How Brandon Elliott Uses 0% Credit Cards to Buy Real Estate and Build Wealth

Brandon Elliott (00:00)
We’re talking about zero percent interest. That’s how I was able to start my real estate journey back in 2015 is because in 2011 I started geeking out on what the rich have been doing and what the banks do and how to basically flip the script on the banks. And what’s cool is like right now like we give all of our money to the banks.

and they give us basically 0 % back, you know? But they lend it back out to you and I for the personal loans, auto loans, mortgages, student loans. They lend it out tenfold and they make anywhere from 500 to 3,000%.

Michelle Kesil (02:07)
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, Brandon Elliott, founder and CEO of Credit Counsel Elite, teaching entrepreneurs and investors how to leverage credit to access capital and build wealth through real estate. So excited to have you here today, Brandon.

Brandon Elliott (02:36)
What’s up, Michelle? Thanks for having me on. I’m excited to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:38)
Awesome, so yeah, let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with your world, can you share what your main focus is?

Brandon Elliott (02:47)
Yeah, my main focus is teaching business owners or even if you’re working like a W-2 and you realize that I can’t rely on a J-O-B or my boss for my future, my finances for my family, then you really want to diversify into either starting that idea, that business, or growing and scaling that business. Then what we teach is how to get access to smart capital. When I say smart capital, I’m talking not the dumb capital, not the expensive mafia rates.

of 20, 30, 40 percent.

We’re talking about zero percent interest. That’s how I was able to start my real estate journey back in 2015 is because in 2011 I started geeking out on what the rich have been doing and what the banks do and how to basically flip the script on the banks. And what’s cool is like right now like we give all of our money to the banks.

and they give us basically 0 % back, you know? But they lend it back out to you and I for the personal loans, auto loans, mortgages, student loans. They lend it out tenfold and they make anywhere from 500 to 3,000%.

Well, we’ve been able to flip the script on the banks and we can leverage 0 % interest from anywhere from six months to 24 months to be able to buy the deal, flip the deal, grow and scale the business, you name it.

Michelle Kesil (04:06)
Awesome. And can you share a little bit of your background on how you went through this process yourself and what you learned from it, what you found?

Brandon Elliott (04:18)
Yeah, so I grew up in New Jersey originally with a single parent mother. She raised three misfits. I was just one of them. And I made a lot of mistakes growing up, full transparency. I met my father when I was 18 years old in court so he could stop paying child support. You really don’t know what you don’t have until you start finding yourself getting in trouble and probably could have used some discipline. so I ended up…

find myself like addicted marijuana and used it for the good times bad in between and all the other things my sir selling and so forth and growing and i had an explosion in my apartment making hash oil like a complete moron i’d burnt forty percent of my body i was in duced into a coma for a week had to learn how to walk again and i was obviously facing court charges fighting that for two three years eventually getting house arrest

a couple felonies, a misdemeanor, and all these other fees and things that I had to pay over time and probation for three years. That situation was what I needed because if I would have just got a little slap on the wrist, nothing would have changed. I needed something drastic to change my life with my personality. And so, I’ve been able to figure out that…

I fell in love with real estate. It seemed like that was the thing that was gonna change my life and get me out of the restaurant industry one foot in, one foot out of the drug dealing in certain industry like that. And real estate changed my life, but it still takes money to make money. And so I figured…

⁓ How am going to be able to utilize, like how am I supposed to get into real estate? And I went to the banks and I got denied. I got denied because I was working restaurants and making like 30, 40 grand a year serving and it just wasn’t enough.

And so when I figured out how to utilize the power of 0 % interest off of credit cards, I was able to liquidate credit cards into cash. was able to get hundreds of thousands, purchase properties, renovate them, refinance them, and repeat the process doing the BRRRR strategy. And that’s what, it just, it was like dominoes. Like, I just did one after another and another and another, and after two years, I had about 10 income producing properties, producing about $10,000 a month.

And that allowed me to quit my job, my restaurant job. It allowed me to get more time freedom, financial freedom, and focus on bigger deals. And now today we have 14 million in real estate assets. We have no money into any of it. We have about 4.3 million in equity and about $50,000 a month off cashflow. And just super blessed with the transition of kind of where God took us over the years and how to be able to utilize smart capital.

Michelle Kesil (07:55)
Yeah, that’s an amazing story that you were able to overcome that and use a more or less rock bottom situation to propel yourself out of that.

Brandon Elliott (08:06)
Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (08:07)
Of course. And so how exactly can someone leverage credit and access this type of capital?

Brandon Elliott (08:16)
Yeah, it’s a great question. So at the end of the day, lot of people, number one, they don’t even believe like who’s given out 0 % interest? Why would a bank do that? So number one is the belief. Like you gotta even identify like is this even possible? And the truth is it is. And if you Google, simply Google, you don’t need to Chat GPT or AI anything, you can simply Google 0 % interest credit cards. Banks offer it anywhere from six months to 24 months.

on average it’s very common to see 15 or 18 months long. The banks offer that as introductory so that they can get you, like win over your business. All banks have to do is lend to us. That’s their business. That’s their job, right? But they’re looking for high risk and low risk. They’re looking for individuals that they can lend to so they can make money off of down the road. And if they’re not lending, they go out of business, okay? And so…

That’s important to realize first and then realize that there is a checklist. There’s 45 different metrics on this checklist on what underwriting is using to judge you and I.

to figure out, is this person going to be a high risk or low risk? They have a box of lending that they’re trying to fit all of us in when you apply for something. So if you say the wrong things, if you position yourself incorrectly, if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re just winging it like the average American, then you are going to get…

poor results, if any at all. You’re gonna get denied, you’re gonna get low limits, you’re gonna be frustrated. And you’re gonna point the finger at these banks like, dang, I hate Bank of America or Wells Fargo, don’t get me started. It’s just very common to see people frustrated with banks when in reality it’s, just because it wasn’t taught in school, it wasn’t taught at the dinner table growing up, doesn’t mean that it’s your fault, but it is.

your problem, right? And so it’s time to solve the problem by getting the proper education to learn like these banks want to lend to us. They just, you need to learn how to position yourself properly to get them to say yes. And with our strategy at Credit Counsel Elite, we help our members get up to 90 % approval odds, the highest limits possible, and the best terms and conditions.

Michelle Kesil (11:04)
Yeah, amazing. And so how does one use that then to purchase the real estate assets?

Brandon Elliott (11:13)
Yeah, yeah, once you get a bunch of funding, so you’ll, it’s what we call a mass supply. A mass supply is an application sequence. When done correctly, you can get up to 90 % approval odds, highest limits, best terms and conditions. It’s when you’re applying for 10 to 50 plus applications over about a 30 day time frame. Now once you get all of this funding, then you can liquidate it into cash. About half of it, you can typically liquidate it off of just simple purchases.

Okay, there’s other platforms and resources that you can use such as a balance transfer or a cash advance but at a promotional rate of 0%. Okay.

And usually those there’s a flat fee attached with one to five percent. We have a liquidation service for our members as well just to make it easy and they don’t need to think or worry about anything where they get a get the money wired back to them. But you can also use platforms like plastic dot com or Milo bill pay dot com. There’s so many different resources zill money that you can use that you can liquidate these cards in the cash and then you can buy real estate. You can you can use it for anything. It’s cash.

money in the bank. And so that’s a, it’s just multiple different strategies that people just don’t realize. And when it comes down to the funding piece, like our average with our members is 370,000 per member. So our lowest is 200,000, our highest has been over a million dollars in funding. When doing this properly, you can get high limits and a lot of it. And so it really does set you up for success because a lot of people…

try to get the real estate or the deal or, you know, they have the investment and then they’re like, dang, I need to go get the money. gotta end. So you stress out, you lose sleep, you’re working countlessly to be able to try to get that cash when if you just flip that and you get the credit first.

you know how to liquidate it, then you can be very, very powerful by being strategic, waiting for the right opportunity to come across, and you can negotiate stronger, you can beat out the competition. That’s what we’ve been able to do on a lot of our deals. We offer all cash, no contingencies, close in five days, earnest money deposit, $100,000. We just beat out the competition because we know how to negotiate and we have the cash already.

Michelle Kesil (13:37)
Yeah, that’s amazing. so then paying off these cards, does that ever become a problem?

Brandon Elliott (13:43)
Yes, that’s a great question. So this is not for a 30 year fix. This isn’t for a long term solution. The good part is every six months you can go after more and more funding. We have a list of 9,500 banks nationwide. We have it broke down state by state in order from top to bottom which ones are giving out the most funding. But.

like yes, you can go after more funding every six months per person. However, this is for like starting a business, growing a business, scaling, doing a fix and flip, some hard money lending, private money lending, bridge loans. You know, like if you can make a return off of 0 % interest funding within six to 24 months, then this is a great opportunity for you. If you can’t,

then you gotta go figure out the, I mean, you could put money in a CD for God’s sake to make four and a half, five percent interest, a money marketing account, anything really, but.

That’s the thing. You can sleep at night a lot more knowing that you’re not borrowing from Uncle John or Aunt Susie or Grandma and the whole family is frustrated with you or Thanksgiving’s looking very awkward. ⁓ You can rest assured knowing that it’s your own credit. We teach you how to fix credit. We teach you how to strategically move properly so that you know how to get more and more of it. So you have very little to risk because it’s not OPM.

It’s not other people’s money, it’s OBM, it’s other banks’

Michelle Kesil (15:54)
Yeah, amazing. And so how have you been able to scale your business and like what are you focusing on now?

Brandon Elliott (16:04)
Yeah, we’ve been able to purchase a bunch of real estate very quickly with.

Again, with using credit, we’ve been able to do private money lending, hard money lending on three to six months when we have the money for 18 months, 0 % interest, so we can put it to work multiple times. We’ve been able to use it for travel hacking or growing and scaling our business with marketing and so forth. Yeah, I mean, we have millions in funding just through credit cards and lines of credit and so forth.

with nearly $500,000 limits on them. It’s wild. But when doing all of this properly, it’s…

Ways that you can grow and scale in any economy, any business, and set yourself up for success. We don’t pay any interest. I’m not about that life at all. I don’t want to pay any mafia rates. We always have backup plans to be able to pay off just in case if the deal goes sideways or there’s something wrong. We always give ourselves extra time as well. If you have the 0 % interest for 12 months,

I’m not doing a deal that’s going to take 18 months. I’m doing a deal that’s going to take three to six months. So have more than enough time to, if it doesn’t go well, to figure out a backup plan and get more funding or move it around or pay it off at the end of the day. I have my own savings versus using my own cash. I can leverage the bank’s money.

Michelle Kesil (17:36)
Yeah, definitely. Have you ever had to use a backup plan? What did that look like?

Brandon Elliott (17:41)
Yeah, there has been times that…

I’ve had to use a backup plan where the deal didn’t work out or the person that I lent money to kind of ran off and didn’t do well and they weren’t being as transparent. So it took longer. And so the cool part is number one, paying with a credit card, you get protection. OK, so I always pay my contractors with a credit card. Why? Because it’s very crystal clear when you have a before and after pictures and scope of work diligently written out.

And if they didn’t do it, then it’s like a mini court case. You just need to call into the credit card company and say, hey, this isn’t done how it was supposed to. They ran off with the money, whatever. I want to open up a dispute. And they will give that other person that you paid the contractor in this situation the opportunity to explain themselves. And it’s like a mini court case without having to go to court. And so it’s just easier that way.

But yeah, there’s been other times that I’ve had to use my own savings afterwards to pay it off versus, again, if I would’ve used my own savings first, I would’ve been screwed. Instead, I used credit first. I got points, I got protection, and then if the deal didn’t go well, it’s okay, I got my cash.

If I would have used cash first, I would have no backup plan if I didn’t focus on credit first. So prioritizing credit first, always, it sets you up for maximum growth because that’s like your…

your storehouse, like that’s what you can leverage the most. Most people don’t need 500 or 600, 700,000 in new funding to be able to start the business, grow the business scale. know, like 100, 200, 300,000 can be a great starting point. So when you get more than that, it gives you options.

Michelle Kesil (19:28)
Yeah, absolutely. And what type of real estate investments are you normally going after?

Brandon Elliott (19:34)
I’ve done all types of things since 2015 is when we started real estate investing for ourselves. I used to work for another company focusing on pre-foreclosures and notice of defaults back in 2011, 2012.

⁓ But we’ve done fix and flips, we’ve done wholesaling, we’ve done rental properties, Airbnb, long-term. A majority of it has been the BRRR strategy. So buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat. We have some syndications as well that were invested in 242 units in Arizona. We’ve been in New York, New Jersey, Ohio. We’ve sold all of that except

Arizona and San Diego. And we’re doing a lot of ground up construction right now, which has been amazing. In San Diego, it’s incredible. We can build for $300 a square foot, and it’s worth $900 a square foot afterwards. Got ocean views, bay views, fireworks from SeaWorld at night, rooftop decks. It’s just a…

It’s just fun because you’re hiring high level professionals, come in, do all the electrical at once, all the framing at once, all the painting instead of one off situations. So that’s been very rewarding and I’ve been liking it a lot. The only thing I don’t like with that is the city of San Diego taking forever to be able to get permits approved.

Michelle Kesil (21:00)
Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. Thank you for sharing.

Well, before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, or learn more, where can people find you?

Brandon Elliott (21:11)
Yeah, the best place would be on Instagram. have, you can follow me on there. It’s Brandon Elliott Investments. Otherwise, our business page, Credit Counsel Elite on Instagram. There’s some information in the bio that you can check out. You can also just DM me and say hi, say that you found me on here. We also have our podcast. It’s called Ready, Set, Go, Real Estate Investing Podcast. That’s Ready, Set, Go, REI Podcast. We have 450 episodes. Been doing that for eight years every single Monday, a new episode drops.

Additionally, can just check out our website. It’s creditcounselelite.com. That’s www.creditcounselelite.com.

Michelle Kesil (21:49)
We’ll appreciate your time and your story. Thank you so much for being here.

Brandon Elliott (21:54)
Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Michelle Kesil (21:56)
And for those tuning in, you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Brandon who are building real businesses and we’ll see you all on our next episode.