One of the best ways to learn what a good deal is is to bird dog for an investor pro. Even if you are just looking for one deal for yourself this can be a way to get paid for all of that hard work you will do to find the "one". It may take several deals to find the one you really want.
This case study is all about me several years ago. I had no clue what I was doing but I wanted to start investing. I ended up bird dogging this one just because I was too chicken to buy it myself due to the junky yucky look of the house.
The seller's only desperate concern was not to leave the VA (VA loan) hanging by letting the house go to foreclosure. He was really motivated by this. He had not lived in the house for about a year and a half. The best part was that he only owed about $8,000 and the house was worth around fifty or sixty thousand. The problems were it looked horrifying and there was a girlfriend that had been added to the deed causing a title flaw.
I decided at the time it was not what I was looking for so I called an investor and gave him all of the information. I decided that I would accept $1500 from the closing and he agreed. It ended up taking another $7500 to get the girlfriend off the title. It took about four weeks for the investor to get this one closed and for me to get paid.
If only I had kept doing this I would probably be semi retired by now. Instead I went and bought four houses over the the next year and took another year to sell them off one at a time. By the time is was all said and done I could have made 10X more money bird dogging and graduating to wholesaling.
In summary, I was able to earn fifteen hundred bucks just because I talked to a guy that was extremely motivated to get rid of his vacant unwanted house. All I did was listen to his story and pass the information along to an investor who purchased the house. This investor paid me at the closing as his partner in the deal. I learned a great deal from this experience and now use that knowledge to buy and sell houses full time.
