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Show Summary
In this conversation, Rick discusses a recent real estate deal where he successfully negotiated a property purchase. He outlines the process of acquiring land, the negotiation with the seller, and the subsequent sale to a buyer, highlighting the profit margin involved in the transaction.
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Rick Deltero (00:00)
I reached out to a seller and right off the bat, they’re asking me for 90 K. They wanted 90,000 for the lot. You know, I’m not going to negotiate with them. said, okay, perfect. We’ll do the 90 K sent them over a purchase and sale agreement. We got it signed. Our company signed it. The owners of the lot signed it. And then I shot that deal over to the buyer. The buyer said, Hey, we’re good to go. We’ll pay one 20 for it. And all I did was right up in a sign.Which just said, you know my my rights to my underlying a contract deltero wealth partners, which is our company Going to X builder. This is the price. It’s the date. They’re closing and at the time of closing I am going to get a check in the mail for the difference of $30,000
Michelle Kesil (02:10)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Rick Deltero, who is making serious moves running a land acquisitions company. So, excited to have you here, Rick.Rick Deltero (02:27)
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.Michelle Kesil (02:29)
I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching managing your investments and developments. So let’s dive in.Rick Deltero (02:39)
Absolutely, let’s get right into it.Michelle Kesil (02:41)
Yeah, so first off for those who are not yet familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is these days?Rick Deltero (02:49)
Yeah, absolutely. So once again, my name is Rick Del Rio.⁓ Five years ago. I got into real estate. I started off as a residential realtor like most people ⁓ Didn’t know the best path to get into luckily I got into wholesaling which for those of you guys that do not know what that is It is essentially connecting a buyer to a seller the same way that a realtor does however You know, you’re just flipping two pieces of contracts So you’re basically the investor yourself, but you don’t need to actually close on the property
Need the capital you don’t need a license to do it and you can do it basically fully virtual. So We focused on land acquisitions working with builders and developers Focus started off in the state of Florida grew that network to about 680 active builders and developers here scaled that business to doing seven figures a year and Today from the relationships obviously the capital we were able to create from it the relationships we built with developers in that industry It’s led us to actually start developing ourselves
while still having, you know, a consistent cash flow and business there.
Michelle Kesil (03:55)
Amazing! That is such a cool opportunity that you’re focusing on.Rick Deltero (04:01)
It’s very niche, yeah, it’s very niche.Michelle Kesil (04:02)
did you get started? know you mentioned a little bit about the journey, but yeah, I would love to hear like what kind of led you on this path.Rick Deltero (04:57)
Yeah, so it’s interesting. If you’re familiar with wholesaling, you’re probably familiar with residential wholesaling, which is for houses. It’s been around for decades. That’s what almost everybody knows about. Now, my business partner, he used to be an acquisitions manager for a Joe home buyer. They’re one of the largest wholesaling franchises in the nation. They focus solely on houses. He used to give me a list of leads, people that would opt into their website.But never answer the phone and one of those leads happened to be a 10,000 square foot vacant vacant lot in Port St. Lucie And I was calling these leads and I skipped over that lead I was like, you know, I’m looking for distressed houses. What am I gonna do with this vacant land? I thought nothing of it. So he ended up calling that lead He got that property under contract with the seller and ended up selling it to a builder They closed in 15 days and he made $26,000 on that deal
which was for me at the time getting started, like insane. I needed that money. I needed that. It was a major opportunity. ⁓ So once I saw that, I saw the opportunity in land development, not only because of, you know, how quick the process was in really how nobody really knew about it, but the volume and scale that these builders and developers actually purchase in, you know, your average real estate investor average, right? They’re maybe buying three
to four properties a year, doing three to four flips a year. These builders we work with are buying 50 to 100 lots every single month. And there are thousands of them. So, you know, there’s, they want to work with people like us. They need to work with people like us. ⁓ The more lots we’re able to do for them, the more builds and business they can do. So it’s, it’s just a great opportunity for both sides. So that’s how I got started in it.
Michelle Kesil (06:52)
Yeah, amazing. So inspiring. As you’ve been on this journey, what are some of like the main obstacles that you’ve encountered?Rick Deltero (07:00)
The main obstacles is just persevere.I would say perseverance. know, you’re going to run into a lot of people that tell you no, a lot of people that reject your offer. You might even get some lots on our contract that builders reject and it could be a little disappointing. Like, man, this isn’t, this isn’t working, but you never know that next phone call you make that next builder you speak with could be like the deal that changes your entire trajectory. So, you know, I say perseverance through that, you know, sticking with it until it works. I’ll say firsthand, it took me six months to close my first deal.
A lot of people quit after a couple weeks of not seeing results. And if you’re in real estate, know success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, but if you stick with the process, it’s gonna pay off. ⁓
So I’d really say just perseverance and learning from the mistakes and adapting to wherever the market is. A lot of people might think like, the market’s not good, interest rates are too high. And it’s irrelevant. It’s irrelevant. People are going to buy real estate no matter what. There’s always going to be opportunity in real estate. You just have to learn how to adapt and how to adjust to make your business work.
Michelle Kesil (08:11)
Yeah, I think the adaptability and the pivoting is a big part of it.Rick Deltero (08:15)
Absolutely. Yeah, it really is.Michelle Kesil (08:17)
Yeah, so a lot of the listeners are investors, whether they’re newer on their journey or they’re looking to expand their skill set and level up. What’s some advice you would share for the people that are earlier on in their journey that are looking for the right skills to grow their business in a successful way?Rick Deltero (08:35)
I mean.If you’re looking to get into real estate, I would say first you have to analyze what your strong suits are. Are you a relationship person? Not everybody is cut out to be a real estate investor, but you still may have an asset that you can provide to whatever it is that you’re looking to do. If you’re more tech savvy and you’re more of a numbers person, but you’re not a relationship person, you’re not the person that’s gonna get in there and close a deal, maybe not right off the bat, because you could always train yourself to be
that person through time and experience, maybe work with somebody and just help them on underwriting opportunities. know, if you’re a person and you know your strong suit is building relationships, building connections, you know, I’ll say this, right? I’ll say the number one thing that you have to do is simply just do.
As I told you, getting into developments ourselves. I was in my local market here. I’m in Fort Lauderdale. I driving around Victoria park, a pretty high end neighborhood. And that’s where I’m planning on doing my next development. I hadn’t done one there before. And I just started driving around. I saw a brand new construction house being built and I don’t know anything about this market, but I called that developer that was on the sign for the house building. I just simply introduced myself. You know, I didn’t come in there like a
Like I know it all I just say hey, I see you have this build going up I would you know, would it’s a beautiful build. I’m planning on doing a build here as well I would love if we could just maybe grab a bite get together and I could pick your brain and maybe I could even you know Cuz you still have to try and offer some sort of value Maybe I could even try and source your next lot for your next next project that you’re doing He invited me to his office sat with me down for almost two hours You know offered me the opportunity to do any sort of partnership with
with
him on my build that I do. And you know, a lot of times you just gotta jump. You gotta jump straight in the water, get into it, can’t be scared of rejection, and just get straight into it, because you never know what opening that door might lead to, I’ll say.
Michelle Kesil (11:09)
Yeah, definitely those connections and relationships and taking action are really important pieces of the business.Rick Deltero (11:16)
yeah.Michelle Kesil (11:17)
Cool. So when it comes to land acquisitions, like how exactly does that differentiate from other types of investments?Rick Deltero (11:26)
So land acquisitions is pretty unique.I would say it’s one of the few sectors of whether it’s real estate flipping buying holding whatever it is that you can do Practically sight unseen, know, I’ve done about we’ve closed about 650 transactions in the last 24 months and I’ve never been to one property never in my life and when we’re doing residential holes like wholesaling for houses Even when we did we did four flips last year ourselves, right? There’s never a time where Yeah, unless you’re like
a big hedge fund or private equity group where you’re buying sight and seeing, know, somebody has to go out to that property. Somebody has to take pictures. You know, a lot of times you’ll deal with people say, you know, my house is in, you know, pristine condition. You get in there and you know, there’s a hole on the roof. You know, those are just things that you don’t deal with land. and I would say obviously the consistency in these markets. So, you know, when we’re targeting analyzing a good market to actually do acquisitions in, we’re looking for a few things.
consistent sale prices, consistency in the size of the land. So it’s like when I, you know, do any sort of marketing, whether it’s off market, I’m on Zillow making my offers, you know, once I know a base price of what these builders are paying, I know I just got to get that property for a little bit less. And usually all the lots are the same, you know, we’re checking the flood zone, the wetlands map, verifying utilities. And after that, mean, I’m set to go on my offer, but it’s very, like very, very rare.
Like you’re never gonna run into a house where it’s like identical to the house next door. It just doesn’t happen. Every house is different, all different conditions. So, you know, it’s a very, it’s a very plug and play. And one of the safest models you could get into, cause like I said before, there is no risk to your actual capital when you’re doing this. And it’s very rare. can, you know, brokering a deal is really the only way you can do that without risking your own capital, right? So.
Michelle Kesil (13:20)
Yeah, amazing. When you say you can do that without risking your own capital, what does that look like?Rick Deltero (13:26)
Yeah, so.At least in our business, the way that we have it structured, we do our, move our contracts via assignment. So obviously you have, whether it’s, you know, your state, you know, verified vacant land contract that the realtors use, or it’s a, you know, purchasing and sale agreement that you downloaded from a PDF off of Google. You have a clause in that contract that states assignability. You know, it’s verified by, you know, the, the board of commissions for realtors, everything, and that assignability clause just allows.
you to transfer your rights to the original purchase and sale agreement over to someone else. So when we get a property under, like we just got one last week, right? We got a property under contract. I had a bill to reach out to me. They were like, Hey Rick.
We’re looking for land in X neighborhood. We’re paying $120,000.
I reached out to a seller and right off the bat, they’re asking me for 90 K. They wanted 90,000 for the lot. You know, I’m not going to negotiate with them. said, okay, perfect. We’ll do the 90 K sent them over a purchase and sale agreement. We got it signed. Our company signed it. The owners of the lot signed it. And then I shot that deal over to the buyer. The buyer said, Hey, we’re good to go. We’ll pay one 20 for it. And all I did was right up in a sign.
Which just said, you know my my rights to my underlying a contract deltero wealth partners, which is our company Going to X builder. This is the price. It’s the date. They’re closing and at the time of closing I am going to get a check in the mail for the difference of $30,000
so I’m not incurring any transaction fees any closing costs It’s just a clean assignment. The builder takes on you know, the deal they do their own due diligence and they close once it’s approved for closing
So that’s all assignability is. You could do that for literally anything in real estate. You could do that on a thousand unit building if you wanted to. It’s all the same.
Michelle Kesil (15:56)
Amazing. Thank you for sharing your insights.Rick Deltero (15:58)
Yeah.Michelle Kesil (15:59)
So what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?Rick Deltero (16:03)
So the biggest thing that we’re focused on scaling right now, I would say, is helping others get started. ⁓ That’s the, you know.where the majority of my focus is. I’ve already been able to build systems in place for my actual wholesaling business, building the right team in place, ⁓ where I spend maybe one to two hours a day in it, and it’s done. And it’s still gonna cash flow us. We have our acquisitions managers that underwrite and close deals. We have a disposition team that gets the deals that we have and sells them to the builders in our network and also focuses on building and creating new relationships with builders.
And you know, transaction coordinator basically runs the entire process where we’re basically hands off. So, you know, I spend every morning training my team, ⁓ putting their calendar in place. And my other focus is just working with the students in my community, people that are already getting into wholesaling bacon land or looking to get started in it and making sure that they succeed in it. ⁓ We’ve had some crazy, crazy results, you know, just like one of our students, they’ve been here for about two months. They’ve done 65K in profit, which is pretty crazy.
It’s
just like plugging in the exact blueprint and then obviously focusing on taking the capital we make and doing actual developments so And just like feedback on your your original question is you know, what can you say to new investors? New investors like I would say is focus on stacking up that capital in a low-risk way to the point where you could actually become an investor because you’ll see people they’ll have a you know some money to their name, but
they don’t know how to underwrite a deal. They don’t know how to determine a market or know what price they should be listing or the cost of materials and stuff. And just because you have money and get into real estate doesn’t mean you’re gonna buy a property, put some work into it and make a 20, 30 % return. There’s a process that’s involved in that. But if you’re able to build capital while learning that process, by the time you actually learn it, you have the money, now you can start safely investing into doing projects, buying holds, underwriting deals properly.
Yeah, that’s our biggest focus right now. We built up the capital, we built up the team, now scaling into what I would call the big leagues, which is developing ourselves.
Michelle Kesil (18:15)
Exciting. I love that you are educating people too. Is that like an online platform?Rick Deltero (18:20)
Yeah, yeah, so we hosted on Slack. You know, that company for us, it’s called Dirt2Deals. We got…You know a good amount of members in there and it’s just a really good community like I tell everyone I told you before we met my strong suit personally. I’m a relationships person I’m amazing at building a friend and I like to do business with friends, you know, I don’t like like it to just be Platonic like hey buy this love from me. Like hey, how’s your day going? You know, so real estate is all about your network now when you can have a network of individuals and I come across a deal and I’m like Hey, we just got this at X price. Can someone bring us this?
for XPRIZE and now somebody else has the opportunity to partner up with us on that deal or vice versa. It’s just a great community. A lot of people getting started in real estate, they don’t have a network. When I got started, I didn’t have guidance. It took me three days to write up my first bar bar. I didn’t know what I was doing. ⁓ So yeah, it’s a good community. It’s a good network and it’s all about building something where everyone can actually succeed in real estate.
Michelle Kesil (19:25)
Absolutely. Yeah, so you’ve mentioned a lot about networking and relationship building. Are there specific like tools and tactics that have made the biggest difference for you?Rick Deltero (19:35)
I mean, biggest tools and tactics. I’ve always been like a cold caller. I started off as a door-to-door sales rep for a solar company. I’m used to phones getting hung up on me, doors getting slammed in my face. The other day, you just gotta keep going. ⁓ Eventually, you’re gonna get the hang of properly speaking to people.And learning how to do that. You just got to keep going keep building relationships. Like I said, I’ll drive around you know, anywhere you live in you’re gonna find people Flipping real estate building brand new developments No matter what the case is and they’re always gonna have their company and their number on the front of that Drive around your city go on Zillow for instance, literally go on Zillow look at new construction being built find a little pocket You know, ⁓ know where there’s a bunch of developments going on drive around to that address, know call a call the number
Hey, I’m in front of your build right now. It looks awesome. I’m looking at branching to the space, you know, obviously I’m new but I was just wondering if I could pick your brain ask you some questions, you know, literally just you just got to do it. You got to pull the trigger and you can’t be scared of rejection. That’s really all it comes down to, you know. By cold cold calling and driving around, you know, those are things that have been around forever will be around forever. So.
Michelle Kesil (20:44)
Totally.Yeah, absolutely. I think exactly what you said, like not being afraid of the rejection and just going for it.
Rick Deltero (20:55)
You got to. Yeah, absolutely. You have to.Michelle Kesil (20:58)
Amazing. So if people are curious about your online platform, are there any requirements to join or it’s for any type of investor?Rick Deltero (21:06)
I mean, it’s for everyone. It’s for everyone. have people that have came in here that have never even considered a minute in their life wanting to get started into doing real estate. But you know, they always wanted to take that next step into building financial freedom. And we all know, right. Most people that have achieved it, probably achieved it through real estate. I have people that are already doing six figures a month in their actual real estate business. have builders and developers that want to get started into wholesaling vacant land.especially flippers because I mean a lot of them don’t have an actual cash flowing business on a month to month ⁓ So, you know you get into a project it might take you three six up 18 months before you see a paycheck from it which is why we focused on right building the cash flowing business first and then reinvesting that into doing larger projects at scale so You know whether whether you’re new to it like whether you’re in college you have free time You want to get into real estate?
we have the right path for you to help you get started in it.
Michelle Kesil (22:08)
Amazing. Well,before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you?
Rick Deltero (22:15)
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m most active on Instagram. My Instagram is RickyDelRio_ , R I C K Y D E L R I O underscore. I do a lot of informational content in there about wholesaling. I do a lot of content about my community and my members and the success they’ve been able to achieve and a lot of tips to help you get started into wholesaling. ⁓ whether you’re looking to like get into it, scale into off market softwares or completely for free, just likegot started we have a you know good structure in there to help you so yeah Ricky Del Rio you can find me on Instagram
Michelle Kesil (22:51)
Well, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.Rick Deltero (22:55)
Thank you.Thank you, Michelle. Have a good one.
Michelle Kesil (22:57)
For the listeners tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators like Rick who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.Rick Deltero (23:09)
Have a good one.
