How to Buy Real Estate Without Banks or Personal Guarantees | Ron LeGrand

Ron LeGrand (00:00)
The thing that I teach the hardest and I have to pound into people is that we do not guarantee debt to buy real estate. That’s downright ignorant. We do not do what other people do. We don’t put up a big down payment, go down and ask for permission from the bank if we buy this property. We take over debt and we create seller financing debt, neither of which requires a personal guarantee. And that’s the biggest mistake you can make is personally guaranteeing debt because it won’t be long, you’re gonna be out of business.

And think about how many loans you think you’re gonna get at banks to show in your credit report before you’re gonna run out and they’re gonna tell you, no, that’s enough. My world, I don’t care what the banks do. I don’t need their permission. I don’t need them at all. I don’t even go into them. Everything’s electronic.

Scott Bursey (02:13)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast, powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey And today we’re joined by a true pro in the industry, the founder of Global Publishing, Ron LeGrand, with over 40 years of mastery in both residential and commercial sectors, and a track record of personally buying and selling over 3,000 homes. Ron’s insights are the blueprint for many of the most successful investors out there. Pros

You can expect a masterclass today on how to build sustainable high velocity wealth in any market cycle. Ron, welcome to the show.

Ron LeGrand (02:50)
Thank you. Those were nice words.

Scott Bursey (02:52)
Well they’re very true words. And it is an honor having you here today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Ron LeGrand (03:00)
My honor, sir. My honor.

Scott Bursey (03:02)
And to help our listeners get up to speed, please give us the front row seat on how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Ron LeGrand (03:10)
Well, that means we got to go back to 1982 because that’s when I started in real estate. I was running a service station and I was the mechanic and I was the one working 10, 12 hours a day. The hot Florida sun. I lived in Jacksonville, Florida and I did that for a long time. And finally I decided I don’t want to this for the rest of my life. Started looking and I saw an ad that said come learn how to buy real estate with no money or credit.

appealed to me, didn’t have either one of those, but I knew it was a scam, had to be a scam. But I went down and checked it out and I had to miss Dallas on TV that night. J.R. Ewing was my hero. That was a very tough decision to make.

Scott Bursey (03:50)
I look back.

Ron LeGrand (03:51)
I look back and I ask myself, wonder what happened if I’d watched JR that night. Anyway, I went to a two day seminar thereafter, got fired up, made my first wholesale deal in three weeks, got a check for $3,000. That’s my first one. And that was the beginning for me. I just kept doing it. I quit my job and just kept buying real estate. I didn’t really have any choice because I didn’t have anything else in line to make money with. My wife didn’t work and we had no…

IRAs didn’t even exist then. So I kept doing it. In over the years, I’ve learned from the best of the best, which most of them are gone now. And ⁓ I figured out that this business will create money for you, but it’ll also create cashflow and wealth and retirement all along the way. And then we figured out how to do that tax-free forever, legally. And so today I still buy houses. I’m about to turn 80.

but we still buy houses. I can’t get it out of my system, Scott. I mean, it’s so easy for me. I don’t work more than an hour or two a week at it. And then I have somebody doing most of the work for me. They don’t work more than four or five, six hours a week. So today we got it so systemized, anybody can do it. Most of it without leaving your desk or your home. Systems do everything. All we do is make decisions, what we wanna buy and what we wanna sell and systems do the rest. So back in my day, we didn’t have those systems.

Back in my day, we didn’t even have the internet. Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet. So a lot of technology has come along and we’re taking advantage of it. Certainly AR is well within our whole system here at Global Publishing and in my real estate business as well. So we’re keeping up with the technology along the way. I’ve been through six down cycles, six so-called recessions, the worst being 2008. Got through all of them. I didn’t like any of them, but we got through. We adjusted as we go.

And there’s a times change. We adjust constantly adjusting. And I’ve been teaching now since 1987. Still do that. I have a four day event every single month. Most of them here in Jacksonville, tons of online stuff. I have some virtual events of the four day. We got all kinds of calls for just about anything you can think of. so I’m still teaching today. I’m semi retired, but I still teach because that’s what I do. And that’s what I will do as, as long as I can. But

teaching and buying go very well together. So I don’t know how many houses I bought today, because I put account in, gotta be 10, 15 years ago now, doesn’t even matter anymore. So anyway, my job is to expose people to real estate and then convince them that it’s something they can do part-time to build wealth and retirement.

Scott Bursey (06:27)
Well, that is an incredible journey, Ron. Thank you for walking us through those early days. It’s amazing to see how those fundamental pivots set the stage for such massive scale. And you know, Ron

Ron LeGrand (06:41)
Everybody has a turning point.

Scott Bursey (06:42)
Yes. And ⁓ you definitely found yours. What really caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to dominate the quick turn space while scaling your teaching empire at global publishing. It’s rare to find someone who executes at that level and then successfully duplicates it in others.

Ron LeGrand (07:00)
Yeah, it is really.

Scott Bursey (07:02)
And looking back at those three thousand plus deals, what was the specific aha moment that transformed your approach from just doing deals to building a scalable engine?

Ron LeGrand (08:00)
Scott, I can’t honestly answer that one. I’m not sure I had an aha moment. All the decisions that I make come through time over time. And I guess probably the biggest thing that I’ve learned is to not listen to everybody. In fact, I have a t-shirt that says the whole world full of crap. I caution my people, you know, be very careful to whom you listen because most of them have no idea what they’re talking about.

Scott Bursey (08:19)
Yeah.

Ron LeGrand (08:26)
And especially if they haven’t done what you’re doing, they have no right to even tell you what to do if they haven’t done what you’re doing. we, get plenty of people that will gladly, you know, their opinions don’t cost anything. And unfortunately that costs a lot of people, their careers, to be honest. I was lucky. I got my first check in three weeks. They didn’t have time to steal my dreams. Once I got that first check, it man, it was over. I went out there and started doing it. Nobody could stop me. I didn’t want to talk about anything but real estate. And that’s that first check.

At first it was a seminar, which I did not want to go because I knew it was a scam. It wasn’t. Then I got that first check. That was a huge turning point for me right there. If I hadn’t got that check, I don’t know what would have happened. Dreamstealers might have got me. So we work with students here at Global and have been for a long time now since 1999 in this company. our goal is to get them their next check if it’s their first check, because that’s what they need to see. They need to see results, not just

seminars and videos until they’re blue in the face. And we’re so systemized now, pretty easy to get those results if you just follow the plan.

Scott Bursey (09:28)
You were able to tune out the noise and get that first check, which spearheaded everything. Yeah.

Ron LeGrand (09:35)
It’s called hunger, Scott. Had to eat. Had to pay the bills. Didn’t have anything else to rely on.

Scott Bursey (09:43)
Understood, Ron. And I’m curious to know, what do you consider the primary strength of the quick turn strategy in today’s unpredictable economic climate?

Ron LeGrand (09:52)
Well, I love it when everybody says this unpredictable climate because they just haven’t learned what I’ve learned over all these years. And that is no matter what the circumstances are side, what the interest rates are, what the economical climate is, who’s in the office, who they’re sleeping with. None of that is going to stop people who want to sell their house from selling them and stop people from wanting to buy a house by people are always going to have to have a place to live. That hasn’t changed since long before I started.

and it won’t change too long after I’m gone. Now, a few things change. The laws changes. Sometimes techniques change, the market changes, but people always need to sell and other people always need to buy. And that’s what I love about this business. Never gonna go out of style.

Scott Bursey (10:34)
That’s great perspective. And Ron, curious to know, with all your experience, we’d love to hear what is the biggest blind spot you see most investors having when they start out with residential flips?

Ron LeGrand (10:47)
Well, most of the investors start out without getting any training or watching a few videos on YouTube. And I got plenty of them on YouTube, by the way. You are not going to get trained by watching videos on YouTube as much as you try to convince yourself you are. There’s a whole lot of pieces to this training. It takes me four days to even get the basic training across. ⁓ I’ve got a lot of videos on YouTube. Well, they’re not designed to teach everything you need to know. They’re just designed to focus on what little question you might have.

and answer it. So the biggest mistake that people make is they’re not getting help. They’re not getting trained. And it makes no difference what the product or service is. You can’t just go into a business blindly and expect to succeed without years of failing and most likely getting yourself out of business. Get the training first and make sure the training is supplied by somebody who knows what the heck they’re talking about, been there, done that, and they can tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly. And of course, that’s what I do. I tell them the good, the bad, the ugly.

and try to make it as simple as I can so people understand it as easy as they can so they can get to work. Because there’s so much coming at us out there now, Scott, all, you every day, every day, everybody wants to sell something to us, pull us all apart. And we just can’t maintain the focus. We can’t stay on track long enough to make it work. Now, fortunately, I didn’t have that back then because we didn’t even have the internet. Okay, so I didn’t have to get all these things in my head every day.

Even today, I delete almost everything that I get. I’m just like most other people out there. And if you’re not careful, you’ll eliminate the chance to get the training so you can actually succeed. I can’t tell you how many thousands and thousands and thousands of my people have taken the training and gone out and they’re doing deals. And I’ve got a bunch of millionaires that I’ve created, some multimillionaires and a whole lot of people with life-changing experiences. In fact, I got them all over the place in our building. got… ⁓

checks up on the wall or testimonials and so forth. But I can’t make a decision for them to make the decision to get trained. And they do everything they can to fight it. And I think I probably did the same thing when I started. It’s hard for me to remember back that far. But one thing I did right from the beginning was I kept buying stuff and buying stuff. I’d learn a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there, and I had to put it all together. Today, they don’t have to do that. I mean, it’s all in one place and it’s all systemized.

People don’t know how lucky they are that how easy it is to get into real estate now. Of course, if they listened to the experts, so-called experts on the internet, they’re all gonna get us confused. When I look at some of these folks, I wanna throw up. Some of the stuff they teach just is not right. And some of it is downright illegal, Scott. They just don’t know that they’re teaching people to do illegal stuff. you know, it comes back to the point you better…

you better take a good hard look at who you’re listening to.

Scott Bursey (14:09)
We appreciate ⁓ that transparency, Ron. And thinking about where the market is shifting. Where do you see the most overlooked opportunity for someone looking to build a pipeline right now?

Ron LeGrand (14:20)
I’m a fan of the pretty house or the terms business, Scott. I do wholesaling. I’ve done rehab, I’ve done over a thousand rehabs. I don’t wanna do any of them right now because of the volatility of the market. I don’t know what they’re gonna be worth by the time we get them ready to go back on the market. And here it’s going down in most other places. Besides a lot of work. I mean, I can wholesale a house and make as much as you net on rehabbing a house today. But terms business I like, beautiful homes and beautiful neighborhoods.

and we get into them with little or no money and we have multiple streams of income. First of all, we get a big deposit. get five minimum, 5 % of the sales price of the property by lease optioning to tenant buyers. They can’t qualify for it at the bank. So we got 70 % of the market all to ourselves. Then they get in it and they’re responsible for all the repairs as part of their option agreement. And I give them plenty of time to fix whatever’s broke, credit, debt ratio, whatever’s broke if they wanna buy the house.

I them two years and frankly, I ain’t gonna kick them out at the end of the two years. I just let them stay, some of them stayed over 10 years. So when I put them in the house, I get a check sometimes bigger than I’d get if I rehabbed the house. I get cashflow monthly. I get depreciation. So we had a ton of that a couple of years ago. In fact, I’ve some houses that doubled in value. have up, I’m sorry, depreciation, that’s tax write-offs. I save a ton of money every year just doing that. Then the appreciation is the raise in value.

And then lot of those, most of those people who lease option will actually default and leave that money behind. If they leave, they do not get that deposit back. not a security deposit. It’s an earnest money deposit. Just like when you buy in any other house out there. You default, you don’t get that back. And again, they’re responsible for all their repairs. So I discovered over the years that tenant buyers make tenants obsolete. I’ll never rent a single family house again. I will lease option them no matter what price range they are. Get all these multiple streams of income.

I keep getting them for years and years and years and I call it the golden geese. Do a job once you keep getting paid. We buy these houses by taking over debt or by having owner financing, creating a wraparound mortgage or deed of trust on it. I do not guarantee any debt. I do not need anybody’s permission but the seller. I don’t fill out any applications. I don’t have anybody checking my credit. The loan will never be in my name. It won’t show on my credit report. It does not show on my financial statement.

And so nobody’s stopping me and buying all the properties that I want to buy. I just got to go out and get them to call me. Now think about today’s markets, Scott, because here’s a missing opportunity people aren’t looking at. There’s a ton of houses out there now with low equity, very low equity, one to three years old, excellent condition, and they have to move or for whatever reason. They’ll give you the house. They’ll beg you to come take the house. There’s no negotiating. Just go see if the numbers make sense to you or not.

The problem is there’s very little monthly cashflow because the interest rates that they borrowed at were so high. But so what? You get all those other benefits I just described. You can build a fortune very, very quickly by buying these assets that don’t require your money, don’t require your credit. And you get all those benefits out of it. Don’t matter how you buy it, you still get depreciation and appreciation and all that takes place. And I teach in my event. I went back, started 1985, 95.

2005, 2015, 2025, it proves that every decade, from way back then to now, the value of properties went way, way up every single decade. It goes down sometimes, it comes back up. We’re going down a little right now, but all that’s doing is correcting for all that hyper appreciation we had a couple of years ago.

Scott Bursey (17:47)
And that’s something that the pros should definitely be paying attention to, those words of wisdom right there. Ron, let’s dive into the risk. What do you ⁓ identify as the most persistent threat to the quick turn model today? And how do you protect yourself against it?

Ron LeGrand (18:03)
The thing that I teach the hardest and I have to pound into people is that we do not guarantee debt to buy real estate. That’s downright ignorant. We do not do what other people do. We don’t put up a big down payment, go down and ask for permission from the bank if we buy this property. We take over debt and we create seller financing debt, neither of which requires a personal guarantee. And that’s the biggest mistake you can make is personally guaranteeing debt because it won’t be long, you’re gonna be out of business.

And think about how many loans you think you’re gonna get at banks to show in your credit report before you’re gonna run out and they’re gonna tell you, no, that’s enough. My world, I don’t care what the banks do. I don’t need their permission. I don’t need them at all. I don’t even go into them. Everything’s electronic.

So remember, we take over debt. fact, I show an example of a house that I bought in 2014, Scott. I took over a $351,000 debt on it. The guy had to leave because he had to go another job.

I had to leave, call me, said I’ll sell the house for what I owed on it. And the value at that time was 385. All right. All he wanted was out. So I took, bought the house, I got him out and I’ve been making payments on it ever since. But I put a tenant buyer in it within about a month, gave me $50,000 non-refundable deposit. So let’s talk about risk and payment first. I put up about four grand to buy it, tech closing cost. I got it back 50 grand in a month. I don’t know what kind of rate of return that is, but it is pretty good, I think.

Now think about all the goodies since that house is doubled in value. It’s over is worth $700,000 now. I didn’t do anything to make that happen except collect rent and pay rent. Of course, I don’t even do that personally anymore. ⁓ The debt went from 351 down right now down to about 250 just by making those payments. ⁓ The depreciation was about $90,000 over that period of time. I mean, that’s sorry, that’s a tax savings. That’s not the depreciation.

That’s what I saved in income taxes. People forget about all these income streams. And of course that tenant defaulted after the end of two years. I didn’t put anybody else in it. My personal assistant has been living in it ever since. And so that thing, here’s the moral of the story. Over that period of time, I used 10 year period, that house has made me $721,000. I only paid $351,000 for it.

Now I haven’t got all that money because I still own the house. I haven’t got the appreciation and I haven’t got the benefit of the debt paid down, but I will get it if I ever sell that house, which I really don’t have any intentions to do. That’s one house, one house and I still own it. And it’s going to keep on producing for me. What if I had 20 of those, 30 of those, you know, a few years from now, I’d be so rich, they can’t count the money, have to weigh it.

Scott Bursey (21:21)
Love that strategy, Ron. Just love it. And interested to get your take on if a pro listening today wants to align their personal strengths with a current market, what is the one habit they must adopt immediately in your view?

Ron LeGrand (21:37)
I just said it. Learn to buy properties without guaranteeing debt, period. That is the most important mistake you can make. Don’t make it. Just learn how to do it without guaranteeing debt. And then they got to learn how to find the leads and then to handle the leads when they find them. And selling is so easy today. It’s incredible. I mean, remember I’m selling with lease purchase, which means I’m not really selling it. And you imagine I got 70 % of the market. Can you imagine the phone calls we get when we put a house on the market on lease purchase in a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood?

Now today, selling doesn’t cost you any money. And in fact, you don’t even leave your desk to sell houses. We don’t sell, we don’t show houses. We put a lock box on them and screen the people and then they, but two or three people go through it before it’s gone on all these purchase. All right. I’m not dealing with those picky buyers today that you have to get qualified at a bank. I’ve had enough of those. When I, if I sell one like that and I want to cash out of it, I hire a realtor to sell it. Cause I don’t want to mess with that process. So anyway, most of your time,

what little bit you have is in finding deals and handling and closing call, which I have scripts for that that anybody could read. And we got virtual assistants that do almost everything else. Very little that a human has got to do anymore to buy and sell houses. And in fact, I know some people that are wholesaling houses all over the country. All they do, they do everything online. They don’t ever look at the house, see pictures of it. They made an offer on it and they put it right back online at a higher price. And people buy it as long as they bought it right.

That’s part of the business as well. But I’ll tell you, I like the terms business a whole lot better because remember when I wholesale a house, I’m done. When I rehab a house, I get a check. I’m done. And that is the, you know, I don’t get the benefit of the long-term gains. It’s all short-term gains. So it’s maximum taxes. But I’ll say again, I got nothing against wholesaling houses. I like the big checks coming in. You learn how to buy them right when they need rehabbing. And there’s tons of them out there and there always will be.

And get this guy. All I do is get a contract signed, a piece of paper with black ink on it that says I have the right to buy the house for blank, all cash. We don’t sell the house, we sell a contract. We never buy the house, we don’t take title of the house. There’s absolutely no cost except we give the seller a $10 deposit. And that’s it. We sign the contract. So a wholesaling, I mean, a sixth grader could wholesale a house. But I still love the terms business a whole lot better.

Scott Bursey (23:59)
Heard loud and clear. Thank you for laying that out for our pros. And Ron, what does the next twelve to twenty-four months look like for global publishing?

Ron LeGrand (24:09)
Well, we are growing. had a down period, way down period like anybody else in our industry in the last couple of years. And we’re starting to move back upward. Had to change though, had to make some major changes. Most of them was in how we acquire customers, because it just got to be too cost prohibitive. But on the other hand, there’s a lot of work involved in working social media and getting customers through that and learning all the ropes. Fortunately, my team is doing very well at that, because I would never do that, nor could I ever do that.

It all comes back to the people that you choose to work with as well, Scott.

Scott Bursey (24:41)
It really does very, very critical. Thank you for highlighting that. And Ron, if you were stripped of everything and had to rebuild your portfolio from zero in the next, let’s say 90 days, what is the specific high leverage move you would make to, you know, first get ⁓ that positive cash flow going?

Ron LeGrand (24:42)
I am bored.

Okay, well, if you’re, depends on what you got to work with, where most of the stuff that I do don’t require money, if it is, it’s a little bit of money and you get that back very quickly. I think when I was just starting, the easiest way to make money is to get a wholesale a house. Like I just said, I’m selling a piece of paper, right? That’s the easiest way to make money. And that’s actually the way most people make money coming into this business. And it’s all they see, that’s all they’re told from the outside looking in. All selling houses is great. That’s the fastest way there is to get a check.

find that junker and flip that contract. put that property under, if you got it priced right, you put that property on the market free through the internet, you’re going to get flooded with calls because you’re selling a business opportunity. They’re going buy it, fix it and rehab it and sell it and make a profit on it like they’re taught on all those TV shows, which there absolutely is no reality in by the way. I get a lot of people coming into the industry by watching the TV show. So if I had to start all over,

Do I get to know what I know now or not?

Scott Bursey (26:00)
Thank you for sharing that level of expertise, Ron. And Ron, you really

Ron LeGrand (26:02)
This was your wife.

Do I get to know what I know now or not when I’m starting over?

Scott Bursey (26:11)
That’s the thing, you know, you can only control what you can control and you try to accumulate as much knowledge as possible. And then you teach that knowledge to other pros like you have. And especially

Ron LeGrand (26:25)
answer the question. You didn’t understand the question. If I don’t know anything when I start, first thing I got to do is get some training. And that’s going to depend on how what have I got to invest in my training, starting with the free stuff, but working my way into the real quality information that will absolutely cost you money. Anybody who thinks they’re going to get trained for free is very naive. Why would anybody want to train you for free? And all the videos you’re watching are just a way for you to get in touch with somebody that’s going to sell you training. We sell training. I’m not ashamed of that.

I’ve created so many millionaires, I can’t even count them. And nobody’s going to do it for free. So might as get that out of your head. You got to pay a little bit to get trained. So I’d do that first. Of course, that’s kind of knowing what I know now, but what I know now, I do that first. All right. And then I’d start generating leads because nothing happens until something is sold and you can’t sell it until you get a contract to buy it. So the most important thing you can do is go do everything you can to find deals, which of course I teach a ton of it. Most of it is free.

Some of it costs a little bit. Some of it you can hire somebody else to do, but if you don’t get those leads coming in on the houses, you got nothing to do and you’re certainly not gonna make any money. So generating leads is the first step after training. And even today that’s automated. We got a whole system that does that for you. Does the mailing, does everything.

Scott Bursey (27:37)
So the first step is educating yourself and then implementing.

Ron LeGrand (27:41)
Always, any business, any product, any service, educate yourself first.

Scott Bursey (27:45)
Absolutely. Ron, pure gold. And you really have delivered a lot of fuel for our listeners today. Is there any other advice that you can leave with our pros?

Ron LeGrand (27:55)
Well, got a lot of, by the way, I got a free book. You want your listeners to have a free book?

Scott Bursey (28:00)
⁓ that’d be awesome.

Ron LeGrand (28:01)
Well, I just happened to have a book and I’m gonna give it to them for free today. Here’s the book. It’s called, to Be a Quick Turn Real Estate Entrepreneur in Any Economy. This is literally a seminar in a book, guys and gals. ⁓ And people tell me it’s great. When I read it, I’m kind of impressed. Anyway, go to Ron LeGrand, that’s L-E-G-R-A-N-D, ronlegrand

.com forward slash free book ronlegrand.com/freebook and you’ll get a chance to get it free if you want to download it or if you want to pay for shipping and handling we’ll mail you the book whichever you choose and right in there right there you’ll see what i do which is how i do it see why i do it see where the money is made and again pretty much a seminar from beginning to end ⁓ what was the question again after that scott

Scott Bursey (28:55)
And I know our pros are gonna be impressed with the book. Give us the the Cliff Notes version, please.

Ron LeGrand (29:01)
Well, I can tell you just like I said, I take you from start to finish on all kinds of deals in here. And I mean all the way through it or how to raise money when you need it and all that stuff. And I can sit here and read you all the chapters, but I’m not gonna do that. And that’s, I told you this is a seminar on a book, it really is. Good stuff.

Scott Bursey (29:17)
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much. And for our listeners that would like to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you, Ron?

Ron LeGrand (29:26)
⁓ Get the book. That’s the best way. ronlegrand.com/freebook. I mean, I’m all over the web, but that’s how you start. Get that book and see if you want to go further.

Scott Bursey (29:36)
Ron, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast.

Ron LeGrand (29:43)
Thank you for having me, Scott.

Scott Bursey (29:44)
It’s been an honor. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with the lineup of a leak guest, just like Ron LeGrand, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.