Casey Mericle Reveals Creative Financing, Counteroffers, and 1031 Exchange Strategies

Casey Mericle (00:00)
you know, people call me with 10 days left and ask me to, you know, find me a 12 cap, right? Well, if, if I had a 12 cap, why would I sell it to you? I’ve never met you in my life. I wouldn’t. Right. But they forget about this. Now, can I pull that out of a hat sometimes? Yeah. But really, if I could pull an eight cap out of a hat and make you safe and get you to not pay any taxes, you’d probably be pretty excited about it.

Quentin Edmonds (01:57)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest. And listen, if you want to talk about structuring a deal, this is the person that you want to talk to. And so he’s going to tell us how he slice and dice a deal offer in different ways and how he can get things done. And so I’m super excited to introduce you all to Mr. Casey Mericle Mr. Casey, how you doing today, sir?

Casey Mericle (02:25)
Good, how are you, cute?

Quentin Edmonds (02:26)
Oh man, doing good, doing good. Happy to be alive, man. And I’m excited about this episode. I know how people are going to get a lot of good nuggets from you today, And so I’ll be honest, I kind of want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. Casey, if you can give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got to where you are now. We love the hero’s journey, man. We love like that second how people got to where they are now. So it’s a little bit of an origin story.

And then if you don’t mind telling them where you are in the world, people seem to definitely want to know that, especially if you’re right around the corner from them. They’re like, hey, maybe I can connect with this guy. So a little bit about what you’re doing, your origin story and where you are. Mr. Casey, sir, you have the floor.

Casey Mericle (03:08)
Okay, Casey Mericle, I’m out of Missouri. ⁓ Origin story, I started buying houses on the courthouse steps like 0910, bought ⁓ a bunch of houses, ⁓ flipped a bunch of houses, got into notes and the debt side of real estate, got into hard money lending, creative financing and commercial. ⁓

And now I buy stuff, mostly commercial stuff all over the country. I lend a little bit. I help a bunch of people facilitate their 1031 exchanges. And ⁓ I chase around two little kids and my wife and my fair friend. So that’s it.

Quentin Edmonds (03:52)
I love it, man. I love it. Thanks for bringing in the two kids because that’s the full-time job for this software. Absolutely, man. Thank you for the concise journey. Started in 2009, 2010. You did flips, notes, creative finances, commercial. Got the two kids. That’s your money around, Jason. I love it, man. I like to kind of rig the ice a little bit with this question.

Casey Mericle (03:57)
Hello.

Quentin Edmonds (04:13)
⁓ I have a statement where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning like no matter what you go through in life, it kind of prepares us for the person that we are now. And we pick from different parts of our life. And sometimes if we reflect, we kind of see the road that kind of led us to where we are now. And so, man, I would love to know throughout your journey, man, what has these moments within your success, within your growth, what has it taught you about yourself? Has it taught you like discipline, resilience, humility? Like what is these moments?

Casey Mericle (04:14)
Sure.

Quentin Edmonds (04:43)
throughout your growth, throughout your process, your journey, taught you about you, Casey.

Casey Mericle (05:34)
Yeah, like if I had to sum it into a word, I’d say persistence, right? Like if you’re in real estate long enough, you get kicked in the mouth a lot. You get battle scars. ⁓ You get no constantly, right? And you’ve got to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going, right? And that’s kind of the essence and the epitome of what I’d say ⁓ I do every day. ⁓

Quentin Edmonds (05:58)
Yeah.

Casey Mericle (05:59)
You know, I make a bunch of offers and then I get kicked in the mouth and told no. And I try to figure out ways to make deals ⁓ with, with people and entities to basically make both sides win as much as I can. Right. Full disclosure. I’m a greedy capitalist pig and I, you know, but you don’t have to be to do a good deal with somebody, right? Like you can make it.

Quentin Edmonds (06:03)
Hmm.

Casey Mericle (06:26)
work for both sides if you know how.

Quentin Edmonds (06:29)
I love it. love it. Listen, self-awareness is everything. I love it. Like, listen, I know who I am. I’ll just stop bringing integrity to what it is, but I do know who I am. I hear it.

Casey Mericle (06:38)
Yeah. Well,

I’m not going to do a deal if I can’t make any money. I’m sorry. That’s why I’m here. I got to feed those kids. So, yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (06:46)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. So Streamline Holdings, that’s the name of the company. Is that correct? OK, tell me a little bit about the name. I love to know sometimes the origin story kind of where the name came in. So is there a story behind the name?

Casey Mericle (07:02)
Oh dude, no, I was just trying to come up with something, you know, 17 years ago or whatever. And I’m sorry, there’s nothing sexy there. Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (07:09)
Okay.

I love it. I hear sometimes there’s a story behind it. Sometimes like you just said, nah, just pulled it out. Here we are. I love it, man. So let me ask you this. What’s the next real goal for you guys? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next?

Casey Mericle (07:18)
Yeah.

Well, you guys is really just me. I’m not really trying to solve for anything. I live for today. All I say to myself at the beginning of the day is I get to wake up and I want to make a good deal with somebody, with a good person, really. And that can be, I’ll transact anywhere in America.

Quentin Edmonds (07:28)
Okay.

Casey Mericle (07:47)
I’ve bought just about any asset class you can think of. And ⁓ I’m just looking, I’m looking for opportunities kind of that people miss or don’t know how to, you know, fit the puzzle pieces together, if you will.

Quentin Edmonds (08:03)
Absolutely. And I know you said, listen, if you in real estate, you get kicked in the mouth. So I would love to know adversity. How does adversity or how has adversity looked within your world? And what are some of the things you did to kind of overcome it?

Casey Mericle (08:17)
man, well, mean, there’s, don’t have like, man, I live a good life and there’s, there’s stuff that’s happened to me that, you know, I think happens to everybody, you know, at some point, like somebody tries to screw you over in a deal, right? Like I,

I can’t tell you how many people in my life have tried to screw me over in a deal, right? But like, think the most important thing is to, when you make a mistake is to think through, ⁓ okay, how do I fix this in the future? You know, how do I set up my affairs to where I’m not going to have to learn this lesson again? And you know, sometimes that’s just as easy as a sentence and a contract. And then it’s sometimes, you know, it’s, well, like,

Quentin Edmonds (08:58)
Mm.

Casey Mericle (09:02)
For instance, I might send somebody an offer, right? ⁓ And I get this quite a bit. ⁓ No, revise, you know, we’re not gonna take your offer, revise your offer, right? Or, ⁓ hey, can you do this or can you do that, right? And after I’ve already sent in a written offer, what I would tell people is don’t do anything unless you get a counter offer.

a written counter offer. Because here’s what’s going to happen. If you say yes to one thing, right, then they’re probably going to ask for something else and your whole deal might change, right? Whereas if you get a counter offer back, you know all of the things that are changing and there say there’s 10 levers to pull in the deal and they need six of them ⁓ or seven of them, right? Like I can usually still do that deal.

But I’ve got to pull the other three levers for myself. If they leave me nothing on the bone, again, if I’m not going to make money, I’d just rather go on to something else, right?

So, you know, something that, you know, just a little thing that your people should learn about is always get a counter offer in writing.

and tell them that they, that not to negotiate against yourself. Cause if you, if you concede a one point, then one, if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile, right? And then, then two, you might not like, you might not be able to do that deal at all because of the other things that they’re going to take in the deal. So just see the whole picture, not just one part of it.

Quentin Edmonds (11:11)
Yeah, I love it. I love it. I’m so glad. I love how you, you know, speaking to our audience and I love how you are definitely like, listen, I’m doing a deal to make money for sure, but you’re doing it from a technical way. So I want to talk about relationships for a little bit. And so I want to get your perspective when it comes to relationship building within business. And this can be from a client perspective, partnership perspective. Like I just want to hear your philosophy on relationship building within this real estate space.

Is it important to you? Have they worked out well for you? Tell me a little bit more about relationship building within the space.

Casey Mericle (11:45)
⁓ Well, ⁓ relationship building is important, right? And people say, find a commonality and talk about that. And if I’m in a conversation with somebody face to face, or if I’m calling somebody cold calling over the phone, I might try to do that, right? Typically, most of my conversations, because I think I’m a bit older than you, Quentin, is ⁓

Quentin Edmonds (12:10)
I don’t

know.

Casey Mericle (12:11)
People come to me, my phone rings off the hook, get DMs all the time, I get emails asking me to help people figure out deals, right? And they ask me to help them figure out deals because ⁓ I’ve got a pretty…

decent social media following, right? And I post every day about deal structure and how to do deals and little tips and tricks and whatever, right? And so ⁓ I’m kind of in the mind of people, people know me for figuring stuff out, right? Like they’ve got a deal, they think they got an inkling of a deal, they see the tip of the iceberg, but they can’t uncover the whole iceberg. So I get a lot of phone calls just because ⁓ I’m out there every day

I’m trying to educate people. do it for free. If you look at my stuff, you’re never charged for it. I mean, there’s some crazy, wild, and wacky stuff that you wouldn’t believe if you checked it out. So people come to me and they already know me. They know me from social media and they say, hey, let’s start. Instead of starting at the beginning, I get to kind of start at the middle. So that helps a lot.

Quentin Edmonds (13:08)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Casey Mericle (13:22)
Not always. What you said is important. If I’ve never met somebody before, then obviously I’m going to try to build a rapport and figure it. My big deal is, hey, if you’re coming in cold, you need to figure out what the other side wants. And until you know what they want, you can’t give them what they need. So I don’t.

I don’t beat people up a lot of times. I’ve lowballed a million people in my life, right? But I’ve also, I bet you I’ve probably put in a higher than asking price offer more than I’ve lowballed. And how do you make money with that? Great financing, right? And deal structure. And so, I’m rambling on here, but there’s ways to do things and that’s what I’d say.

Quentin Edmonds (14:08)
Yeah, yeah. Love it, man. Love it. Well, listen, Casey, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to bring up? Or is there like kind of any words of inspiration, education, motivation you want to bring? I’m just like kind of trying to open up the floor for you. Like maybe if you come in here, came in here with something on your mind, like I want to make sure, you know, I stick this with the, with the viewers. Kind of want to just open up the floor to you. there’s anything you feel like our audience need to know.

Casey Mericle (15:15)
Yeah, well, regarding education, would say, you know, a smarter tribe.

is a wealthier tribe, right? So anything you can do to educate yourself is going to be helpful. the rising tide floats all boats, right? The water in the rising tide is education. So if you don’t know how to do something, like there’s plenty of platforms out there ⁓ to figure out how to do a deal or how to do a deal in a certain asset class, right? Or how to finance something or how to structure something, right?

As far as things that I would want to highlight, I don’t know. Well, so for instance, I’ll give you an example. So Guy calls me the other day. He has…

10 days left on his 1031 exchange, right? And I get these calls, I get, I don’t know, four or five calls a month about this exact thing, right? Comes to me and says, hey, ⁓ I haven’t found anything to buy. I’ve got 10 days left. ⁓ I want to buy something in a class A location at an eight cap when…

Krexy says, all I can find is fives and sixes on a needle in a haystack, right? And I remind people that the whole reason they’re in a 1031 exchange is to save the money they already made, which they’re about to blow, and to not go into something stupid and overpay, right? And…

Nobody really looks at 1031 deal structuring, but there are some really fantastic ways to structure a deal for a 1031 exchange, right? So for instance, like a discount sale buyback, right? So people will sell it like…

Another example, right? saw a property recently where I was talking to a guy and he had a big recapture bill and he sold his property to another 1031 exchanger for less than fair market value. Now it was less than fair market value because there was some issues with the property, right? But a couple things happened in that deal.

The guy sold for less than his basis, his adjusted basis. So ⁓ there’s no recapture if you sell for less than your adjusted basis. People don’t know that. ⁓ The property was rented out. So the buyer, let’s take this guy that’s looking at six caps and wants an eight cap. The buyer got an eight cap. Actually, he.

I think he got an 11 and a half cap, right? Because of the discount for the issues on the building. Now, ⁓ the issues on the building, the buyer had some extra funds, right? So he fixed that up, right? And then ⁓ they’ve got a deal down the road where ⁓ the seller can buy it back, right? Well, what happens, right? Like the buyer got an 11 and a half cap when he was trying to get a six cap.

or was looking at six caps on Crexie and Loopnet and CoStar. That’s almost double. That means that the deal is super safe because fair market value is far above what he bought for. He’s cash flowing like crazy for several years. So all of that is great for the buyer. Now, what the buyer really had trouble with is the buyer doesn’t like this asset class.

And it’s not some shiny new thing on the corner of Maine and Maine. So, but the buyers also saved all of the taxes from the, from the previous deal. Okay. So look at this, you got off the clock, you may double what you’re supposed to. You got in a deal for, you know, 60 % of fair market value. The seller got no recapture, right?

And then the buyer gets all of this time to go and find something else in the three to five to eight years he’s got for the buyback, right? So you can structure deals in a way where it works for both parties. You don’t have to get all of the meat off the bone. ⁓

you know, people call me with 10 days left and ask me to, you know, find me a 12 cap, right? Well, if, if I had a 12 cap, why would I sell it to you? I’ve never met you in my life. I wouldn’t. Right. But they forget about this. Now, can I pull that out of a hat sometimes? Yeah. But really, if I could pull an eight cap out of a hat and make you safe and get you to not pay any taxes, you’d probably be pretty excited about it.

You know, so

Stuff like that happens every day. ⁓ OK, I think I long-windedly answered your question.

Quentin Edmonds (20:12)
You giving information, you giving nuggets that people could pick up on, man. And that’s what it’s all about and I appreciate it. ⁓ Listen Casey, sir, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, Casey. How can they get in contact with you,

Casey Mericle (20:28)
Yeah, Twitter X it’s just @CaseyMericle. My name it’s spelled a little funny. So I guess look at the show notes to see how to spell my name.

Quentin Edmonds (20:36)
Yeah, yeah. There he is. He mentioned the show notes. There you go. He’s definitely right. Look into the show notes, in contact with him. Casey, there’s three things I want to say to you, First, thank you for your time, man. You could have been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with us. Thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story, for your narrative, the nuggets that you gave. I believe people’s narrative, people’s stories, such as yourself, have a way of planting seeds in people.

Casey Mericle (20:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (21:01)
And it could, course correct them. could have them change their perspective around something. So you talk about the 1031, you giving these nuggets. I really believe it’s going to plant a seed in somebody. So thank you for that. And lastly, man, thank you for the way you think, brother. Thank you for your perspective and your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. I really appreciate you, sir.

Casey Mericle (21:18)
Hey, thanks for having me, Quentin. It was awesome to join you.

Quentin Edmonds (21:21)
Absolutely,

Well, listen, like he said, look in the show notes, get in contact with Casey. But definitely, people, make sure you subscribe here because we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Casey. So, sir, I say thank you again and everyone else. You have a fantastic day.