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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, Kristen interviews Trevor Rice, owner of Home Pros, about the intricacies of wholesaling in real estate. Trevor shares his unique approach to wholesaling, emphasizing trust, transparency, and relationship-building as key components of success. He recounts his personal journey into the industry, highlighting the importance of education and practical experience. Trevor also discusses the significance of creating a positive company culture and the need to redefine wholesaling standards in the industry. The conversation concludes with resources for those interested in wholesaling and working with Home Pros.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Trevor Rice (00:00)
I had like three buyers coming. Two buyers say no. The last buyer left that I met at a networking event. He comes in and basketball shorts and a t-shirt. I’m like, all right, I’m not going to judge this situation. We’ll see how goes. And he’s like, all right, this deal is pretty good. Like what do want for it? I said 110, but I was so nervous because I had it under contract for a hundred that I kind of out negotiated myself. And I just was like, Hey, look, if, if you keep doing deals with me, I will sell you this deal for 105,000 bucks.right now.
Kristen (01:59)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Trevor Rice, who’s the owner of Home Pros. We’re going to talk all about wholesaling today. So I’m excited to get into it. Thanks for being here, Trevor.Trevor Rice (02:09)
Hey, thank you so much for having me.Kristen (02:10)
Do you want to go into kind of what Home Pros does, what you guys do different? Give us the whole scoop.Trevor Rice (02:16)
Yeah, absolutely.What we do at Home Pros is we’re a wholesale operation, if you want to put it basic. I think from what makes us different is that not only do we do the paper leads and the paper click stuff and the Google Ads, kind what most operators do, and then we sell them off to buyers. But I think the unique approach for is the, for Home Pros, is that we also wholesale with
JV partners, whether it be working with wholesalers, working with agents, we also do novations, right? We’re creative in that aspect. We work with agents, we work with banks and bid pools and work with asset managers on that end. And we also do online auctions. And I think from the disposition end, what makes us unique is we do work with hedge funds, turn keys, REITs. We read 13F filings. We chase down the publicly traded companies and we find the nitty gritty acquisition guys in those org charts. I think because of that, and we sign off on all these
NDAs and these non-circumstances. When we work with these people, it’s been able to help us scale massively quickly. And I think from RN, from HomePros, we’re transparent and integrity driven. So we’re here to share. I think I think we’re very abundance mindset.
Kristen (03:17)
Amazing, how have you been able to build up all these partners that you work with?Trevor Rice (03:21)
So from the acquisition side, I think it was just.Trust in transparency. think the industry from a wholesale perspective lacked a lot of that I think from a from a trust integrity and transparency standpoint, it’s ⁓ For integrity for us. It’s it’s not what you do out there in the public It’s what you do behind closed doors and I think shining the light on that and being transparent while also being integrity driven and just showing like hey I know you don’t have to see this but but we’re gonna show it to you anyway because we care and I think with that it’s taken us a long way and ⁓ We were very not short-minded when it came to doing the transaction
meaning like if you you would do a deal with the realtor for instance right you find a deal on the MLS any cat can go out there and find a realtor on the MLS and lowball them and get it under contract and ship it out to a buyer but at the end of the day there what we found was the relationship is what made more sense because if we hook on to that realtor you never know in three years that realtor could be the number one realtor that market and then you now are best friends with them because you’re doing the right thing and even though you may lose money
or even though you may lose a deal here and there and lose money altogether for a deal, it’s still worth it in the end because I think overall with the volume, that abundance mindset and that transparency, it enables us to do a lot more deals and it becomes more inbound than it is outbound. I think when we grow our relationships, we notice that, man, if we just went 50 miles deep rather than 50 miles wide, that goes a lot farther. And that’s what we did there to gain those relationships.
Kristen (04:42)
greatYeah, I think that’s a really good breakdown and it’s so important in this business. It’s really about your network. Yeah, I think that’s wonderful. And so tell us how you even got into the wholesaling space to begin with.
Trevor Rice (05:53)
Oh man. It’s a funny story. I’ll make it quick because it’s kind of a long one. I grew up in a very, very small farm town. My parents were very blue collar. They didn’t really believe in the college and going to be an attorney or a doctor. was very like, your hands dirty. I was a pretty boy growing up. My hands were not calloused by any way, form. I had a knack and ability to use my brain to do stuff. My parents just really didn’t get that. But umGoing out at 18 years old, I just kind of went out on my own, was couch surfing at buddies houses and I wanted to get into real estate. I started Googling, just like anybody else, was like, how do you become a millionaire? I just had this…
Thing where I was like man, I just want to chase a dream and I want to I want to chase the money and I want to see what I can do What’s out there and then of course, know, you find real estate is creating a lot of millionaires at a time and so I was like, do I get it out? Let me go get my license Well in the state of Illinois where I was from originally a little farm town You have to be 21 to get your real estate license, which is a fun fact And so I was 17 at the time and I was like man, I have these big dreams and they’re already crushed day one, you know, so I I
I started figuring out you go to Missouri across the river, you can be 18 and get your license. And then when I started going to networking events, I realized that you don’t even have to get your license. You can go wholesale. And so that’s where I learned kind of creative wholesale. And then I went to the famous YouTube University, right? I started watching Phil Pustejovsky with Freedom Mentor, one of my favorites. That one really got me off the couch. And watching Jerry Norton, that was another true hero of mine. And that’s where I started learning that. then Max Maxwell, I got addicted to some of his videos and I watched them religiously.
And then I got obsessed a year later. I did my first deal. It took me literally I think it was like a year and a half total before I actually got my first assignment fee But it was still to this day the craziest story ever
Realtor randomly calls me. I was just at a networking event. I guess he saved my number. I didn’t even remember the guy. John Grissom, out to you. That was amazing, right? But he called me and was like, hey, I need help selling this listing. It’s not on market yet. I made him an offer. I shopped into the buyers that I had met at networking events. And again, mind you, at this time I was couchsurfing. I had zero money in my pocket. My wife now, who I’ve been with for 11 years, she was with me when I had nothing. I had my last $20 to go to this.
showing
and
I had like three buyers coming. Two buyers say no. The last buyer left that I met at a networking event. He comes in and basketball shorts and a t-shirt. I’m like, all right, I’m not going to judge this situation. We’ll see how goes. And he’s like, all right, this deal is pretty good. Like what do want for it? I said 110, but I was so nervous because I had it under contract for a hundred that I kind of out negotiated myself. And I just was like, Hey, look, if, if you keep doing deals with me, I will sell you this deal for 105,000 bucks.
right now.
And so I said right now, and I was I was a newbie, right? So I didn’t know what I was saying. But he’s like, right now, right now? Like, yeah, yeah, we sign a contract and go forward, right? Well, he steps out comes back in, he brings $5,000 in cash, throws it on the on the kitchen table and says, sign this assignment agreement in this receipt book and get out. And so I literally got $5,000 in cash. Didn’t ask questions. I left and I was like, wow, this is crazy. I’ve never seen a deal like this.
And he calls me back 20 days later and he’s like, I appreciate you doing the business you did. And he brought me another five grand. So I did make the 110 and I got addicted at that point. just started, I started trying to be resourceful and because I didn’t have any money for marketing, I was doing everything, you know, from the auction.com stuff to trying to pay three cents at skip tracing, whatever I could to try to get a deal, you know, and then also JV of course. That was, was the start.
Kristen (09:34)
You seem like…yeah, I mean that’s an incredible story and that’ll get you into the game for sure. It seems like you have a really good mix of learning and education but also doing and learning on the job. Can you just talk about that balance between the two?
Trevor Rice (10:25)
Yeah, it was, I think, big thing for a lot of people.that I checked my ego at the door. I think that was for me what I had to do and I think that created the balance that you’re talking about because I just, I had humility and I knew that I was on the bottom.
And I knew that because I was at the bottom, the only way is up. And I was like, my back was against the wall. Like I had nothing left. I had a couch to my name. You know, like it was one of those things where it’s like, all you have is up. What is, what is there left? You know? And so because of that humility that I had, I think that got me into a lot of rooms that I wasn’t supposed to be in, you know, I would stay late at the networking events. Then, that’s one, little trick, right? That you probably know about where it’s like, you go to the after parties, you really talk to people deeper than just.
Shaking hands and trying to want want want hey, I want a deal or I want this it was more like I just want relationships I just I want to do something and I think that on-the-job training of just like having that humility With on-the-job training that really helped me out a lot transcend my career But I think also on top of it like the education piece I think it was just the obsession of when I got that first wholesale deal I was really going back to YouTube University again there wasn’t a lot of education and gurus out at the time, but but the
that were really impactful for me, just obsessed over it and I tried to like look at it from different perspectives and having that I dropped the ego at the door again like I was very open perspective I didn’t have the blinders on and and I was really big on just trying to understand the game fully and trying to absorb as much as I can and I had a little bit of analysis paralysis I know a lot of people have analysis paralysis that was normal that’s honestly probably why it took me a year to do my first deal I was so scared but I think once I started going to the networking events that was my first
like foot out the door literally to like going out like just okay I can leave the house I can get my keys I can go drive to something
and I can go network with one person and hopefully that gets me somewhere. And that was like my first step of going on the job. And then you start to hear all these gurus and people in person and, that guy’s full of crap. that guy’s legit. He’s doing a lot of deals. And you start to just stop and listen and you leave here, you go out the door, like you learn so much very, very quickly. And that’s where I was like, okay, I got to start taking action sometime. You know. So that’s for me where that balance came in.
Kristen (12:45)
Yeah.Absolutely, and it sounds like you are really great at building relationships whether it be people you work with or you know your partners your mentors all of that how does that How does that bleed into you know working with employees and hiring people and creating a good culture within your business?
Trevor Rice (13:05)
So awesome question. So I think from a networking perspective, when I started networking, I was crap at it. I had like the butterflies in my stomach and like I was nervous to talk and still to this day, like I went to the American Money and Private Loan Conference over in Vegas a few weeks ago and I was in the seizures like super nervous and I think it was just pushing past that nervousness and having the tough conversations and like having the courage.I think that that kind of helped me out a lot with building out the relationships. And um because of that, going to like, for instance, I went to a mixer event and that’s how I got one of my sales reps who ended up leaving a very large company with a very large name for four years. I landed another rep that was 15 years in the game, a GM, mind you, who would work for me as acquisitions. And that came from literally just, again, that humility, the transparency and integrity. I think when I just like,
expanded and I talked about my dream with passion and I was just like, hey, this is what I’m doing. Do you want to go with me or not? And like, I’m totally transparent. Here’s, here’s this. Here’s my financials. Here’s what’s going on. Here’s what I’m trying to do. Here’s my marketing efforts and here’s my goal and here’s what I want to end up in. And I think that me having that entire pathway carved out, I think that
people really took that in as like, man, this guy actually cares. Like he actually gives a crap about where he’s going in his career and he has a goal that’s above him. And that was what was really cool. And what was so funny about it too, Kristen is that the, it was, became a snowball effect. It was like once one person came into my team and then like, wait, this experienced person’s joining Trevor. And then this person’s experience, this person’s joining Trevor, like what’s happening over there, you know? And so then it built up this curiosity. And then when I,
noticed, which is the coolest thing ever, was that Home Pros mission became bigger than my dream. And that was really beautiful moment for me as I like the team now became very defensive about what we’re about. And like if I have a bad day, they’re like, whatever, Trevor, we still got to hit this goal.
Like, let’s go, dude. And that for me was like, wow. And so I think that that, again, that transparency, that humility and integrity, I think that that goes very, very far. That’s one of my core values. And from that, you got to show up, right? And you got to show out. And I think when you show them the shut up check, right, the commissions, the base pays, the stuff like that, I think when you show the money, right, and you show the closings, you show that you’re about that, you’re not faking it, I think that that also helped a ton. I think real recognizes real. That’s one of my favorite quotes. So
really really helped.
Kristen (16:23)
Definitely and I know that with Home Pros you guys are just doing things a little bit differently and it seems like there’s a more personal touch to it. Talk about kind of the narrative around wholesaling and how you guys are kind of going against that and you know redefining what that means.Trevor Rice (16:39)
Yeah, 100%. So it goes deep. mean, even today, like I know this is a collared shirt. We recommend, like I’m looking at my team now, like everybody on my team wears a collared shirt. Everybody dresses to impress. Everybody’s dressing professional. It’s an actual company requirement of mine. So it starts there from the beginning, right? It starts from how you are perceived by others, I think is huge. doesn’t, I don’t care what anybody says. I think when you show up in a beat up car, people are going to judge. Just park around thecorner walk around, right? Like I had to do that myself, right? But I think from that end,
I think from a professional level and how we are in this business, there’s a lot of people, especially from building up the team and seeing a lot of people see wholesalers as very Wild West, like I said to you before, and very like no regulations. They get to do whatever they want. There’s no license. They get to lie and cheat and steal and circumvent and backdoor people. And again, there are wholesalers that are like that. But I would also say that there’s realtors like that.
bankers that are like that. There are there are people from all levels from that. But I think when the light got shine on us.
from wholesalers, from a legislative standpoint, from Oklahoma, from Oregon to Illinois to South Carolina and a lot of other states enacting a lot of laws now. Attorneys are looking at us differently. Title companies are looking at us differently. A lot of these different companies are looking at us differently. I think that when they shine the light on us, I’m like, wait, hold up. You’re going to shine light on us. Let us shine the light back. And I think also from shining the light back, for me to be able to shine the light back, I got to show transparency on our end. And I think
I think a lot of the… ⁓
A lot of these title companies, these attorneys and everybody around think that we will circumvent, we’ll cut out our own brothers to do a deal. And there are people like that. I think we need to find a way to get those people out of the business completely because they don’t belong here. Like for me, if you’re not here with me, you’re against me, right? And I really believe like we need to find a way to get them out of here with rules and relegation. I actually kind of believe that a real estate license should be required. ⁓ I don’t think it’s required that you need to go hang your license up.
up at some random brokerage and then have to split your feet, whole self-ease of that broker or anything like that. But I think from the training and education standpoint, I think we do need to educate. I think from the networks here at the networking events, it shouldn’t be just a networking event. I think it should also be an education of rules, regulations, integrity is a big one that I don’t think is coached on. And I think from like doing deals and being more ethical, I think that’s a big word too. I think from that standpoint, if we can figure that out, there would
be any flashlight on us. You know. They wouldn’t care. They would move on to the next target. So I think from that standpoint, if we start from the bottom, from just how you’re perceived, the way you’re clothed, the way you’re professional, the way you talk, you’re not cursing, you’re not being benevolent, you’re not being circumventing people, you’re not out there just for a quick nickel. And I think from that perception, there’s a little barrier to entry to wholesaling. And I think if we up the barrier and up the standards a little bit,
I think that that will help weed out a lot of the quitters quickly and I think it’ll weed out a lot of the bad actors in the industry. And I think if we do that and we shine a light on the bad actors, I think we can get a lot better because I think from a perspective, and I’ll finish out there with, I think the perception of wholesalers all being bad is not true. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. There’s a lot of us that do a lot of good things. There’s a lot of people that I know that are very good people. But I will say there are lot of gurus, right, that we all know that
have big names that they’re not really doing the transactions that they’re saying. They are skeez balling or circumventing. There’s big names out there that went to prison for you know, wholesaling bank short sales, right? I won’t go into that. But I mean, I feel like that exposure like that, that bad exposure, it’s like, we got to shine a light on that. Like, hey, those are bad actors, right? Like, those aren’t us. But like, let’s get those people away. I think if we do that, that’ll really, really help. And I think also highlighting that to finish out is
highlighting the good because you got to shove out the bat and then you got to push the good like I think there should be more awareness of the amount of money that we save the counties amount of money that we save from foreclosures amount of people that we help me and I’ve got hundreds of stories I think people need to highlight those stories that what we’re doing that helps these people when no one else had help and when no one else had a handout you know I think that you replace that bad with the good and we’ll be all right
Kristen (21:08)
Definitely. Well, I think that’s such a great note to wrap up on. seems like Home Pros, guys are, you just have a great personal touch on it. It feels like you really help the people you work with. Tell everyone where to find you and where to find Home Pros.Trevor Rice (21:22)
Yeah, so if you are just a homeowner and you’re looking to sell, you can come to us at selltohomepros.com. If you’re somebody like an agent, a bank asset manager, you are a wholesaler that need help selling your deals and you want to do deals, you want to learn how to sell the hedge funds or you want to learn how to do that, we’re very open door. You go to selltohomepros.com forward slash jv. That’s where you’d go for if you just need help doing a deal together and you want to do a deal with us. There’s a whole portal and ask you a ton of questions.But once you get those questions, it’s pretty easy to fill out. You tell them that Trevor sent you. I’m actually one of the owners of the company, of course. So when I see it, it’ll go right into our CRM and I will take a look at it and I’ll give it to one of our acquisition people that are very, very experienced. Every single one of our acquisition people have been here in the industry for at least five years and they’ve done at least 100 deals.
So these are very, very experienced people that deal with us. So from a media standpoint or from a seller standpoint, just reach out to us at selltoahomepros.com. If you want to partner up with us, selltohomepros.com forward slash JV.
Kristen (22:24)
Amazing Well, thank you so much for being here Trevor.Trevor Rice (22:26)
You’re welcome. I really appreciate it, Kristen.Kristen (22:28)
Thank you everyone for listening. Hope you got a lot of great takeaways for you and your journey. Got some inspiration for your own business and we will see you back next time. Thank you.Trevor Rice (22:39)
Bye, have a good one.
