How to Find Off-Market Real Estate Deals: Probate, Foreclosures & Tax Deeds

Yoganand Ganeshram (00:00)
And what if I tell you as well, there’s opportunities where you buy one lot and get a value for two?

How that works, right? When I scan the auction or I scan axe, opportunity for tax default, my heavy my number one focus is to find lots that are actually double wide or two lots that combined or grandfathering back in the days, sit right to, for example, a lot that is a hundred foot wide, then all the lots next to it are fifty foot wide.

Hm. You go you go to the auction, you buy it for the price of a of of the same value for one lot, and then you do a lot split and you get two lots for the same price.

Dylan Silver (02:03)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Yoganand Ganeshram, an Orlando real estate agent and investor with decades of experience, hundreds of sales, short sales, flips, and more. Yogi, thanks for taking the time today.

Yoganand Ganeshram (02:18)
You’re very welcome.

Dylan Silver (02:20)
What types of deals are coming across your desk these days?

Yoganand Ganeshram (02:24)
The deals that come across my desk as a lot of probate, you know, tax deeds, and also foreclosures. Right. And the reason why they’re coming across my desk is because, it’s my niche business where, I heavily focus on seeking those opportunities where, I look at a tax delinquent list,

death certificates filed with the public records and I constantly on a daily basis looked at, all of the foreclosure on tax deed sales in Central Florida on a daily basis.

Dylan Silver (02:53)
When we talk about acquisitions, and we were talking about this a little bit in the green room, some people really make this their bread and butter and they dive in on a granular level, and it certainly sounds like you have. Some people have one specific acquisition strategy and then other people will buy from wholesalers. Over the years, has your acquisitions strategy changed? Has it been relatively consistent? What’s been the journey?

Yoganand Ganeshram (03:21)
So it has relatively be consistent because one of the things that I’ve learned during the financial crisis in 2008 there was a lot of investors and hedge funds approached me when I used to do a lot of short sales saying, Hey Yogi, we want to partner up with you. Here is my business model. One of the things that I learned, when I got my real estate license is become an expert. And I learned very fast that if I am an expert at something, why am I not doing for myself? And I

Do what every traditional or most traditional realtors do. You know, show up at your office and say, Hey, I have an investor who wants to buy a hundred properties, but you don’t understand any basics of what the their business model is. And two, and how are they doing it? And if you understand that, then you will understand the real reasons why you can do it for yourself. And by doing it for yourself, I simply doesn’t mean that you have to have the money they have. You just have to have the understanding of how you can accomplish the same thing that

they’re looking for, but you do it from a smaller scale until you can grow it. Now, one of the things that I’ve done from that day from then to now is that, I’ve grown an investor base where I have access to excesses of five million in cash from partners who becomes actually really I say partners of mine, who brings cash to the table, including my personal investments, and we split the deals 50-50. Now here’s the reason why someone will do that.

They will do that because you have the skills that, very few people have and you have the ability to give them, a return that they can’t even get in the stock market or anywhere.

Dylan Silver (04:42)
Yeah, I mean when we talk about the the big bottleneck for a lot of folks, it’s financing deals. It’s raising capital. But there’s a couple of schools of thought. There’s this idea that if you find a deal that’s good enough, that people will buy into it or you’ll be able to finance it. I’ve seen this changing over time because people have gotten burned, particularly in the Sunbelt. And you see maybe investors be a little bit more hesitant. You could have one deal who may

becoming from a a wholesaler or or a broker who may be, you’re unfamiliar with, but if you have someone who you’re familiar with, who’s got a track record, who you trust, that person seems to be worth maybe more so and precipitously more so than in the the past, five or so years, where you could kind of, take lemons and turn them into lemonade wherever you were, even over buying.

Yoganand Ganeshram (06:17)
Right. And I think the most important part, in the context of what you just stated is that you’re buying real estate, most people buy real estate and assume that there’s a profit because somebody in social media says that you can make a profit, right? I get wholesaler deals all the time. I get fifteen or twenty on a daily basis that say, Hey, Yogi, I have a deal in X, Y, or Z. And I look at the zip code within thirty seconds I could tell you if it make financial sense or not. And here’s why.

Because I do this every day. I live and breathe this, right? Someone sells me a house and says, Hey, I have it for sale. The ARV is 350K, I have it with 200 grand. Well, he just didn’t understand as a wholesaler that home built in 1978 and he’s gonna take an average of a hundred, hundred and twenty thousand to bring it to today’s code, making a brand new home, right? Where’s the ARV for the individual who is actually buying that? Now, when you understand that.

Then you understand the reality. If I am going out and seek this opportunity for myself I’m buying them at 160, 175, and I put, 100K in it, then I’m at 270, 275, and the ARV at 375. You have you have a profit from the day you buy it. When you have the ability to do that, then no one will question what you do. One. And two, it’s not only the ability to do that. When you prove a track record over decades.

A span of decade, two decades that, you have proven this over and over. It’s hard for people to doubt that, it’s just hypothetical you’ll be able to do this because you got documentation, got deals, right? And I would say this, right? Every home that we are purchasing right now, right, when we buy them, we know what we’re gonna spend to remodel them. We know what our profit margin is. And it’s it’s a soft market in Florida right now. We’re taking

homes that were buying an average of 200,000 dollars, spend 100,000, ARV 375 to 400K, rent them 25, 2600 dollars. You got a brand new house that some investor, and here’s the interesting part, right? Every day as a realtor I see comes over my desk, someone have bought a piece of real estate in the MLS at full market value, doesn’t have new plumbing, new electrical, new AC, new ductwork.

Does have one of the biggest problems in the state of Florida, cast iron pipe under the slab, right? Right. So so you’re buying a home at full market value, but you’re buying a home that within the next seven to ten years, you’re gonna spend 40 to 50 grand upgrade. So so my question really is as always, right, for a real estate investor, whether you’re a real estate investor or you have cash, you don’t have cash or you have 50%, are many loans today that allow you to buy these properties and go and

or a monetary rehab, then one and two. Then when you’re finished, you have equity from day one that you purchase it. And two, have a brand new house you don’t have to worry about, cost carrying costs for fixing problems that would arise in the near future, right? And for any real estate investor who understands that or who knows that, or realtors who can explain that to their clients will understand

they get involved in something like that. Well, I’ve just made a mistake. I wish I’d known this guy six months or a year before, I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Dylan Silver (09:09)
You mentioned a couple of different acquisitions strategies and two that that stuck out were, probate and foreclosure. Two different types of deals, right? Probate many times it feels like and foreclosure too, but probate especially, it feels like we’re bringing people together, having to get, people to agree on things and almost feels like we’re a family triage coordinator. I I liken it too. And in the foreclosure side and in many cases there’s a lot of

people who are knocking at this person’s door, calling them, they’re receiving lots of notifications, oftentimes emotionally distressed. So these are a different type of of conversation. Do you feel that you’got without giving away all of the gold here, Yogi, but do you feel that you’ve got a unique approach or even just a conversational approach where sellers are, maybe more likely to talk with you versus someone else out there?

Yoganand Ganeshram (09:58)
Absolutely. And in that grows with experience over time, right? Learning from the mistakes that you have made, right? In one of the things that I’ve done, and it’s it’s an interesting question. And I’ll I’ll say this, right? One of the things that I’ve done my real estate career from a real estate point of view, that I’ve never sold a home to anyone that I wouldn’t buy for okay. Same goes for an investment property and an investment strategy. The most important thing in the situation to answer your question, truthfully.

Is that when you’re dealing with someone in a probate situation, it’s a very, very, very, very stressful situation, not only for them. A lot of times in a probate situation, they’re taken on a situation where they have never been involved prior to the death of the individual or individuals, right? But if if you don’t have the knowledge of explaining to them what the process really is, what it entails, how they’re gonna get through that. But the most important thing, right?

Is build a relationship where you’re coming from contribution, right? You’re not there to actually get their home at a discount value. You’re there to give them the real value of their home, but

enough for you to be able to make a profit. And here’s why I’m saying that, right? I’ve seen many people go in, right? Because of a situation like that, and they say, Hey, 100,000, I’ll offer you offer you 40,000, right?

And here’s the problem with that. When someone like me approach them and say, I give you a hundred thousand, what makes a difference between the forty thousand and a hundred, right? You are not there to steal their home. You’re actually there to help them because you value the money that they’re gonna get from this. Because I think in so in most of these cases, those people need the money more than I do or anybody else do. Why go in and try to steal something from someone knowing someone like myself is gonna come and say, Hey, I’ll give you a hundred K instead of forty grand?

‘Cause I know I’m still gonna make a hundred thousand dollars on that property, or we will, right? But when you do that, what you do first of all, put them in a defensive position where they may never ever talk to again. Right? And then it’s important too to nurture that relationship, right? Sometimes may say, Hey, it’s not the right time, I my family’s still grieving, I mean, this property of being in our family for a generation, look, I am not gonna push

them to sell it, what I’m gonna do that I’m gonna step back, I’m gonna make it a relationship based opportunity I’m gonna constantly check in with them on a weekly or a monthly basis and say, hey, I’m here if you got any questions or anything I can help with, any connections that you need to be made, like my real estate attorney, for example, like, my real estate attorney will charge someone to do a probate.

2500 flat fee, but if depending on the amount of filings, it will go to max forty thirty five hundred, right? Right off the bat, someone comes in and says, Yeah, I got an attorney gonna do you a probate, and then they charge him five to ten grand right off the right off the bat. Right. See, see when these conversations occur, there are smart people on the other side that is gonna listen to you and said, what? This is not someone here to help me. This is someone here to steal from right?

And if you make it a relationship situation and you guide them in the right direction, where you’re showing them in every approach you are here to help them you’re not here to take advantage of them. And that makes a vast difference. And that’s how you, in my opinion, and what I’ve learned over the many years that I’ve been doing this, you’ll be able to get these. And I think also one of the one of the most important thing questions that you would get in these situations, well, what is it gonna cost me?

Way gonna cost you anything. Here’s the reason why it wouldn’t cost you anything, because I will fund robate the probate costs up front. I will pay for the delinquent taxes up front, right? To stop the the tax sale or fees in the future, depending on the situation. But here’s what you’re signing. You’re signing memorandum of contract or something that says, hey, I have lien rights, right? Right. So there’s there’s ways that you go and approach it where

if you ha if you go with the approach that I’ve just discussed with you, how many people do you think is gonna say, Hey, don’t wanna do business with this guy?

Dylan Silver (14:12)
Most I think if it goes from the the the challenging, confrontational, but if you’re using the contributive approach, everyone’s gonna wanna do business, right? ‘Cause they’re getting something, other w a s an opinion where they otherwise would not have had it, with nothing out of pocket, right?

Right. I wanna ask about the other side of this equation, the the foreclosure portion of it, because there’s a lot of folks, investors in particular, that are going to people on a foreclosure list, the p a f a pre foreclosure list, with some type of, hey, I can give you cash for your property, but you’ve taken this a step further. While that is one solution set that you have, you’ve also done hundreds of short sales. Short sales are not easy. A lot of realtors won’t touch them, right? How did you get into the short sales space?

Yoganand Ganeshram (14:52)
So that’s an interesting one, right? In two thousand and seven, I was sitting on my couch and I saw Suze Orman when nobody understands what a short sale is, right? Two thousand and six or seven, sometime around then, just got my license in two thousand and five and I was sitting on my couch and everything in the world I was doing twenty five, thirty BPOs a day these banks, making fifty, sixty bucks a BPO because the real estate business wasn’t the best business at that time.

Of course I’m a fast learner, right? And I am a someone who doesn’t wait for things to come on my desk. I seek out the opportunity, right? I saw Sus Suze Orman, told a guy in California, call your bank up and tell them you would like to do a short sale. I was like, what the heck is she talking about? Right. So I Google it, not find anything online. So then the next day, I started, hey, calling people who I know who was in foreclosure and I said, Hey.

I would be able to help you with doing a short sale. It was like, what is a short sale? I had no clue what a short sale was. Really, I didn’t. One thing I did know that, what? Was an opportunity to learn. Even the banks didn’t know what a short sale Countrywide, which was given free by to Bank of America, didn’t understand because they were given all the bad debt. Right? Nationstar, Wells Fargo, all these banks. And in and what was interesting about the entire thing is that when I call and I ask, well,

I have a client who would like to do a short sale. They didn’t know what paperwork should be submitted. They had no clue, right? So start making it up as they go along, right? Then of course I start making it up myself and compiler lists. And then eventually it came to fruition around 2008, 2009, where they give you a package you have to send. And then they had I can’t remember the the the platform they were using you submit the paperwork online.

And then the banks were hiring people, paying them nine or ten dollars an hour to make these phone call up process paper. Nobody had any clue what they were doing. So then I had at one point all my agents when I was an agent with Keller Williams were bringing these deals and say, Yogi, I got a short sale. You help me with it? Yeah, I’ll t do it for a twenty-five percent referral fee because I knew that the banks were paying a full three percent commission without breaking a sweat, right? But but one thing that I didn’t

I couldn’t have tolerated is that on my desk I had mounting of paperworks and I’m submitting paperworks and then next thing they’re asking for the same paperwork over and over because nobody had any process.

Dylan Silver (16:51)
Yeah.

Yoganand Ganeshram (16:52)
Well then I was like, I I was involved in the stock market from then and I understand how the stock market worked. I understand how finance works. I started learning about default notes, prop performing notes, and who owns the mortgage and how the mortgage gets

assigned to them and all this kind of stuff. I started to learn more about the back end of the process. And then I did something that that everybody said was a genius move. Well I went on Wall Street and CNBC and I looked at Bank of America. Of course Bank of America has a format of the emails. So is every bank and so is every company cooperation in America, right? They have a format of the email you can send an email and then it will send you back and say, hey,

yes, but you all you need is the formative email. So if someone, Brian Moynihan, who’s the CEO of Bank of America, a middle initial, it can be three ways his email is gonna be first name, that last name, first name, mid middle initial, last name, or the first name with a last initial, or vice versa, right? So then I start sending email to all board of directors of Bank of America, through us every one of these banks, and I B C C all these leaders. And the emails what I was sending wasn’t very friendly. Because why?

Because the federal government said at that point, we’re giving you these mortgages technically for free a deep discount. Your job is to help these homeowners. And then on top of that, you had attorneys who were coming along and says, Well, we’re gonna help you to pay me. Don’t pay the bank, pay me and we’re gonna stop we gonna stop the foreclosure? Nobody wasn’t stopping foreclosure because the banks weren’t foreclosing at home anyways. Right? So then

I started getting, sending these emails to and the first I started aggressively was with Bank of America because they had the big bulk of Countrywide mortgages. That’s when ninety-eight percent of all the short sales were going. I got an I got an interesting phone call one day from someone in the cooperate office of Bank of America that says, her name was Lara. She says to me, would like to speak with Yogi. And I said, I am Yogi. She says, Well, I’m calling you because

I am trying to remember the platform that we’re using, and she says, I look at your profile online and we see you have about 35 short sales. I said, That’s interesting, Laura. I said, I’m glad that you have called me, but you I got an average of 35 short sales. But how many of it has actually got through the process so far that have been sitting there for six months or more? She was like, Well, none. And I said, You explain to me and she says, Well, gonna fix that problem.

And she basically said to me, but one under one condition, you will not send any more emails to the CEO of bank.

Yeah. And it wasn’t just CEO, it was the board of directors and the CEOs. And from that day forward, I was the only one in Orlando who were processing short sales less than 30 days. Was actually uploading files and someone within 24 hours were approving it or denying it on the other end because of missing paperwork. Right. Then I used that same process for all of the lenders, and that’s how I was able to process so many short sales. Now, one of the things that I did too.

And all those short sales that I’ve done, have never used an attorney any legal person to get deficiency waivers on any one of my short sales. And I’ve got deficiency waivers at 100% of all my short sales that are processed. And I also will say I was only the only one that I knew at that point was doing what you call a strategic short sale. What that is?

Dylan Silver (19:44)
No.

Yoganand Ganeshram (19:45)
A strategic short sale is when somebody is not default on their mortgage they have money in the bank.

But the home was so much upside it down they no longer want to deal with it or keep it because they could buy the same home seventy-five, seventy-five percent off. Why keep a home that is seventy-five percent off and pay a mortgage just because I have a hundred K. And I had clients, one of my first clients in that situation was an attorney have become a business partner to me today, right? And he was like, Yogi, listen listen, I got this house.

It’s a crappy two bedroom, one bath, dum tongue, and I want to get out. Had owed like 350k and the house was worth like 120 grand. I said to him, I said, Are you willing to give up at least 10 grand of your 110k cash you get? He I’ll give up 50 if I have to. I was like, so okay, so I submitted some but what was interesting when you understand the background of what the federal government was doing, and then you understand the loss mitigation process, the the process we are homeowners.

Not the risk to banks where they have to put insurance on these banks, got to board them up, they got to do a property check, constantly have to maintain all these properties and don’t know when they’re gonna get off the balance sheet, right? So so when you have a saw a mortgage that is solvent and somebody’s telling you, I’m gonna default if you don’t help me, then that’s another one you’re gonna get that gonna become a bad debt. So why allow it to become a bad debt when you have someone are telling you, I am gonna default on it if you don’t help.

And that’s when I start doing strategic short sales as well. Right. So so so over that period of time, knowing what I’ve known and learn what I’ve learned, I’ve taken it, to my advantage where now if I am approaching someone with an in a pre-foreclosure situation today, right, I understand all of the situations that they will go through, right? In and and it’s important to keep in mind too, right, is that when I approach these individuals, coming from contribution is the most important thing me, right?

I’m not going after them and saying, hey, go short sale your home because I’m a real estate agent and I’m gonna make a commission. I’m educating them on forbearance. I’m educating them on on and deferred payments, which a lot of banks are doing right now, where say, hey, if you can’t pay the mortgage and you can show me documentation that you’ll be able to pay 90 days or six months, can defer what you owe to the back end of the mortgage and you pay 30 years from now. But

here’s what we’re gonna give you. We’re gonna give you the opportunity for 90 days to catch up. But we’re gonna establish a payment now temporarily until. But if you don’t make those payments, then gonna live in the thought process, right? For minutes. So all these are opportunities that exist today. And in and for most folks who don’t understand this, they find yourself in a situation that goes and make these decisions based on someone who doesn’t have the knowledge to guide them to doing this.

Doing the right thing.

Dylan Silver (22:05)
You bring up a lot of good points. And one of the things that stuck out to me, well, there’s two things. First is this idea of contribution first, even if there’s a deadline, even if there’s a auction date set, right? But second to that is this idea that, sometimes people for whatever reason, it could be emotional distress, it could be situations in their life, medical, death, divorce, right? Anything, right?

Simply just kick this can down the curb. And so they might not always be in the situation where, the the home is like in that one situation, hundreds of thousands of dollars negative. It could simply be, the the the the paperwork that was, notifying them of of the the auction date somehow isn’t getting to them or they’re not currently occupying the house. It’s someone else. Someone’s not paying the taxes. And because of all these situations, people can still

lose their home and we oftentimes find these deals and we we think, here’s a great deal, but without educating that homeowner, in many ways we’re doing them a disservice. So hearing you talk about being a a contributor first, tailoring it to that person’s situation is really a unique approach.

Yoganand Ganeshram (23:11)
Well and you want to add to that as well, right? It’s it’s a unique approach, but at the same time you’re building a customer base for life. Right? Mean the relationship that you’re building there, when they’re ready to buy the next house, who you think they will call? Do right? If they know someone in the financial situation that they have been in who they will refer.

Dylan Silver (23:26)
You no question.

Yoganand Ganeshram (23:26)
Right. In and again, we are salespeople, right? If you’re not in a relationship business, you’re a salesman. That’s the way I see right. I’m not a salesman. I’m in a relationship business, right? In and the best part about it is that you get reward every time for it. Think about what I said, right? I have folks who will come to me with cash. Will say, Hey, Yogi, I’m looking

to buy an investment property. And the first thing I say to them, hey, we’re now gonna set up a social criteria in the MLS. Am gonna sign you up with the auction. Gonna deposit your money in the auction. Here’s the process. I’m gonna identify the the properties. Gonna give you a, a breakdown of what is cost for rehab costs, what will pipe purchase it for, what your net equity will be, right? But what am I getting from that as a real estate agent? Nothing.

Not getting anything because they’re buying it at auction. I’m not getting paid. But I can easily sell them an opportunity of buying one the next day in the MLS because they got cash, right? I’ll make a an a a nice commission, two and a half percent on a 350 or 375 or 400,000 deal, it’s a nice commission. But but what what what is important about this conversation here is that if I come to you as a real estate investor and I say, hey, okay.

I’m not gonna buy your house in the MLS for 400 grand, that you’re gonna spend 50 grand, as I explained earlier the next seven or ten years. Gonna buy you a house at the at at the auction for 200 grand. Gonna spend 110 to 120, we’re gonna make it a brand new house. Even underground plumbing, everything 100% brand new on the same concrete blocks that they exist. New windows, new doors, new everything, and and your ARV now will be a hundred grand more. Here’s the part.

After after we’re done with the rehab and I provide a tenant to you, you’re paying me not a real estate commission, you’re paying me a five to seven or ten percent on the ERV of the problem.

Depends on that investor, the recruited investor. Yeah. Right. If someone pays you five percent on a four hundred thousand dollar home, how much money you make? Twenty grand, right?

Dylan Silver (25:10)
Yeah.

Yoganand Ganeshram (25:10)
But I are you making that as a real estate agent? No, you’re not making that. You’re making it as an investor relationship.

Dylan Silver (25:15)
I want to talk about this idea of your sphere, right? Because you mentioned a contributor first. You mentioned, partnering with folks on these deals as an investor. When deals are coming across your desk, do you look at them first through the investor lens, the the brokerage lens? Do you look at it like you’re wearing one hat one moment and another hat the next, is it a different way that you approach these deals?

Yoganand Ganeshram (25:38)
Way the way I approach it when something comes across my desk, what is the value to my clients, not to me? What’s the value to my client? And the value to my client at the same time, what is the legal way to do this without not causing any problem with my brokerage or me as a real estate investor? Right. If you’re buying something if you’re buying something at the auction, then that has nothing to do with your brokerage.

Dylan Silver (25:58)
Right.

Yoganand Ganeshram (25:58)
You’re buying through the MLS and you’re writing a real estate contract, that’s a whole different game.

Dylan Silver (26:02)
Yeah. Yeah. Disclose, disclose, disclose, right?

Yoganand Ganeshram (26:04)
Right. Right.

Dylan Silver (26:05)
I want to pivot here, Yogi. Were talking in the green room about land acquisitions and some pretty incredible deals. And one in one in particular, it feels like there’s a lot of momentum b behind land in general and folks that are now maybe even pivoting from being single family investors to more land heavy and even getting into ground up development, although that is a

big lift to go from flip fix and flipping to to to ground up development. When you’re looking at raw land in particular, do you look at this from the perspective of, which developer might be interested in this land? Are you looking at it from long-term kind of land banking, I’ve been told, or another approach?

Yoganand Ganeshram (26:44)
No, so the way I look at land development based on my experience over decades doing it as well is that okay. Land value, there’s a direct relationship with the value of land what somebody will be willing to pay the land based on a couple of criteria that I use. One is where it’s located. What is the development cost? Is there

a s infrastructure already built. Is there a road? The land is already platted out. It’s ready, you just go

pull a permit, ready to build a house, clear the land and build a house, right? Is the neighborhood or the surrounding area are being developed by by builders. Are builders one of the one of the one of the things that have been happening since 2010 in Orlando is that, builders are starting to buy individual lots in neighborhood and build individual lot homes.

Versus building an entire community because now you don’t have to develop infrastructure, right? In they’re doing combination of both, right? Communities, individual lots, right? Gonna hire an acquisition agent to go and buy those land and try to buy them. Well, here’s the important part, right? And I’ll use one example of a neighborhood right now in Orlando. Let’s use Village 8 in Ponti Village 9 in Poinciana, right? For for for the conversation sake of Village 8 in Poinciana,

that’s about a 30, 45 minute drive from Orlando. At one point there was one road in, one road out. Now you have multiple from I-4 getting in, get out. They’re all individual platted out lots. When we had the hurricane in Puerto Rico, you were buying prior to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, you were buying vacant land at the tax action but twenty five hundred to three grand. Two years after the hurd hurricane in Puerto Rico, those lots were selling for fifty to sixty five thousand dollars.

Within two years. Okay. Why did that happen? That happened because there was a shift of people moving in from Puerto Rico into that neighborhood and individual lots, the builders were building these houses and people were buying them because it was the cheapest in the surrounding Orlando market, right? But take take what I’ve just said, someone was buying a house for $375,000 and you purchased the lot for $2,500.

What an investor will pay you, because an investor could buy go bill a house at a hundred and forty dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars a square. Fifteen hundred square foot, maybe two hundred thousand. Cost them to bill it. So if they buy it for two fifty, if they buy the lot for fifty or sixty grand and they’re building the house at two fifty, what is their cost?

Two hundred and fifty K. They’re building a house of two hundred and fifty thousand for the land, right? So what are they selling for? Three seventy five, three eighty, right? What are the profit? So who wouldn’t wanna buy vacant land and build a house?

Dylan Silver (29:00)
Man. Now in the in that example

Yoganand Ganeshram (29:01)
Now now one other thing is, right, is that there’s a lot of neighborhoods in Orlando and the surrounding neighborhoods where you have communities, entire communities that have of lots that are already plotted out, right? Ready, roads are built. I’m not talking about dirt roads, I’m talking about paved roads, but nothing have built, and then a mile down the street, you have an entire community. You’re still able to buy those lots for a thousand.

I’m sorry, fifteen thousand or twenty thousand dollars a lot. Now let’s think about this for a second, right? Where can you go in the US and buy a vacant lot for under twenty grand that is buildable?

Dylan Silver (29:33)
Not a lot of place.

Yoganand Ganeshram (29:34)
Quarter acre to half acre, right? Yeah.

Dylan Silver (29:36)
Yeah.

Yoganand Ganeshram (29:36)
Now think about at some point someone is gonna step in there and build one house or two houses, and then what happened? It caught fire everyone started to do it. That same fifteen thousand lot now just jumped to from fifteen thousand to forty or fifty grand, just buy a few person, go and build a house and show someone you can build a house and sell it in that neighborhood.

Dylan Silver (29:53)
When you look for or I guess there’s a couple ways to look at it. You could say looking for these opportunities, but you could also be seeing kind of the urban sprawl of Orlando or whichever market someone is in Florida or anywhere for that matter, and say, Okay, well I see where this is going. I have this opportunity to buy this land over here. I’m I think this is a a good bet. It it might not be I might not be able to flip it this month or next month, but I’m gonna hold it.

For a year and a half, something along these these lines. Based on what I’m hearing you saying, it has me interested in in doing that. Do you think more people will start to look at, this idea of infill lots and, land banking, so to speak, or buying, pre development lots a as a way to to have an alternative low cost entry real estate play?

Yoganand Ganeshram (30:37)
And I this is something that I do my best to educate new investors or young investors, right? Instead of take twenty grand and put it in the stock market on and hope that you make a profit on it or or hit the jackpot, right? On, SpaceX or Tesla or NVIDIA, one of these companies have shown the world that you could take 10,000 and in 20 years you turn it to a couple of million dollars, right? I mean, that is something that you’re hoping would happen, right?

But if you’re a young investor, you’re someone young and buys a lot for 10 grand that you put aside and next thing five years from now is forty grand. I grew up in Guyana in South America, right? One thing my grandparent my grandfather told me when I was a kid, he said there’s two things you never lose money dirt and gold. True. History of proven it, right? So you can lose money in the stock market, but you can’t lose money in land. You gotta understand, you gotta understand what you’re buying, and here’s why.

I’ve seen people bought land in neighborhoods that don’t have the width to be able to buy it. So you don’t understand the county guidelines, you’re buying a lot that hope that you can bill. Right. This is an important thing to remember, right? If you don’t understand what the county requirements are in a neighborhood to billing, whether the setbacks, the land has to be a hundred feet wide. If it’s 75, you can’t bill if it’s 60, you can’t bill or 75, you have to buy two lots and put them together to build. You have to understand how much development land that would allow you to develop, whether it’s wet land or high.

High and dry land, you have to understand, in those neighborhoods, right, what are the setbacks, right? Whether the lot does have the depth for a setback, in and again, if you don’t understand that and you’re buying lots, I’ve seen people buy lots at the tax action and foreclosure action in neighborhoods that doesn’t have any roads. It clearly says in the public records those lots are not, you can’t build on them, right? They’re like for dirt bike,

leisure, right? People are paying 10 to 15 grand where you could take that ten to fifteen grand and you can buy land that actually right off a paved road. Right. But the the issue here is that lack of knowledge and understanding and guidance, right? That’s when you will get burned if you buy land not understanding what I’ve just stated, right? And I’ll also touch to say, right, was a gentleman who a few about eight years ago

who had $26,000 in an IRA with JPMorgan Chase from a pr previous job. He says, Yogi, I don’t know what to do with the money. So the lots have gone from from around $25 $2,500 in Poinciana at that time about $12,500 a lot. So I bought him, I had him take that money, put it into an IRA, and bought two of those lots for $12,500 each. Right? And then three years after we flipped them for $65,000 apiece.

And we took the hundred and ten thousand out of the money we bought ten lats in a community in Po Comti for an average of twelve thousand. So now the goal is to take that twelve lots and turn them to forty to fifty thousand in the next five years. So this is someone in a few years took twenty-six thousand, turned it to a hundred and twenty, and now we will take a hundred and ten and turn it into probably half a million dollars in the next three to five and it will happen in the next three to five years. Why? Because,

with inflation, construction costs, tariffs and everything, have I’ve learned one thing in this business, and that is cost goods or material doesn’t go down as we expected, right? The first time we had, the situation when tariff came about, I mean the prices at Home Depot went up almost a hundred and twenty percent, they only came down back about sixty percent.

Dylan Silver (33:32)
It’s so interesting to get your perspective on this because you have, really multiple different real estate lives almost between the investing side, short sales, and then you’re talking about the this land portion of it. And I feel like land right now, there’s there’s more eyeballs on it, but it’s still new to a lot of people. So hearing your perspective, and then also the dangers, right.

How many times have you seen it? I’m see I’ve seen it. I’m sure you’ve seen it so many times. Investors will go buy land without understanding what it can be used for. The land could be, on an island with no access to it. And then what do you do? And of course, the agents don’t always know exactly what they’re selling. You could go go to an agent and they say, yeah, it’s a buildable lot and you’ve got access to it, only to find out that it’s, trapped and landlocked with no access to it. And then what do you do? So you don’t want to find yourself

on the wrong side of a land transaction, that’s a whole other headache.

Yoganand Ganeshram (34:22)
And what if I tell you as well, there’s opportunities where you buy one lot and get a value for two?

How that works, right? When I scan the auction or I scan axe, opportunity for tax default, my heavy my number one focus is to find lots that are actually double wide or two lots that combined or grandfathering back in the days, sit right to, for example, a lot that is a hundred foot wide, then all the lots next to it are fifty foot wide.

Hm. You go you go to the auction, you buy it for the price of the same value for one lot, and then you do a lot split and you get two lots for the same price.

Dylan Silver (34:52)
Amazing. Yogi, we are actually coming up on time here. Any new major projects that that you’re working on or also anything you’d like to mention directly to our audio?

Yoganand Ganeshram (35:02)
Yeah, the the pr the projects that we are working on right now is that, I have a property that we purchased recently and I can send you some a video that I did on it and you if you want to to take a look at it, be great. We bought it, someone owned the property, they have owned it for five years, a tree fell on it, weren’t able to get the insurance to pay them. We went in, purchased it from them.

Had them assign the insurance rights to us. And price that we purchased it for, we double our money after we flip it to a client of mine. And then we sue the insurance and just got a settlement for them for a it a very valuable number. So we end up, made 175% on that deal. And now my client who I who I am working on this deal and I actually are doing the rehab for him for free at no cost.

But I’m managing it for him. And that’s the value I bring to clients of mine, right? I am someone who, if you decided to do a real estate investment with me, am not gonna sell a property to you and walk away. I’m gonna give you a turnkey property because most people don’t understand how to go about do this. And one of the things that I’ve seen, I’m sure you’ve seen this as well, you hire someone to do the work and then you you get something else that you didn’t pay for, right?

And when when when they decide to use me as the individual that buys it for them at auction, whether the MLS auction or wherever, we do the rehabs for them, we provide a turnkey solution, and by the way, a hundred percent of everything is permitted. Do not do remodels with anything. Coming back to this project, it’s he’s gonna turn it into a purchased it in his IRA and he’s thirty-nine years old.

He’s an ER doctor. And this property will be the single only asset that if he follows my guidance and take the 2700 net he’s rent that he’s gonna get and invest it in an index fund to the next 30 years, with the return of the real estate and the one house that will cost 400,000 to be completed, the return from

compounding 10% for the next 30 years would be approximately 9.5 million when we let it right? And I will be the first one to say if someone is interested in doing this, they can reach out to me and I’ll be more than glad to show them what we have done in the past and what we’re currently doing. So you’re not getting something that, hey, we can do this, but we have never done it.

I have, seven rehabs we’re working on right now that I can show you exactly what we purchase the acquisition costs, what we spend and remodel them. And I also will send a link to one of them that we have just completed give an example, purchase 200,000, 120,000 rehab, it’s a brand new house, rent over 2600 dollars, an ARV of 400,000. So if you’re an investor and you have 350,000 dollars, why buy a home in the MLS?

When you have the ability buy it another way and have instant equity. And don’t have to worry about what this cost gonna cost you for fixing problems that will come along the next 15 to 20 years.

Dylan Silver (37:34)
Yogi, thank you so much. So so much for joining us today. Thanks, thanks for supporting

Yoganand Ganeshram (37:38)
Right.