She Bought 50+ Properties Without Using Her Own Money

Lisa Ferris (00:00)
at one point I had a small deal. It wasn’t a real big deal. I sent three texts in three minutes. And after I sent the third text, the second person came back and said, I’m in. And all I said was, I have an opportunity for you to earn some income on certain amount for six months. And just let me know if you’re interested. And they said, I’m in.

Cody Crabb (01:58)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Cody Crabb, and today I’ve got Lisa Ferris with me. Lisa runs LJE Property Solutions out of Central Texas, and she spent over a decade investing in real estate through flips, creative finance, private money, and rentals.

We’re gonna dig into how she’s bought deals without using her own money, why networking matters more than new investors realize, and what she’s currently seeing in her market right now. Thank you so much for hopping on, Lisa. I appreciate it.

Lisa Ferris (02:28)
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you having me out.

Cody Crabb (02:31)
So we were chatting for a minute before this, and you you’ve mentioned you’ve got a you’ve got a message. You’re spreading the word. You feel like you have something to say. And that message is you’re you can buy real estate with no money out of pocket. Which when someone hears that, especially people that are brand new to the to the game, they’re like they’re either they’re thinking one of two things. One, how, tell me now I want to do it, or yeah, right. Like how could you possibly do that? I would love to hear

what people should understand first and then I want to hear how you were able to discover this.

Lisa Ferris (03:07)
Well, first of all, I have to tell you what my new husband asked me when I told him what I did. He said, Is that legal to buy?

Cody Crabb (03:16)
Yeah, I think you’re just describing stealing. Yeah, that’s just sounds good.

Lisa Ferris (03:20)
Exactly. So yeah, so most people don’t realize that, but there’s so many creative finance ways to do it. And I had to figure it out because I had no money. And I wound up negotiating with a lady to purchase a property and she agreed to sell it to me at a great price. And then I was like, Yay, I’m buying a house. And then I was like, but I have no money. So I just went back to her and asked her if she would take payments or

sell it to me seller finance. so there’s a lot of creative ways that you can purchase property. I’ve purchased all of ours with no money out of pocket. Every last one of them. Yes.

Cody Crabb (04:02)
Wow. That’s pretty that is a pretty impressive record, I will say.

Lisa Ferris (04:08)
It’s just a it’s a mindset to be honest with you. It’s about networking with people that you know that have funds or just mentioning to people. And it’s a lot, it’s you need to network with people, but you also need to be very visual visible to people. Like I’m all over social media. so people know what I do. and this is after.

Doing it for years, I’ve had people say, I’d be glad to fund your next deal. I see what you’re doing, you’re doing good things. But in the very beginning, it’s hard to find people that are interested in funding you. You just have to present that you have a very good offer and you know what you’re doing and you’ve got the good scope of work or whatever the situation is.

Cody Crabb (05:45)
mean I’ve been known among all my friends and family and people that I’ve met as like I’m the podcast production guy. That’s what I do. I’m the podcast guy. And so then lo and behold, someone one of my friends, friend of a friend, is at a party and someone’s like, I wanna start a podcast, but I need an editor, and they go, Well, let me go get you Cody’s information because I know I know they do that. So

That that networking piece is like not only do you know the people that you know, if you’re the I buy houses with creative financing person, if that’s you and someone knows you, or someone knows that they know you, I mean it just becomes this network of people looking for stuff for you, really.

Lisa Ferris (06:25)
Exactly. And I do have people that send newer investors to me and ask me to walk them through how does that look? How does how do I find these people? And it’s not where you think. It’s not a hard money lender, it’s not a somebody that calls themselves a private money lender, but they’re actually a hard money lender. It is your neighbor, it’s your it’s somebody that’s retired that has a retirement account.

41K sitting there earning three percent interest. When you start talking to these people about making ten, twelve, thirteen percent interest on their money short term, their eyes light up. They’re interested to hear what you have to say. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (07:09)
I mean as opposed to the alternative, which you know, what who knows what those alternatives could be. I mean that sounds like

Lisa Ferris (07:17)
And you just explained that that the loan is secure by the real estate. So it’s very secure. and it’s a very easy process to do. So you have to educate these people on what it actually looks like. And what I’ve done over a long period of time is I talk to people, but I don’t push what I’m doing. I just talk about it. And then pretty soon they’ll come back to me and say,

Tell me more about that. How does that work? And then we have the conversation and I’ll write them in a notebook. I have an old school notebook on my desk. I write down, okay, potential lenders, and then I will try to pinpoint where what they’re comfortable with. And that’s important because if I get a $400,000 deal, I’m not going to shoot it out to somebody who said, okay, I’ve got $20K, I would love to put into a deal. So you have to do it strategically and it and know who you’re going to put that out to.

And at one point I had a small deal. It wasn’t a real big deal. I sent three texts in three minutes. And after I sent the third text, the second person came back and said, I’m in. And all I said was, I have an opportunity for you to earn some income on certain amount for six months. And just let me know if you’re interested. And they said, I’m in.

So

Once you form those relationships, you don’t need to be out there on the internet or searching around for lenders. You’ve got them. I’ve got lenders that I’ll pay them off and they’re ready to go the next time. I’ve got lenders that have brought me money that was in their freezer, thirty thousand dollars she had in the freezer. Had to meet her halfway. We drove two hours, she drove two hours. I felt like I was doing a drug deal in this little barbecue place.

Cody Crabb (09:13)
That bunch of cash, that’s incredible.

Lisa Ferris (09:16)
‘Cause she said, Well, I have the money but it’s in my freezer. So she hands me this wad of cash out her window at the car and I like stick it in my coat and put it in the car. I’m like I’m

Cody Crabb (09:31)
I really hope there’s no cops around right now because yeah. Holy cow. Well, I actually love this. I would love to hear a few examples of like you know, there there’s two sides of this, obviously. You’re kind of in the middle, you’re kind of negotiating on both sides. But I would be curious to know how are you finding these properties, like not just how are you finding them, like what do these situations look like? Like, give me a give me some examples of like

Who might be interested in taking an option like this as a seller?

Lisa Ferris (10:37)
Well, sellers are in a position where I’ve had a couple of them that were really willing to seller finance. And once you explain that, you know, instead of me just buying it for this amount and I’m gone and you’re out of the deal, I can buy it for this amount, but you can still make interest on that for six to eight months. And they like the idea of that. It’s extra payments. Sometimes it helps us out in the negotiation because I can’t quite meet their price.

I’m $8,000 apart. We just can’t get there. So I explain the seller finance portion of it. And I usually pay points. So say I’m borrowing $200,000, I pay points. So $2,000 they get at closing. And then I pay them interest until we close. And that closes the gap. And that’s helped a lot. Plus, I stay in touch with that person. So once I’ve paid them back, I reach out and say,

Hey, I’ve got an opportunity for you to put your funds to work again.

Cody Crabb (11:39)
They just happened to come in with some money recently. So they might exactly I find I find this really interesting because so I’m picturing a scenario. I mean, like we’re literally talking about someone driving two hours to give you a giant brick of freezer cash. Like why would they trust you to do that? Like do you know what I mean? Like is this someone you knew already? Like what in the world made this happen?

Lisa Ferris (12:06)
Well, and to be fair, this was my very first private money lender. I did have the one that seller financed it to me, but the my very first private money lender, I was a realtor. I was selling her house, house that she owned free and clear. And I knew she was coming in to about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. and I happened to be under contract on a house that I was closing the same day she was closing.

At the time I was buying it for 65,000. I was like, okay, do I pull money off credit cards, you know, scrimp and save, pull from savings, do this and this. And then I was like, I know somebody that is coming into some cash. So I took my good friend to McDonald’s and I asked her if she would consider partnering with me as a lender.

On this. And she trusted me because she’d been my client for about 10 years, buying selling her properties. So she trusted me, knew that my numbers, I I knew my numbers inside and out. And so she did. She purchased, helped me purchase that property. And the good thing is, she’s was my lender for probably 15 more properties. And when she did bring me her freezer money, we had a very good working relationship with she knew that.

The minute I drove off with her cash, it wasn’t gone.

Cody Crabb (13:28)
Yeah. Well, okay, so that those kinds of situations make sense to me. Someone you know already, someone that you’ve got a working relationship with. How does a new relationship like this start? Because I’m picturing one of my friends reaching out to me and saying, Hey, I’ve heard you talk about real estate before. I have an I have an exciting opportunity for you. My first thought is they’re gonna try to get me into a pyramid scheme. Like, you know what I mean? I’m sure you can relate to this.

How on earth do those conversations go? Because I feel like no matter what someone said to me, I would be like, Yeah, but like why are you why would you just reach out to me? Do you do you know what I mean?

Lisa Ferris (14:07)
Yeah. Well, and I don’t just reach out to people. I warm them up and they kind of come to me. I’m all over social media, people understand who I am. I may put out, you know, I’ve got an opportunity coming up, and then people will reach out to me. I don’t elevator pitch and say, Hey, would you like to invest in me?

Cody Crabb (14:26)
So you’re not asking people to re

Lisa Ferris (14:31)
You and that’s where networking comes in, to be honest with you. You want to be in these groups with people, and you wanna be in the group with the people that are where you want to be. You’ve got to elevate yourself and be with people that are going places, and take yourself out of the rooms of where people are not going places.

But in these rooms, they understand that you’re doing deals. They’re there to find somebody to invest in. So talk to them, form relationships, stay in touch with them, be very intentional about what you do. As far as your friend coming to you, the one thing that I will say is I use a program and I’m gonna throw this out there Rehab Valuator. I absolutely love it because it’ll take me 10 minutes to put together a report that shows.

what the property is, what the rehab is going to be, what the profit for the lender is going to look like. And it’s very detailed and that’s very impressive. Rather than me scribbling on a napkin and saying, okay, well, I want to purchase it for this amount, this amount, and here’s your profit and you, you know, that it’s present yourself, be make it professional and it makes it much easier to say yes.

Cody Crabb (16:33)
Mm. Yeah, I feel like that that’s the trust element is one thing, but also like being able to back up what you’re saying, that’s a whole it’s not a separate thing, but it is like a huge part of being able to like I could trust I have so many friends that if they came to me, like I trust them with my life, but no chance am I ever going to be give them money to invest for me. Like that just doesn’t work like that. They’d have to really, you know, show me that they it’s the trust and the

the numbers to go with it too.

Lisa Ferris (17:05)
And

It takes a little bit of time. It takes some time to build that trust with people. You have to have a track record of doing what you’re saying you’re going to do. And then for newer people, it’s a little bit more difficult, but that’s when you network and you find somebody to joint venture with. And you can use their credibility because credibility is really important. And if you team up with them, use their credibility.

And then are able to acquire the loans, then you know, pretty soon you don’t need that JV partner and you can get the loans yourself. So you’ve got to build it up. I was blessed, I was in the real estate world anyway, to start out with, and I just stepped from realtor to investor. So I kind of had that, and that’s where I get a lot of my leads too, is just talking to

realtors, past clients, people in title, all of those people, the relationships that I had before, a lot of deals just fall in my lap. In fact, that’s where a lot of my deals come from.

Cody Crabb (18:14)
Hmm. Yeah, I think the one question I’d have, because so I’m an introvert, like I can I can hold my own in a conversation and I I’m happy to be around people, but it’s very taxing to me. So sometimes I overthink conversations and I worry that I’m, you know, saying the right or the wrong thing or something. what would you say, you know, when you’re building a relationship, what cues do you see where it’s like, okay, now they might be like susceptible to me like talking to them about this. Like do you see is there something that you notice in those.

Lisa Ferris (18:50)
Yeah.

I say it all the time. like you can have a conversation with somebody and I kind of say, Yeah, I I’m a real estate investor, and sometimes I bring people in to invest my deals and they make double digit returns and it’s secured by real estate. And some will just look away, change the subject, leave it alone. They’re not interested. But some will say, really? Tell me some more.

And I don’t really go into it a lot with them there because I feel like that’s a high pressure whatever. But I do put them in my notebook and I slowly begin to talk to them a little bit more about that and explain what I do. Or I’ll say, if I have a deal come up soon, do you want me to send it to you and you can see what you think? And they’ll say, sure, or, you know, no, I’m not ready, or, you know, but I do have that.

Cody Crabb (19:23)
Yeah.

Lisa Ferris (19:44)
That conversation. And sometimes it takes six months to a year before that person will even really entertain the idea of investing with us. I want to go back to what you said about being an introvert because it’s really funny. when I first started in real estate and started to go to these networking events, I would sit in the back, and in my mind, I’m thinking the minute the speaker stops talking.

I’m gonna sneak to the restroom and then I’m out of here. And I had driven down to Austin. It took me an hour to get there. And I said, No, make it worth your time. So I forced myself. I said, I’m gonna identify three people, and I’m gonna talk to three people and I’m gonna shake their hands. And even since then, that’s what I do every single time. I identify three people that I can talk to and shake their hands. And it’s always the biggest.

Three people in the room, the speaker, the big level guys that are way beyond where I am. It’s not the newbies or the and I don’t want to discount them, but it’s always the biggest people in the room. And I introduce myself and I

Never been hurt. My feelings have never been hurt. They’ve been very welcoming. And so that’s what I do. And I have to do that every single time. Otherwise I’ll be a wallflower and not speak to anybody.

Cody Crabb (21:13)
I love that ’cause it’s it couldn’t be more opposite than like I in fact it’s so funny. I actually really relate to that story, the hiding out, you know, halfway through. I when I went to my first convention in a similar setting, just to kind of a network and things, I literally found myself just kind of walking around the hotel. Like I was like, I don’t know what to do. I’m just walking around. I don’t know what or where I’m going, what I’m doing. But same thing. I kind of just made myself like you said, I think it’s wise to

You know, if you’re gonna really only make contact with a couple of people, like make it worth while. I mean, you there there’s a chance that some of these newer people end up being amazing relationships down the road. I’ve certainly had that happen with me, that end up being clients or whatever. But that’s more luck than anything if they happen to be people that that have something going on. But the people that already have something going on, you know who they are because they just told you. Hey, I have something going on.

So I’d like to pivot a little bit here. You mentioned something about before we kind of started recording on the podcast, that flips has been something that you’ve been involved with, but it’s been rough where in your market right now. Can you tell me a little about that?

Lisa Ferris (22:30)
Yes. Gone are the days of finding the $65,000 house and turning around, flip it for a $80,000 profit in three months and on the market a day and sold. Those days are gone. So it just does make us pivot a little bit and move into other things. The market is very saturated with wholesalers and sellers are overinflating the prices.

And then we had the market uptick and now it’s gone back down to the norm or correction as some people call it. it’s tough to find the properties and then with a little bit of uncertainty, it’s a little bit tough to sell them. So our time has doubled how long we have these properties and it’s really been a struggle. So we just

Put it on pause for a little bit. I told you earlier that we sold four of them and got one more to go, but I just said one at a time and we’ll just, you know, focus on getting those sold so that we can move into a different way of doing investing. It will always pivot to whatever works, but right now I think we want to get into affordable housing a little bit more because it’s much needed in our area.

Cody Crabb (23:55)
Hmm. Interesting. So I love yeah, something you said before we started too was you’re like, I’m I hope it’s okay that I’m like really real about this stuff because I’ve I want to, you know, I want to be direct. But I think that’s what people need because hearing anybody can do it, it’s you know, anybody can it’s great to hear, it’s great to feel those things. But hearing something like, you know, there is a good time, but maybe the good time is not right now, or

There is a good time, this is a good time, but not for this specific thing. That’s such that’s so much more helpful than just like you can do it type advice. So thank you for

Lisa Ferris (24:33)
Buy a house, you can do it. And that’s the thing. I think the last two years flipping’s been a little bit tougher, but sellers are still unrealistic about their pricing. just back like back in 2008, I had just been a realtor for about two years. All this in 2006, you could sell your house for a huge profit, but when the market tanked, sellers were still thinking they could sell for that high price.

And that’s where we’re are we are right now. wholesalers and sellers are still unrealistic about where the pricing or pricing is going. And so that really, really hurts. But soon they’ll get realistic or they’ll lose their house. And that’s the really sad part. because if they don’t realize that they are gonna have to drop their price to sell it, then they’re just gonna lose their house. There’s nothing else they can do.

Cody Crabb (25:31)
Hm. we’re almost out of time here, but I’d love to ask you, so for someone who’s newer, who’s hearing sellers ask kind of yesterday’s prices in today’s market, like what makes you say like, This is a good deal, this is not a good deal, I need to walk away from this kind of thing? ‘Cause it sounds like that’s something you have to deal with right now.

Lisa Ferris (25:52)
Well, you have to run your numbers and you need to be conservative. And I heard actually yesterday somebody runs their normal numbers, which my normal numbers are after repair value times 70% minus the repairs equals your offer. Well, somebody else added on top of that times that by 20%, and then that’s your offer. Be 20% more conservative.

And I think that makes total sense because when you’re adding the holding costs and the time on market, you’re paying more interest and holding costs. That makes a lot more sense. So run your numbers conservatively. But if you’re going direct to the seller using those conservative numbers, it’s much it’s much better than going through third parties, I think. Just find those people.

that are realistic and they need to sell and want to sell.

Cody Crabb (26:53)
Yeah, I think you know, one last question. You mentioned affordable housing under 250K. what is it that makes you feel like that’s a good opportunity right now? You said there’s a certainly a need for it, but is there anything else in the market that you’re seeing that makes you like that’s where we need to be right now?

Lisa Ferris (27:13)
Well, it’s in our area, it’s tough and most of our, I believe the average home price is around four hundred and above, which is crazy. Families with two incomes aren’t even able to afford that in a lot of cases. So I feel like two fifty and below is an underserved price range in homes, so that people

Can still be homeowners without struggling and having that two thousand, four thousand dollar house payment. So that’s kind of where we’re going and I’m seeing those houses in the market and they’re they are selling and I feel like that’s a good place to be right now.

Cody Crabb (27:57)
Hm, for sure. Yeah. Well, I think this has all been really awesome. if people want to find out more about you, about what you do, you just mentioned you you’ve written a book.

Lisa Ferris (28:09)
I did write a book. It’s called How to Buy Real Estate With No Money Out of Pocket. Sorry I had to look at it.

Cody Crabb (28:16)
Yeah, you think you just changed it to something very eye-catching, and then that certainly is eye-catching. People hearing that title, that’s certainly like, What did you just say? Yeah, for people that don’t know what they’re doing.

Lisa Ferris (28:28)
It’s on Amazon. Look it up. It talks about the real it tells about real world, real people in my stories of how I did it. from just being a broke realtor to purchasing properties. I’ve purchased over fifty of them. Some are 30-year notes with private money lenders, no money down.

So the book talks about real stories, about how I’ve purchased properties and how people can purchase properties with no money out of their pocket, just by being creative and just thinking through things. It’s not it’s not science, it’s just being creative and your network and relationships.

Cody Crabb (29:08)
Awesome. Well, I think that’s that it seems like it’d be an amazing read for someone who is maybe like bummed out because they feel like they’re priced out from investing in real estate. There are lots of ways to do it. and it sounds like this could really give you some awesome ideas. So thank you so much for joining us today, Lisa. I really appreciate all the all the advice you’ve given us and for giving us some of your time today. And listeners, thank you as well for giving us some time and we’ll see you on the next episode. Lisa, it’s been pleasure. Thanks.