is your access to the seller. So when I go direct to seller, I can literally have a conversation with the seller and then I can figure out a way to meet their needs. But when you are talking on the MLS, you rarely get to speak to the seller. You’re typically dealing with an agent. And so the only way for you to truly find out what that motivation is is for you to make an offer and see if they jump at it. And so don’t make a decision for a seller that they won’t want your offer.
Try to piece together the best offer that you can put together for you may not be money is the best thing that you can offer. What well be said is I’ll offer you 1 51, but I’ll get you a seven day close. That sounds great. To a seller who wants cash and wants cash fast. I did something very similarly with a property that I bought here. Agent reached out to me and said, Hey, this property is going on the market. This guy wants 120,000 for this duplex. It’s livable. It will need some work, but there’s two tenants in it. And I knew I wanted it and I knew what’s the seller want. So what most people were going to do is they were going to shoot their shot and then they were going to have a 30 day close period and they were going to do an inspection.
They were going to do all this stuff that was going to take forever. I said, tell him I’ll give him 75,000 in seven days. He took my offer because I wasn’t going to inspect it. I knew I was buying some distress and I want to fix that distress. Anyway, so we paid 75,000, had that property closed in seven days, and it started making me money from day one. So I want to make sure people, when you’re making offers on the MLS, you’re probably going to have some competition, but think about what is it that you can offer other than money that might make your offer more attractive. I just said sometimes you can do a quick close. Maybe you don’t have that in your bag just yet, but what do you have? Could you offer earnest money? James Dayner does this. He will offer extremely high earnest money.
He would make offers on properties where he would give them 80% of the money as earnest money. Meaning that they are pretty much saying, here, we’re going to give you most of the money upfront. And then as long as everything checks out, then we’ll close on the property. That made it very attractive. Shows he’s serious, right? So maybe you can say, I’ll put 10, $20,000 down to earnest money. Maybe you can say, I’ll give you 10, $20,000 in non-refundable deposit. If you’re confident that you’ll be able to close and to protect yourself, what you can do is you can say, my earnest money or my non-refundable deposit does not go hard until we have approved inspection. And then that gives you the opportunity to inspect that property. And then if something’s crazy that you don’t like, then you can back out without losing your money. But it still makes your offer very attractive. It shows them you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is.

Welby:
That’s right. I love it. Love it, love it, love it.

Henry:
Awesome man. Welby, this was great information, man. I love talking to you about real estate because I love how you do real estate. You truly do real estate the right way. As you look to the future, man, as you continue to do real estate deals and grow your business, is there anything you haven’t done that you’re interested in doing? Or are you just going to stay the course?

Welby:
Honestly, I love what I’m doing. I love what I’m doing. I have people that try to give me other avenues to do. And you know what? There’s so much more to eat on the table that I’m eating. Let me get my fill and then we’ll see what will happen then. So right now I’m going to stay the course and do exactly what I’m doing and the method of what I’m doing because it’s working.

Henry:
Alright, man. Thank you Wellby for joining us on the show today. Thanks to everyone for listening. I am Henry Washington and we’ll be back with another episode of the BiggerPockets podcast in just a few days.