Pocket Listings for Investors: How to Find Hidden Real Estate Deals Through Agents

Matthew Carrigan (00:00)
The simple answer is hire someone that knows more than you do about the topic you’re willing to scale in. I mean, I think if you can, I’m always like, I’m busy. So I’m trying to find someone that knows a lot more about me and, or a lot more about the situation that I’m dealing with. You know, I just hired someone in my business that he’s doing agent outreach to, he just does it at higher scale and it’s more profitable.

Dylan Silver (01:54)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Matthew Carrigan, real estate investor, wholesaler and flipper. He’s built his business by going against the grain. Instead of chasing sellers, Matt has developed a repeatable system centered around partnering with real estate agents to generate consistent off-market deal flow. He’s also the creator of the investor playbook, a school community where he teaches other investors how to leverage agent relationships to build predictable pipelines and close more deals. Matt, thanks for taking the time today.

Matthew Carrigan (02:24)
Yeah, absolutely happy to be on here and yeah.

Dylan Silver (02:28)
Now, one of the angles which really goes untapped is how people can better interface with agents, brokers, and folks who don’t otherwise know what to do with these distressed deals. How did you come about that angle?

Matthew Carrigan (02:48)
So I joined a mastermind early on and that’s kind of the proposition they took was like they did all their deals through real estate agents, know, like direct to seller marketing can get expensive fast, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. And so we, ended up working for, I did quite a few deals by myself, but I was like, I need more consistency, you know, I need more consistency. So I ended up working for a guy out of California. He, that’s all we did was we cold called agents, we build a relationship with them.

you know, got the properties on a contract, follow up sequence, the whole nine. And I saw like how the pipeline just kept increasing and hit, you know, I’ve heard the average seller lead. I’m not in that business. So don’t quote me on this, but I have heard that it’s like three to five K a lead, you know, or not a lead, but a deal closed is what I’ve heard in the panel. I mean, my marketing maybe, and we’re texting thousands of agents every month, like, like each

Dylan Silver (03:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Carrigan (03:46)
Acquisition manager has over like 9,000 agents that they’re following up with every month and that’s twice a month. And then we, we maybe spend $1,500 a month a month in marketing and we’re closing three to five deals on average per month. You know, great, great months, five, six deals and you know, a slow month might be two or three, but it’s very rare that we don’t get something like that. And all it is, is we’re just putting them on a pop on, following up with them. ⁓ we essentially run with two pop ons. We’ve got a agent.

Popline and then a property pop on, right? When they send us a property, put in the property pop line and it’s simple, man. You just, it’s the law of numbers, I guess.

Dylan Silver (04:24)
What’s that conversation like with the agent when you’re starting that discussion?

Matthew Carrigan (04:33)
Yeah, well, I mean, I think it’s gotten more more popular, I guess. I guess it really depends on your market. know, some markets are more saturated than others, but we’re just pitching like, hey, you know, we we buy houses, you know, that are that are in distress. You know, if you got a seller that is in probate pre foreclosure, something like that, like just let us be an extra tool in your tool belt that we can kind of help you out when when things are are going south for a client like that.

And

you gotta understand like a of these agents, that’s not something they deal with a lot. So whenever they do get that, they’re like, ⁓ what do I do with it? You know? And so we just want to be alongside of them. And then now you do have some agents, that’s all they do. And that’s great too, you know, that’s more. So it’s really case in case dependent on like how that conversation goes. But yeah, we just tell them that, you know, we’re looking for the houses that are in distressed, you know, distressed.

house and or situation we can help with both, you know, and we always like try to tell a story about how we helped a seller pre foreclosure, something that that’ll relate to them ⁓ or show them that we can do it. And then.

Dylan Silver (06:29)
Yeah, to your point,

Matt, mean, there’s a lot of, ⁓ I would say distance, frankly, between what most realtors are focused on and the distressed space. Many of them, I would say, and this is no slight against realtors, I am a realtor, pretty much want to work with people whose homes are in a listable condition, meaning they can be financed, they’re gonna pass an inspection.

And when that’s not the case, they are a fish out of water. Because now they’re having to talk investor lingo, right? Now they’re having to explain, you know, potentially rehab and ARV and so forth. And this is terminology that they’re not gonna teach you in real estate school and that your brokerage might not be able to school you on. And so it can be challenging for a lot of agents to know what to do in those situations.

Matthew Carrigan (07:18)
Yeah, absolutely. think yourself as too, as like a buyer’s agent. if you did get, let’s say you got a property that, needs a, ⁓ that a seller it’s in distress. You’re the agent on that property. You bring a buyer and then you work out with that buyer that, since I brought you this deal, like, let me list the flip on the backend. So really one deal can turn into two very quickly. It all is. It’s just like a question. I’m not an agent myself, but if I was in the game like that, that’s exactly what I would be doing is if I found someone in distress, I would

connect with buyers in the area and say, hey, look, I’ll sell you this deal. Just kind of promised me the listing on the back end, you know? And so then you do get to work with that perfect property when it’s all said and done. you know, that’s just opportunity that I feel like agents are kind of leaving on the table at times.

Dylan Silver (08:05)
I wonder if there’s a way for them to lock that in almost like put it in the contract, like, Hey, I’ll sell you this property, but I want to be included in the flip. Probably not. But I think that there’s a lot of symbiotic nature to this where I think on the flip side, sometimes agents have their guard up because they’re thinking cash off for, know, what is this? this, they, they might have the, the, the negative connotation in their mouth tied to cash offers.

Matthew Carrigan (08:30)
Yeah, I do. And we hear that a lot. It’s like, Oh, we get your, you get the calls, right? Just like a seller, they get calls to agents, get calls, you know, and it’s, and Hey, look, it’s, there’s plenty of agents out there. I tell my guys not to get too worked up. If agent don’t want to work with us, that’s totally fine. Like there’s other agents out there and same thing with those who do retro direct to seller marketing, you know, and it’s really about just that initial phone call building rapport with the agent. Um, it always helps if you’ve got a flipper that you want to work with in the area.

and you can essentially compile a list of properties that they flip that you say, maybe you talk to them and be like, hey, you know, I’m new to the market. ⁓ This is the way I get my deals. If you could provide me a portfolio of what you’ve done where I can kind of put a presentation together and send it to these agents and show them like there’s proof in the pudding, I guess. And then just promise that buyer like, hey, I’ll give you first dibs on anything I get in the area for providing me this, you know? And so I think if you can come to the agent with proof rather than just a phone call that

That tends to help out a lot too.

Dylan Silver (09:30)
The dispo side, think people are having to get craftier and craftier. How do you approach maintaining those investor relationships? And once you have a deal, how much pressure do you feel to dispo it in a timely manner?

Matthew Carrigan (09:47)
We typically like our dispo works pretty good. I mean, like we don’t really lock up stuff that we can’t sell. I mean, it happens, right? Like there’s stuff maybe you didn’t know about once you get a contract, you know, you find something, you can’t sell it or whatever. But most cases like, you know, we’re, if we get 10 contracts, we sell six or seven of them. You know, I would say our, our rates pretty good. Now, do we miss out on some that are a little skinnier because we didn’t want to take the advantage. But then I also think about like,

If you cancel with an agent and you’re hurting that relationship. So we work hard on building these relationships. Whenever we go into a contract, we really try to perform. So that comes to know when your market. So like you want to make sure that when you’re working with these agents, you know the market and what it’s doing. like if you go, if you’re in Jacksonville, Florida, what it costs to rehab a house in Jacksonville, Florida is what is different than Miami or Orlando or wherever. So you got to make sure.

Dylan Silver (10:41)
Sure.

Matthew Carrigan (11:18)
Your ARV is typically pretty easy to find, then your rehab numbers is where you, got to make sure that you’re nailed down because every month.

Dylan Silver (11:26)
How do you feel about

wholesaling across state lines and into areas where you may be unfamiliar with or don’t have boots on the ground?

Matthew Carrigan (11:37)
Yeah, so don’t think I’ve ever been to like one of my closings. I’ve always like wholesale virtually. I’ve never, if I’ve sold over my years, if I’ve wholesale to a hundred properties, I may have been to two of them. really, I mean, so if your numbers are right, your numbers are right. ⁓ You just got to learn the market. We use a software called privy that you can easily go in there and see like what they’re buying at percentage of ARVs. And so like, like to like,

Dylan Silver (12:00)
and

Matthew Carrigan (12:06)
bestneighborhood.com, that’s another way. So if you’re in a new market, get on bestneighborhood.com and it’s like a red, yellow, orange, green, you know, or some mix of colors, right? And the greens are obviously the best neighborhoods. And so like whenever you’re comping, you want to kind of have that pulled up and know where your good neighborhoods are and where they’re bad, right? Because some people go by major roads and that’s, that’s a good starting point, but it’s kind of wild. If you get on bestneighborhood.com, you’ll see that it may be in a

you know, not over a major road, the neighborhood still splits. And you can’t take this house and complement with this house over here because it’s just different, you know? And so best neighborhood has helped us.

Dylan Silver (12:39)
Right.

one street away, yeah, and it can be

totally different. The street on the other side of the intersection, which looks like it’s in the same neighborhood, might be in a totally different ⁓ vibe, right? And so that’s gonna create different comps, that’s gonna create a whole different deal. And just by being a couple hundred feet away, mean, literally, that can change the deal. I do wanna ask you specifically about finding

these properties with these agents and what the process looks like compared to going off market. Specifically, some of the things I’m thinking about are these properties are already probably pictured up, right? The seller is under contract with the realtor. So you’re going under contract with someone who already is aware that they’re selling their home. So you don’t have to pitch them like that. ⁓ I’m imagining you find this preferable to go in

direct to seller off market, right?

Matthew Carrigan (13:47)
Yeah. So funny enough now don’t get it twisted. We do deals with agents, but 90 % of our deals are off market. They haven’t hit the market yet. So I don’t even run MLS and that’s a huge part. I’m trying to scale more and more in my business. I don’t even touch the MLS and we’re doing three to five deals a month, you know, and like it’s all through just calling and putting them on the follow-up campaign. So most of these properties have not hit the market yet. So exactly. Yeah. They won’t call them that.

Dylan Silver (13:57)
Hmm.

So these are pocket listings.

Matthew Carrigan (14:17)
but yeah, they’re pocket listings. They’re like, they, for some reason, the agents don’t like the words pocket listings, but you know, I know.

Dylan Silver (14:23)
I don’t know why they don’t like those. I mean, if they

have it and they’re not putting it on the MLS, I guess it’s because it’s not papered up or something along the lines of that he knows what the reason is. that’s your ideal client, right?

Matthew Carrigan (14:31)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And so like we just say, hey, you in normally in most real estate contracts, everything’s negotiable, but the sellers pay in agent commissions, right? So like we don’t factor in agent commissions in these deals because they normally only have a buyer, a buyer or a seller broker agreement or whatever, because we sign by our broker agreements. But the big thing here is if you work with agents on property specific agreements. So.

Dylan Silver (15:00)
Hmm.

Matthew Carrigan (15:01)
because if you get yourself, like let’s just say we work in Fayetteville. If there was like someone that an agent that sends us a buyer broker agreement and let’s say Fayetteville, I’m like, I can’t sign that. You got to give me property specific agreements. I’ll sign property specific agreements all day long, but you don’t want to get yourself tied down with one agent in an area because if another agent that you’ve been working with sends you something, well, you’re kind of stuck. So that’s a huge.

Dylan Silver (15:25)
That’s a great point. Yeah.

And I think a lot of investors are wary of signing anything with agents because they’re well, what do I need the age for? But you can build that bridge by signing, as you mentioned, a property specific ⁓ representation agreement of some kind or deal of some kind, because that way you’re able to further that relationship. You’re able to get a deal done potentially, but you’re not locking yourself into the whole, you know, metro area.

Matthew Carrigan (16:34)
Yeah, exactly. And I tell them all the time, I’m like, Hey, I have no problem signing agreement with you because I want you to get paid for the work that you do. You just got to understand my business and know that I work with a lot of agents. So it’s not fair for Bob to send me an address and a potential deal. And I have something with Cathy, right? So that’s just, that’s just the way we do it. Property specific agreements. They generally do not, they never, they always, that’s totally fine. So, you know, that’s a good way around that.

Dylan Silver (17:02)
Yeah.

Now I know also that you’re scaling your business currently. I don’t know how much we can get into this, but ⁓ you’ve been making some hires and you’re also looking to see, how do I scale from here? There’s a lot of people that I know, flippers, wholesalers, know, even folks that are doing multifamily acquisitions that are trying to scale, especially right now with all the tools that people have at their disposal. What has been

most helpful for you in your scaling process.

Matthew Carrigan (17:35)
The simple answer is hire someone that knows more than you do about the topic you’re willing to scale in. I mean, I think if you can, I’m always like, I’m busy. So I’m trying to find someone that knows a lot more about me and, or a lot more about the situation that I’m dealing with. You know, I just hired someone in my business that he’s doing agent outreach to, he just does it at higher scale and it’s more profitable.

And I’m like, all right, I’ll pay you to show me how to do it, you know? And so I’m learning how to scale through that.

revamping my systems a little bit, looking at kind of my expense to income ratio and seeing like where we can increase margins across the board. So my advice to someone that’s looking to scale is to go and find someone that is doing it better than you and pay them for their time. They’re busy, right? They’re worth something. like, what’s the opportunity cost? So let’s say it’s $10,000. Well, you…

If you’re in business, you know that you’re going to get that $10,000 back and then some if you apply the principles, right? And so it’s just your opportunity costs. Like how long or how much money would it cost you if you wait to do that? You know, so, ⁓ yeah.

Dylan Silver (18:48)
Yeah, it’s huge. And

it could take you, you know, a year or two years, a year and a half, you know, what’s what’s the time value of of your time, right? We are coming up on on time here, Matt, any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to get in contact with you or your team?

Matthew Carrigan (18:58)
myself.

Yeah, so actually I just got a flip on our contract. We flipped to here locally to me. It was too good of a deal. I couldn’t pass it up. So I actually got that one from another wholesale and I bought it off of him. But so we’re working on that flip. Obviously I’m trying to grow and expand my business. I’m in the Carolinas, North and South Carolina and Florida. So if any of you are out there and want to connect there, the investors playbook. So that’s my school community. If you want to hop in there or you can find me on Facebook or Instagram, Matthew Carrigan. ⁓

I also have a YouTube channel called The REI Dad. I’m a dad at heart. have two little girls. So I just like, I will just be the REI dad, you know, and it’s small, but I’m trying to grow it too. just I’m currently like showcasing my flip and stuff that we have kind of like A to Z flip showing you the ins and outs of all that.

Dylan Silver (19:57)
Matt, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for your time.