PODCAST

Short Sale Tips

Mitch Stephen|By December 14, 2016

Episode 34:

Dwan Bent-Twyford, America’s Most Sought-After Real Estate Investor, started as a broke, single mom who had been fired from Denny’s. She now heads up “The Investor’s Edge University” – A company that specializes in training new and seasoned investors in a wide range of real estate investing techniques such as mastering short sales through live workshops, weekly webinars, a member site, and seminars.

Having Flipped over 2,000 deals herself she is more than qualified to share her vast knowledge of real estate investing with America. Here, she shares some of her greatest short sale tips and real estate investing techniques.

Dwan is affectionately known as the “Queen of Short Sales”® and is considered to be the Nation’s #1 Expert on Short Sales & Foreclosures. She has written two best sellers, “Short Sale Pre-Foreclosure Investing” & “How to Sell a House When It’s Worth Less Than the Mortgage”.

She is highly sought after and has been featured on Fox and Friends, MSNBC, Naomi’s Good Morning, Colorado and Company, and many other TV, radio, and print medias.

In addition to being the Nation’s #1 real estate investing expert, she is a Christian, mother, wife, financial counselor for her church, and a corporate sponsor of Orrin Hudson’s “Be Someone” nonprofit organization – an after-school program designed to keep kids off the streets.

Her goal never changes – to make a difference in the lives of others! God Bless…

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

Dwan’s background and how she get into real estate
Dwan’s first deal
How she got into wholesaling
Why you shouldn’t tell people how much money you’re making
Why Dwan decided to teach others what she’s learned
How Dwan met and worked with Steve Forbes
Dwan’s best short sale tips and tricks
Why owner financing is the strategy Dwan uses now
Why using the owner financing system isn’t taking advantage of people — it’s giving them an opportunity
Why you need to recognize people that don’t take responsibility
Why you can’t afford not to have a mentor
Why — if you’re going to make a million dollars in a year — you need to blow past that threshold, not sneak over it

Resources:

Transcript:

Mitch: This is Mitch and welcome to the Real Estate Investor Summit Podcast. I am your wonderful and all-knowing-host. You can see all our podcast at the Real Estate Investor Summit Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher and a couple of other places, but– Today we have a wonderful and very adept real estate investor guest and am really excited to bring her to you. Right now, we’ll gonna pay homage to our sponsors, we’ll give you a break here and we’ll be right back after these messages from people who supported the show. Thank you to my wonderful sponsors. Hey, I wanna introduce to you Dwan Bent- Twyford, she is an incredible investor long history. She has written 3 best sellers and it’s been featured on Fox, Trends, MSNBC and shows mainly judge show. She’s all over print and media, everywhere. She has a book out currently, on top on New York’s Best Seller written by Steve Forbes, of all people, called “Successonomics” and this report shows Dwan help him write this book, because he considered her as one of the nation’s top real estate investing experts, that’s quite a compliment, I must say.

Closed over 2,000 real estate deals with flipping and rehabbing, she’s a co-founder of Investor’s Edge University, and something that specializes in teaching real estate investors how to become millionaires and live their dreams. She’s in an industry dominated by men, yet she is a very active and on top winner woman. Dwan, how are you doing today? How are you doing today, so nice to have you here.

Dwan: Thank you. Am doing great, Mitch and thanks for having me on. Am very excited.

Mitch: Well, it is hard to know where to start with you. You have done so much stuff. I guess, the first question is, tell us your backstory. Just a little bit, I don’t wanna go way too far, got a lot of stuff I wanna ask you. But, tell us a little bit of your back story, how you got started?

Dwan: Well, that story. Well, that story is actually pretty good. In my 20’s, yeah– I worked at restaurants, I wait tables. I worked at nightclubs, it was 80’s, so– I don’t know.

Mitch: You have big hair?

Dwan: Am sorry?

Mitch: Do you have big hair in 80?

Dwan: Oh, gosh. Yes. I have to tell you, I got my pictures and I am like, “I like the big hair. I wish it would come back in. [LAUGHTER] I had blonde, big giant, giant–giant, giant hair.

Mitch: [LAUGHTER]

Dwan: Everywhere I went, I love the good ‘ol picture. And yeah, I was doing in 80’s– I guess, I didn’t take life too serious. You know, I wasn’t thinking so much about life– what I’ll do later. And you know, it was the 80’s, I found a guy, got married. I had a baby, and my daughter was just 8 months old, when her dad and I split up. So, now am 30 years old, and I have an 8 months old child. And I have no husband, and I have no child support, anything. So, I was like, I kind of thrown out to the wolf. And so, really my whole career springs from a single decision, and I just decided, I don’t wanna raise a child in daycare. I already have friends that have kids and they dropped their kids off at daycare in the morning and take them off– take them off at night. [INAUDIBLE] you just give them a bath, and put them to bed, and somebody else’s raising your child. So, I thought, “Okay, I’m not gonna put her into daycare. What I’ll do is to work from home, make money so I can raise my daughter”.

And that was my real estate investing quest again. I have no idea what I was gonna do. I just know I had to be able to work from home. And luck [INAUDIBLE–we had it], I met a couple of guys that were rehabbing. Yeah, I remember, this was like in 80’s. Mauve is a hot color, ’cause a lot of [INAUDIBLE] talking about investing. I don’t know of it, gurus, I don’t know anything of this stuff. So, I think it, they taught me how to pick houses. And so, “My gosh, I’d like to decorate”. I thought that what I’ll do, I mean how hard can it be? [LAUGHTER].

Mitch: [LAUGHTER]

Dwan: That was my mindset, when I moved into my first rehab. So, I went going, I don’t have to do computer stuff like everyone has today. I went down to the courthouse, in [INAUDIBLE] Florida. And I hand drawn all the foreclosures. Remember those old mapping books?

Mitch: Yeah. Yup.

Dwan: I can still remember those, they’re looking at me like, “What”? I have used all those old stupid mapping books, and map all those houses. And I went door knocking, baby on hip. It took me a few weeks to kind of get into the groove what I was doing. I don’t have any idea what I was doing and I found this woman, she agreed to work with me. And she was out of her house, I moved into it. I rehabbed it. Then, when we sold it, you know, I split profit with her. And I made $22,000 on my first house.

Mitch: Wow.

Dwan: So, I was just like, “Oh, my gosh. $22,000. I am rich. I am gonna do this forever”. And that was so much money.

Mitch: [LAUGHTER]

Dwan: And it was, Mitch. That was so much money. And–

Mitch: Yeah. On your first deal. A lot. That was a lot of people on their first deal.

Dwan: That was so much money to me. ‘Cause you know when I was [INAUDIBLE], I probably was out of job. One of my humbling waitressing experience is, I got fired from Jeannie’s. So, I knew. I thought I said, “You know, these people. This scene– these people that work at Jeannie’s. I worked on third shift, 11 at night until 6 in the morning. Just know why I wanted. And you know, 3 o’clock in the morning, I got fired. Like, how bad you have to get fired from Jeannie’s. It was in the middle of the night, you know.

Mitch: [LAUGHTER] So, you made $22,000. I don’t know if it was a great inspiration to you. Did it get right after that, like the next deal? Did it get harder or did it get easier? Or It just stayed the same? Because, a lot of people when they make a lot of money on their first deal. Thinking, it will be just like way forever and they go up and they made stupid decisions.

Dwan: No. I actually was still on fire at that point. You know, I worked– I just worked and helped myself, and after I had done apartment paint. You know, the basic decorating type of thing, I realized that I actually did not have rehab skills whatsoever. And I started going to Home Depot, and I would take those Home Depot classes. And I would go, and I remember taking a Saturday class, and I started to lay tile. So, I lay around tile, I told the guy here’s how I big my kitchen is. He gave me everything I needed, the tiles, the graphs, the places and all those stuff, the sponges– everything. After I go home, I decided to tile my kitchen. Then my first crack at it. So, I should have tiled the bathroom, or something smaller, I start with kitchen. [LAUGHTER]. I titled this whole kitchen, and said “Hey, it really looks good”. I did a good job, you know. Then, I tiled the bathrooms, and I tiled the bathroom walls, and I tiled behind the counter space in the kitchen. And I tiled everything that I could. [LAUGHTER] I like to do this.

So, I learned all that. So, you know the thing is, for me, I was going through a divorce and I was you know, kind of how I went through that man-hating-phase. I was on a man-hating-phase, and I was working on houses, and doing physical work. And working with tools and ripped all the walls out, and stuff. It was actually extremely a good therapy for me.

Mitch: Yeah. Instead of paying the psychiatrist, you just did your own rehab.

Dwan: I thought [INAUDIBLE] my girlfriend, if you ever gone through a divorce and ask a break up and you want to get through it, just rehab one house, you’ll feel so much better. You won’t need therapy. [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: You know, I had my therapy in the form of a book. I sat down and start cataloging my life. That’s how I did my therapy when things weren’t doing good. I didn’t like what I was doing at that time, but that’s what I did.

Dwan: That’s all right, no kidding. So, I actually lived– I lived in rehab. I do my first 4 rehabs, and no, all of them. The second one, I made $50,000 on. And I was like, “Oh my god”. You know, I thought I hit the golden jack pot or something. And after– I don’t know, after about 5 years, I was–at that point now, “Hey, rehabbing is really a lot of work”. If there’s another way to make money, not to have physically work so hard, so, that’s when I started wholesaling. Then, I started wholesaling but I was using the same [INAUDIBLE], I was door knocking, flipping houses to rehabber where I had met at this point, and in my very first year of wholesaling, I knocked out 75 houses.

Mitch: Wow. Wow.

Dwan: So, I was a monster. And I didn’t even know it. That’s the funny thing. I didn’t even know, because I didn’t know any rehabbers. I remember reading– because you know, we are looking back like, right now on early 90’s, people are still finding jobs and things through the classified sections of the newspaper. So, I’ve seen an Ad in the paper that says, “A real estate investing group down in South Florida. And I was like,”Hey, maybe there are other people they are like me. I can go out and check out this meeting”. When I get there, the first one, there’s like 80 people there. And they’re almost all men. It was me and another woman there, all men. So, now am completely intimidated, because–I’ve never been in a group, in a room full of investors, and they’re asking me, you know, they are telling me, “Oh, yeah, you know. I did 10 houses last year”. And this guy says,”Yeah. I did 20. I averaged 20 houses a year”. And they are telling me all their business and I am thinking, “Holy cow, am a rock star. I didn’t even know it. I am doing 75 deals a year. These guys got nothing on me”. [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: Wow. This is quite a revelation. How old are you at this point?

Dwan: Well, probably around 30– let me see, I started when I was 30, so by at this time, at the re-group–maybe I’m 34.

Mitch: So, let me ask you. When you wholesale, which is a whole different game. You wholesale 75 houses, back in– say in early 90’s about, somewhere around mid-early 90’s. How much did you make that year, you think? The reason why am bringing this one up is, not to get your personal business but, one is, am not afraid you because that’s so far back in the past, but I wanted to tell people you know, I just wanted to tell people, this is how much money you can make out there if you go there.

Dwan: Well, I only rehabbed just those 4-5 houses. And I think, I made a deal a total of 10 rehabs altogether. So, I still rehabbed a couple of wholesale, but the first year I decided I cracked out wholesaling. I decided I was gonna make $10,000 a deal, ’cause it seem like a paramount, because you know, my rehabs I have been extremely lucky, making $30,000-$40,000 a deal on rehab, and you don’t always make that nowadays, but, I don’t know, I think I hit the right– a lighting hit at the right moment for me. And I was having my $10,000 on a deal, so I had 25 deals. I had so much money. I was like, “I didn’t know what to do with all this money”. I didn’t much money I was making much money, I didn’t told my family. Because, my family is all from Ohio, they’re all factory workers, factory minded. Everybody has regular jobs. I was the first person in my entire family. All my cousins, all their kids, and uncles. I was the first person that branched out and decided I’m not gonna work in the factory, am gonna work for myself. I was the first one to go get[INAUDIBLE] that became a millionaire in my whole family.

Mitch: Well, let’s talk about that for a second, ’cause it’s very important point. When you made a lot of money, and the people around you, your family members don’t. It is really a smart move to keep your cards full to yourself. I don’t know how you got so smart, so young– and.

Dwan: You know, I didn’t tell them honestly. And this is sad, but my parents, aunts and uncles like “You need to get a real job. You need to get married. You need to get a man. You need to work at the factory. This real estate thing is not gonna work out. It is just a bunch of get-rich-quick stop”. And I don’t really know where they get this information from. The only guy I see on TV is [INAUDIBLE] and I gotten this program at one point, rather than I thought, “Well, this is not get-rich-quick, am working my ass of”. [LAUGHTER]. Quite good. I didn’t tell them because I thought to myself, I got [INAUDIBLE], and what if I can’t do it again. If I can’t do it again then they’re all gonna say, “Oh, I told you so”.

So, I really kept this to myself, only out of the fear, hearing “I told you so”, when I couldn’t do it again. The next year or the next year or the next year. Probably by the third or fourth year, I was like. Screw everybody. Am not gonna tell how much money am making. They need to get out of their factory jobs. So, then I start telling all my cousins, and offering them income, “Hey, listen I’m teaching a little workshop in South Florida, come to my workshop. Learn how to do this”. At that point, I had written some books and tapes, I said, “Take these books and tapes and learn from them”. Am teaching people all over the place how to make money, ’cause I can’t believe how much am making. So, if I can make it. Everybody can make it. And I just immediately started writing, speaking, and training and teaching and all the people in my family. One cousin–well, a bunch of them came. One cousin saved with it and she has now several rentals and she messaged me, she doesn’t have to work anymore. And she’s the only one, and she was the one that I would least have expected to do it. [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: So, let’s talk about that. ‘Cause I went through the same phase, where I was trying to teach my brother and my friends and my cousins the same thing. And am like– they were all laughing at me.

Dwan: Yes.

Mitch: I get them in a room. I get the whiteboard out. I was telling them how it works, you know, all they wanna do is go, go to bar and drink, “Hurry and get this over with, we’ll go and have a beer”. You know what– I realized right off the bat that they weren’t paying attention to me, they weren’t taking me seriously. This is just one particular meeting. And so, I just breezed through the last half of it. Just like took all the shortcuts to get to the end of this as far as I could. They say, “Okay, let’s go”. And then I left. And then, you know I thought, “Well, I tried. You know”.

And then, about 7 months later. My cousin called me and he says,”Hey, I need to apologize to you”. And then I said, “Why is that”? He says, “Cause you brought me down there to show me something real important, in fact life changing and I blew you off”. And he said, “I had some major things”. He got–they got pregnant late in life, and things were getting kind of tough, and there was another baby on the way, and he said, “I think am ready to hear that, that proposal again. Can I come back down there, just me and show it to me, and I’ll pay attention”. And he came down. And he got it. And he is the only person that ever really did anything with it. He’s a couple of hundred houses now– You know, in a town of only like 250,000 people. So, he does very well. But– he doesn’t–it’s funny how most of it just right in where you are the other most of the people you talked to, right?

Dwan: Yeah. And you know what’s always funny, after– it got through my heart in the beginning, to teach other people what I was doing. Like right from the beginning, because I was that broke single mom that lost all my stuff, nobody knocked on my door, nobody helped me, so when I heard this real estate investing thing, “Oh, only I can do that”. So, as I am working on my first house and am oozing on this other stuff, and then I said, “Hey, someone to help me I got this help from Barbara, I would have been that person.

And so, I think, I just felt like I really had a heart for, especially for single moms. Most of the people that I would go to, as that time, I would knock on the door, and almost–always a woman would answer, she’d be going through a divorce, she and her husband qualified for the house together, and they couldn’t afford it with just one more mortgage payment. She wasn’t getting child support or whatever. Am walking on these people, and just seem like for a couple of years, just like– almost all that I found, were all these women, going through the same I had gone through. And so, I thought, you know I got fired from Denny’s and you know, had no job skills or whatsoever. If I can make money on this, certainly, other people can make money on it, too. Sure, there’s a lot of people that, you know, are smarter than me. And so, I really just start right kind off the bat, teaching and wrote a couple of books and I open that REIA in South Florida. And I just run my own REIA, then I can teach you to come to my real estate investor group. And I actually did that for a couple of years, I had my own REIA, doing my own business. And then, I don’t know, a work on the spread, you know, met people from other real estate and that thing grow. And believe it or not, do you know whose Phyllis Rockower is in California?

Mitch: I don’t. Tell me.

Dwan: Well, Phyllis Rockower, she probably had the first REIA in the country. She has run the LA REIA, literally like 25 years. And Phyllis Rockower looked me out, at this point now, we have the internet. She has seen me online, she called me and say,”Hey, I see you have a REIA group in Florida. I run a REIA group in California. But, I got some houses in Florida, and am looking to sell. I got rentals, I wanna get rid of. Can you help me get rid of them, and you know, we’ll split the money or something”. So, Phyllis called me, I get look at all the rest of them,”Damn, she tell me, geez this girl”. I called back and said ” Phyllis, you sounded too [INAUDIBLE] but I take all five of this. Just five”. So, I bought all 5, I close like a week later and you know, Phyllis, she’s 25 years older than me. So, she’s like, “How long have you been doing this”? And I was like, “I don’t know it is like my second or third year, I don’t seem [INAUDIBLE] still. But, got a REIA and pieces and workshop and selling stuff and write programs at night, I don’t even know what i’m doing. And she’s at–with her son, and you may know him, he is Bill Bronchick.

Dwan: From legal whiz. Bill Bronchick is her son. So, she said, “If my son is doing this training, it is a three-day workshop in Colorado. Am calling him telling him he’s got to book you, you are the smartest one that I’ve ever met”. So, Bill Bronchick, booked me and that is where I met Bill, my husband.

Mitch: Oh. Okay.

Dwan: I have to be careful right there. So, Phyllis called me to sell rentals, to have me help her, I buy them. She calls her son in Denver, Bill Bronchick he is doing a three-day workshop. He has come to see which is one of my first time speaking in a multi speaker event. I was terrified. And then, that’s where I met my husband, Bill. He [INAUDIBLE] that weekend, one thing leads to another, and we were married a year later. [LAUGHTER] and now we’ve been doing, you know, deals and speaking and stuff for 16 years together.

Mitch: Wow. I didn’t realized that connection there. I didn’t know–

Dwan: Isn’t that crazy?

Mitch: I didn’t know.

Dwan: I know.

Mitch: You know, when I talk real estate to someone who wanted to talk about it. I guess for me, it was a guy. So, we didn’t get married, but, we started [LAUGHTER]. I could just imagine the revelation you all were having talking to each other, you know. Him being on the same mind, and you being as the same mind. But, you came from different, coming from different angles. I could really see how that would really be a long conversation. So, how long was that conversation been so far?

Dwan: Well, we’ve not–we’ve been together for 16 years.

Mitch: Okay.

Dwan: We start doing deals together even when we were dating. We started right off the bat. We start doing deals together, working on some rehabs, flipping some properties, we bought a commercial building before we even got married. So, we just jump right on it. So– I was like.

Mitch: So, we’ve heard that you have the heart to teach and obviously you have that from the very beginning. So, I want to give our listeners here a link so they can, can I tap with you, its 1000houses.com/shortsales. 1000houses.com/shortsales, although I wanna make it very clear. You are not just about short sales, you have–you’ve done all of different kinds of marketing and sales and you can teach just about anything under the sun, right?

Dwan: Oh yeah. I actually written, 3 Best Sellers. I have 3 Best Sellers. One was on short sales about short sales, pre-foreclosures investing. And another one, on the same publishing company, I actually write one for homeowners, how to say your house since 4th class on a mortgage. Give all the homeowners all the options that they’ve got and the one with the Steve Forbes, I wrote about to find houses and flip them. How to find them and hold them for long terms, for rentals and I also wrote a section on short sales. So–

Mitch: How did you meet Steve Forbes?

Dwan: Well, it wasn’t a matter of meeting. It was a matter of, “Hey, Steve Forbes is writing a book and he is looking for people. You can sit and chat, like hundreds of people are submitting them, and if you get selected, then you can meet him”. And I was one of the people that got selected, so then, of course, I met him. We talked. And I told him the kind of my vision, whatever I was gonna write about, what I wanted to do. And he just loved me. And he’s like, “OH, you’re just funny”. He is funny because I use a tagline from people who introduced me, I use the tagline, “Dwan Twyford America’s Most Sought After Real Estate Investor. That’s like my trademark tagline. So, I met him. I was so nervous. And I say, “Hey, am Dwan Bent Twyford America’s Most Sought After Real Estate Investor”. He goes, “Dwan, Steve Forbes. I think am the Most Sought Investor”. I said, “No. Not even in the tagline. “That to me, you are just some people that talked to. I am the most sought real investor”.

Mitch: [LAUGHTER]

Dwan: And he looked at me stunned like, “Who is this woman”? And I said, “You could use me in your book”. I hip hop up your image. I think that kind of sell him. I’ll hip hop your image. I said, “You got that stereotype, that old school thing going on”. You need a nice hot woman in your book to hip hop your image”. And he was dying laughing at me. And as it turned out, yeah we met and we talked. And so now, I know him. And yeah, I can call– email and get return calls and stuff. And so I get to be in that book, and I was like, “That was one of my dreams, to write some type of book by somebody super famous”. And so, I checked that off my bucket list.

Mitch: Wow. That’s amazing story. So, you know people don’t understand book writing or writing a book or teaching or having a REIA can do for a person. And it– you know, you are telling me the stories, of where things like that have taken you. I can attest that, my books and teaching people has taken me to places that I never thought I’d go. It is a wonderful big world, isn’t it?

Dwan: It really is. And you know that’s one of the reasons, I think I’d like to talk to people about real estate investing. And teach them how to make money, and teach them how to get out there. Let people know who they are. You know, my goal for every one of my students is to be the most successful investor in their city. The most successful everyone know who you are. People on the radio, you know, they are interviewing you. The people in the newspaper that write articles about you. People are having you come on as a guest speaker on you know, the local Channel 9 news to catch up with the top real estate investor. And it is amazing once you get out in the media a little bit. People just want to know what you do, who you are, and your business will go crazy.

Mitch: Yeah. It is all about branding, right? So, let us talk about, what your strategy of choice is today in the current markets. What strategy do you like the most right now?

Dwan: Well, you know. There–with the– people think that like, “Oh, honey the downturn was in 2008, people are better now”. But, honestly Mitch, people don’t realize, ’till today 50% of all the mortgages in the entire United States, 50% either don’t have equity, which mean they owe what their house is worth, ’cause whatever they owe, the value of the house dropped down it hasn’t climbed up enough yet, but then they have equity so they owe that their house is worth, or they are in foreclosure or they are behind on a payment or they missed a payment and so 50% of the mortgages in the country, the people are still struggling to really get back to where anybody was before all of that. So, one of the things that we are finding right now, especially right now, is that a lot of people still don’t have equity. So, for new people, equity would be like if you owe a $150,000 on your house and your house is worth $200,000. You would have essentially have $50,000 of equity or some value on your property but if you owe $200,000 and your house is worth $200,000, you don’t have any equity in your property. So, we are finding homeowners endowed, they have no equity and they just kind of walk away from their houses. So, we’ve been doing– the main thing that we’ve been doing in the last 12 months is we’ve been taking all those no equity houses, having people bid them to us using our contracts, using a land trust, using all of our cool stuff like that. And getting these houses under control. And we’ve been offering them back out as owner financing. So, we are finding people, there’s a million of these people to, or finding people that they’ve been [INAUDIBLE] their house, and they can’t get a bank loan, but they saved a bunch of cash. And they can buy something, they can make payments but the bank won’t give them the loan. So, we in turn, offer this properties back out as owner financing. We have done 350 of these already in the last few years and we are teaching other people how to do them. And we have a developed $35,000- $40,000 on a deal that has no equity.

Mitch: Wow. Wow.

Dwan: It is the craziest thing.

Mitch: You know, that’s the magic of owner financing. That’s the strategy that is near and dear to my heart. I’ve been owner financing houses for over 20 years. I was owner financing houses when there isn’t anybody doing it.

Dwan: I did, too. I did some back in the 90’s. And that was the time I thought– I was on my tire company one day, and I was like, “I found the person that once I learned on my houses, how do I owner finance”? How [INAUDIBLE] like teach me, how do I owner finance, I don’t quite understand the whole thing and then now, I didn’t do it for a long time. I thought rehabbing for a long time, I was too busy with wholesaling, but the market went down, you know, speaking wasn’t as good. And wholesaling–everything changed. So, I thought, “All right. How do I come out of this market? And what you do, and what’s the good thing”. So, I got back into rehabbing. So, we were rehabbing– we have 3 rehabs right now that we are working on. Amazing. One of them will gonna make $200,000 on. It is an amazing rehab. And I got back into owner financing. I started financing all these people, so like, “Give me a thousand bucks, I’ll walk away. There’s nothing I can do about with my house. I couldn’t stay in the loan modification. I fell out of that. I tried the ferratum. I tried this. I tried that. The bank tried all these things. I just have to walk away from this point”. So, we start at getting these houses and you know, for people don’t know, basically what we are doing, we are taking a deed to the house and put it in a house into a land trust, we are getting power of attorney, we are taking control of the property. We are making up all the back payments, and we are making all the mortgage payments and the home is locked away. So, we own the house, the homeowner is still on the mortgage. We give them a 5 year limit, so in 5 years if I make my payments on time, which will restores their credit, so now they probably get restore so that someday they can go buy another house and then am taking somebody else that has problems with the economy, and am giving them a home, am giving them a mortgage, and giving them a chance to have the pride of ownership again. So, then we make–

Mitch: It is a wonderful plan.

Dwan: It is a beautiful plan.

Mitch: A lot of people win. Everybody wins.

Dwan: Everybody wins. The old homeowners, gets their credit restored. ‘Cause you know, they’ve been making all their mortgage payments late late late, probably for year or two. All of a sudden, they get 5 years of on time payments, it helps them be able to buy another house. I put and see together people, Mitch, manage the deal. And am in the deal just for 5 years, and so for 5 years, am making my– on the down payment, and am making money each month, because the original house payment with the new house payment maybe there’s a $500 difference. So, I might be making 500 bucks a month on it, and at the end when my new homeowner, they are credit have been restored too, now. When, they refinanced the house, I get paid again. So, I have 3 profits centers on one deal.

Mitch: Yeah. Welcome from Chaos. I love that idea. That slogan, that saying, “Welcome from Chaos”. And so many people think that house fire is like [INAUDIBLE] a great dancers and that we are taking advantage of people’s misfortune. The truth of the matter is, the misfortune is usually there, but we have nothing to do with the misfortune. We’re the ones that come back in and patch it up. And help them give them a way to patch it up. So, they can breathe again. And so–

Dwan: You know, that is something interesting that you actually said that. My biggest problem in the very beginning. I mean the first deal that I did, because, and I always tell people, “Listen my first deal, it was all about the money. I don’t care anything but the money. I was a single mom and an 8 month old kid. I knew I had to do something. I only care about the money”. My first deal was all about how fast I get this house, get it turned, get a paycheck, and help this woman out. But, I really care about me, not her. Because, I have a child. I don’t care about anything else. But, after I did my third or my fourth deal. I start realizing, “Guys, these people are going through what I went through. And it is painful, and they are losing their house. So, I went through a phase, where I literally, wanted to move in everybody in with me, because, I felt so bad, that they were all losing their home. And I felt, “Gosh, you know. I just can’t leave this people go and they’ll gonna be on the streets, or they’ll gonna in the car”. I got to help everybody. So, I went to some sort of I-gotta-help-the-world-phase and, which is not a good phase. And then, I finally decided what you said, I thought you know, “Am not taking advantage of anybody. I did not get them in trouble. They are in trouble, and if I don’t help them, they are gonna lose their house to foreclosure. The bank will gonna take them out in the street. I am the only chance that they have, to have any saving grace or whatsoever”.

Mitch: Right. If you’re–I just want to know if you found this to be true, ’cause I have tried the worst predicament that I have gotten myself in ever, hands down, bar none, was the people I tried to help the most. I don’t know why that is. I don’t know how come that way. But, the people that I tried to help the most were the ones that cost me my biggest heartaches in my career.

Dwan: I know. Because, you know what, they– this is just also I learned over the years. I mean am on it 25 years now is– I had the same thing. I find that those people, the problem is, they’ve never asked to take personal responsibility that they are in their current situation because of themselves. They blame my act, my job, my boss, my this, my that and someone else’s fault. And you help them and they almost feel like they are entitled or they deserved the help, and people are just straight out there listen, “Am an idiot, you know I flunk crack. I lost all my money. I cheated on my spouse. I drank at my job, whatever. I gamble my money away”. All the people that just faced up to what they did. They are the easiest people in the world to work with.

Mitch: Yeah. So, the– the one that is blaming everybody else. You come along to help them and you are just the next person they blame.

Dwan: Yeah. Exactly. So, I don’t work with people. I don’t work with people anymore. When I met a homeowner now, and they blame blame blame. And they never even take one I-owe-some-personal-responsibility. I only just say, you know, am not the right investor for you. Because, I’ve been taking care advantage too many times, and I am tired of that happening to me and people that don’t take personal responsibility gonna end up back where they were. I’d rather save my effort and energy on somebody else. So– I can’t.

Mitch: I want my audience to listen up. I want you to listen up. I want you to listen carefully to what we are talking about here. I’ve been sued 3 times in my life since 1,500 houses. And those people were gonna sue whoever sold them another house. And I am that unfortunate person that took them on. They’ve all they didn’t had a [INAUDIBLE] person, and I thought I was helping them. And I was trying to help them get in a home and get off the street and do what I heard God called me to do. They all turned around and set me on fire. So, now those 3 people that sued me, would never make it 2 feet inside my office door again, because, just what Dawn said, she learned to hear them with her special ears, she sees those trouble makers and can hear what they are saying. Take note of people who don’t take personal responsibility that they– everything is a catastrophe and it is always someone else’s fault. These are problems. It is okay to deal with the rattle snake, I like the stuff from Texas, so this is my Texas analogy. You can deal with the rattle snake, but you gotta make sure you are standing behind the fangs. You can’t stand in front of the fangs, when you are dealing with this kind of person. So, you know there are still things that you can do with them, which you don’t get expect them in relationships, you don’t have an ongoing relationship, and usually it is an in-and-done-kind-of-thing. And you get it over with. Don’t set yourself up for long term relationships when you hear this kind of situation happening. This is probably one of the most valuable lessons I have learned and one of the most valuable lesson you can learn as a real estate investor, is how to stay out of trouble and who is trouble. And so, I think Dwan you put it really so slinky. You know–go ahead.

Dwan: Well, I was gonna say, you know, the thing is. It took me years to learn that. I mean, I would let people use me and ask for more money and I felt sorry and I mean, I did that like for 10 years. It is not like something that I learn in the first year of investing. So, the folks who are on this call listening, I am telling you. If you think you can take nothing else away from this entire conversation, if you would just learn how to say the word, “Next” and let people go, and just say, “Sorry, I got a next deal, because you are the one that I can help, I can help the next guy, not you”. If you would just learn how to “Next-people “I am telling you, you’ll save yourself a world of aggravation, I also have had few people try to sue me. And if you only work with the people that say straight up, “I got myself in this situation. I don’t know how it happened. It happened so fast. I can’t seem to get out of it”. You’ll never had a problem. And I work my entire business, as I— the way I think every day is, “Okay. I am gonna work with this very nice homeowner. What can I do to make sure, I don’t get sued”. And that what make it determine the homeowner. If I see its one of those homeowner like looking to sue somebody and live off somebody else, you know when they start telling me, they are in car wreck and they sue everybody and their brother. And am just like, “No. Not for me”.

Mitch: They can be kind of challenging sometimes. Because, sometimes these people have a decent amount of money. I turned out a guy one time that had $30,000. I just didn’t like him. I flat didn’t like him. I like his $30,000 and it was a little bit tempting and the office was saying, “Are you sure you’re gonna turn this guy down”. And I said, you know, I thought for about 10 second and said, “Yeah. Am sure. I’ve been down this road. I know who this guy is. Just $30,000 won’t end up $30,000 because he’s gonna do something that’s gonna cost a lot”. And—

Dwan: You know, I had a really really weird story. I have a guy and I also was gonna make the same exact amount, $30,000. And I feel at that point, I kind of really needed the money. And– but, my gut I just felt it in my spirit was like, “No. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it”. And I was like, you know I had that talk, “Listen, I need the money. Am a single mom”. And you know like, “No. No”. And your response now is not to do it. Because, it is so much money. Anyway, I passed on that deal. My very next deal, I swear to God, the next deal, I made $85,000.

Mitch: Man, you gotta learn to go with your guts, right? You can’t– you gotta go with your guts. Now, I won my 3 lawsuits. I won them. But, they cost me a fortune to win. I think they cost me about $40,000 a piece to win. You know, luckily the last 2, I had insurance to deal with it. But, the first one I didn’t and you know, and I was standing on principle, let me tell you when you get into a court, they’ve got nothing to do with principle.

Dwan: [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: They had me. They had pictures of me with a mustache like Hitler, you know with a swastika behind my head in the court. You would have thought I was Hitler after they got to– me being in the court. And I was like, “This is anything about what–what the problem is, the problem is they wouldn’t pay me and I need amount of my house. And now, am like Hitler”. So, don’t go to that courtroom, if you can avoid it.

Dwan: I worked on mine now with a mediator. But, you know what you made a great point there. Whenever you are buying a house folks, if you’ll gonna wholesale the house, so like wholesaling for example, I would get the house on a contract. I might sell to a rehabber, if you’ll gonna wholesale a house, make sure the homeowners have moved out before the final transaction. If you’ll gonna do anything like a home owner financing, make sure the homeowners moved out before any money trade done, because I’m telling you, the few times that I let people talk to me into, “OH, Dwan, I just need 30 days”. I ended up eviction court.

Mitch: Yeah. That never works out. You don’t give money for their house, because they give you the house. I mean, it is only fair, right? I am giving you all these money and am taking on all these responsibility, shouldn’t I get at least what am promised, you know, before the transaction happens, which I need to get possession on that house, full possession of it. You know.

Dwan: That was it. That was when I was in my sorry-I-have-to-help-the-world-phase, give people 30 more days. I did honest to God, I probably did 10 eviction on houses they sold and the landlords like, “Hey, you sold me this house. You should be moving in 30 days. I shouldn’t have bought it from you”. And I was like, I can feel like my reputation was gonna go down the tube. So, I had evictions on tons of people and threaten my [INAUDIBLE] storm and “Here’s my guest, get out, shoo”.

Mitch: Can I get to answer your question. Do you think being nice has cost you more than a million dollars?

Dwan: So, I can guarantee you for sure.

Mitch: [LAUGHTER]

Dwan: For sure.

Mitch: Hey, we can go on forever, because you are such a pleasure to talk to. And we didn’t get any to the real questions that I wanted to get to. But, I think it has been a great conversation, and I think the listeners out have really had the chance to grasps you and your personality and so, if this is the kind of person that you think you might wanna learn from, then I want you to seek out America’s Most Sought After Real Estate Investor, Dwan Twyford and I want you to 1000houses.com/shortsales with an S on the end, 1000houses.com/shortsales, it’s all one word, lower case. And find out what she is all about. She has– tell us about what kind of courses and stuff that you offer there.

Dwan: Oh. You know what. I have so much stuff. So, I’ve got sorts of programs, I’ve got wholesale programs. I can send you free real estate investing kit to give to the people that go to your site and check it out. I have programs on rehabbing, we really really have done the full gamut of investing. And it is funny after all the hundreds of things that I’ve done, and I can’t think of any area, of investing that I am not been a part of over the years. And in this market, I am back to the 2 things that where the money is right now. And that is doing a lot of these no equity deals and we are rehabbing. And we are finding rehabs that, you know, you drive the neighborhood, you see a house that sits there for 2 years. The bank can’t process these houses and they came back on the market. They sold them so so cheap. So, we’ve been buying houses and rehabbing them and I just bought 14 acres and am gonna build my very first storage units.

Mitch: Oh. Well, that’s the home of this conversation.

Dwan: That’s my new project. I am so excited to do it.

Mitch: Well, that might be another conversation for another day. Because, do you know I have 14 locations and 1,100 doors.

Dwan: You do? I didn’t. My goal is to put– to get a 1,000 doors. That’s my goal. I don’t know if I can put a 1,000 doors on 4 acres but am sure gonna try. [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: You might wanna spread it out a little bit. Kind of diversify your location. Maybe. That’s just the thought. I don’t know where your location is. But–so, here’s the thing, you got– when Jack Bosch’s book you had, Jack Bosch’s book, Forever Cash. You had a temporary, I mean, you had a one-time cash, which was the house flipping. And you figure that out really fast that, that was the job, right? That you have to keep flipping forever. And then, so you moved up, you started doing owner financing, if I am recalling your story correctly. And then you started getting some cash, but you also start getting cash flow and that was temporary cash, because those notes would have actually expire, and then I did what you are fixing to do, I recognized after reading a lot of different books, that I needed some, I did some rentals, you know. Although, I hated renting houses and apartments and that kind of thing, ‘cause I didn’t like being the kind of landlord. There were other kinds of properties out there that would offer me offer me forever cash. I e-rent. And a rental income. And it was storages. I build and bought many storages around the lake where I lived. I am canyonstorages.com I have 14 locations and I have 1,100 doors and it is a tremendous business. It is an inflation proof business. It is a very easy to managed business. The owner is manual that you hand to your manager, is not nearly as complicated as the manual to rent apartments or houses.

Dwan: Oh yeah.

Mitch: And also, when you have to displace someone from a storage, it is no like you are taking their home. It is a whole different, less emotional.

Dwan: You are my new hero. I am might be calling, asking you questions, now that I know that you have 1,100 doors. [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: And I didn’t all kind of grassroots and I do all rule, and I didn’t want to be in a cities with all the regulations, ’cause you can never tell how much its gonna cost in the city because you are at the mercy and phase of the inspectors and whatever they wanna do and they tell you one thing and you go there again, and they just tell you something different in the next day, because it is a new day standing there. And you know.

Dwan: You see, we live up in the mountains, we live in Colorado. We live in the mountains at 9200 feet. And up in this area, the family, the Dowser family we happen to know them pretty well, they own all of this land within you know, hundreds of miles and do recently showed us all the housing developments that have been done and approved. They are in the process right now of building 5,000 new homes, way right up here in the mountains. And there’s only one little storage in place up here, I call them, they like only have 2 and a half year waiting list. I thought, am not– it’s for everybody.

Mitch: That is exactly how you pick your locations. It is by looking at the subdivision plots that have been planned and figured out if they really are gonna happen. And then you find a place like what you are talking about that has 5,000 potential houses going in. And it looks like it shows like it’s really gonna happen, that’s when you start buying your lands before it is too late. And get you in position. So, I love to talk to you about it sometime. We’ve been on the call now, I don’t know how long but, I don’t want to take it too long, ’cause I don’t want people to get, you know antsy but, let’s call it a day, Dwan. It’s been a terrific conversation and–

Dwan: Well, thank you so much for talking. We didn’t get into a lot of real estate questions. But, you know, Mitch. I think the people would just take the sound advice. Treat your business, like a business, so you won’t get sued. And don’t work with homeowners that expect the world out of you. And be–don’t be afraid to say no to somebody and walk away for a $30,000 check, because if it will cost you court time, you didn’t make any money. And if people will just take control of their business and do the right thing and not be afraid, they become very successful.

Mitch: Yeah. I agree with you, 100%. Learn to say no. Learn to walk away. You know, there’s a– a real investor knows that there is another deal tomorrow. And you don’t have to have this once a day, for any reason, if someone is pressuring you. Or you are able to find the right amount of information, ’cause you don’t have enough time. You don’t have to buy that deal. A real investor knows this, another deal tomorrow. And you know, just sit down and say, “Next. Am gonna go to the next one. This is too much pressure”.

Dwan: That’s it. That’s what I tell all my people in my room, and I say repeat after me, “Next”. We are investors, don’t have the confidence to say, “Next”, only seasonal investors do, after they’ve been through what you and I have been through. So, for the next investors, if you’ll just learn how to have confidence, and the faith that there is another deal, you will have such an easier path, to Mitch and I both had. [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: And that’s the thing. Whether you pick Mitch as a mentor or Dwan as a mentor. You have to pick someone, because you’ll gonna pay the price for education. There is no doubt about it. You just–you know one thing you can measure from mentors, that is easy to measure is how much money that you made because the mentor coaches you along. But, the thing that you cannot calculate that is immeasurable and that you’ll never know is how much money did the mentor keep you from losing. Because, the fact that you didn’t lose them, you know, you didn’t lose, means there is no number to plug in there. But, you would have lost many many times in certain situations if you didn’t have someone with that 20 years’ worth of experience who did take down that road for many many years.

Dwan: We have time? I want to tell one super quick story.

Mitch: Sure. You can use all the time in the world. I just didn’t know what your schedule is.

Dwan: Now, just really quickly. I wanna tell everyone this story. ‘Cause this is, this story is exactly what did a mentor saved your, or what did you lose or whatever. So, my husband and I, we start investing at approximately the same time. Bill became a real estate investor first, he works with Mike Ferry. If you don’t know who Mike Ferry is. He is a real estate agent mentor. So, Bill start at the same time. I [INAUDIBLE] with my pants. Bill start working with a mentor. Now, this is back in, you know, in the late 80’s. Mike Ferry charged him a $1,000 a month to be his mentor. So, he was paying $12,000 of a year, 25, 26 or 27 years ago. So, by that time, Bill and I met. We had both been investing for approximately, 10 years. During that 10 years, my goal was, I wanna make a million dollars in 1 calendar year, a whole million in 1 calendar year. It took me by myself, 10 years. On my 10th year, I cracked a million. Now, Bill had a mentor. He paid him $1,000 a month, he cracked a million on his third year. So, for 7 years. We were in business for 10 years when we met. 7 of his years, he made a million every year with a mentor, took me 10 years to crack a million by myself. So, in essence, my lack of mentor cost me $7 million.

Mitch: There you go. All for $12,000 a year. Not a very good bet, huh?

Dwan: [LAUGHTER] When I met him and I was like, “Dang, I got to have a mentor”. I still made it. I made a lot of money, it was hundreds of thousands for years, I couldn’t cracked at a million dollar crack. And Bill was like, “Oh, I did that on my third year. My mentor told me do this, this, this, this. And he still to this day, he still mentors with Mike Ferry and Bill’s– we done 2,000 deals and he still, “You know what, I can’t afford not to have my mentor”.

Mitch: Yeah. We should always have one, or at least be part of a mastermind group or something.

Dwan: The thing about that, $7 million. He made $7 million more dollars than me, because he got a mentor. So, it does cost you. You learn to experience, you learn to mistakes– get a mentor.

Mitch: Yeah. And mentors are a lot cheaper than mistakes, most of the time. Hey, by that way, when you cracked that million dollars for a year mark, it is not gore as you think because you lose a lot of your tax– you lose some tax stuff and so you can’t really get over that marked by a dollar. If you gonna make a million dollars a year, you need to bull passed it, because if you just get passed a million dollar mark, you might regret it. So, the moral of the story is, just stay under the million dollar profit mark, or if you gonna over the million profit mark, you have to bull passed it. You can’t inched over it. Because, it is a break point and the whole passing situation changes and it is not worth for a million and one dollar.

Dwan: It is not. I think, someone’s paying taxes [INAUDIBLE] because I could almost pay off the country’s debt [LAUGHTER]

Mitch: Hey, maybe we can talk to you at least paying half of it.

Dwan: Oh, lord.

Mitch: Okay, Dwan thank you so much and one last time, 1000houses.com/shortsales all lower case, short sales. And I enjoyed this time immensely. I want to meet you in person, Dwan. Am going to meet you in person.

Dwan: Let’s do that.

Mitch: All right. And we’ll have to take our choice, you can come back down to the River Walk or invite me to Colorado.

Dwan: Hey, well if you wanna come up and ski those weather, you can come and stay at my house. I take you over, and we’ll go skiing in snow mobiling.

Mitch: Maybe snow mobile, because I’m not skiing. ‘Cause I’m just gonna watch those people break legs. I am not gonna be the one out there doing.

Dwan: I got to say, there– I have to admit, well, I am not a good skier either. So, there’s nothing more beautiful than going in snow mobile and they take you up to the very top, up in 40,000 feet and I swear to god, you feel like you are in heaven. It is the most spectacular view of anything. But, I like that Riverwalk, am all about warm weather. So—like everyone–

Mitch: I got friends in all places, you got friends on my place.

Dwan: That’s it.

Mitch: All right, Dwan. Thank you very much. It has been an incredibly enjoyable. Thank you.

Dwan: Thank you so much for having me and God bless everybody.

Mitch: Bye now.

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