How This Florida Broker Closes Deals Fast with Cash Offer Solutions

Michelle Kesil (00:01.23)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Vasbinder, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate industry. Suzanne, I’m so glad to have you here with us today. I really think our listeners are going to take something away from how you’re approaching your brokerage and your business.

And yeah, I’m really excited to dive in with you.

Suzanne Vasbinder (00:34.448)
Thank you, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (00:36.428)
Awesome. So first off, for people listening who may not be familiar with your world yet, can you give us the short version? What is your main focus these days?

Suzanne Vasbinder (00:49.404)
Okay, my main focus, I’m the broker owner of the Homeswell Guarantee Realty Vast Binder National and located in Southwest Florida. My main broker, basically our market right now is very buyer driven because it’s just the way the things are going today. So our main focus is to really help the buyers get into homes and for the best deal also. We’re really good at negotiations and this is a really good time that you can negotiate.

Michelle Kesil (01:17.356)
Yeah, absolutely. And what does that negotiation process look like in your business?

Suzanne Vasbinder (01:23.708)
Well, seller concessions. Sellers are willing to give some concessions right now, where a few years ago there was no such thing. People were paying $40,000, $50,000 of asking value. And they were waiving inspections. They just wanted a property. Now in today’s market, we’ve got just in Cape Horn alone, there’s over 3,000 homes on the market.

But we’re not in a distressed level or anything like that. We’ve got less than 1 % foreclosures. But it’s a good opportunity for people to move up and get a bigger home. And basically, that’s what we’re looking to do right now. We’re working with a lot of move up buyers, as well as first time buyers, people that have been renting.

Michelle Kesil (02:13.09)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s really important. So yeah, what really caught my attention is the way that you’ve been able to manage this brokerage and really leverage that side of the business. Is that something that you can expand on and what is your key to run that business smoothly?

Suzanne Vasbinder (02:35.28)
Well, it’s having a business plan, And I do have a full-time assistant that works with me. I’ve got my daughter working with me, and I’ve got marketing also. So we all work hand-in-hand, and we get together. So we also do have our agents at the brokerage, and we are always expanding. Because we believe that there’s a lot of business out there, right? We all know that. And we don’t come from a scarcity mentality.

comes from the abundance mentality and there’s enough business for everybody we just need to help people get into the right homes or sell the right homes and give them the right tools to do it with.

Michelle Kesil (03:14.178)
Yeah, I think that’s super valuable. What are some of those tools?

Suzanne Vasbinder (03:19.612)
Well, for sellers, we have got access to a cash offer platform. So we can give multiple cash offers on their home within like 90 seconds.

So that is great if somebody is relocating or they’ve got, for example, they’ve got young children at home, they’ve got pets at home and they just don’t want to always be in show-ready condition or they’ve kind of neglected their house for the last few years or it’s been outdated. So we’ve got opportunity to come in there and we’ve got some investors that will give them some money upfront so that they can move on to their new property and then we can come in there and update the current property, their old property and get it in show shape.

And so we can sell it for top dollars then and they end up with more money on the back end. So we’ve got that opportunity and our marketing is out of this world. mean we’re always expanding on it and sharing new ideas that we come up with.

Michelle Kesil (04:17.718)
Yeah, that’s amazing. What are their specific marketing strategies that you can recommend people?

Suzanne Vasbinder (04:25.212)
You have to have exposure, We are showcase agents with Zillow, so we’ve got access to that. Zillow will only allow about one tenth of the properties to go get showcased, but we’ve got access to that. We also have access to other marketing problems. We’ve got solutions for the problems that people have out there. we also, for our buyers, if they come in and they want something specific, we’ll go and find it for them.

Michelle Kesil (04:54.766)
Yeah, that’s very valuable. Now, every operator I know also had a moment where things got real in their business. Maybe a deal went sideways or just a moment where you had to pivot fast. Could you share a moment like that for you? Okay.

Suzanne Vasbinder (05:13.648)
You going through one right now? This morning I’ve been working on, you know, this is an estate sale, you know, but the property had gone into foreclosure, pre-foreclosure, because, well, the deceased was not making the payments anymore, so it’s kind of hard to make payments when you’re not alive, right? And so when in pre-foreclosure, it’s finding and it’s working with the heirs. We got it out of probate, so we worked all that. But this morning we’re just trying to get a payoff from the

lender.

that’s not communicating with us. So we’ve been working on that all morning and I was able to nail down the attorney that is actually handling the list pendants and ordered the payoff from their office this morning. actually we’ve just been texting back and forth and we need it, we’re closing tomorrow. So it’s just, you never know. mean, that’s one thing I love about real estate, there’s never two days that are exactly the same. Every deal is different, right? There’s nothing that’s cookie cutter.

Michelle Kesil (06:14.742)
Yeah, absolutely. And what would you like suggest for people that maybe are in more of like these pivoting situations? Like are there any tricks that you have?

Suzanne Vasbinder (06:27.088)
You’ve got to be resourceful. You’ve got to be able to do, you know, you can’t be…

you know, sitting back and waiting for somebody else to do the job, right? You’ve got to be in there, be proactive, and look up the information. Today’s world, can find, and everything’s online, right? I mean, there’s no secret agents anymore. You’ve got to be able to go out there and find, and just, you know, just even, I reached out to somebody, to one of the agents at the mortgage company, and found her on Facebook, so I messaged her on Facebook. I’m like, hey, you need to respond to this, so, you know, we’ll go that extra mile

just to get the job done.

Michelle Kesil (07:03.808)
Yeah, that’s important. That’s what the stuff that people don’t talk about enough and

Suzanne Vasbinder (07:08.476)
No, if they don’t, and they just think it’s, you put it in the MLS and you write up a contract and it’s easy peasy. But it’s not, some of them are right. But every now and then you get some doozies out there.

Michelle Kesil (07:25.366)
Yeah, and it’s what separates the people who are just dabbling in this industry versus the long-term game.

Suzanne Vasbinder (07:32.302)
Right, because the long term, we know where we’ve gone through enough where we’ve seen everything. We’ve seen probates, we’ve seen foreclosures, we’ve seen divorces, we’ve got all of these things that we’ve worked with in the past. So we know how to approach the situation.

Michelle Kesil (07:51.522)
Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you this, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Suzanne Vasbinder (08:00.956)
Right now we’re scaling our brokerage and we want more agents so we’re working on a recruitment plan right now and we’re going to be able to offer them some revenue share programs and our cap is extremely low. We’ve also implemented a SEP program at our brokerage also.

Michelle Kesil (08:18.584)
Yeah, amazing. And what is like that next real goal for your brokerage as well?

Suzanne Vasbinder (08:25.616)
We want to, this year we want to end up with another 20 agents by end of this year. Yes, so I figure for, you to get 20 we’re going to probably have to go through about at least 100 agents.

Michelle Kesil (08:33.55)
Okay, amazing.

Michelle Kesil (08:43.51)
Yeah. And how is that, is that manageable? Like, is that something that feels easy to find a lot of agents or what does that process look like?

Suzanne Vasbinder (08:51.388)
you

It’s running ads, recruiting, inviting people to our brokerage. We’re very open about inviting people into our brokerage for our meetings. We also have access to university for our brokerage with over 250 hours of training. We give all the agents a 12-month checklist that they can go through step by step, and if they follow it, they can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. the problem that we find is people are

get kind of overwhelmed sometimes, right? And they don’t take the step by step and they don’t follow directions. They are not good at time blocking. So, you we believe that you’ve got to work on your business and you’ve got to work in your business. You’ve got to be able to do both and be able to differentiate both of them.

Michelle Kesil (09:42.892)
Yeah, absolutely. And what do you think the people that are successful, like what differentiates them?

Suzanne Vasbinder (09:50.449)
They time block and they don’t accept the status quo. They’re never satisfied with where they are. They have goals. They work on PPFs, personal, professional, and financial goals, they have their KPIs, right? So they’ve got milestones that they have to hit.

Michelle Kesil (10:15.98)
Yeah, amazing. And yeah, that’s like really important to make sure you’re hiring the right people because they can really compound things for your business or yeah, create chaos depending on how it goes.

Suzanne Vasbinder (10:28.892)
Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Vasbinder (10:32.828)
Yeah, you know, we’ve got a buy-in also. I mean, we do have a monthly fee, but we believe that, you know, I mean, if you don’t value something, if you don’t have a point in the race, it’s not worthwhile going, right? I mean, everybody has to have a point in the race in order to accept that it’s something of value that you’re getting.

Michelle Kesil (10:55.756)
Yeah, absolutely. And what do you feel like people, like most people listening to this maybe are earlier in their journey or looking to level up? Is there any sort of like advice you could give to people that are maybe just getting started?

Suzanne Vasbinder (11:15.548)
Keep on going. mean, it’s a numbers game, right? You’ve got to keep on doing these open houses. You’re not going to meet anybody living at home. I always like working out of an office, because at home you tend to have some distractions. here, we’ve got an office here. Agents are more than welcome to come into it. I think if you treat it as a business, it is a business.

Michelle Kesil (11:42.722)
Yeah.

Suzanne Vasbinder (11:43.332)
say, I’m an independent contractor and, you know, just that’s what I do.

Michelle Kesil (11:49.59)
Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to growing your network and building relationships, what do you feel has made the biggest difference for you?

Suzanne Vasbinder (12:01.276)
I’m part of several non-profits, well, been in rotary for many years, so I’ve got some good connections that way, but also I’m part of master networks.

and that’s been a great organization and you can meet people throughout the United States, actually the world now because they’ve got other people, they’ve got people in Philippines, Scotland and some other countries. So it’s great and once a week, every Tuesday at 1 p.m. they’ve got a like an open forum mastermind which is really nice to attend and you get to work on your business at that point in time and get to brainstorm with other people in different industries because at the end of

Today is a business, right? But you’re running, it’s not just, I just happen to be selling real estate. Somebody else might be able to be able to sell, for example, your accounting, but we’re all selling something, a service.

Michelle Kesil (12:54.7)
Yeah, totally. And for people that maybe aren’t in a mastermind yet or are looking to grow their network, like where can they get these resources?

Suzanne Vasbinder (13:07.004)
Master networks throughout the United States just go to, I believe, is Master Networks or just Google that. That’s great. Joining a non-profit also is great. Just giving back because we always believe that actually out of every single transaction we do, we give money back to local charities.

and to help support you’ve got to be able to be visible in the community also. Participate in maybe some clean up days or anything like that. Just go out and meet people. There’s a lot of service organizations out there and networking events.

Michelle Kesil (13:43.5)
Yeah, that’s super important. Do you have like an example of how when you attended one of these networking events or masterminds, it paid off for you?

Suzanne Vasbinder (13:54.257)
Yes, actually I joined Master Networks about eight years ago and I was in it for over a year before I got my first referral and since then it’s kind of snowballed from there. here’s the thing, you’ve got to keep in mind anything worthwhile is going take its time, right? And people do business with people that they trust, no one they trust. When you join any of these organizations you just cannot just go in and expect to get a referral tomorrow.

You’ve got to build that trust, these relationships, have face-to-faces with people and really get to know them also because it’s a two-way street in life.

Michelle Kesil (14:33.238)
Yeah, absolutely. What do you feel is like the best tip to build trust?

Suzanne Vasbinder (14:40.528)
get to know somebody. Sit down with them, find out about them and find out how you can help them. It should not be about you. You should be able to help somebody else grow.

Michelle Kesil (14:55.372)
Yeah, absolutely. think that’s something that many people forget is that we’re in it to, yeah, be in the cycle of the giving and receiving, not just the receiving.

Suzanne Vasbinder (15:06.576)
Right. mean, you know what? I find the more I give, the more I get back.

Michelle Kesil (15:10.698)
Yeah, I think that’s a really important lesson. Yeah, relationships are everything in this space, so you can’t fake that stuff.

Suzanne Vasbinder (15:13.372)
Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Vasbinder (15:21.166)
No, can’t. that’s the thing is you’ve got to be able to trust somebody. I’ve had referrals for the parents, the grandparents, and the children now buying homes for me. it’s having that, and you can’t just have that transactional mentality. It’s got to be a relationship.

Michelle Kesil (15:41.526)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s super important. So, all right, before we wrap up, if someone wants to reach out to you, learn from you, collaborate, where is the best place for them to reach you?

Suzanne Vasbinder (16:00.764)
They can call me. I do pick up my cell phone. My phone number is 239-357-8787. Or they can email me. My email is suzanne. That’s suzanne.com. That’s spelled V as in Victor, A-S, B as in boy, I-N, D as in dog, E-R, international dot com.

on social media, can reach out. I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter, TikTok. So I’m on everything.

Michelle Kesil (16:39.822)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story and your perspective. We really need more people in this space doing things in this right way. So thank you so much for being here.

Suzanne Vasbinder (16:53.712)
Thank you, Michelle. Have a wonderful day.

Michelle Kesil (16:56.342)
Awesome. And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Suzanne out here building real businesses. And we’ll see you all in the next episode.