How to Buy Houses With Seller Financing and Protect Home Equity

Gery Connor
I would say number one, make sure that you know and understand what seller financing is. If if you understand what seller financing really is, how to present it to a seller, and I go back to sports all the time, kind of my background, but if you’re going to the plate ten times and you close three out of ten in this business, you’re gonna make a lot of money in a very short period of time. So

As long as you’re making the offers and you can support those offers with facts that the seller can trust you, you don’t need a lot of money to get into the business.

Issa Hanna
Welcome back to another episode of The Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have somebody who is a single family residential genius, an equity icon. For twenty-eight years, he’s been revolutionizing the way people use their equity. Gery Connor. Gery welcome to my show.

Gery Connor
Isa, thanks for having me.

Issa Hanna
Thanks for coming on. I’m super excited to talk to you and pick your brain about this. you have 28 years of experience, so I know you have tons of knowledge. the first question I want to ask you is for people that don’t know what you’re doing, please explain what you’re currently what’s going on right now in your business, what you’re currently focused on.

Gery Connor
We focus on buying homes and then doing two year lease options for people who need need approximately two years to qualify to buy a house. It could be that in transition or moving in from Dallas to to here, they’re gonna work for Amazon, they gotta sell the house in Dallas, or perhaps a lot of self-employed people. They just need a couple of years to get to show the income. we do get a lot of divorced people. So anybody who’s in a transition

part of their life and including college grads who need a little time to establish some time on the job and get a little bit more down payment. So it’s a quite a wide market that we approach.

Issa Hanna
Definitely. So you are basically into the transitional housing market in a nutshell, correct? Yes. So an example of that would be somebody, God forbid, in a house fire, correct? Yep. And they would need somewhere to stay for a year or two, but also want to, you know, lease to own.

Gery Connor
Right. They need a lease to own and so they got their settlement from the insurance company, for example, got their money back, got their down payment in order and settled up with the old lender and they could qualify for that next home.

Issa Hanna
Well, one thing when we were talking earlier that really, really stuck out with me is the integrity you have in this business. How you’re offering sellers fair money for their houses, you know, and making sure their equity doesn’t go to waste. that’s something I really like. Can you shed some more light on on how you do that?

Gery Connor
It comes from my financial planning background. often working with people, their largest asset was often their home as they’re building up their 401k at work. But a lot of people had a lot of equity in their house and I always felt like that was their money for them to keep for their retirement, for their kids, whatever reason, it was their money. And to me, $100,000 in home equity is no different than having a hundred thousand dollars in savings in the bank. It’s their money.

I wanted to learn how to protect that. I did become a realtor for several years in Naples and I did well, but I always felt there was a piece missing because all the commissions, obviously, closing costs, everything came out of the seller’s equity. And I just wanted to find a way where how could I buy these houses myself, let them keep all that equity that that was their money to begin with.

and then pay them off in a reasonable amount of time so that they could get all that equity, get that paid off in full, then they can invest it or put it where they wanted to put it. And that’s kind of been my passion and that’s what I really believe in.

Issa Hanna
Definitely. And for twenty eight years, you’ve probably saved people in the hundreds of millions doing this. So I applaud it and and I really love your knowledge. So speaking of twenty eight years, everybody has a cool story how they got involved in in the business we all love, real estate. what’s your origin story? How’d you get started in all this?

Gery Connor
I don’t know how cool it is, but it’s a fact. I I’m from Northern Kentucky, right outside Cincinnati. I went to Sweden to play basketball for a couple of years. And then I became the director for Converse Sweden, Finland, and Norway. And I ran Converse from nineteen eighty four when they sponsored the Olympics in Los Angeles, is when they expanded into Europe. So I was kinda in the right spot at the right time.

Worked with Converse for nine years, grew the company extremely well. my sales were number three in all of Europe. That included Italy and Spain. We were the top three in all of Europe. And that is where I was going to retire. That was my life of doing clinics with Dr. J and Larry Bird and Jimmy Connors. So that was I I wore Converse my whole life. I was extremely happy. Converse

Issa Hanna
Well I love.

Gery Connor
Their parent company called Interco filed bankruptcy and they owned Florsheim Shoes, Central Hardware, and ended up that Nike took over Converse. Nike always wanted Converse anyway, because Converse ruled the NBA market, the college basketball market. And that’s why you don’t see Converse shoes on basketball teams anymore. You only see the Chuck Taylor, what they call the fashion shoe that we grew up with. And that’s all owned by Nike now.

I had zero interest to work with Nike. different business ethics and different things in my opinion, what Nike where they source shoes, how they source things. So I’ll probably get in trouble for saying that, but that’s why I did not want to work with Nike. Came back to the States, didn’t know what I was gonna do. I thought I was gonna retire with Converse and I wanted to retire with Converse. But since there was no more Converse, I got into financial planning.

I enjoyed that, but there was still something missing. I sort of like bigger things, bigger, you know, opportunities, if you will. And that’s where I learned about people’s equity. Every every person I set up in investments, I saw that big chunk of equity in their home. And I realized how important that was for their future. And been married 43 years. My wife is from Sweden.

We decided decided to try Naples, Florida, met an attorney, and all of a sudden I bought my first house on seller financing. gave them full price, had a d determined amount of time to pay them off. They got all their equity, they were super happy, we’re still really good friends, and I really enjoy that and I saw the opportunity to expand from there. And that’s how I I don’t know, I don’t know how interesting that was, but that’s how I got into the business and just

Continue to build off of that.

Issa Hanna
No, definitely, definitely an interesting story. And then you know, it it always people get the bright light, it goes off at some point in their real estate career and they’re like, man, this is a really good idea. And you took that idea and also said, you know what, I can help people with this idea. So I definitely applaud that about you. now every real estate investor or real estate person has a nightmare they had to overcome. do you have a real estate nightmare you might want to share with us?

Gery Connor
More than one. and it’s kind of funny because I’m quite naive. I’m kinda like my father was. shake a guy’s hand and that you’re that’s the deal, you know. I learned the hard way that that’s not always the deal. and certain markets in Southwest Florida, we have tremendous success with our lease-to-own program.

We moved up back to Greater Cincinnati because that’s where my family is from. And my wife’s a nurse practitioner at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in the intensive care unit. So she really liked Children’s Hospital and the environment here. And we continued the exact same business model. We bring the people in, qualify them, expecting them to buy their house in two years.

And my first nightmare was walking into an eviction court in Kenton County, Kentucky. I’d never been in an eviction court in my life in Southwest Florida. I’m sure there were evictions, but not in our group. And I almost got sick to my stomach. There were so many people in there, I had no idea. And my attorney looked at me, I played basketball with him actually in in college here. Six he’s six foot eight, and he he told me, he said, Gery, what’s wrong? I said,

I’m gonna throw up. He said, What’s wrong with you? I said, All these people are being kicked out of their homes because they’re not paying their rent. He said, Yeah, it’s part of the business. Welcome to welcome to Greater Cincinnati, he said. As stupid as that sounds, it I still hate evictions today. I don’t want to see anybody lose their house. But I come to learn that some people really don’t they don’t pay and they don’t care. And you can’t help somebody who doesn’t care.

Issa Hanna
Definitely you can’t help yeah, you can’t help somebody that doesn’t want to help themselves as much as you try. I can definitely relate to that. so Gery, what does the future hold for you? where do you see yourself in a few years? Are we scaling up? Are we keeping it the same? We going down a little bit?

Gery Connor
Bigger than I did.

Two things. One is we we want to go ahead and level out at 100 homes. We we want to learn from our mistakes of how to qualify people better to get them into the homes. because there’s a real joy in the people who do buy the houses. Sometimes it’s come in six months is our shortest where they got in, fixed their credit or whatever it was, sold it in six months. Others who hit that two-year mark or 18 months.

They are extremely thankful and extremely happy that they didn’t have to rent an apartment or rent from a slum lord and move again. They got into a home, into the school district they want to be in, and now they can live there for the next 10, 15, 20 years or what have you. so from that point of view, it’s a very rewarding business as well. They’re happy they made some equity. We made our money and everybody wins. so I want to continue that, just get smarter.

How we qualify people that we’re working on that a lot. the second thing is my dad was a coach. I enjoy coaching. I’ve coached a few people, but I think I want to take this to a whole new level. I want to build this out to where I know our business model is so different than anybody else’s, and like I’ve been part of many groups and still am and

I just see that there’s an opportunity for people who believe in what I believe in to help people keep that equity and they can do it with just a good simple operations manual and a way to market themselves properly. And I would I I’m sixty six, I would enjoy being able to do that. Maybe build a large network of people that can do the same in other markets and in here. There’s plenty of business everywhere actually. So those are my two things.

Issa Hanna
So scaling up to a hundred cleaning up operations and you know, I always I always say people in our business, integrity matters. you’re able to build your your business relationships through, you know, your good name. For people just starting out, trying to build their networks, Gery, what advice would you have for them?

Gery Connor
I would say number one, make sure that you know and understand what seller financing is. If if you understand what seller financing really is, how to present it to a seller, and I go back to sports all the time, kind of my background, but if you’re going to the plate ten times and you close three out of ten in this business, you’re gonna make a lot of money in a very short period of time. So

As long as you’re making the offers and you can support those offers with facts that the seller can trust you, you don’t need a lot of money to get into the business.

We don’t put large down payments down. We we make things very affordable and make it work for the seller and obviously for us. and most sellers, if they see the amount of equity you’re gonna save them and how you’re gonna do it. And you can close pretty much today and take over their grass cutting and their

utilities and everything, they get the peace of mind because we can guarantee the purchase from day one. You know, the competition can’t, realtors can’t guarantee anything. and if you can learn that piece of it with confidence to find the lease purchase buyers who will come right back in and within two weeks you’re getting a down payment from the lease purchase buyer, your cash flow starts building. So it’s timing, but it’s also determination that

you you’re not trying to ever hurt the seller. I don’t know how many sellers I’ve talked to, especially in the beginning, that were another cash, you know, the cash buyer thing, the low ball, are you a realtor? You know, they’ve been hit with the same thing over and over. So they almost think, like, who are you? What are you talking about? I never heard of something like this before, you know.

Issa Hanna
Definitely like like you’re too good to be true.

Gery Connor
Yeah,

yeah, exactly. You know, so but that’s okay. I’m I’m okay with that because I know what we do is true. And I think the one thing we offer that really helps is that we offer a three hundred fifty dollar legal guarantee. So at the signing of the documents, we will pay for their attorney to come read over everything. But he’s got he or she needs to physically attend, not sit at their office and go, you know, read through faxes and all that or email. And

we will pay for their attorneys. That’s how confident we are what we do is not only legal, ethical, but it’s also good for the seller financially.

Issa Hanna
And that goes back to when somebody has the knowledge in this business like Gery does and deals in integrity, he can really, really help you. So with that, Gery, if we had a seller who might be watching us right now, I was like, Man, that’s I I I need to deal with that guy. I want to get all my equity. How could they get a hold of you?

Gery Connor
my assistant, it’s [email protected] She monitors everything we do because I’m not very tech savvy myself. But and she sort of screens first and if they’re serious, she’ll set up a Zoom meeting and I’ll give fifteen minutes and we’ll know right away if we’re a good fit for each other or not.

Issa Hanna
That was good. Well, make sure you guys give Gery a ring. Just give Gery a call if you can use his services. Gery, I want to thank you for coming on the show. it was great hearing all the knowledge from 28 years of experience and and your unique perspective on real estate. And if you guys enjoyed Gery and my conversation and want to hear more like this, make sure to like and subscribe. I speak to people every day who could give us different aspects of knowledge on the real estate industry.

We all know and love. Until the next time,