Boost Your Cash Flow: Innovative Property Management Techniques Unveiled

John Harcar (00:00.141)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Wyatt Reed. And what we’re going to talk about is obviously his background is, you know, his, expertise of real estate, how he got to today. But we’re also going to talk about buying with seller financing. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers. I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X to business.

Wyatt Reed (00:18.583)
Hmm.

John Harcar (00:28.094)
We provide tools and resources to grow that business they want to have, which helps them live the life they want to live. Man Wyatt, welcome to our show.

Wyatt Reed (00:35.583)
Thank you so much for having me man. I’ve been excited about this podcast I know we had some issues at first with audio, but I’ve been excited about this podcast man

John Harcar (00:39.883)
I know that’s a… I love it, man. least we got it done. I appreciate you being flexible and we’re glad we were able to get you in. I’m super excited to talk about seller finance. I love seller finance. I love creative deals. I think that’s kind of where a lot of the future is. But before we talk a lot about that, tell us about your background, how you got into real estate, what got you to today.

Wyatt Reed (01:05.324)
Yeah, man. Well, first of all, I appreciate you letting me on, man, to talk about my story. You know, I started when I was working. I was an engineer. I’d started out just a somebody who worked on an assembly line, you know, as just a regular worker. I worked my way up into maintenance. I worked my way up into engineering. It was funny because I flunked out of college and I had a

engineer’s salary and position before some of my buddies graduated from college. So that’s the only thing about work ethic, man. I hated school, but I can work, right? So

John Harcar (01:40.331)
Right?

John Harcar (01:46.881)
Where did that work ethic come from? Like where in your life did that come from?

Wyatt Reed (01:49.526)
Man, I’ve always seen my parents, so like my grandpa was a serial entrepreneur. He tried and done everything. And my parents, they’ve run a barbecue place. They own a barbecue place here for over 40 years, man. And they’ve just broken their backs to give us a life where we never really wanted for anything. always got the new gaming system, the new whatever comes out the next.

John Harcar (02:03.655)
love it.

John Harcar (02:15.159)
Sure, the New Jordans.

Wyatt Reed (02:17.87)
Yeah, it was amazing, but I’ve seen them work themselves to the bone in it. And I think the work ethic come from there, but it also showed me what I didn’t want to do as well. I didn’t want to have to kill myself to be able to provide that for my family. So that’s where real estate come in. So I made it to where I wanted to be in my early 20s, like 21, 22. The salary, the nice house.

John Harcar (02:29.889)
Mmm.

John Harcar (02:35.617)
Sure. Okay.

Wyatt Reed (02:46.318)
the house, the cars, the family, like I made it to where I thought I wanted to be in life. And I was like, man, I can’t do this the rest of my life. What’s next? I’ve always felt like there’s something more. And so I started looking at what businesses could I start, what seemed to make the most sense. And YouTube gurus got me on real estate, right?

John Harcar (02:59.01)
Right?

Wyatt Reed (03:12.686)
So I didn’t pay somebody all the way across the world, but I did find a local mentor here in North Alabama. And that’s how I got my starting was, I tried for the first couple of months on my own and I just spun my wheels and spun my wheels. And then I finally broke down and I was like, I gotta hire somebody.

John Harcar (03:26.348)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (03:33.707)
What I know your parents are serial entrepreneurs, which is great. I mean, I could definitely see where that work ethic and drive would come from. But was there anybody in real estate that you might have had an influence in your life at all that planted a seed? Because I know you mentioned just looking through businesses. I don’t know if maybe like real estate was planted somehow and that’s kind of led you to it.

Wyatt Reed (03:51.83)
No, man, I wish I could say yeah, but I’m a first time real estate investor in my family as far as I know.

John Harcar (03:54.487)
Hahaha

John Harcar (04:00.929)
love it. So when you started man, what were some of the struggles, what were some of the hard things that you’re like, you know, that maybe push you to like think, is this what I really want to do?

Wyatt Reed (04:10.796)
Yeah, once I got over the initial investment in myself, because it’s high. Some coaching programs, some mentorships, most of them you got to invest in yourself and that was high. That was my first big step was like, OK, I’m going to do this. I’m going have to do this because I just invested. It was. It was a lot. Me and my wife talked probably a month or two about it.

John Harcar (04:34.029)
Was it mindset?

Wyatt Reed (04:40.558)
And I’m the guy that is like, we’ll figure it out. I didn’t have the money, but I’ll figure it out. We’ll do whatever it takes. that work ethic really, really helped in that too. So we were able to get a non-secured term loan, which was stupid, but it was $18,000 for my first mentor. And we got a non-secured term loan and we just went after it. But I would say like my first couple of deals went really well.

John Harcar (04:46.103)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Harcar (04:58.637)
Mm.

Wyatt Reed (05:10.414)
But that kind of gave me a big hit, you know? And so I started taking on things that I wasn’t prepared to do and I got on board very, very quickly.

John Harcar (05:19.865)
Mm-hmm.

And Real Estate can do that to you very, very quickly. So as you kept growing, mean, were there any other things that you kind of struggled with as far as maybe some processes or maybe like selling deals or doing stuff like that?

Wyatt Reed (05:25.869)
Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (05:39.596)
Yeah, so I didn’t have the money to do the paid marketing, like the postcards, the texting, all the paid marketing and stuff. So I had to hustle, network, all my, my first five deals came from wholesalers and realtors. I got one off Craigslist, know, referrals, stuff like that. And so that was a big hustle, but I spent all of my time in that and I didn’t even think to…

learn about the other stuff as I was going. was like, well, this is working and I had my blinders on and I was doing it. So I was like, let’s just keep doing it. when you’re doing it that way, it’s a good way to get started, but you’re relying on somebody else’s business to be successful for your business to be successful. So I wish I would have paid attention and learn more about the paid marketing sooner. then, like we were talking about earlier, the seller financing.

I wish I would have started that. I don’t even know if I’d be here right now if I would have started that six years ago, you know? So that was, I wish I would have known that sooner too.

John Harcar (06:42.1)
right?

John Harcar (06:46.239)
So in refresh me again, I don’t know if you mentioned it, how long did it take you to get your first deal?

Wyatt Reed (06:50.894)
So once I hired the mentor, it took me three, maybe four months to get my first deal. It took me three months to decide to get a mentor, doing it myself though.

John Harcar (07:00.365)
Okay, why was it so important for you to get the mentor as opposed to the YouTube you learn on the internet?

Wyatt Reed (07:10.997)
I just knew that I had already watched BiggerPockets, I had already watched YouTube. I went to a couple of events and I was like, they were talking about mentors, everybody was talking about mentors and masterminds, which I had no clue what a mastermind was at the time. And I was like, okay, well, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna have to do this.

John Harcar (07:27.414)
Right.

John Harcar (07:33.463)
Nice, I love it. Okay, cool. So it brings us up to kind of like today. What does your team look like? What does your business look like?

Wyatt Reed (07:41.71)
Yeah, so I grew a team when I first got started after I learned the paid marketing and stuff. We had about six, six or seven employees. We had an office, we had everything going. We were flipping six, seven houses at a time, just keeping them rolling. It was the worst time of my life. I’ll tell you.

John Harcar (07:57.933)
Nice.

John Harcar (08:02.349)
I know why but I’d like to explain that.

Wyatt Reed (08:06.894)
So yeah, we were always continuously pulling from projects to pay for other projects. Contractors were never doing what they said they were going to do. We miss things. When you’re rolling and doing that many deals, you miss some things if you don’t have professionals in that position to do it for you, right? But I miss stuff. Our first year, I remember having this conversation with our partner.

John Harcar (08:22.7)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (08:28.087)
Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (08:35.634)
Our tax lady said we made $600,000, which was amazing to me, but I was like, we don’t have any money. We don’t have anything. We had nothing. literally had nothing. Our employees were being paid before us, and that was usually the employees. We kept the business running, and we just thought that that was how it was for our first.

John Harcar (08:45.259)
I’m about say, how much did you keep? How much is left? Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (09:03.406)
going to be our first few years. we hit this wall and we were like, man, we can’t keep doing this. We had a couple of people that were doing the seller financing thing. I had done the rental properties. I’d bought like five or six rental properties. I hated being a landlord, right? That was when I first got started. I hated dealing with these people. Even with a property manager, it was still a pain in the butt.

John Harcar (09:14.881)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (09:18.935)
Yeah. Right.

John Harcar (09:28.845)
Yeah, unless you have the right one. mean, if you have the right one, you know, and then they can make it go smooth as butter. But yeah, if you got one that maybe isn’t as up to point, it can be rough.

Wyatt Reed (09:39.04)
It’s tough, man. Yeah, for sure. we were like, you know, at the time when we first got introduced to Seller Finance, we waited a whole year before we actually tried to do it because we didn’t understand it. And we were like, we’re doing what we know what to do, you know. And then we finally were just like burned out and we’re like, we can’t keep doing this. We’re not making any money. But we tried it on one deal and

John Harcar (09:52.333)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:00.781)
Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (10:08.59)
we made like, I think it was like 15 or 20 grand upfront from a down payment. And we had like six or $700 net coming in a month off that one house. And now like, you know, when you sell or finance, you’re essentially being the bank instead of a landlord. All the responsibility goes to them now, the tenant buyer. And so I was, we were hooked from there. We started building up the portfolio.

John Harcar (10:18.87)
Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (10:35.63)
We have around 160 doors 70 something of those are our storage facility But the rest are all single family and I would say maybe three or four of those are rentals all the rest are seller finance and so Yeah

John Harcar (10:42.157)
Mmm.

John Harcar (10:48.309)
Okay, so now, so let’s kind of start at the beginning of the seller finance part. So you’re going to look at properties. What specifically are you looking for? Like, are you targeting high equity properties? Are you free and clear properties? know, what are you trying to, you know, what’s your avatar property?

Wyatt Reed (11:04.79)
Yeah, so at the beginning we were targeting high equity and landlords. So the landlords though, we realized we can start pitching seller finance to them. When I’m generally talking about seller finance, I’m talking on the back end. But we realized we can pitch it on the end too. Right. We had gotten the whole BRRRR method, know, buying and with hard money and refinancing out. We understood that and we started to implement

John Harcar (11:20.619)
Right. okay, not on the buy.

Wyatt Reed (11:34.627)
At first, we started to implement seller financing just on the back end.

John Harcar (11:38.475)
Okay, I thought you were buying VSL or finance from the owner.

Wyatt Reed (11:43.072)
Right. At first we were not. At first we were just using the Burr method in seller financing instead of putting it in regular end, right? And then we started to realize that we can pitch terms on the front end and that made the deal way juicier, you know?

John Harcar (11:48.045)
Sure. Sure.

John Harcar (11:56.877)
Oh yeah, you can give them more money, they can have their hands off, they’re getting maybe taking a little bit less for their, you know, for their monthly payment, but still it’s…

Wyatt Reed (12:04.91)
Yeah, yeah. And you can’t, you can, but we noticed that when we targeted landlords, they were more susceptible to that because they got into real estate to have that passive cash flow that everybody wants, right? But then they start realizing that tenants and toilets and all that stuff isn’t as glamorous as what they thought it was going to be. Right, right. So they’re more susceptible to the seller financing.

John Harcar (12:20.077)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (12:25.485)
Tenants, toilets and termites, man. The three T’s. Tenants, toilets, termites. Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (12:33.9)
which is what they wanted in the first place anyways, right? So.

John Harcar (12:36.447)
OK. So are you targeting mainly landlords? Because I know that in my experience, at least, when I’m talking to a direct to a seller, that’s not a landlord. It’s maybe someone who lives there or whatnot. It’s a lot harder to explain and understand.

Wyatt Reed (12:53.644)
Yeah, yeah. We are, we target the landlords more heavily. We still target high equity too, because we still do flips. We still do innovations, wholesale, whatever really makes sense, but our primary focus is cash flow. So yeah, we still target that same audience. I’m not a fan of niche lists, man. I’m more of a cast of big net and volume.

John Harcar (13:00.236)
Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (13:17.272)
type of guy, you know? I I get it. I’ve got friends that do nothing but niche and they have some pretty juicy deals, but I feel like I make up for it in volume.

John Harcar (13:26.605)
Well, I worked at a data company back in the day when I started. my thing was find out where the buyers are buying and hit everybody in those zip codes. Because what are you going to get when you target everybody in the zip codes? All the niche lists, all the tax and faults, the tied landlord. You’re going to get all that. But you’re also adding that later on of, hey, these are where the buyers are buying. So it’s a better. So all right, cool. So where are you guys buying? Are you just in Tennessee or are you virtual?

Wyatt Reed (13:47.255)
Right, right.

Wyatt Reed (13:54.764)
Yeah, so I started out in North Alabama. I live in Tennessee, but North Alabama was where the community was, the real estate community that I joined and it’s where I got my first deals. I’ve done deals in Tennessee, Southern Middle Tennessee, and now we’re branching out into North Georgia and North Mississippi as well. we’re just bringing in.

bringing in deal partners and doing it like that. Nothing fancy. Once we got the portfolio where we wanted it to be, our overhead just completely dropped. We don’t even have an office anymore. There was no need for it at the time. So it’s been much less of a headache. We’re able to go and do.

John Harcar (14:35.425)
Yeah.

Wyatt Reed (14:48.162)
I go to Africa two times a year. I’m fixing to go to Florida next week with one of my business partners. We can go and do and we don’t have, people are paying their mortgage payments, right? They’re not paying rent, they’re paying mortgage. So you have a lot less headache.

John Harcar (14:52.961)
Awesome.

John Harcar (15:01.036)
Yeah.

John Harcar (15:06.197)
Yeah, I love it. Okay. So now you mentioned like North Georgia and some other areas like are you like familiar with those markets? Do you have like partners in those markets to help you?

Wyatt Reed (15:16.64)
Yeah, yeah. So I do some mentoring as well and I strategically identify people in other markets and when I see that there’s a good market that somebody’s in but they just can’t really handle it or don’t have the experience to handle it, I kind of step in and I say, hey, would you like to do this with me? I’m very strategic with that. Like I’ve found over the last six years, like you can’t do business with everybody.

John Harcar (15:45.333)
No.

Wyatt Reed (15:46.126)
So like it’s the upfront conversation is a lot harder than it used to be. Their boundaries set up their rules and responsibilities. Like if we’re not, if we’re not both kingdom minded, like that’s, that’s something for me that I want. I want to make sure that I’m working with some people, So that’s, that’s how we, we do the multiple markets.

John Harcar (16:09.537)
Yeah, I asked that because I don’t know if you have a standard underwriting process for the deals that you’re looking at. Like I said, if you have someone else in another market that’s helping you in that specific market or whatnot.

Wyatt Reed (16:20.842)
Yeah, first thing we do is we find local attorney, local realtor, a couple of local realtors. And then if we have issues with any of our numbers, they’re the first ones we call on. And upfront, it’s a lot heavier process for them. But once we figure it out, it’s a lot better.

John Harcar (16:43.029)
Yeah, I figured he had at least had a general kind of rule on how you’re looking at these things. What kind of mistakes are you seeing people that are starting to try to do seller finance, like maybe on their own, maybe they didn’t learn properly? Like what are the mistakes you’re seeing or you’re looking at?

Wyatt Reed (17:00.588)
Yeah, based around seller financing, as far as mistakes, it’s more towards general real estate mistakes. People come in and they think that they have to wholesale. They don’t have the other options or they don’t know enough about the other options. But I always tell everybody, if your credit’s good, you can refinance. But if it’s not, can pitch terms. And dialing in that conversation.

That’s one of the seller finance struggles that I see, the confidence in being able to pitch terms. When you’re first getting started, if you don’t have a mentor, at least what I’ve seen is they only know how to pitch a lowball cash offer because they’re trying to wholesale it. And I tell people all the time, I can beat your lowball cash offer out by 30, 40 grand because I have two or three other options that I can give them.

John Harcar (17:58.817)
Right?

Wyatt Reed (18:00.512)
Be a well-rounded investor, like learn the other strategies as well.

John Harcar (18:05.227)
That’s good advice. What trends are you seeing in the investing world, whether it’s wholesale, whether it’s buy and hold, fix and flip, whatever?

Wyatt Reed (18:15.468)
Yeah, our flips are definitely sitting on market a little bit longer, that’s for sure. Seller financing was iffy for the last, since November. So a lot of the tenant buyers that we have are Hispanic and a lot of those guys didn’t know what was gonna happen, right, with the election and.

John Harcar (18:42.637)
Mm-hmm.

Wyatt Reed (18:43.096)
with everything going on. it kind of slowed down. honestly, like we, this is another good piece of advice that you should always be able to pivot with stuff like that. So like we were hot and heavy in seller financing and buying and holding. And when that happened, luckily we didn’t have a lot on the market at the time for seller financing. And we were able to just transition those into flips. And so we transitioned into flips. I’ve got like,

John Harcar (19:08.482)
Right.

Wyatt Reed (19:12.066)
three on the market right now that we just got finished with and put on the market. But seller financing has come back hard over the last 60 days. we’ve been, I’ve even taken some of those ones that are on market to flip and I’ve put it out to some of my tenant buyers. That’s it, man. That’s it. Just be able to pivot. That’s the big thing.

John Harcar (19:28.557)
Put it out to seller finance. Yeah, you gotta have the inventory for the demand. Well, that’s.

That’s awesome, dude. It sounds like you got a killer business, man. It sounds like you, I mean, you’ve been through it, you know it. What do you mentor people in? Do you mentor them in flips? Do you mentor them in wholesale? Do you mentor them in the whole game of how to really just talk to people about seller finance?

Wyatt Reed (19:51.99)
Yeah, so seller financing and buying holds are what I say should always be the foundation of what you do because like I said, just through my experience, once we got enough cash flow coming in, can’t tell me what to do. There’s nothing that I have to do that I don’t want to do, right? So cash flow should be at the foundation of everything, I believe. But I teach people how to do the marketing.

We go based on their budget, like we look at their finances, their income, expenses. We, you know, create a custom marketing plan for them. If it’s got to be free leads, then that’s fine. You know, we can do that. But if you can afford to do some paid marketing, that’s awesome too. Let’s do them both. And then we just do whatever makes the most sense. So like I’ve got students that are flipping, wholesaling. A lot of them are doing the seller financing though because that’s…

That’s just the kind of people, you attract what you essentially are, right? So like, I’m a portfolio guy, so I attract more portfolio type people.

John Harcar (20:52.653)
Yep.

John Harcar (20:58.027)
I love it. love it. If folks are out there listening and they want to reach out to you, they want to learn how to do the seller financing or talk to you about your business or deals or whatnot. What’s the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Wyatt Reed (21:09.134)
Yeah, you can check us out at ascendyoursuccess.com or you can just follow me on Facebook. I’m Wyatt Reid on everything. I think I may be the only redheaded Wyatt Reid. just check us out.

John Harcar (21:24.141)
I love it man at least you have hair bro. I will all leave my hat on But guys I why did I appreciate you coming out here man? That’s this was awesome Guys, I hope everybody out there enjoyed the the show as well and took some good nuggets and reach out to him, dude I mean the guys running successful business. Why would you not want to learn from someone like that? So Wyatt, thank you again guys. We’ll see you on the next one. Cheers

Wyatt Reed (21:26.503)
Yeah

Wyatt Reed (21:46.616)
Yeah.