The Ultimate Real Estate Problem Solver: Transform Your Property Journey

Stephen S. (00:02.602)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs Welcome back to the show if you’re joining us for a second third or hundredth time and welcome if it’s your first time you’re in for a treat today We’ve got chris tillman in the house. chris has an extensive real estate background has been in the industry for Over two decades and we’re going to hop right into it talking about rentals wholesaling flipping military Relocation that he does on the agent side and everything in between so just remember add investor fuel

We help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted, to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. With that being said, Chris, welcome to the show today.

Chris (00:44.998)
Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Stephen S. (00:47.054)
Yeah, I’m super excited to get into our into our topics. But before we kind of begin there, let’s start with just give me a little bit of a background as to what got you into real estate, what that process was like and and how you’ve gotten to where you’re at now.

Chris (01:01.774)
Okay, well I am a 25 year veteran of civil service. I was an aircraft mechanic in Florida and Georgia for a long time breaking my back and getting sore muscles. So during that time actually my brother taught me into buying my first house.

And once I started feeling the aches and pains, I realized that I couldn’t work for my hands with my hands anymore forever. So he started telling me a little bit about what he was doing with real estate up in Atlanta. And I kind of jumped into it from there. I learned, I found a couple of the major mentors in the real estate world. I don’t know if y’all know them, but like Peter Fortunato and

Tampa, Florida, Bill and Kim Cook out of Adairville.

and let’s say Gary Johnston out of Ohio he he does a real good class on financial freedoms so they I got into that network and I learned that I can do a whole lot more with a house than I can with a dollar and so I started off with buying rental properties I got my butt handed to me the first time I ended up filing bankruptcy and then I got the education from all these guys and realized what I was doing wrong and

I’ve been going great guns ever since. So now I do a little bit of everything.

Stephen S. (02:33.624)
That’s awesome. So what would you say your main focus is within your business right now?

Chris (02:40.068)
Honestly, it really depends on the market. If the market’s up and like during COVID, anything that didn’t smell like a dog was selling for full retail. So the agents were doing great. If you had overabundance of your inventory, then it was great to sell them full retail and cash in for better investments. If the market is down, then of course it’s time to start buying up. So it really depends on what the market is, right?

And now with the market kind of sitting on the edge of a cliff and nobody knows if Market Man is going to jump or not, it’s still pretty good for flips and a little bit of wholesale. There’s not much wholesale in my area right now, but the retail market is still going good. So right now I’m concentrating mostly on the agent side and catching flips where I can.

Stephen S. (03:40.235)
Now you brand yourself as the real estate problem solver. Where did that come from?

Chris (03:45.798)
Well, actually, I mean it was kind of an inspiration for my mentors and Bill Cook and Pete Fortunato are very good at asking somebody what why are you selling such a nice house and they tell you their pains and their problems and if you know what tool to use for the particular problem then you can always make some kind of a deal so when I

when I first got started I really fell in love with like creative deal financing with private lendings with 1031s with subject 2s So I’m a strategist. I like to think I like strategy and so I wanted to Study any and all avenues that I could so no matter who I got in front of I knew that this situation Dictates a wholesale this situation dictates a retail sale

or a flip or what have you. So retail, real estate problem solver just kind of fit my persona.

Stephen S. (04:54.254)
makes sense. you look from the creative side of things to not just from a retail perspective, which I think a lot of agents at least that I brand into it’s it’s all about just like retail sales. So like, what is that? What does that relationship look like? When you’ve got a property, it’s maybe a seller that’s looking to get things done. What kind of are some of those things that fire off in your brain when you’re getting started to figure out where to take that deal?

Chris (05:22.756)
Okay, well, right now I’m marketing to anybody and everybody in my market for being an agent, particularly because in my market, I deal with lot of military relocations. So military has the mindset of the traditional mainstream process of using a real estate agent.

real estate agents have more credibility than house buyers because we buy houses is the stigma of low ballers. So I can get in front of them as a real estate agent.

Why do you want to sell this nice house? Well, it’s I’m getting PCS to another location. Okay, that’s a standard retail sale. But if you’re six months behind on payments or you have a mother that just died and you don’t know what to do with the house.

then I’m getting in front of more potential clients by being an agent and then I branch off depending on the answers to my questions that they give me.

Stephen S. (06:33.43)
Yeah, that totally makes sense. So tell me a little bit about the military relocation. What are some of because I’ve heard this in the past about how it’s kind of like a specialty niche within like the retail side of things. What are some of the what are some of the caveats differences, maybe?

I don’t even know how to really frame the question properly, but like what are some of the differences between like military relocation and just like the average person that’s like, I’m in the house, got to get out of it, et cetera. What are some of those red tape things or some secrets that that maybe the general public doesn’t know about that?

Chris (07:06.37)
Okay, so for starters, when the military, when, okay, let’s say that you’re active duty and you want to go to another location or your first sergeant tells you that you’re going to another location, you get a set of orders. Those orders are dictating where you go and when you have to report there.

And that could be anywhere from six months from now to next month. Well, the first thing that they’ve got to do is they’ve got to set up with the, with the office, the transportation office to have their stuff moved to another location. So since I spent about seven years in that office, I know what is expected in getting their household goods ready.

what they have to do in order to get everything shut down here and on the market. So the main difference between a civilian move and a military relocation is pretty much the timeline is a little bit more streamlined. They do have a professional moving company moving their stuff on a set deadline, you know, and they have a set schedule that has to be kept or else, you know, things can really go sideways. So that’s the main difference between

between civilians and military moves is just that they’ve got a schedule that they have to keep.

Stephen S. (08:36.972)
Yeah, that’s really interesting. How does that affect like the timeline of the house being sold? Like does it have to be sold by the time they are leaving? Do they have to be in a house by the time they get there? What are some of those things look like?

Chris (08:50.662)
Well, the good side is the military is a very tight knit group of people. If you know where to go and what and who to talk to, I’ve had quite a few officers that ended up selling their house to the next officer that was actually moving in to take their place. So a lot of times it’s just a matter of just doing the paperwork, making sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted and that’s that. On the bad side is,

when they’ve got, shoot, I lost my train of thought. The bad time.

Stephen S. (09:26.936)
You’re good. On the good side, sometimes they’re selling to the next person that’s coming in. So there is some things there that kind of work out in certain cases. But then the bad side is…

Chris (09:42.01)
Yeah, the bad side is that they’ve got, like I said, they’ve got a strict timeline and they can end up having to leave now and get to their new duty station and now they’ve got two mortgages that they’ve got to float until the one here gets sold.

Stephen S. (10:02.242)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, so what gets you excited about serving these people?

Chris (10:09.008)
well honestly they’re taking a bullet for me so i mean this is the least that i can do the military gets almost no freedom they have to be in guam they have to be in italy they have to be in germany they have to be in colorado springs they have to be in tendal so they don’t get to dictate too much where they go and what they’re allowed to do of course they’ve got options you know they can put in their preferences but ultimately if they’re ordered to do something they have to do it and

Stephen S. (10:13.678)
Mm.

Chris (10:39.022)
And they are giving their service, are giving their life, they are giving their time to protecting the United States. And somebody that’s willing to dedicate their life to a service like that, I’m gonna give them everything that I can.

Stephen S. (10:55.854)
Love that. Let’s transition a little bit and talk about some of the investing that you’ve gotten your hands in and what you’re doing in that space. What are some projects that you’ve been working on recently that’s got you going?

Chris (11:11.236)
Well, if we’re going to transition to that, then keep the military theme. We just finished a couple months ago, just finished a retired army sergeant that wanted to go back to Pennsylvania. So we actually bought her house.

It had a lot of repairs that needed to be done and she didn’t have the money to do them. So we actually bought her house, gave her a note for the amount of balance, the equity that we owed her. We fixed up the house, we put it on the open market, we got it sold, and she got paid, we got paid, the mortgage got paid off, and that was a very nice little flip. It took about three months.

Stephen S. (11:53.71)
That’s awesome. That’s not the traditional story you hear either,

Chris (11:59.586)
No, as a matter of fact, a lot of people, mean, of course, know, it’s standard that you buy the house, you fix it up, you put it on the market and you take all the risk. Well, you know, I cut my teeth not having hardly any money, so I had to partner with people a lot, whether it was a private investor, whether it was another investor that wanted to partner with me, even Steven, or if it was a seller themselves.

Stephen S. (12:25.816)
How do you go about finding the right partner for real estate deals?

Chris (12:31.076)
That is a relationship question. That is a marathon. And it’s not easy because when I first got started, there was quite a few people that would, you know, put their arm around you and say, yeah, I’ll show you all the ropes, yeah. You know, and then next thing you know, you’re getting the short end of a litigation or you’re the one paying the delinquent taxes on a property that they were supposed to be keeping up with. So.

Stephen S. (12:36.27)
Hmm.

Chris (12:58.746)
That I would be suggesting to go to the Rio meetings, go to the Facebook groups, talk to these people, have coffee with them, get a feel for them first, see what other deals that they have done in the past, and then once you feel comfortable and confident that they know what they’re doing, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you become their golfer. You do their chores, you do their footwork, you learn from them, and that builds a relationship. One of my first mentors,

locally here I took him probably four or five deals before he finally said yes and then all he did was cover the repair costs while I covered the purchase and then I graduated to hey I’ve got a deal over here you know what do you need from me he’s like what’s the address and that’s it he’s like okay I’ll do it just tell me what paperwork and where to send it okay so it you know builds up over time

Stephen S. (13:57.506)
Yeah. Now, so on the flip side of that, Quain, because, you know, I asked the question every now and then, like, you know, how to find a good partner. What are some of the things you do to that partner? But what what makes a good partner and what is somebody that maybe is, you know, lacking the experience? What can make them a good partner for somebody that maybe has the experience, but less time?

Chris (14:22.544)
Well…

Less and more time is probably the key. My personal opinion is you stay in your lane. If you’re the one that’s doing the deal, that means you’re swinging the hammer or you’re making sure that the hammer gets swung. Then you concentrate on getting the house fixed, getting the house ready, doing whatever it is that you want that you’re doing and you stay there. The partner may be the money man. Well, he stayed. He needs to stay as the money man. He doesn’t need to come in and dictate the

contracting. If he trusts you, he trusts you. If he doesn’t, well you shouldn’t have started to begin with. So a good partner has their job title and they stay in that job title. And then if you are the more experienced person, then of course

Chances are you’re probably going to be taking a little bit more of the risk, which means you may or may not be getting paid a little bit more. And then the understudy is getting the education, which is worth money in itself. And they may take a little bit less, but they’re going to be trading out most likely for little bit of sweat equity and the education in lieu of getting dollars.

Stephen S. (15:35.96)
makes ton of sense. Now with what you’re working on right now, what would be like a story that you faced that could be an avoidable problem for somebody potentially? Or is it just every deal is case by case and you never know what you’re gonna get into until you’re into it. But what are some of the pitfalls maybe you see new people falling into that could otherwise be avoided?

Chris (16:03.558)
How much time do we have?

Stephen S. (16:05.934)
How much time do you need?

Chris (16:09.754)
Well, the two that come off the top of my head, every time that somebody asks that question, there’s always two scenarios that pop into my head, the ones that hurt the most. And I’ll go back to the delinquent taxes. When I first got started, I partnered up with a guy. He had a deal on nine houses. Well, take that back. He had a deal on 15 houses. I locked up nine of them as a hard money lender.

The understanding was he paid an interest only payment for two years. He gets the houses fixed up. He gets a refinance. He pays me off

What happened was he sucked them for all the rents. He didn’t pay any of the taxes. He didn’t fix anything up. And then when it finally came due, I ended up having to pay the taxes for clothes on him and sell the houses myself to try to recover my costs. So that would be definitely a case of know who it is that you’re doing business with and check behind them. Trust would verify.

Stephen S. (17:13.038)
How did you get hooked up in that situation?

Chris (17:18.02)
Well, he was the local guy that was in the in the real estate group. I actually host the real estate, the middle Georgia real estate investors group up until COVID. And then we kind of shut down. But I’m working on getting it started back up again. But he was one of the people in our group that I resonated with, I thought. So we he brought me a deal that I thought was pretty good. So with the understanding that everybody had their barge

orders and and we agreed to it but like again he didn’t do what he was supposed to do I ended up having to foreclose on the properties that I had locked up and selling them or with you know full retail or over financing to recover my funds

Stephen S. (18:06.026)
When was the point in that deal where you started seeing things go south? mean, sounds like that’s a two year long process, but did things happen quicker than that where you realized you’d got yourself into a bad situation with him? Or when did that start where you were like, no.

Chris (18:22.956)
It was probably the end of the first year when that went sideways and I realized where it was going was because I got noticed from and this is one thing that I always do if I’m partnering up with somebody I always make sure that I’m the lender or the mortgagee the mortgage or on the insurance policy so the insurance sent me notification that the insurance had been canceled

And that was my first red flag and I called him up. said, what the hell do think you’re doing? And he’s like, no, no, we’re just changing policies. I’ll get you back on. So he did it and then six months later I got another notice and that was when I really knew that he was trying to pull some fast ones.

Stephen S. (19:01.376)
No kidding. And so like at that point, what kind of mode did you go into at that stage once it happened the second time?

Chris (19:09.734)
Well, at that point I started checking the tax assessors, the online tax forms found out that taxes weren’t getting paid and started sending demand letters and when he didn’t respond, I went ahead and foreclosed on them. So yeah, there again, trust but verify.

Stephen S. (19:28.556)
Right, absolutely. So if you had to go back to the beginning of your, you know, start and you could take all of the lessons, failures, wins, all the good and all the bad, but you had to start over and you were in the beginning, what would you do different and what would you do the same?

Chris (19:46.574)
Well, first of all, anything that I am planning on taking for myself…

Between me and my wife, we’ve learned the hard way. You pay for an inspector. Get them to go through that house and find out the ins and outs of that house because there’s always some surprise around the corner that you didn’t notice that is going to end up costing you money. So always get an inspection done. And then like I said, you know, make sure that you know who it is that you’re doing business with.

Stephen S. (20:18.958)
Absolutely. What would you have done the same?

Chris (20:27.654)
Starting all over, the first thing that I would do is go back to a group of people that know what they’re doing. The network that I fell into are, and I really love them because they’re not the…

Gurus per se these guys are telling you stories about deals that they’re either working on right now or just finished last week They are in the trenches So you find and Bill Cook says this all the time look for the gray hairs and bald heads Those jokers are the ones that have been doing it for 20 30 years You take them out for coffee you take them out for dinner and you ask them the same questions. You’re asking me what

deals were the best ones that you loved, what were the deals that you really wish you hadn’t done, and what would you do different? And ask them those same questions. And that’s what I would do if I had to start all over. I would find the mentors, I would find the people that are successful and become their gophers, become their little chore boy.

Stephen S. (21:33.678)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Well, Chris, thanks for joining us on the show today. If anybody wants to possibly connect with you for more, learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Chris (21:45.862)
Well, they can reach me on my email ctillman at propertyconveyors.com or they can go to my website at realestateproblemsolver.com

Stephen S. (21:56.918)
There you go. You heard it here first, folks. Everyone, I hope you enjoyed the show and we’ll see you on the next episode.