Navigating Wholesale Market Shifts: How to Thrive in Tough Times

Stephen Keighery (00:00)
Dispositions is super important and I think it’s probably the most, I think a lot of wholesalers haven’t prioritized that and I think they got away with it in 2020 and 21, right? Because I think back then it was true if you had any contract, even if it wasn’t a great deal, it moved because of just such a lack of supply. That absolutely

Dylan Silver (01:51)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Stephen Keighery is the founder of Homebuyer Louisiana and Homebuyer Mississippi. He runs one of the most active off-market acquisition operations in the Gulf South focused on Louisiana and Mississippi. His team has completed over 225 transactions and is building a scalable, partner-driven model around flipping and wholesaling. He focuses on creating consistent deal flow, strong investor relationships.

and improving communities through his work. Stephen, thanks for taking the time today.

Stephen Keighery (02:22)
Awesome. Thank you. really appreciate being on the show.

Dylan Silver (02:25)
Now, off market acquisitions, where are you seeing a majority of your deals coming from right now?

Stephen Keighery (02:33)
So most of our deals are inbound deals. We’ve been able to establish a brand. So we get a lot of inbound that come from Google search engines, branded stuff, people that just know us from socials. I get a lot of joint ventures, because just a lot of the people in industry know me now too. it’s really the phone rings a lot. And it’s mainly branded. have a few channels behind that.

Dylan Silver (02:57)
Now, when people are reaching out to you, are they in all different situations? Is there typically a fair degree of distress? Are these properties that are potentially listed even maybe sitting on market? Where is their motivation coming from? Or is it across the board?

Stephen Keighery (03:15)
mean, it’s pretty varied. We do deal with a of inherited properties. Probably my favorite in terms of closings. Like we close a lot of inherited properties and, you know, in Louisiana and Mississippi, there’s a lot of like, you know, succession issues. So we will help sell us through that. So it’s probably like the ones we close the most. We do get all sorts of inquiries though. Yeah, foreclosures, like damaged properties, know, fire damage, all that sort of stuff. We do get listed properties. We don’t do a lot on this properties. I must admit like we really.

we’re looking to solve a problem. if someone, some people do call us cause they’ve been like listed for 30 days and they’re freaking out, but they got a nice house. We tell them this, like we don’t really, generally send them away because you know, the house is beautiful and they’ve got time and not stressed. We’re not the right buyer for them. So, you know, we do get those calls, but we’re generally looking for somewhere where we can add value, be that to the property or maybe through speed and cash, easy sale.

Dylan Silver (04:06)
Now for inherited properties specifically, there’s a number of ways where these deals can be tricky for people, including for sellers. When folks are reaching out to you, what are typically their concerns or their questions that they

Stephen Keighery (04:19)
Yeah, well, really often they’re not really sure who else they need to sign off on them, particularly in New Orleans. Our office is in New Orleans, where our headquarters is here, and there’s a lot of intergenerational properties. grandma gave the house to some son or daughter, right? But they never actually did a succession. And then that person passed away, and their kid’s in the house, and they’re like, they want to the property, but you realize, well,

Actually to be honest, we need to go back to that first succession and you know your grandma all her children are actually You know as and need to sign off on it So, you know we get a lot of those sort of messy situations We had one in particular that took us 21 months to close recently where a one of the one of the heirs was dead According to the family he’d been missing since Hurricane Katrina. So believe dad we believed he was dead, but he wasn’t

ever declared dead, there was no death certificate, no body. So from a legal standpoint, he wasn’t dead. So we had to you know, call a point, do a partition of sale. They’ve had to appoint like an administrator for that person. They still kept his portion in like the state has that in case, you know, he appears one day. But so we get a lot of those sort of complicated situations. And generally, sellers just don’t know what to do. We’re really lucky we work with very competent title attorneys so we can offer like contracted with the heirs.

and then work with the title companies to clear the title and then close on the backend as soon as it’s cleared.

Dylan Silver (06:36)
Now those types of relationships are pivotal and how can having, you know, efficient title really help an operation like this?

Stephen Keighery (06:47)
Yeah, mean, Tidal’s everything to be honest with you. So like our Tidal company is, I see them as an extension of our business. know, like they, we bring them a lot of business and they, know, so we have a good relationship. So we have a system in how we open escrow, how we communicate, we create chains. So they are part of our business. ⁓ You know, to them, I think we’re a good customer too. Like they value our repeat business and we really value what they bring. like creating that relationship is really important. ⁓

for sure, so I think that’s essential to anyone.

Dylan Silver (07:19)
I wanna talk about finding buyers for wholesale deals. So you get a property in your contract, but then you have to find a buyer. I’ve heard it said often that if you get it under contract, the buyers will come, but I’ve also heard it said that you do need to have your relationships primed and ready because if you don’t, then you might have something under contract and you just don’t have the ability to disposition it. I’m of the opinion that having those investor relations

pretty much set so where once you find them something they’re buying is way better than getting something under contract and then trying to find the investors later on. What’s your feedback on dispositions as a whole?

Stephen Keighery (08:01)
Dispositions is super important and I think it’s probably the most, I think a lot of wholesalers haven’t prioritized that and I think they got away with it in 2020 and 21, right? Because I think back then it was true if you had any contract, even if it wasn’t a great deal, it moved because of just such a lack of supply. That absolutely

I view wholesaling as a two-sided marketplace where you have sellers on one side and buyers on the other, right?

Just like Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace. Angie’s List is a two-sided marketplace, connecting contractors and homeowners. I’ve got a tech business background. had a business that was a two-sided marketplace. So I view wholesaling like that. You need both sides of the market. sometimes, you normally add a balance. Sometimes buyers are more important than sellers, and sometimes sellers are more important than buyers. I think at this point in the cycle, buyers are more important. We’ve done deals with 120 different buyers we’ve closed deals with.

We’ve got about 3,000 on our email list and we constantly add into it because you do need a core group of buyers, but they change their buying habits and they change their criteria and their appetite. So you wanna have those key relationships, but you also need some depth on the bench as well. I have two people that work dispositions for me. To me, it’s a whole function. So I’m definitely in your camp. And I will say if you’re a newer wholesaler though,

I would say, cause you need both, like sellers, buyers, what comes first? The truth is you need both. So if you’re starting out, my strongest recommendation would be to do your first couple deals where you joint venture with an existing wholesaler that has deep buyers. So then if you work with them and they will help you know what a deal is and they’re gonna move the deal, well then you now have the confidence to speak to the sellers and know you can close it. you can get good at speaking to sellers, lean on that JV partner to close the deal.

Dylan Silver (09:29)
You do.

Stephen Keighery (09:51)
And then as you get more confidence and build up, you can build your own buyers list and your own complete business. But that would be my tip for the new starters.

Dylan Silver (09:57)
I’m a big fan of that, a very big fan of that strategy. And I think working with investors and having that relationship can be just as tricky, honestly, as getting a property under contract. And I’ve seen this. I mean, you mentioned the new market, if you look at 2020 or 2021 versus today, you could seemingly have a deal that pencils right now, but people have been burnt or are at least…

proceeding so cautiously that unless they have rapport with you, they might not wanna take a stab at it. And so having the ability to JV with someone who’s got the credibility, the brand, the track record behind them, so then they’re bringing their buyers in who are already comfortable working with them, that’s why I really love that strategy.

Stephen Keighery (11:18)
for sure. I mean, I learned a really valuable lesson once when I had an out-of-state wholesaler bring me a deal. They said, do you join venture? I’m like, yeah, I do. know, mostly when I look at the deals, they’re not deals, but I looked at the deal and I’m oh, that’s actually a deal. Like, yeah, I can join venture with that with you. And so we did a joint venture. I sent it out, got a buyer. We got to the closing table and the buyer said to me, he said, Steve, I think I saw this deal before you sent it to me. I think someone sent it to me, but I didn’t really look at it until I saw you send it.

And that was when my light bulb went off that I’d built a brand and that I needed to build more of a brand. So my emails come out, Home Buy Louisiana, like when they come out, think buyers, I’ve trained the buyers to think this is a deal. Whereas if they don’t know you or if you send bad deals regularly, like they might know you in a bad way, or if they don’t know you, they’re cold. But if you send good deals and build relationships, the buyers will look at you differently. And that’s super important if you’re gonna wholesale at volume.

Dylan Silver (12:16)
Yeah, that’s a huge, mean, it really can’t be overemphasized because especially right now, you’re having to get craftier in order to move these deals across the line. And what might have been like a sure thing a handful of years ago, now it’s requiring every bit of effort to get these deals across. I do want to pivot here though and talk about how some of these strategies may be changing. I’ve seen more people who may be actually potentially looking into

other segments of real estate, but having come from fix and flip. So I’ve seen more people get into short term rentals, long term rentals, even multifamily, simply because it has been more challenging to flip operating in this space. How have you been able to navigate through these times when it does seem like there’s some level of transiency and who is a flipper, you know, who’s buy and hold and then who may be just sitting on the bench for

Stephen Keighery (13:14)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s been really tough and a lot of us or a lot of wholesalers stopped, you know, like the market like slowed down, buyers pull back, everyone pulled back. I actually really doubled down into that. That actually I’m a bit of a contrarian. That’s when I I doubled down into that. And like we did a record year last year, which beat the year before that, which was a record, which was in a bad market. We did a record month last month. So like I’ve accelerated into this bad market. How have I continued to do it? The buyer, I mean, I don’t flip a lot. I do buy rentals and I burp.

I don’t do a lot of flips to be honest with you. My skills are sales and marketing. But how we did on the wholesale side is you just need to adjust the price, right? So, and particularly New Orleans, Orleans Parish has been one of the worst markets in America. The growth has been terrible market, because we got hit with insurance before anyone else. So our market’s been in the trash. So how do we react to that? We just adjust our prices.

We went from 70 % of A of E minus repair to 65%, did that a couple of years ago, and then the deals were moving slower. We adjusted our acquisition price to 60 % of A of E minus repairs, and the deals kept moving. There weren’t other buyers around buying, so I’m able to negotiate harder with my sellers because 60 % is the market now. We just adjust price. If the market gets better, we’ll pay more. If the market gets worse, we’ll pay less. If you’re a wholesaler, your job is to find the price where deals transact.

always a price that deals with transactions. So if it’s getting tougher, just go lower.

Dylan Silver (14:42)
I agree completely with that. And I think a lot of people were used to 70%, 75, 80 % of ARV minus repairs. But then, and I’m in Texas, so we’re in neighboring states, I would see, man, I feel like this is a deal. What’s going on here? And I started to feel innately like, I think we have to be acquiring at like 60 % or even lower than that. It has to be so obvious that we can’t miss.

because people are maybe a little bit more cautious right now. And so I saw everyone else still not really acknowledging that, but in my heart and also just looking at the trend, I was like, this has got to be purchased very aggressively in order for people to take this with the same seriousness that they took 70 % of ARV just a handful of years ago.

Stephen Keighery (15:32)
Price Q was everything, right? I don’t know, that’s the truth.

Dylan Silver (16:16)
Pivoting a bit here, Stephen, for folks who are scaling in the wholesale arena specifically, I think that there’s a number of different avenues where they’re trying to do so. You have inbound leads coming in, which is like the cream of the crop. But if you had to start over again, and we’re looking at mining other lead avenues, where would you start?

Stephen Keighery (16:38)
Cold calling’s great. mean, we do cold calling too. I cold calling’s a good avenue. You when I started texting was fantastic. I sort of pulled back when like some of the laws were changing. I probably pulled back too early to be honest with you. But I mean, texting used to be great, but I would cold call if you’re like driving for dollars or just pulling lists of like motivated sellers, like just call them, you know. That’s the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to get through. And that’s what I’d be doing if I was starting out.

Dylan Silver (17:07)
Do you see any one way where wholesalers may be leaving money on the table or could be potentially a bottleneck for wholesalers at large?

Stephen Keighery (17:17)
Yeah, well, mean, something that we adjusted a couple of years back, we moved to the offers over model of Dispo. So, because pricing is really tough, right? Because you don’t leave money on the table and price your deal too low, but if you price your deal too high and it doesn’t get traction, then you lose all the power and it’s really tough. So we adjusted to doing the offers over style where we will do a starting price and we say we’re accepting offers over that. We’ll do a showing, it’s a blind.

It’s a blind offer, so we’re not auctioning back and forth, but we’re saying we’re accepting offers until this date, make your offer, best and final, we’ll pick the best one. And that allowed us to do bit of both worlds. We didn’t have to set a price so high that we lost no one wanted to look at it. We could set a price where if our offer’s over, if that’s the highest price we get, we will take it. But we’re hoping that we can get some tension and get a higher price, and sometimes we do much better, sometimes we get around that price.

But that’s one way we haven’t left money on the table while still offering attractive deals to our buyers.

Dylan Silver (18:20)
What percentage of buyers are physically walking the property themselves or having someone walk the property versus but purchasing effectively remote?

Stephen Keighery (18:30)
We pretty much like 95 % of people walk the property. We prefer it. There’s only a couple of people that I will sell a property to, sight unseen. I don’t like it because we definitely like, run good numbers, we be transparent, we show all the issues with the property, but I don’t wanna like guarantee it, because I don’t know, right? So I do feel more comfortable when someone’s seen it, because then you’ve seen it, that’s the price, let’s move on. So I feel personally, I just feel a little uncomfortable if they haven’t seen it.

So there’s only a few people that I’m comfortable, there’s some big boys and girls who I know they know their stuff and I would accept that. So yeah, 95 % of people are checking it out. We do prefer it. We do operate locally, so we’re not national, right? I consider us regional, we started local, but now we’re more regional, like South Louisiana, South Mississippi. And I like that as opposed to national because we know that you can build a brand, you do repeat business, you know the market. So mostly people are around and they can come check it out.

Dylan Silver (19:26)
I think there’s a lot of attention that’s been put on Texas and Alabama and Louisiana and Mississippi. I’m curious to see if you feel like these are hotbeds for purchasing of distressed real estate and for wholesale, or do you feel like, you know, they’re maybe inundated like we see in Texas, like we’re beginning to see in Alabama.

Stephen Keighery (19:47)
So probably like, it’s probably not a great market, which makes it a great market from, again, I’m a contrarian, right? So I live here, so I sort of work out of here, but like if I were to pick it as a market, I wouldn’t pick it. It’s tough to get your head around. I just think most big players can’t be, like it’s tough to get your head around. Like we moved from multi-million dollar houses to the next street is like, could, like it’s really.

It’s really, honestly, it’s really hard to get your head around our market. It took me a while. So I think anyone that’s national, they just struggle. It’s not a big enough market for them to care. So I just think no one really bothers to come here. And for good reason, it’s not the best market. But that being said, for me as a regional player, I’m like, I can take this market. This is my market. I can get a good stronghold on it. I can know it. And for me, and there’s other people too, for our group, we do really well. So it’s not saturated.

But like, don’t think, if you’re not from here or around here, I don’t think you want to come here. I’m not saying that scare you off. I’m saying it because it’s it’s true. And so yeah, as a contrarian, I really like it because it’s not a great market, but it’s somewhere you can grow into.

Dylan Silver (20:41)
it’s a demark.

We are coming up on time here, Stephen. Any new projects that you’re working on and then what’s the best way for folks to reach out to your team?

Stephen Keighery (21:03)
Yeah, I mean, we’re just going forward, know, continuing to expand through Mississippi, know, Louisiana. So no new projects. If anyone’s a buyer in those markets, reach out to me. If you’re a wholesaler, reach out to me. We run meetups here as well. So we’re happy to help where we believe in, you know, cooperation of the competition. So, so reach out to me. No real projects. You can find me on all the major socials, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.

come at me, I’m very happy. We run the West Bank Real Estate Investors Meetup, which is here in New Orleans. It’s a Facebook page. If you’re local around this area, it’s an awesome Facebook page. It’s really, really active. You’ll find a lot of active people in there if you wanna connect with the community here.

Dylan Silver (21:45)
Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for your time.

Stephen Keighery (21:48)
Appreciate it, man. I enjoyed it. Thank you.