Beyond Buying: Full-Spectrum real estate investment process pioneered by Glenn Greene. The method emphasizes extensive service, building trust, and nurturing long-term investor relationships. The team discusses their hands-on approach, from property selection to closing deals, ensuring each investor gets tailored advice and complete transaction support. They also tackle property management, debunking the superficial engagement common in the industry. By being the investors’ boots on the ground, they secure and maintain properties, proving dedication and a robust work ethic that are key to thriving in competitive markets and retaining investor loyalty.
Brett
0:00:40 – All right, this episode, we’re going to actually go through our process. As an investment team, we have a specific process that was developed by Glenn Greene that we follow. It requires a lot of work ethic, a lot of time, but we do it for a purpose, and we’re going to discuss that process and what we do for our investors when you first pick up the phone and call us.
Sponsorship
0:03:58 – We are sponsored by Title Assurance and Escrow, a title company here in Cordova that does all of our closings, title work, escrows, and we only use Title Assurance and Escrow. That relationship is very important because we can get things done for our investors quickly and easily. So to speak with Title Assurance and Escrow, call 901-737-3332 and ask for Chris or April.
Brett
0:01:39 – All right, so this episode we’re going to talk about a process that we use, and I think this is the most important part of what we do. Let’s face it, any monkey can go get a real estate license. You know, if you have half your brain cells, you can study and pass a test and get a license and go find a broker. It doesn’t make you an investment agent, and I think there’s a lot of agents out there that we’re dealing with now that are beginning to realize that. The investment game is not easy. So we have a specific system and this system was actually started by Glenn Greene, our former partner, who passed away. Just so you know, that chuckling of ice and the mumbling and the background, that’s Jeff. He’s drinking his Johnny Walker on the rocks.
Jeff
0:02:15 – I’ll get you one.
Brett
0:02:16 – Glenn Greene, when we started this, we dealt with a lot of agents. Him and I are here at the law firm doing short sales and negotiations. We dealt with a ton of agents and we learned something very quickly. Very few agents just give a shit. They just don’t care. They got their license to make easy money or they thought to make easy money. So Glenn always said that if we could find a way to take an investor from point A all the way down the alphabet to Z and we can handle everything for them from start to finish, we’ll build loyalty, we’ll build friendships, we’ll build relationships, and we’ll build a good business.
Richard
0:02:51 – And for Jeff, drinking buddies.
Brett
0:02:53 – And drinking buddies, right, for Jeff. So the concept was is we would put together, that we would go the extra mile on everything we did for our investors. And a lot of agents said that was stupid. Why would you go through all that extra work? Well we’re sitting proof today as to why we’re going through extra work because while you’re back shuffling papers with Smith and Nephew and because you can’t make any money in real estate because the market’s down.
Jeff
0:03:14 – No, they’re typically standing behind the counter at Autozone.
Brett
0:03:17 – Autozone, yeah. We’re doing business still, even though interest rates are up and the economy is not doing great. So that concept is pretty simple. When I talk to a new investor, this is what I tell them. My job is to be your boots on the ground, start to finish. And when you’re done closing on the house, I’m still involved with the house and I give them examples. So this is what I tell them number one Let’s find out what you want to invest in. What’s your goal? Are you investing now? How’s that working out? Tell me about those investments So what’s your level of risk you’re willing to do and I hear everything under the sun to where almost no risk down to I don’t Care if I can put a tenant in it, I’ll buy it So once I have that in place and I just go through the system and let them know, okay, well, number one, I’m going to set you up a search and we’re going to start researching properties that based on the criteria you’ve given me and I’m going to send a list to you every single day and every day at five o’clock when you get home on your email is going to be a list and you just start looking at it. What I want you to do from that point is if you see something that catches your eye, just shoot me a text. Hey, what do you think about this address? And in 10 minutes I can look it up, check the location, pull up the rent comps and say well based on paper. It looks great Based on a location. It looks good, too Let me go tomorrow and drive the neighborhood So then I get my car my truck Drive to the neighborhood and I drive four or five blocks around this house check out the neighborhood check out the neighbors homes If I go down and see a ton of people sit on their front porch at noon and cars in the yards and trash everywhere I’m just gonna tell them no, because that neighborhood is not going the right direction. If I go down the street and see a bunch of boarded up houses but three or four are being remodeled, I’ll tell them yes, this street is going somewhere, get in early. So once we accomplish and find that house, I’m going to recommend an offer to you and the terms, right, because in an aggressive competitive market, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. You can’t just throw offers out there because you won’t get any. So my job is then to guide them through the offer process and give them tidbits and advice on how to really make your offer strong.
Jeff
0:05:23 – What do you do? What would you recommend? Full price offer contingent upon an inspection? And then backtrack it. What does a full price offer do? Locks the property in, takes it off the market?
Brett
0:05:40 – Yeah. Here’s the thing. Step one is getting a contract accepted. I can write a million contracts a day, but why do I want to write a million contracts a day if none of them are going to be accepted? If an investor is selling a property and the agent gets 10 offers in, the first thing the agent is going to do is what I do. They’re going to flip through them, price, price, price, price, price. They’re going to organize them based on price, best to worst. If you low ball an offer or go in 10 grand and they’re asking, that guess for yours is going to be on the bottom of the pile, and I guarantee you that investor is going to pick something else before you.
Jeff
0:06:07 – Well, you can feed on the seller’s emotion. You give them a full price. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you offer $100,000 on a $100,000 asking price or a million dollar on a $100,000 asking price. It’s all going to boil down to the inspection. But I’m guessing if you present that full price offer, it’s going to play on the seller’s emotion.
Brett
0:06:26 – You’re going to float to the top of the pile.
Jeff
0:06:28 – And he’s like, wow, man, I’ve got a guy, this guy’s serious, he’s willing to pay full price.
Brett
0:06:32 – Well, but he may have four other full price offers. So then I tell him, look, if you’re not borrowing money, you’re paying cash, that’s even better. Instead of a 10-day inspection, let’s do a five-day. Agree to put the escrow money with his attorney. There’s a lot of things you can do, and I walk them through those different scenarios as to why you want to do that. I get a lot of kickback with new investors, well, I don’t want to offer full price. And if I argue with them and they won’t listen, what I do is I write five or six offers for them, let them go down the toilet, and they’re like, we’re not getting any offers because I told you. We’re sending offers to somebody and yours is going to the bottom of the pile. You’re not even getting looked at. So offer full price. Unless it’s been on the market for 90 days, then you can pull the price down some. But if it’s been on the market for two days, don’t go in there and offer 10 grand under asking, because you’re not going to get that deal, period. It’s not going to happen, unless it’s in the worst part of town where no one’s going to want to buy that house but you. So offer full price asking, 10 day inspection contingency, because guess what? We’ll go inspect the property, we’ll get a contract that’s been on the rehab, and then we’ll see if it still works. If you’re all in at a certain price and you’re still breaking 1%, done. If it doesn’t, we go back to them and say, well, it needs more work than we anticipated, so we’re going from full price. We’re dropping six grand off the price. Some investors say, well, why would a seller do that? I can tell you why the same old rule, one bird in the hand is better than two in the bush because he’s going to think to himself, the seller’s going to say, okay, well, this is going to come up with the next buyer. So if I tell these guys, go piss up a rope and go back to market another 30 days get another contract and same thing’s gonna happen again I might as well try to work with these guys so we wanted six off he comes back and I’ll give you four great we’ll take it and then we move on. Get the contract bound we handle setting up the inspection we handle setting up a contractor to go get bids on the work while we’re there doing inspection we set up the termite we physically go to the inspection Jeff and I have all been, Jerry, we’ve all been to inspections. If there’s a tenant in place, I wanna go meet the tenant. I give my investor a honest opinion of the tenant. I met the family, they got two small kids, they’re a great family, blah, blah, blah. Then we go through the process of getting all that done. I’ll renegotiate it. I’ve already set your contract up with a title company. I’m working with the title company to make sure all the title’s getting pulled, if there’s any liens, trying to help them navigate that part and get it set up for closing. And then when we go to close, we’re gonna email you a package and you’re gonna print it off, sign it in front of a notary and FedEx it back to us. Congratulations, you just bought your first rental property. Now most agents at that point wouldn’t do half of what I just said. They won’t. I’ve had agents, for their buyer’s inspection, I’ve had inspectors call me saying, the agent said she’s not coming, can you come let me in the house? And it pisses me off because that’s your job. You’re supposed to be there. But from that point forward, we close it and most agents are done. That’s it. Congratulations, Jeff. Good luck with your house. Hope things work out for you. If you need something else, let me know.
Jeff
0:09:31 – So what do you do? You get them set up with the management company? Yes. Follow through? A lot of you are out of town investors. I may be getting ahead of you but I’m guessing.
Brett
0:09:42 – No you’re right on to the next step.
Jeff
0:09:43 – I’m guessing an out of town investor, if that investor requests it be a liaison between him and the management company, say he gets a huge invoice for something.
Brett
0:09:53 – Yeah, I’m about to go through all of that.
Richard
0:09:55 – Just before we go on, based on what you’ve said this far to getting that FedEx package back where someone went out of town and signed it in front of a notary they’ve bought the house. What period of time are we talking about? How quickly or how long might that take?
Brett
0:10:07 – If I found you a house tomorrow we’ll have it negotiated in two or three days and be on our way to close and from that point forward it’s up to your lender. You’re paying cash we can close in two weeks. If you’re getting
Jeff
0:10:17 – Typical closing is probably two weeks.
Brett
0:10:20 – Yeah. So now that you’ve got the house and before you close we’re going to do the next step. We’re going to start the next step, and that is management. Most agents don’t even want to mess with management. They don’t like it. Look, I don’t like management. I would never be a property manager. I hate that job. But here’s where some agents completely lose sight of what the business that we’re in. If you want to be in the investment game, your stockbroker wants to make sure your investments are performing, right? Well, how does he do that? By staying involved. So when we close, the next step is we help you find the proper management company. We got four or five we work with, and it’s gonna depend on the market you’re in, the type of tenants you have, is it MHA, is it self-pay, and then we’re gonna recommend property managers to you that fit the bill for those type of properties. So then once we get the management set up, I’m still not done. I mean, my investor at that point, hopefully trusts me and knows that I’m his eyes and ears here. And we’ve had this a couple of times recently. Tenant vacates, management company just sends a bid to the investor for $6,000 rent turn. And they call me and I look at the bid and I’m like, you know what, I don’t know if this is valid or not. I’ll go drive to the house for my investor and walk the house with the list and check everything. And I’ll be like, nope, nope, nope, nope, not necessary, not necessary. Yep, that needs to be done, that needs to be done. I’ll send it back to them.
Jeff
0:11:43 – Keep in mind, you’re doing all of this as a courtesy to your investor. You’re not getting paid to do this. You’re just doing it as a courtesy.
Brett
0:11:52 – But there’s a method to my madness, and I’m gonna talk about that in a second.
Jeff
0:11:54 – Well, I understand that.
Richard
0:11:55 – That’s relationship building.
Jeff
0:11:56 – That’s your relationship with him. He’s gonna buy 40 more from you.
Brett
0:11:59 – Mr. Tani, out of Japan. Uses me for that all the time and I gladly do it and I’ve saved him thousands and thousands of dollars and the management companies get mad at me because I’m taking money in their pocket But listen, my job is not to babysit the management company. I’m not loyal to you I’m loyal to my investor My job is to make sure his assets performing the way we anticipate it and if there’s a problem I’m gonna defend him and that’s where I get involved so then I’ll go through that process and I’ll I’ll give it back to the investor and the investor will send the management company saying, hey, I had Brett walk the house and he says these things aren’t necessary. They don’t argue with me because they know I personally believe that management company sends a vendor out and the vendor just creates work for himself. He finds stuff that he says needs to be done. I’ve gone in a house where they said it needed all new ceiling fans. Not a single, every ceiling fan was less than a year old. He just created work for themselves.
Jeff
0:12:50 – Well, you just have to be careful with the management company you get with because these management companies are notorious for not checking their vendors’ work.
Brett
0:12:58 – Well, it’s not the management company padding the bid. It’s the management company not paying attention to what their vendors are bidding and making sure that what they’re bidding is accurate.
Jeff
0:13:07 – For the fees they charge, they need to send somebody out and inspect.
Brett
0:13:11 – Common sense would tell you that, but in reality it doesn’t happen.
Jeff
0:13:14 – Every management company needs to send a qualified person out in-house. This is what needs to be done, and then that person can go call the vendors and say, this is what I need done. Do it.
Brett
0:13:25 – There is one management company we work with out in Arlington, Enterprise Realtors. They have a management division, and in my opinion, they do it right. They have an on-staff estimator. When a house goes vacant, he heads to the house, he takes the pictures, he writes the estimate up and says this is what it should cost. And then he sends it to his vendors and says here’s how much we’re paying, who wants the job?
Jeff
0:13:46 – That’s the difference. The management company is dictating what needs to be done, not the outside vendors that are never supervised.
Brett
0:13:55 – And I think that adds a lot to their, that’s why they’ve grown so fast in the management side because that’s a good way to approach it. Because that’s what I’m doing at this point. I’m not doing the estimating. I’m just going in saying, no, that doesn’t need to be done, that doesn’t need to be done, that doesn’t need to be done, and they’re reworking the bid and saving my investor money.
Jeff
0:14:12 – You should get a part-time job at a management company.
Brett
0:14:15 – Hell to the no. I would rather go sit in eternity of seminars, real estate seminars, than ever do that.
Jeff
0:14:22 – I don’t believe that.
Brett
0:14:24 – So, all right, so that now we are to the point now where my investor has a solid performing asset that is paying cash flow that he knows he can call me anytime he needs to. I have investors, Michael Gibson said he called me at 2 o’clock in the morning one time, stressed out. It’s a very true story. He woke me up and I got up and answered the phone and talked to him. And he goes, and thank God for Brett, I was able to sleep that night. I didn’t do anything but just talk to him, but I’m available That’s the key as most agents aren’t available five o’clock on a Friday the phones off They didn’t come back on till 8 a.m.. If even that on a Monday morning
Richard
0:14:59 – I actually remember Mike Gibson telling me that you whispered sweet nothings to him and that helped him sleep.
Brett
0:15:04 – Yeah, I had to I had to really bring him off the ledge and it took that it took some weird shit to get him down. But yeah, no.
Jeff
0:15:10 – I like the agents voice, the agents never answer their phone to get their voice mail. It says, “I am available to take your call between 9am and 5pm by appointment only after 5pm and on the weekends. Boy, that must be one important agent.
Brett
0:15:27 – You know what happens when my phone rings? I answer it. Sometimes it irritates my wife because we’re sitting outside grilling at 6 o’clock and I’ve got stuff on the grill and we’re talking, having a drink and all of a sudden my phone rings or my phone somebody texts me.
Jeff
0:15:40 – Yeah, well she’s pretty patient with you. I mean you know at the end of the day your nickname is revenue stream.
Brett
0:15:45 – Right, she got on to me one time I said baby I said my job pays for those nails, that hair, that Jeep, the boat, all the things we have, this is my job. Now I’m on seven days a week and I work seven days a week. Like last week we went down and worked on my boat for three days and my phone barely rang.
Jeff
0:16:02 – Four days we’re on the lake baby.
Brett
0:16:03 – That’s right.
Jeff
0:16:04 – That was like a mini vacation.
Richard
0:16:05 – And you got yourself one of them damn foreigners, didn’t you?
Brett
0:16:09 – I did, I did. I got a foreigner, yeah, I do. But anyway, that’s our process. And two very leveled agents, leveled up with where I’m at in volume, one of them said to me, why would you do that? It’s very simple. If I make sure this one, first one performs, then he’s going to buy number two, then he’s going to buy number three, and number four, and number five. And I can tell you my investors, Donald Trump himself could call my investors and say, I’ve got a deal for you. And he’s like, they’ll say, run it through, Brett. Daniel Tabish, I can call him and say, Daniel, buy this house. Okay. Doesn’t even question me. That’s why I do it because it does it builds relationships, it builds trust. And once they know they have someone on the ground that cares about their asset and their investment the same way they do, no one’s going to take that investor from me. My investors now buy, every one of them buy at least one house a year, some buy three or four a year. Well, once you get 50, 60 investors doing it every year, year in, year out, then you’ve got a steady flow of income and it’s only going to grow from there. So our process, Glenn was so committed to it and I’m very committed to it and we’re committed to it for that purpose. That if you want to build a business, successful real estate business in the investment world with investors, you’ve got to put forth the effort. And most agents just don’t want to put in the work.
Jeff
0:17:26 – Don’t forget to mention for our non-cash buyers, we walk them through the lending process too. I mean, we do everything. We have relationships with contractors, vendors, inspectors, management companies, lenders. I mean, we’re, like Brett says, your one-stop shop. We follow it through to the end and carry you beyond.
Brett
0:17:46 – I’ve sent a number, Jeff’s sent a number, Jerry, we’ve sent a number of investors to different lenders we have. We are in the process of becoming loan originator assistants. Assistant. Well, we will be able to actually do more of the loan origination process for you. So we’re just going to add that one tool to our complete mix of services that we provide. Is it easy? No. But does it pay off? Absolutely it pays off. I mean I would put our system up against any other agent in this town or in this country. And when they say that I’m wasting my time doing this stuff, no, I disagree with that. I think Glenn and I were ultra successful in a very short period of time because of the way our system works, because of the process we put together. Now I do get ten sometimes, get a little irritated and lazy, and then I’ll snap myself out of it because I try to stay focused on what got us where we are. I’m never going to deviate from that process because it is the lifeblood of our business.
Jeff
0:18:40 – Well, it’s like you said, it’s not rocket science, all it requires is a little bit of a work ethic.
Brett
0:18:44 – That’s it. That’s it. I say all the time, I’ll be glad to go to open up a seminar. Everybody can give me two grand a head to come in there. At my seminar, I’ll be literally 30 seconds long. I’ll walk out with a mic, say, work ethic, and drop my mic, boom. Everybody, if you just follow that one simple rule, you’ll make a lot of money in real estate.
Jeff
0:19:03 – And you know what you do is rewarding. You’re helping a lot of people create a lot of long-term retirement wealth. I mean, you know, it’s rewarding. We’re going out in these communities, we’re cleaning them up, we’re lowering the crime rate, we’re building houses, we’re rehabbing houses with our team. I mean this is rewarding work. We’re helping a lot of people that otherwise couldn’t afford decent housing, safe housing, we’re putting them in that. I mean everything we do it’s just rewarding.
Brett
0:19:46 – That’s it.
Richard
0:19:41 – Well one thing I’ve noticed as well, everybody you choose to bring into the circle to wotk with share your work ethic, and they go about things in the same way. There’s a lot they give away for free just to build that relationship and keep everybody on board.
Brett
0:19:49 – Nick’s very first investor came off the podcast and he just now sold his first house four or five months later, but he would go to her houses that were being rehabbed. He called me one day after the first house and said, man, this contractor’s doing a horrible job. I don’t know what to say to her. I said, Nick, just be honest with her. Send her pictures and just be bluntly honest with her. One or two things are going to happen. She’s going to think you’re a jackass and she’s not going to call you again. Or she’s going to gravitate towards you and start to trust you. And he did. He was brutally honest with her. I saw the email and it was pretty brutal. But now, she doesn’t even buy a home from a wholesale without sending it to Nick first. It has Nick go walk it. And when that contractor’s working on it, she has Nick go every other week and check on the house and check the quality of work before she writes a check.
Jeff
0:20:36 – But to Richard’s point, he has spent countless days and hours with her. He has stayed awake at night trying to figure out how to help this woman. He stuck with her. Nobody, nobody would have done that. They would have just walked away from him. But he stuck with her for months and now she’s going to build a portfolio with him and probably end up with 30 or 40 rental properties.
Brett
0:20:59 – That’s it.
Jeff
0:21:00 – That’s it. He’s going to benefit from it. She’s going to benefit from it. Her tenants are going to benefit from it. All the hundreds of jobs that are created with all the inspectors and contractors are going to benefit from it. I’m telling you, this is a win-win for everybody.
Brett
0:21:13 – I’ve reaped the benefits of that system, Glenn did, Nick is, Jeff is. The concept is not hard.
Jeff
0:21:20 – It’s a win-win.
Brett
0:21:21 – It comes down to work ethic, that’s it, bottom line and Nick’s got it. Yeah, and so this investor, he just wrote a contract on our first house, got a buyer for it and he’s about to make some money on that house, he’s got three other ones lined up for him. But what I found interesting was I follow the emails, I don’t chime in if I don’t have to, I try not to. I try to let Nick handle it. But as I follow the emails, I could tell she was beginning to trust him for everything, right? Now, wholesaler sends her a list of properties, she’ll pick two or three out and send them to Nick first before she even makes an offer.
Jeff
0:21:52 – I wish she’d start chiming in on some of my emails. I get emails and I’m like, I don’t even know how to respond to that. I wish Brett would chime in on this right now.
Brett
0:22:00 – I try to stay out of the conversation unless I’m needed, unless I feel like I can contribute something more than what’s being had because it’s important. I think it’s important for Jeff, Jerry, Nick to communicate their own words. If I see something in an email that I’m not quite sure of, I’ll jump in and kind of smooth it out. But so far, everybody’s doing a good job. You know, I personally believe, and I’m not just saying this because it’s us, I think we have the best system in Tennessee. Our investors are loyal to us. They’re not fickle. They trust us. So pick up the phone and call us or go to our website, mymemphisinvestmentproperties.com, check out what we got. Also register so you can get notified when we have a new podcast episode out. 901-692-7401 and talk to one of us. Thanks for listening.