The big challenge is this: How are investors like us who are not backed by a billion hedge fund who are investing money from our own pockets? How do we buy, sell, and invest in the properties we believe in, yet still make a profit without risking all of our own money? That is the challenge. In this podcast, we'll give you the answers. My name is Nate Armstrong and welcome to the social media blueprint.
(00:33): Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Social media blueprint podcast. Today. We have a special guest and actually it's a really special episode. I don't occasion. We take episodes like this to highlight ethical people doing this real estate investing business. And I want to answer one of the biggest questions that we get from people is real estate investing ethical is wholesaling ethical. Are you really helping sellers? And rather than me go into it and give you my long explanation of how we help people. I just want you to see it in real action. I want you to hear it from someone who represents ethical business in real estate investing. I want you to hear it from her and learn from her. So my guest today is Kim Serrato. Kim and her partners run a business in Jacksonville, Florida, where they help sellers. And you're going to hear the story of how they just helped the seller.
(01:25): This is the way that they do business on every transaction. And this is the way that all of our folks that we work with, how we represent to go out there and do business with. So the folks that you hear highlighted in this segment of the podcast, they are all about doing business the right way, taking care of sellers, serving people first. So with no further ado, let's go ahead and welcome Kim Serrato to the show. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back today. I've got a really special guests. I've got a fellow investor who does this business with heart first. Her name is Kim, and we're going to be talking about her journey so far and the sellers that she's been able to help. And actually Kim, welcome number one. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thank you very much. Yeah, Kim.
(02:11): So I know that you're a superstar down in Jacksonville, Florida. You're helping a lot of people. You just got done telling me that. In addition to that, we've been able to watch some of your success since we started doing some stuff together. My mom looking forward to this, but can we pick into this story of the seller that you recently helped? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So in, in anyone that's new to this broadcast, the only folks that get a chance to get interviewed and highlighted here are folks that do this business with the highest level of ethics. They really take care of the people that they're working with. And Kim displays that on all fronts. Like if anyone is looking at her business to business with, I've got to watch Kim now for the last four months, and this lady does it with high ethics, high regard for people. So it's not a privilege to have you here, Kim, first off, second off, let's hear this, this, this story. I got to hear the bits and pieces, the highlights of it, but what happened with the seller? Tell us.
(03:06): Yeah, so, you know, we got a lead through Facebook and we immediately made contact and I actually work with other partners. So, you know, I do the same thing. You do. The people I work with, you know, they have to have the same ethics I do. They have to want to help people. And so, you know, we reached out this individual, reached out to them, to the seller and immediately she said, you know, come see the house. So he went and he did that walk through and we pre did all the analysis ahead of time. You know, we basically look up everything we could. So we were prepared to make a cash offer that day. And of course, you know, he had a preliminary conversation with her on the phone. So when he went, she basically told him that she had just signed another offer and that she had done that a couple of days prior.
(04:01): So we just kept it open. And we said, you know, let us do our analysis. Let's talk through this. If this doesn't transpire for you, or if you have any questions, just let us know. We're here to help. You know, we want to make sure that this is going to be okay for you because she needed to move. She had just lost her son. She had been taking care of him. She needed to move was planning to move, to be with her daughter. And she'd been in this, in this particular home for like 40 years. So we said, you know, we want to make sure that we can make this easy for you. So we even offered to help her with some of her moving process, even though we weren't going to be putting the house under contract that day. And so our,
(04:43): I want to stop and just highlight this for a second. So literally, even though you knew at that time, you weren't getting the deal because she had signed with someone else, you volunteered to help her move.
(04:54): That's correct. Move on here to help her. And that is, you know, part of who we are, right? I mean, we really do want to help people. And when we hear a story like that, you know, we have heart. We want to make sure that people are getting what they need. We want to be there to consult with them. And whether we get the deal or not, you know, whether we end up buying from them or not, because that's just who we are. And so that opened up the conversation and it opened up the conversation for her to contact her daughter and have her daughter begin to talk to us. And we just fostered that relationship. And so about two and a half, three weeks later, they came back to us and she expressed how she was having a hard time.
(05:40): How'd she come back. And I'm curious because a lot of people like, you know, the follow up, follow up thing and you put out heart first, like true heart, you tried to help. And then you try to serve and then they came back to you, how did they come back?
(05:53): So part of it was through followup, you know, so we continued follow up and just to see if everything was going okay. And then they reached out and called us back and said, you know, we're having some problems. You know, the person who has it under contract is continuing to ask us if they can lower the price, they hadn't closed the transaction yet. And so she said at that point that she was unhappy and she wanted to know if we were still interested in buying. So we said, promptly, look, if you're under contract, you know, that needs to be honored. We need to know if, if this, if you can cancel it or if it's been canceled. So she did say that she had canceled the contract with this individual. And we asked her to show us that cancellation notice. So we got that. And then we promptly offered her what we had originally offered her, which was a cash price.
(06:44): We told her we could close it as quickly as we could. And she accepted that. So we ended up going ahead and writing that up, putting it under contract, and then, you know, just working with her through that process. Well, come to find out at the end. Cause I think I talked to y'all prior to us actually closing the deal. Yeah. The day of we got notice that there was another contract hadn't been put on the property. So what really transpired after everything kind of like we learned about it the morning at closing is that like in January it had been put on the contract and that was the person who had not been closing it, not been trying, you know, trying to talk her down to a different price. And then it had gone under contract the day before we thought the contract that got canceled was the one that was the day before we didn't know about the one in January.
(07:40): So yeah. So what had happened was she canceled the one from January and I, you know, I don't know if she should probably just confused. Right? So you probably just didn't realize that, okay, I've signed two contracts here, the morning of closing. I mean, we got everything packaged up, you know, we're ready to go. I get a call from the closing company who says, we'd already had title, title, search done. Right. Everything was clear. It was ready to go. And then they called and said, we did our final search. Right. Cause they do that day of to make sure nothing has transpired negatively. We found a recorded notice of contract and we're like, Whoa. So we obviously at that point we knew this person, right. The title company did, we did. So we both made calls and they agreed to release it for nothing. For nothing. Yeah. They agreed to release it for nothing.
(08:36): Your emotions. When, when you got this note at you're about to close and then you get this notice what was going through your mind?
(08:41): Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, I was on a team status meeting with my team members. And so we're like, ah, okay, we've got to put this on hold. So we got to go and figure this out. They were in route like the seller was in route, our partner who, who was heading to be at the closing was in route. We'd already wired the money, right. Money sitting there ready to close. And I was like, Oh my gosh, how are we gonna make this happen? I'm thinking, well, you know, if they want money, you know, what are we going to do? Because we're thin. I mean, we offered top dollar that we could, you know, to still stay whole. And I'm like, what are we going to do? You know? So it just worked out and thank goodness that those people were honorable people and they were willing to release it. What I find interesting though, is that they had it under contract and they never marketed it,
(09:32): The market it, and why they even record the notice.
(09:35): I think it's probably just part of their process is my guess because they're strictly a wholesaler, a wholesaling company. And so I was like, thankfully, they did that. And we were able to make it happen for them because not only like we were all this had to happen, they literally, the daughter had come in and they literally had trucks loaded up and they were ready to leave now to go to where she was moving to. So it happened, the seller was very thankful.
(10:03): Well, this other say, I always love to hear,
(10:06): They were just thankful that we were there to help them. They were thankful that we were honest and that we were willing to come to the table. They were upset obviously because of, you know, what, how they had been treated previously. So they were like, they were just very thankful that we were able to be there and be honest and help them through this situation. So, and that is what we want to do, you know, to help you.
(10:30): Yeah, absolutely. Oh, this is a beautiful, beautiful story, Kim. I know it's fairly recent, but have you touched base the seller at all or heard anything else?
(10:38): Yeah. Yeah. We stay in touch saying they got where they were going. Okay. You know, we've told them, you know, that we'll let them know how things are going. We got rid of a lot of stuff they wanted to leave on. We just told them, leave whatever you want, if you can't take it, we'll get rid of it. So yeah. Yeah, we definitely are in touch.
(10:56): Kim, this is beautiful. And in addition to you and your partners running a good business, I think that a key ingredient for that deal was that you put your heart out there first, you were willing to serve first. And obviously you made the numbers line up and all that stuff, but it goes beyond just numbers and business. People want to feel you. They want to know that you're actually there.
(11:16): It did that. It rarely is. I mean, you have to be there to help people no matter what. And you know, that's what we do. It's what we do on, you know, with sellers. That's what we do on the back end with, with buyers who are buying the properties that we rehab and sell. That's what we do with our tenants. I mean, you know, we're here to help people and that's really what it is about for us. So
(11:38): This is the exact kind of people that I like to work with Kim. And I feel honored that we get to work together. Thank you for choosing to come and work with us. Yeah,
(11:48): Me too. Y'all are done. Got some great stuff. I'll tell you what, why did you end up choosing to work with us over others,
(11:55): Facebook advertising, you know, that's a new thing for us. So my background, even though I've been investing a long time, you know, we've always bought through wholesalers through, you know, real estate auctions, that kind of thing. And we've really never put a whole lot of upfront engine work to get leads to come in. And so we wanted to do that. And you know, I saw your stuff about Facebook advertising. And to me it makes sense. It's like, Hey, I want this to be easy. You know, let the leads come in. So we're, we're still learning about that. We still have a lot to learn a lot to truly tweak, but I just love everything you do. And I love your heart. I love, you know, how you're educating people. I think that's amazing. And all the automation you do. So my background's in technology. So you know that, that really excites me to hear all this automation. So
(12:48): Yeah. Well, Kim, it's an honor and a privilege to work with. You keep helping these sellers, the world needs more people like you out there. I know that there's some people that enter every business. It's not just real estate, but every business has some people that they do things the wrong way. But when you get someone that's doing it the right way, like you guys, you guys are going to soar, you guys are gonna keep helping people and keep climbing. So it's a blessing. Yeah. Kevin, anything else you want to say to the world before we cut it off?
(13:17): You know, if, if you don't mind, I do want to share something that we're doing, which is about helping people because it's one of the reasons why we do what we do. So we actually, every year are starting a process where we're going to help a family in need by doing some kind of construction project. And this is the first year we're actually kicking this off. So this October, you know, we'll be actually gifting a family in need in our local market construction project valued up to $10,000. And that's really literally coming out of our profits, our money that we make with our businesses. We're just setting that aside every year. And we've started the process. We've got seven people that have been submitted to us right now. So once we get the queue up a little bit, then we'll actually be selecting from that queue. But that's something that we're passionate about. It's construction related, you know, house related, but then also helping. So that's why we do what we do, right? That's why we step in, make money doing this so that we can give back to our community. So I just wanted to share that because that's so important to us.
(14:30): I love this, you know, when you go to the movies and you see a really good movie and you get those tingles on your spot, you just gave me that.
(14:37): Okay, good, good. I mean, we're, we're really looking forward to it. We're excited about it. We had a nonprofit previously and it didn't kind of go the way we wanted it to. So we've kind of shifted, and this is what we're going to do. Cause it's simple, it's
(14:52): Focused. It relates to construction, housing, that kind of thing. But then also can help somebody that's actually in need and who knows where it's going to go. Right. I want to pick your brain on one more question. Okay. Okay. So you've got a heart like gold. If there's a new real estate investor sitting out there right now, trying to get into this business, what's the biggest piece of advice or the one piece of advice that you'd give them entering this business. So I would say that you have to be an action the minute you start, you know, so, you know, learning is a process and we're always going to learn like it never stops learning. I mean, you never, never, ever stopped learning, but you have to be an action. So find a way to be an action. And this will happen for you, right?
(15:41): Yeah. Beautiful. And I see you take an action all the time. You're a very, very common member in the group, cheering people on and out there and doing it yourself. I see it, Kim, thank you for this time. We appreciate it. And everyone, as part of the social media blueprint family, and those that are looking at this opportunity, take the leadership precedent that Kim has sent. She has set a bar that basically says serve, serve other people first and the business will come. It will Kim. Thanks again. Appreciate your time. God bless you. Thank you Nate. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on bye. Bye. Bye. All right. I hope you enjoy this episode with Kim. Kim is an amazing person. I feel blessed. I feel honored to call her a client to call her a friend and to call her a fellow real estate investor.
(16:27): Now, if you are trying to do this whole real estate investing thing at the same level that Kim is at right now, and you're trying to get in front of sellers and help them to, then here's what we can do. I want you to jump onto the next episode of this podcast. The next episode of this podcast is the single biggest skill that I believe every real estate investor has to have from helping sellers out, to getting better rates on loans, to even getting deals with contractors. Like literally I had a deal set up with a contractor for a couple of years where they would do 40, $50,000 in renovation work and not charge me anything until they finish. They would buy the materials. Even if you're looking for structures like that in this real estate investing game, it comes down to one skill in this skill. I'm going to share on the next podcast. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in today. God bless. We'll talk to you soon. Hey,
(17:23): Calling can't stand direct mail wish there was a way to have sellers coming to you instead of having to chase them down. Now there is it's called the social media blueprint and you can get it absolutely free when you go to www.socialmediablueprint.com/podcast.
