Beat the Odds: How to Rescue Your REI Transactions Like a Pro

Brett McCollum (00:00.622)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Brett McCollum, and I’m here today with Kirsten Banks. And today we’re going to be talking about transaction rescue. What does that even mean? You’re about to find out. Before we do, guys, at InvestorFuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 2 to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Kirsten, how are you?

Kirsten Banks (00:27.121)
I am incredible. It’s the crack of most people’s dawn over here. So up with the birds.

Brett McCollum (00:34.328)
There you go. Yeah, I’m East Coast time. You’re over there in Arizona, right? Yeah, so we can’t call it mountain time. We have to it Arizona time, don’t we?

Kirsten Banks (00:38.994)
Arizona, yeah.

Kirsten Banks (00:43.837)
We do, we don’t change, which really makes us pull up.

Brett McCollum (00:45.762)
That’s right.

I mean, Kristen, I wish we would all just get on board with that. Just stop changing it. Let’s just all have one time and let’s go, you know? I’m okay with that.

Kirsten Banks (00:56.625)
Yeah, well, you know, they passed the law like years ago, but they don’t, they never implement it.

Brett McCollum (01:02.594)
Yeah, it’s weird. But all right, before we get started on everything, let’s kind of back up a little bit, give some history, some background. Who’s Kirsten? Catch us up to speed a little bit.

Kirsten Banks (01:09.769)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So as a child, I thought I was going to be a dancer, literally thought I was going to be a dancer. I danced my entire life. And my parents told me that that wasn’t practical. And then I needed to be a big girl and go get a big girl job. And so at the ripe young age of 18, I left the cuckoo’s nest and went from Palm Springs, California, where I grew up and graduated.

I moved to Seattle and found my way into like short-term finance, AKA predatory, like payday loans and things like that. It’s kind of where I got my, my kick. then I somehow landed in, in escrow. It started in lending. I was working like on a, backend warehouse line when you refinance or you, you do a purchase money loan with a mortgage broker.

Brett McCollum (01:50.189)
Okay.

Kirsten Banks (02:05.278)
The warehouse line is like a whole other team behind it that has to ready the package and then be able to get it approved to send off to Fannie Mae or Sallie Mae. And so I was doing that and forming relationships with Tidal and escrow because that’s where I was doing a lot of the backend work. And I thought, hmm, this is pretty interesting because I was doing a lot of the funding side of that warehouse packaging.

I decided to take a position with Stuart Tidal as a funder way, way back in the early 2000s. And that’s really where my, my career began. I started out in funding and they had this big streamlined process that they thought that they were going to be able to be super efficient, go super high volume. You know, everybody’s dream in escrow is to have a lot of volume, right? And it didn’t work out. It kind of got mucked up.

because, well, I don’t know if you were around in 2007, but the market kind of took a turn for the worse. And we found ourselves in the middle of a big fat crash. So my company actually shut down completely. My operation in Washington shut down. And I took a little break and did some bartending and some office management work. And that was a really fun life experience. I think…

I hold it very fondly. There’s a lot of ick in it and a lot of rough life in, bartending and nightclubs. But it certainly teaches you how to manage volume, stress, talk to people, sell people, and it really starts to build a sales skill. And that was my big takeaway from it. And then when the market came back in 2009, my team that I had previously worked with, we all maneuvered our way over to Fidelity.

And we kind of just picked up where we left off. And I began my little over 10 year journey with Fidelity from there, a couple of those years in Washington. And then myself and my husband at the time relocated to Arizona. And that was a really interesting story actually. I was at our annual continuing education that was required. And the…

Brett McCollum (04:16.866)
Okay.

Kirsten Banks (04:27.698)
people that were putting that on the head educators had overheard me talking in a small group about how I wanted to move to Arizona. I had just visited, my sister was here and I wanted to be closer to family. And the girl, her name was Diana, she leans over and she’s like, you know what, I’m from Arizona. Like I know the county manager there, do you want an in? And I was like, well, yes. And she’s like, give me your resume. And so I gave her my resume and like a week later,

the now past Pat Baldwin gave me a call personally and said, Hey, I heard you were looking to transfer to Arizona. tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’ve done so far went through like a mini interview and she was like, great. Can you be here in 30 days? And I was like, okay. And so I uprooted my life and, moved to Arizona and started in an investor office.

Brett McCollum (05:11.779)
Done.

Kirsten Banks (05:20.382)
Um, and at that time, so that’s like 2010, maybe early 2010, no, late 2010. I, um, there was a lot of. Investors real estate wholesalers were still going to the sales, the steps at the auctions. And I was working at an office where we were kind of the liaison and we were pulling like mini reports and running like comps and things for these investors here in Arizona that were at the steps.

like, hey, what’s on title on this one? What’s on this one? Can we make this bid work? And then we were doing all of the paperwork for that. So that was my first investor experience. I think I didn’t, in hindsight, I didn’t understand really how the investor side of things worked until much later in the story. But from there, I actually got transferred.

Brett McCollum (05:58.967)
Yep.

Kirsten Banks (06:14.202)
from that office to a boutique office with an escrow officer who was doing kind of a mix of two different businesses. We were still in the short sale hype. So I was coming in to fill in somebody’s maternity leave. And the way that that office had worked was the escrow officer was taking everything over like 500,000 upwards of, I mean, we did like a hundred million dollar transaction. Like we did some big, I did some big hitting luxury, luxury transactions.

And her escrow assistant was doing, we were doing all of Brett Tanner’s short sales. So I was closing for Brett Tanner as his dedicated escrow officer filling in for her. And then they decided to keep me in that position. And when the other gal came back from maternity leave, she went in a different route within the company.

And then I got pregnant and I had my beautiful daughter that is now 11. And when I came back from maternity leave, I was working. I had been promoted to an escrow officer, but didn’t have a book of business yet. And it’s like a really big process to build a book of business from inside, right? Cause you’re selling from behind a desk instead of in front of a desk, but you’re partnered with a sales rep or a title rep, you know, that’s out in the community and, and, know, getting new clients and things of that nature. So it takes some time to.

to build an actual desk. And one day, I’ll never forget it, our sales manager came in and said, we have this big meeting. They would like to meet with you. They had heard about your work in the community, not me, my escrow officer, my manager. And these three boys, and they were boys at the time, walked into the office and they sat down and they started pitching their idea.

Brett McCollum (07:48.29)
Okay.

Kirsten Banks (08:00.319)
And I was listening from my office and I knew that it wasn’t going to be what she wanted to do. And it was three guys and they were pitching this idea that they were going to be an eye buyer in the space and that they were going to change and revolutionize the way that real estate transactions played out. And they left and

there were some chuckles. And I stepped into that office and I interjected myself and I said, give it to me, I’ll take it. And that company happened to be Opendoor. And so the original team of Opendoor and myself began a relationship and we created a process together from their side to my side to bridge the gap between Tidal and escrow, created some systems and processes for them.

Brett McCollum (08:33.73)
Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (08:55.614)
away I went. closed, we closed our first two deals in December of 2014. And in January of 2015, we jumped from two transactions to 30. And in February, I think I had close to 75 transactions and I was doing it all by myself, no assistant. And I was still assisting for my branch manager. And at that point we kind of

had to change the process a little bit. We broke up acquisitions and dispositions, moved back to that original office that I was in, the rest is really history. I was essentially their first escrow officer. Not essentially, I was. And then I moved over when they took the relationship to their JV and where they currently are. I moved over into that company.

COVID hit and they had to make some tough choices and I was one of those tough choices. And they bonded me with a national platform. So I became the national sales director, not national sales director, excuse me, the national closing director for a remote team through a company called Solidify.

And there I was responsible for building out a remote team because we were in the COVID crisis. Can we say that word? They didn’t know they were a brick and mortar and they were trying to go remote so that they could expand and capture a larger sales force for processing because they were so high volume.

We were averaging 13 to 15,000 transactions a month, all strictly refinance. and it was just absolute chaos and madness. And, I did that for a while and, decided I didn’t want to be in corporate America anymore. I had was burnt out and so I exited the company and decided that I was going to do life insurance. did it for a little bit.

Kirsten Banks (11:09.966)
It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. And I started looking around in the Valley at what was going on in the real estate market in 23. And I stumbled upon a company, a real estate team. They were looking for a dispositions manager. And I was like, what do I have to lose? I haven’t done it, but I’ve kind of done it. so here we are through that process.

Brett McCollum (11:10.104)
Good.

Kirsten Banks (11:38.227)
We had an in-house TC. I was strictly doing dispositions, mostly novations and a little bit of wholesaling, but really we’re a buy and hold company. And when the TC left, we had to make a decision if we were gonna use TC externally or if we were gonna bring it in-house and I was gonna be the only one that could really take it over with my experience.

We did do a round of interviews and it just nothing really panned out the way we needed it to. It’s it’s pretty extensive need that niche that we do. And so we did the the outsourcing for a short time and I just found that I was managing, I was still managing the process and I was doing a lot of the heavy lifting for things that the service didn’t cover.

And those were the really time consuming pieces. And so from that, an idea was born to fill the gap. And so I created this company, Transaction Rescue, really as a rescue company to do three things. excuse me, rescue transactions that were falling apart for contractual issues, know, seller issues, and really come in there as like a backup or with a creative solution to get the transaction.

through the finish line, rescue the transaction to bridge the gap between a wholesaler and investor and an outside TC service or maybe an inside TC service that just didn’t have the complete expertise to get it through. And then the last piece of it to come into play was actually, well, why don’t I just do the full TC scope, but do it the way that I would do it if it were my own file?

and take really truly take it from A to Z, no, no, all of cart, no gaps, nothing, make sure that transaction gets closed. And so that’s what I did. And, it’s worked out very successfully and very new. I’m, six months into the, into the picture here. brand is, is building slowly, but yeah, that’s it’s, it’s been, it’s been a roller coaster.

Brett McCollum (13:54.35)
That’s incredible. Yeah. Wow. Let’s a lot to unpack, but let’s, let’s do this. So you get out of the, you get kicked out of the bird’s nest, if you will. You’re in Seattle. You’re in Seattle. Is that right? Yeah. How long were you there before, you know, in total like 13 years. Okay. And then eventually you make your way to Arizona.

Kirsten Banks (13:59.514)
You

Kirsten Banks (14:06.856)
Yeah.

See you. Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (14:16.35)
13 years.

Brett McCollum (14:23.082)
all the way all along the way different forms of

between lending and then title, you know, right? Slash escrow. You’ve been building up to this for your whole career when you rewind it.

Kirsten Banks (14:32.06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (14:42.248)
When you rewind it and look at it, yeah, I absolutely have.

Brett McCollum (14:45.814)
No, that being said, I guess the big question I have is, have you looked back and thought about it like that? Because I can tell you some of my stuff if you want, but like all the things that I’ve done professionally has led me exactly where I am, and they actually really mesh together. Have you ever thought about that before, or was it just like, yeah, that wasn’t random, was it?

Kirsten Banks (15:09.586)
No, it wasn’t random. It was actually very calculated and I fought it for a really long time. I really wanted to do something in the fitness space and I have like a big goal and I’ll get there someday, right? I’m pretty goal driven, but I thought I was fighting the real estate for so long. And once I stopped fighting that that was where

I belong, this is where I need to be. Everything kind of just started to fall into the place that it needed to be and the imposter syndrome went away, the doubt went away, the I’m making a fool out of myself. All of that has really gone away because I just feel so uncomfortably comfortable here that it doesn’t, anything else now seems like.

wildly fearful.

Brett McCollum (16:09.42)
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of us when we’re when you’re talking about like, accepting that I grew up I was you were gonna be dancer, I was gonna be a baseball player. You know, I was gonna be a baseball player and I did I played through college. I thought I was doing it. Like, I’m gonna do this. And then it didn’t. And so I like, what am I gonna do now with my life? Like, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, you know, and I’m now I’m like,

Kirsten Banks (16:19.612)
The answer.

Kirsten Banks (16:24.55)
uh-huh. Yep.

Brett McCollum (16:38.072)
You know, it’s post college. Like, who am I gonna like? What am I supposed to do? This was the plan. You know, from the time I was four, you know, like nobody’s that’s the thing is like when you make it that far, and then you start playing, nobody told you can’t do it. And then I just thought I can’t do it. You know, it’s like, but for me, it’s like, I didn’t get into real estate for the because I was like, I’ve always wanted to be in real estate. No, that was a I got it on an accident. Actually, it’s like, it’s like,

Kirsten Banks (16:49.404)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:08.386)
What is this? You know, kind of thing. And then I was like, even then it was never meant to be anything. But when I look back and rewind and I just open, like, I see the, and I accepted the, this is what I’m good at.

Then actually, it’s funny, it’s that acceptance, then I started having joy in my work and joy in my life, joy. it was like, because I was fighting for so long. And sometimes the acceptance isn’t like just, it’s not accepting for settling sake, it’s accepting for like, I am good at something. This is what I am good at. And then once that happens, like, there’s a lot more peace, everything else comes along with it. It was incredible when that finally happened.

Kirsten Banks (17:27.912)
Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (17:39.272)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (17:49.117)
Yeah, you know, there’s a saying and that’s the saying that came through with this was, I’m going to muck it up here. Stroke brain. I had a stroke a few weeks ago, six weeks ago, very minor, but still there’s some residual fogging, but let me see if I can get this out. Do what you’re good at until what you’re good at becomes your passion. And I think it preludes with like, don’t chase your passion.

until you’re good at your passion, do what you’re good at until what you’re good at becomes your passion. I think that’s how it goes. And that’s really, that’s what I had to embrace. That’s what I had to accept. And just say, you know what, this is what I’m really good at. And my brain capacity understands and can dissect. I’m known as a bulldog. I’ve always, I’m just, I’m very blunt.

Brett McCollum (18:24.856)
Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (18:44.85)
just, I’m just gonna get it done and I don’t take a lot of excuses and I think that’s what’s made me very successful. And I do have a sharp tongue and I have a sharp finger when I need to write an email that’s gonna get it done. And I think that’s, if I were to ask people what they appreciate about me, it’s probably that.

Brett McCollum (19:06.626)
Yeah. Well, let me pause for a second. For that having happened, you’re up. I would never have known. So good on you for that. I’ve walked through some, that was some family. We talked about that a little bit, you know, pre-show. I know that’s a difficult journey, but you’re doing, it appears to me from the outside looking in, you’re crushing. So, you know.

Kirsten Banks (19:24.286)
We’re accommodating, we’re adjusting.

Brett McCollum (19:29.262)
There you go. Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit more like transaction rescue. Okay, like high level for me, you know, I understand the idea of, know, TC and all that stuff. But for the everyday investor that maybe just is used to doing their own stuff, I’m gonna ask the bold blunt question. Is that okay? Why do I need you?

Kirsten Banks (19:34.451)
Sure.

Kirsten Banks (19:50.206)
Sure.

Kirsten Banks (19:55.047)
I think the bottom line and then the thing that I preach most often is that as a wholesaler and investor, you are in sales and marketing, that’s actually your game. And it’s your expertise. And for every minute that you spend pushing around paper and making sure the deal gets to the closing line, you are taking away from your actual business model and goal, which is to lock up more deals and make essentially make money or help people solve.

Brett McCollum (20:17.806)
Kirsten Banks (20:24.85)
real estate pain problems. It’s kind of like the stay in your lane. We always talk about pick your lane and stay in your lane. Those are two different lanes in a transaction. And I think that a lot of people in this industry, you know, they’ve either seen a guru or they’ve seen a mentor, you know, have a big lifestyle and they’re like, I could do that. And

A lot of the coaching in this, in the niche is about the sales and the marketing. Everybody’s talking about acquisitions and dispositions and find the seller and find the buyer. And these people are just like, I can do that. It’s a skillset. It’s a sales skillset has nothing to do with an actual real estate transaction, the actual meat and bones of the transaction. so outsourcing that to somebody who has a high level understanding of it or has done it.

or just strictly alleviates that thing will allow your sales process to get unbottlenecked, right? Every time you wholesale a deal, we’ll just take a wholesale deal, right? Like you find a seller, you find a buyer, it closes, you’re unemployed. And if you do each bucket of that, you’re prolonging your unemployment rate every time you have to go find a new seller because now you haven’t been able to efficiently manage

the process from the sales process. Like you need to be hitting KPIs, you need to be hitting dials, you need to be hitting talk time if you’re going to have a lasting successful operation or scale a team or go anywhere from there. And so why would you bottleneck yourself at the most difficult part of a transaction, which is in fact to get it closed, to clear title issues, to rally sellers and buyers to get them to deposit money, sign funds or sign closing docs, and then everybody gets paid.

Brett McCollum (22:15.438)
Okay.

Kirsten Banks (22:20.094)
Right? Like a contract is a contract, a buyer and an assignment is also just a contract until it gets closed. You don’t actually have a transaction. And that’s why I think TC is, it’s so underrated. It’s so under talked about, and it’s really so undervalued, but it, is just as important as the, the, acquisition and the disposition, but it’s a lane and not everybody belongs in that lane. And that’s where I commit.

Brett McCollum (22:46.818)
Yeah. Tell me a couple like normal, I wouldn’t say every day, but like some fairly common things that you see come up on, like let’s stick with the wholesale lane for now. You have a buyer and a seller, right? Fair enough. You have a seller and then you’re in buyer. What are some common things that you see come up in your deals that you work on?

Kirsten Banks (22:58.366)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (23:11.772)
Yeah. Honestly, the most common thing I will have to say is actual vesting issues, ownership issues, who actually owns the property. A lot of the clients that I work with and even a lot of the transactions that I do as in my dispositions role, because I still do that on top of this, do too. Well, actually, I wear like 17 hats, but we’ll stick with the two, right?

A lot of it is in the like sunshine belt and kind of the not the East coast, but just before you hit the Midwest. And for whatever reason, there is a general lack of understanding of how to effectively transfer title. And you have a lot of people doing quick claim deeds and breaking chains of title and just absolutely mucking up transactions. And then when they go to sell it,

They can’t because nobody’s going to ensure the transaction because they, you know, a brother of a sister of somebody who died, quit claimed it 16 times, or they didn’t want to do a probate because they didn’t have the funds or the know-how to do it. And they tried to do some shady deed underneath it. And it just, every transaction comes to a screeching halt. So would say that’s definitely number one. It’s, it’s a constant flow.

No two transactions are like, but I swear, I think I had six different vesting issue transactions in the month of March and only one of them closed. We’re still working on them, but I mean, that’s just the reality of the situation. I mean, these transactions are falling apart, but these are why in a wholesale deal, these are typically, that’s the avatar, right? You’re looking at distressed sellers and they are either distressed because they have a distressed situation or they have a distressed title.

Brett McCollum (24:42.03)
Yeah.

Kirsten Banks (25:03.43)
And they don’t know real estate agent. can’t go through a regular retail transaction because nobody’s going to fix it for them. or they can’t afford to fix it. But then that’s where, you know, the value of real estate investors, I think they just we just have such a special place in the in the ecosystem of real estate. We are absolutely, absolutely needed in this space. And I hope that.

that we never become obsolete as real estate investors because there are multiple ways to get it done and retail isn’t always the answer.

Brett McCollum (25:40.59)
Right. No, I love that. Yeah. I’ve been on that side of it. You know, had a grandfather quick claims it’s a granddaughter, but then the granddaughter, the grandfather had Alzheimer’s. Uh, and so he’s in a, in a facility. so when title learns about that, they were like, Oh, we don’t want to touch it, you know, because of the risk association. And then we’re like, but then underwriting says, yeah, we’ll do it, but we need

Kirsten Banks (26:00.104)
Well, yeah.

Brett McCollum (26:07.244)
two doctors notes from two different doctors from two different times. It’s just like, y’all, how are we supposed go back, going back a year when this quick claim was done? I’m like, how are we supposed to do that? That’s not my problem. That’s a recent one, right? And it’s just these things come up, these things happen. How do we get through them? Yep.

Kirsten Banks (26:19.848)
Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, I certainly do all the time. Yeah. And it is, it’s how do you get through them and where a normal, a normal investor or somebody who came into this game, a young 22 year old, you know, kid who’s just getting started as like, that’s a cancel. And it’s like, no, wait a minute. You don’t have to cancel that. But that’s, that’s what they think because they can’t see their way through that. They don’t know that they can, you know, take X, Y step and I can sit there and break it apart and analyze it and start.

picking up the phone, but also that’s time consuming. And so the amount of manpower and hours that that takes now their entire business has come to a screeching halt just so that they can get one transaction. that’s where the evaluation is, is this 10,000 or this $20,000 worth me stopping my business for? Well, yeah, because call, call a TC or call a rescue and let me take that and you just keep locking up more deals. And by the time I get this one done,

your next one’s assigned and ready to go, and now you’ve got a system.

Brett McCollum (27:26.412)
Yeah, I love that. That’s very cool. And I agree. There’s a space for it in today’s market, for sure. Especially now with, there’s a lot, mean, you’ve probably heard the silver tsunami, the whole coining phrase with probate. It’s gonna be, mean, it’s basically, it’s our parents’ generation is, it’s just, it’s dying off.

And there’s gonna, I think it’s something like 33 % of all real estate transactions are gonna require appropriate.

Kirsten Banks (28:01.887)
That’s correct. It’s going to be a real problem. what’s even the real, the real problem isn’t that this, this, that trend, that generation, which is my parents’ is going to require probate. What the, what I’m seeing happen, and this is what I’m already seeing as the tip of the iceberg is it’s those 60, 70 year olds that are starting to die that are selling it off that they, it’s the acquisition when

you know, is in the fifties or the forties when they were able to first own real estate and everything was done via a quick claim deed and they didn’t probate that transaction. And now you’re dealing with affidavit of airships or small estates, but I’ve got some, I’ve got some ones that are really puzzle your brain right now.

Brett McCollum (28:33.816)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (28:45.016)
Some doozies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that for sure. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And I mean, and it’s coming soon. I mean, they’re talking like by by 2035. We’re 10 years off of it. It’s not like it’s it’s down the road. No, it’s it’s here. It’s starting. Yeah. Very cool. Well, yeah, I mean, I know we could do this back and forth for a very long time. And I don’t want to respect your time. know, you got a lot to get after.

Kirsten Banks (29:00.241)
it’s here. Yeah, it’s here. I agree.

Kirsten Banks (29:09.768)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (29:13.858)
But if people wanna reach out to you and connect with you in some way, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Kirsten Banks (29:16.498)
Okay. Socials. I’m available on Instagram. have my little link there that you can book a free one-on-one. We’ll do a free discovery call and then just see how I can help you. I’m really focused on the rescues right now. I am one person and am not intending to scale to a… My goal and my vision with this company is not to scale it to a massive transaction.

T.C. company that is not the vision that I have for this. I’m pivoting a vision towards really being able to teach other T.C.’ how to duplicate myself. And I think that that’s where my kind of alignment is. But I love the rescue part of it. I love to help people figure it out and take that piece of it. But we’ll talk on a one-on-one and see how we can work together and if it makes sense to work together.

The best way to do that right now is through Instagram. My website is just about finished or almost there. And then we’ll launch that and then obviously it’ll be at www.transactionrescue.com.

Brett McCollum (30:30.21)
Love that. I’m excited for you, Kirsten. You’re on an incredible journey. It’s a great story. I love where you’re going, what you’re doing. And guys, we’ll have it in the show notes. Just make sure you look up Kirsten and connect through in that way.

Kirsten Banks (30:36.915)
amazing.

Kirsten Banks (30:42.174)
All right, well thanks for having me.

Brett McCollum (30:43.822)
Yeah, thanks for being here. really appreciate it. Thanks so much. All right, guys. Well, thanks for hanging out with us today. I appreciate you listening, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode. Take care, everybody.

Kirsten Banks (30:45.906)
Yeah, pleasure.