I’m In Canada – How Do I Hire “Boots On The Ground” To Help Me With U.S. Properties?

I’m In Canada. How Do I Hire Boots On the Ground to Help Me With US Properties

Joe: Hey, it’s Joe. I’ve got another one. This one is from Russell Seller. Russell says, “My biggest question is being from Canada and wanting to automate in the United States. How do I search for someone to work for me and check out houses I’m thinking about putting an offer on? My biggest fear that’s holding me back is finding reliable people to inspect places where I don’t live and since I’m just starting out with a little money I’m looking for someone who’s reasonably priced as well.”

Joe: Well, first of all, don’t do all that due diligence. There’s no reason for you to have to inspect a property before you make an offer. You make and offer then you inspect. You know, this is the thing that so many different people have wrong. They go out there and they have it wrong because they’re putting cash and credit into these deals. And you don’t want to make an offer on a property that you have cash and credit in because if it turns out to be a bad deal then you’ve lost all that.

Joe: But if you don’t have any cash in it, if you don’t have any credit in it, and you make an offer and say I’m going to take this property, I’m going to flip it, I’m going to keep it for my portfolio, whatever, you know, once you decide to keep it, once you decide to hold onto it then you have to do a little bit of due diligence in order to keep it. But you don’t have anything at risk. There’s no money on the line at all.

Joe: So let’s say I do a for rent method deal and I say, yes, go ahead and sign this lease option memo. It’s $150,000 property, 3 bedroom, 2 bath. You know, the roof is okay, it’s habitable. Maybe it needs some cosmetic work, but it’s okay. It’s rentable. If I know that, that’s really all I need to know in order to take that lease option memo and then turn around and sell it. And I’m going to find out if that seller is lying to me when my buyers go into the house. If the buyers go into the house and say, “My God – this place is awful! It smells like a dog and it’s horrible inside and it’s all orange carpet and,” you know, the windows are broken out or whatever is wrong with it, I’m going to find out from my buyers. So I don’t have to do the due diligence. I don’t have to go to the property. I don’t have to be in the same town.

Joe: And if I’m, if I’m getting a lease option memo I’m going to send boots on the ground over there and they’re going to take the pictures for me. Now, all I do when I try to find boots on the ground is I run an add on Craigslist and I talk to them a few minutes. I ask them to send me over their driver’s license and proof of their insurance so I know what they’re doing. I ask them to take a picture of a house so that I can get a feel if they know how to frame a camera and how, if they know how to send pictures from their smartphone. And as long as they can do that and they’re pleasant to talk to on the phone and I see that, you know, their face on their driver license that they’re not some crazed maniac, then I feel like, okay, you know, let’s take a chance on them.

Joe: It’s going to cost me you know, eight or ten bucks an hour to hire this person. They’re going to put in maybe five or ten hours on every deal that we do once I get them up and running so they’re not going to cost me more than $50.00, maybe $100.00 per deal that I do and it’s going to be very worthwhile so I don’t have to do any of that stuff for them. So you can hire somebody to do that work for you.

Joe: If you really need somebody who has to do inspections, then you need to pay for inspection or have somebody who knows, who’s competent, doing it. One of the ways I do subject to properties, I’ll have my property manager in that area go check out the property for me, tell me what the condition is and how much it’s going to cost to get it repaired, because they do the work to get it fixed usually, and then put a tenant in there and how much it’s going to take to make all that happen.

Joe: Obviously I don’t want to put too much cash into those properties. I have a little more cash to spend on those types of things than some people do, but you know, at the beginning here you want to learn how to do this with no money rather than using some money.

Joe: Anyway. I hope that helps. Don’t stop or keep from doing this because you don’t have some money.

Joe: Oh – oh – I didn’t answer the question about Canada. Since you’re in Canada, you need a bank account here in the States so that they can wire you funds. It’s going to be uncomfortable for people to wire funds out of the States or you can get an escrow with an attorney who, at a title company, that they can wire the funds to the attorney and then the attorney can send out the funds. And the attorney can handle the paperwork for you as well. It’ll cost you $200 or $300 per deal to have an attorney do that for you. Or if you, you know, if you’re comfortable with it you can just have a bank account in the United States if you, you know, have access to that and then they can wire the funds right into your bank account. And then of course you can transfer the funds up to Canada when you’re ready.

Joe: Anyway, I hope that helps. Don’t be intimidated by the cost of getting someone to do this work for you. It’s not very expensive and you don’t need to do it until you have a lease option memo signed if you’re doing the for rent method. Get a lease option memo signed first and then go find your boots on the ground, start finding your buyers from there. And it’s possible, since this is your first time out that you get a lease option memo signed, it took you three months to get it and then you went out and got your boots on the ground and it took you a week to get it and you didn’t get back with your seller in time, so your seller says, “Hey, you’re not doing anything, I’m going to give this to somebody else,” and he kicks you to the curb. But that probably won’t happen if you keep communication lines open with your seller and keep the process going.

Joe: All right. Hope that helps.