Stop Lying to Sellers: How Ethical Real Estate Wholesaling Builds Trust

Riley Kent (00:00)

For example, they would start off wrong the acquisitions would call and say, We’re buying your house. they would even print out ads that says we’ll buy your house.

House that for any condition, any price, and close within seven days. Nobody can close within seven days. I don’t care who you are, unless you’re doing a quick claim deed because title work takes longer than that. So that’s a lie right off the bat. But whenever things would get rolled over to me on dispositions and I would make the intro call and say, Hey, Mr. Seller, my name’s Riley Kent. I’m gonna be working with you for the sale of your property, blah, blah, blah.

try to go over everything and lay things out, they would always say, Wait a minute, I thought your company was buying the house.

Quentin Edmonds (01:09)

Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. I’m indeed excited to be here today.

Y’all don’t know, but some really good preparation has been done for us to do this podcast today. So I’m excited about my friend, I would even say my brother, who I have on the other end. Yes, we just meeting, but you can speed up time, you can meet somebody for the first time, but once you get to talk to them, sometimes time just speeds up because you have so many different things in alignment. And so I believe we have some things in alignment today. I believe today’s gonna be a great conversation.

he’s a consultant. Two words that he said that really just tuned my ears in immediately. He said he believes in being honest and transparent. And so I’m excited today that we get to learn from and glean from the experience of Mr. Riley Kent. Riley, how you doing today, sir? Good.

Riley Kent (01:57)

Good. Thank you for having me on. It’s a privilege and honor to be here.

Quentin Edmonds (02:01)

Same man, same. I say this probably at the beginning of every podcast. Thank you for your time. I think time is our most precious commodity. I think our time is being redeemed. And so I don’t take it lightly that you gave us your time today. Thank you so much for being here. And Mr. Riley, I am the type sir. I like to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days.

If you don’t mind, give us a little origin story, kinda how you got into the space that you’re in. And then tell us where you are in the world. People love to know what market you’re in, where you are. And so Mr. Riley, sir, you have the floor, my friend.

Riley Kent (02:34)

Well, thank you. Wow, the origin story, that’s really a great one. I think you’re really gonna enjoy this one. right now I’m currently in Louisville, Kentucky, but our market is nationwide. we work nationwide within the continental United States, Hawaii and Alaska, Puerto Rico, we haven’t quite figured those markets out yet, but maybe in the future. As far as my origin story goes, I have been in

real estate in the wholesaling and different avenues of real estate. I would say probably about the past seven years consecutively. I started out working for other wholesale companies and that’s how I got my start with dispositions. So I became a very, very good salesman. I was the top salesman at every company that I was in.

And I had noticed that there’s things in certain wholesale companies, probably not everyone, but most of them. And that was the lack of integrity for a better word.

Quentin Edmonds (03:31)

Yeah,

Riley Kent (03:32)

For example, they would start off wrong the acquisitions would call and say, We’re buying your house. they would even print out ads that says we’ll buy your house.

House that for any condition, any price, and close within seven days. Nobody can close within seven days. I don’t care who you are, unless you’re doing a quick claim deed because title work takes longer than that. So that’s a lie right off the bat. But whenever things would get rolled over to me on dispositions and I would make the intro call and say, Hey, Mr. Seller, my name’s Riley Kent. I’m gonna be working with you for the sale of your property, blah, blah, blah.

try to go over everything and lay things out, they would always say, Wait a minute, I thought your company was buying the house. why are we having to go through all this again I’d have to explain to them, no, we’re not buying your house. We’re actually just got you under contract and we’re going to sell the contract to somebody else, and they would get upset. Most of the time it would blow up and it would end bad.

There were a lot of wholesale companies that I’d worked for that just were not honest, weren’t setting the right expectations, which made my job as sales harder I decided, as professionals, we can do better. And so I was making these companies an exorbitant amount of money. And I was getting crumbs. And I was like, Lord, this isn’t right.

Quentin Edmonds (04:40)

Yeah.

Riley Kent (04:41)

I’m not in it for the love of money.

to help people. And yeah, of course we want to get paid for our time and as well we should. However, the main focus shouldn’t be money. If somebody’s calling saying that they have a house that’s in foreclosure and they’re crying for help, that’s not the time to put the screws to and try to drain every penny you can out of for your profit. I have moral and ethical issues with

Some of the way that businesses have been done in the past. And like I said, I just believe that starting our own company that we could do better. So transparency is at the forefront of

Quentin Edmonds (05:15)

Yeah, yeah. Riley, thank you, man. Thank you for walking me through the journey, even here in the why you’re doing what you do, telling us a little bit about what it is that you do. and I love it, and I’m gonna love asking you this, I often say destiny has no wasted moments, We’re learning from every leg of the journey, all things work together, And so the failures work together, the pivots, when we have

boundaries within our moral structure, all the things work together to get us to where we are and what we’re doing today. And so I would love to know, Mr. Riley, throughout this journey, what have you learned about yourself? What has the journey revealed to you about you? Has it made you more humble, more disciplined, more resilient? Increased your tenacity? what has the journey revealed to you about yourself, sir?

Riley Kent (05:58)

Wow, that is a great question.

I realized about myself in this journey that I wasn’t as good of a Christian as I thought I was. Because if I’m lying to the seller to price drop them to make the company more money, it’s not business. It’s not excusable. A lie is a lie.

God’s word is final. His word is absolute. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s right or wrong.

Quentin Edmonds (06:23)

Yeah. Yeah.

Riley Kent (06:23)

If I’m telling a seller, because this is what I’d been trained in other businesses, this is what I’d been trained to tell them that listen, the offers aren’t coming in as high as we would like. The offers are really low. And so therefore I know our contract is at this price, so we’re only going to have to offer this price in order to get it sold.

And that’s really about your only option and they wouldn’t like it, they would hem haw around and they would eventually lower their price so the company could make more profit.

after a while it just convicted me.

I couldn’t rightly go

and praise God and ask for forgiveness and ask for his blessing and prosperity and then turn around and cheat people out of money.

Quentin Edmonds (07:01)

Yeah.

Riley Kent (07:01)

Now, the other side is sometimes it’s true. Sometimes offers aren’t where we need to be. And in that case, I have learned to tell them that, Mr. Mrs. Seller, we have to have a margin here.

if our offer is at your contract price.

We have to have a margin in order to take that offer. But I’ve also found out there are solutions to that. And say, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, what we can do is right now we had agreed to pay your closing cost, which is in that margin that we have to have. However, if you’re not able to drop your price that much, if you’d be willing to pay the closing cost, then maybe we can help take care of some of these other costs. And yes,

It may shrink our profit margin a little bit, but me being transparent and telling them exactly why, that has helped so much because they’re like, Riley, I appreciate you saying that. We realize of course you have to pay the money. There are some times when they’ve even offered to pay money. Say, listen, I know the offers at let’s say a hundred thousand. our contract price is at a hundred thousand.

we can’t go below, a hundred thousand. But what we can do is we can pay you a consulting fee, out of our profits so that we can make this work and so on. And so we’ve done creative deals like that. Instead

Quentin Edmonds (08:17)

Yeah.

Riley Kent (08:17)

of just saying, the offer’s at a hundred thousand, your contract price is at a hundred thousand, but we need to drop you to sixty thousand and lie to them and tell them that that’s the best offer they’re gonna get.

being transparent, we might make a little bit more money, but we gain references, referrals, and customer testimonials because of that.

Quentin Edmonds (08:33)

Yes, sir. Riley, man. Thank you, sir. Man, I’m so glad that you talk about your faith within business. I can’t talk to everyone like this, but you and I know there’s so many biblical business principles. we talked about characters like Solomon. You mentioned Solomon. When you look at Joseph, When you look at some of these characters, some of them are strew businessmen.

because they understand that business is a real thing. And so there’s so many biblical principles in the Bible. And I’m so glad to hear within your business, some of your principles when it comes to kingdom and Bible comes out. this is not to push our religion on people, but some of the biggest business people that use principles in the Bible to develop their business. And so they are just good principles, business principles that’s in the Bible.

And so when we talk about some of those people in the Bible, Solomon, Joseph, different other people, they had a system of doing things. They had boundaries around how they would do business. They had systems, operations in place that helped them be successful. And so I would love to know, Mr. Riley, what are some operational things, maybe one operational thing you’ve put into place.

Let’s say maybe the last year that has really helped you either change the way you do business or be successful at doing business.

Riley Kent (10:24)

I think the first thing that I could say is not every day, but most days, I spend my time with the Lord in the morning as I should. Some people spend it working out, meditation, clearing their head, whatever you want to call it. some people, just take a few minutes in the morning to center themselves or whatever.

Being quiet and listening to my spirit, praying, reading the Bible, getting my mind focused for the day. In doing that, a lot of times I’ll get thoughts or revelations or whatever. So I’ll share that in our chat. And it may be a word of encouragement for our team.

Or it may just be something that I’ve learned that I want to share with people. I don’t do it every morning, but most times I do. So I think being open about what I believe and sharing things that would be good principles to the rest of the team, I think that’s really important. You can either start out with motivational sayings from a fortune cookie.

Or whatever.

just believe that the word of God has power.

Quentin Edmonds (11:21)

Absolutely.

Riley Kent (11:22)

And so maybe a fortune cookie may be a good inspirational quote, but there’s not really any power behind it.

another point Q that you had mentioned earlier is that of course, my intent is not to push Christianity or the Bible on anybody else, because we’re here to talk about real estate.

You did make a very good point. There are other religions, other faiths, they all have business principles in them. the Muslims, they have business principles in the Quran. the Jewish people, they have business principles, within every faith, every belief, there are business principles. And so this just happens to align with who I am.

Quentin Edmonds (11:56)

Yes, sir. Yeah. No, and I’m with you. I ain’t trying to backpedal at all. I agree with what you said for sure. I’m not gonna speak for you. you can amen it when I say this, these are biblical principles, so we find them in the Bible, but we believe they’re kingdom principles, they are jurisdictional principles that if you put them into play, you fall under a certain

Jurisdiction. And for us, that jurisdiction is kingdom jurisdiction. And when we hear these biblical principles and put them into place, we are saying that we believe by putting these into place, we fall under that jurisdiction, and we will receive whatever that jurisdiction, the law for that jurisdiction is. So when I reap, I sow. When I fulfill others, I in return be fulfilled. these are the things that I believe when I fall under that jurisdiction, which is our

principles within the Bible, we believe we’re gonna reap what that principle says. So I’m with you. I feel you. other religions have principles that work, but I’m talking about kingdom principles. I know you and I, that’s what I believe we fall under. You can correct me if I’m wrong,

Riley Kent (12:56)

No, no, no, you’re absolutely right. Absolutely. And I’m sorry, but if I could just add to that, absolutely you’re so right on. I just wanted to add to say kingdom principles, yes, but they’re also spiritual laws like sowing and reaping. And it doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe.

Just like gravity, I don’t care if you believe in gravity or not. Gravity is a natural law that’s gonna work no matter what if you apply it. You jump off a roof, you’re gonna fall. Natural, spiritual, biblical principles. You sow, you’re gonna reap. You sow bad, you’re gonna reap bad. You sow good, you’re gonna reap good. Some people call it karma, but it’s an infallible law.

Quentin Edmonds (13:35)

for adding on my brother because you said it way more eloquently than I said in my heart that what you said is what I was trying to say but you said it so eloquently thank you so much Riley what’s next for you sir what are you trying to solve a scale next what’s the next real goal what’s next for you man

Riley Kent (13:50)

Wow. I have a lot of things in my heart that I want to do. everybody wants to be a blessing. I believe everybody wants to be a blessing, whether you want to be a blessing to yourself or be a blessing to your family or your community or your church or whatever. I want to be a blessing, all the above. I would like to grow this company, K Real Estate Solutions. I want to grow it to the point to where.

Everybody that works for me can redeem their time. I want to get to the point to where we’re all where we all make money, but where we’re changing people’s lives also, to where people who are in desperate financial straits that are having to sell their house because they have no other reason or no other recourse.

I want to be able to help them and be a blessing to them and not rip them off and skin them alive to make profits. I want to be able to fund the kingdom of God in my church. We have a building expansion project going on. so I want to be able to do that. I would love to be able to get to the point to where, when the pastor says to the pulpit that they have a dream or a project or whatever, I’d love to be able to the point financially where

God bless you. I’m gonna write you a check. Here you go. It’s paid for.

I haven’t told very many people this. We are actually working on building out a lead generation platform. And we’re at a pivotal point right now to where we can either do lead generation because there’s a lot of companies like that, or build custom lead generation for your company.

Quentin Edmonds (15:14)

Yeah.

Riley Kent (15:14)

So whether you’re a plumber, whether you’re a roofer,

where we can build a lead generation platform for your company. this is all subsidiary to what we’re doing right now in real estate. Because right now we are procuring our own leads. we do have our own lead generation that’s gearing up. And so we want to expand that way.

Quentin Edmonds (15:33)

Sir. Yes, sir. Mr. Riley, I feel like we’re just scratching the surface. I feel like it’s definitely more that we could talk about. but before I give people how to get in contact with you, I just want to make sure we got enough of this information out, right? So is there anything that you came into this conversation wanting to make sure people knew?

maybe, even in your notes or even in your heart. I definitely want to make sure I make this point. if it’s anything like that, or is there any other words of inspiration, motivation? I just want to make sure we land this point before we get out of here. So is there anything like that, sir, that’s on your heart or even in your notes?

Riley Kent (16:43)

Yeah, absolutely. I want to first and foremost say that at K&K Real Estate Solutions that we’re consultants, our slogan is real people, real solutions. Because we honestly want to give a solution to everybody. It may not be the one that you want to hear, but we’re going to be honest and let you know exactly what the condition is. So I want people to know

if you’re facing foreclosure, if you have title issues, if you have a property you can’t get rid of, if you have a house that you don’t want, like from an inheritance or something like that, these are all issues that we would love to talk to you about and love to give you a consult and let you know what your options are. Before you run in and sign with a buy here, we’ll pay cash.

we buy ugly houses, get a cash offer for pennies on the dollar. Before anybody does anything like that, I just encourage them to give us a call. Let us go over a free consultation with you, assess the property, assess what’s going on, and let you know, or let the customer know or the seller know what their options are, and so that they can choose for themselves.

There are things and solutions that you probably may not have even thought of yet that we can help you find.

Quentin Edmonds (17:57)

Well said, Mr. Riley. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, sir?

Riley Kent (18:06)

Okay, so we’re doing some work on our website right now. Our website is KandKSolutions.com. My phone number is 502-276-7575. Sorry.

Quentin Edmonds (18:28)

Problem.

Riley Kent (18:29)

I got some phone numbers. I got that one mixed up.

Quentin Edmonds (18:31)

Yeah.

Riley Kent (18:31)

Or the email would be

Admin at K & K Solution. No S on this one. Solution.com.

Quentin Edmonds (18:39)

Awesome. So, Mr. Riley, sir, let me say three things to you sincerely, man. One, again, thank you for your I think time again is our most precious commodity. So thank you, man. I value you for being here. Thank you so much. Secondly, man, thank you for what I call the gift of your integrity, the gift of your authenticity. I would even say the gift of your vulnerability.

I believe when we tell our stories, we cast seed. We throw seed out there, and that seed can get planted. Somebody can take it and plant it at any given time and really bring forth a harvest. So I really believe you cast some seed today. So thank you for that. Lastly, man, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you as a Mr. Riley, think in bringing that mindset to this platform. I appreciate you coming on today, sir.

Riley Kent (19:27)

No problem. Thank you. I’m just privileged and honored to be here. And I really appreciate you giving me a platform I didn’t mean to start preaching as much as I did, but it was good anyhow.

But especially to share my business and our business ideas. And so it’s been a great, great time and I really, really do value connecting with you today.

Quentin Edmonds (19:47)

Absolutely. Same here, my friend. Same here. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Riley. His information is in the show notes. Please get in contact with him. Please definitely make sure you’re subscribed here at the Real Estate Pros Podcast. Because I promise you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like thee, Riley Kent. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.