Dwayne Shears – Birmingham, Alabama
I believe the best way to learn the business of real estate investing is to hear how others have done it.
When these interviews were recorded, I asked Tom, the interviewer, to ask questions that would help the viewer see how these folks got started.
I wanted to hear the struggles, the successes and a clear path and explanation of what they had to do to make these deals happen.
I did NOT want them to be a bunch of people telling you how wonderful Joe Crump was. I wanted content, examples and real life experiences.
I hope we succeeded.
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My 6 month mentor program:
http://www.ZeroDownInvesting.com
http://www.JoeCrump.com/partner
A few Case Study Video Interviews with my Students:
http://www.JoeCrump.com/partner/casestudy.html
I’ve Done Thousands Of These Deals Over The Past 10 Years
Dwayne: My name’s Dwayne Shears. I’m from Birmingham, Alabama, and I first met Joe in 2007, I believe. Probably late 2007, so almost ten years ago. No, I was searching online, actually was looking for some untraditional investing techniques and ran across him online and joined his program then.
Dwayne: Well, I’d started in real estate in 2006 just the prior year earlier, pre-crash. I’d bought a lot of properties on the conventional way of mortgages, loans and all that normal stuff. And kind of around when the crash was hitting and right before the crash hit, the banks stopped lending money. You know, they cut it off, so I had to find new ways. So that’s how I found him.
Dwayne: Well, it was new to me and it was unconventional and it didn’t take money or bank financing or you know, anyone el- it was a technique that you could do without borrowing money.
Dwayne: Gosh, I can’t remember, it’s been a decade ago, but I’ve done hundreds and hundreds since then, probably in the thousands. It didn’t take long. I’m sure within just a few days, maybe a week or two, and I was, you know, acquiring properties and filling them on rent to buy, rent to own methods. So I was doing typically the $3,000 to $5,000 range down payment during that time.
Dwayne: I don’t know, three to five hours, I guess, maybe.
Dwayne: The best, I mean, I’ve had a lot of good deals, I mean, I’ve never done one, I’ve done as much as a little more than $10,000 down as an option fee, but most of them were $3,000 to $5,000 down. So I guess I’d say that would be the best one. And this was on about a $200,000 property.
Dwayne: Just normal, what I’ve been doing all along, just putting signs out, rent to own, no qualifying, move in today, you know, I always answered my phone. Just qualify a few people and see if they have the money. If they want to look at it, go from there and this particular case the person wanted to buy their rent down, so we was able to increase the option fee and lower the rent by doing that.
Dwayne: Basically, I’ve just become lazy. Whenever I met Joe I had just started doing this full time and have constantly been doing it full time and fortunate that I now own quite a few properties and I work about ten or fifteen hours a week and that’s about it. So, I’m kind of lazy. So I’m actually going to start back and do some more, pick up some new stuff.
Dwayne: Well, to keep living the lifestyle that I’m living and not that it’s a tremendous lifestyle by any means, but I come from a background where I worked sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week, so I’m at a point where I like having my time. That’s been the most important for me, is, it’s been, it’s enabled me to buy back my time.
Dwayne: Tremendous impact, you know, the, I’m able to spend time with them, watch kids grow. I have grown kids and young kids, so, I’m able to spend a lot of time with them that I wasn’t able to do before.
Dwayne: Well, for me, it was, I got fired from my job in 2006 and so I discovered that, you know, I’m really not that good at employee, so I should work for myself. But, no, it’s a story there, but, I’ve been doing it since 2006 and I was doing it the wrong way had I not found Joe in 2007 then I would probably be doing something else.
Dwayne: I have, over the years, like I said, I haven’t done a whole lot in the last five years because it’s just, I’ve automated and running very smoothly now. But if you do a lot of turnover of properties and acquire new ones and flipping’s and things like that, then I’ll pick up the automated system once again. But right now I haven’t.
Dwayne: I would say stick with Joe’s program. The biggest thing I would not do would be want to become an agent or a broker. I think it’s too much exposure for these type of unconventional risky deals. So I would stay away from that part of it and just do the simple flips, the for rent methods, and then you know, take your time building your portfolio. Don’t rush into it, just pick and choose the best properties that will sustain long time, long term.
Dwayne: No, other than I know I’ve seen these type editorials before and I’ve known Joe for ten years now. He’s an absolutely credible, honest, he’s everything that you read and hear about him. So, I’m, you know, I’m not speaking that from somebody that’s just known him for two or three weeks, or two or three months. So he’s a credible guy.
