Prospect Group buys properties across Southern California. They work with an elite group of agents who bring them deals, represent them in buying the property, and eventually when it is fixed and they also represent Prospect Group as a listing agent in the sale of said property.
Meet some of their favorite agents who are real estate industry royalty who continue to work with Prospect Group year after year.
- Gary Richardson | Strand Hill Co-Founder | Christie’s International Real Estate
- Teresa Fuller | Compass Real Estate
- Olga Safonoff | Pinnacle Estate Properties, Inc.
- Bruce Jay | Bruce Jay Associates Real Estate
- Carol Gillie | Compass Real Estate
Realtors often ask: how to work with an investment company and make more money.
We talked to PG acquisition and investment specialist Greg Davtyan who gave us some useful tips for getting started.
Greg Davtyan says anyone can bring Prospect Group a deal. He has three tips.
1.Be Smart About Exit Value
Realtors must be able to put themselves in an investor’s shoes and do their diligence about the market and the trends. At Prospect Group, they take into account the everchanging construction and contractor costs when considering exit value. It’s the job of the acquisition specialists to make sure that the offer that they provide a realtor is an offer on which they can perform.
2.Use Data
Use data to help make your case for pricing when working with investors or companies like Prospect Group. There are a lot of realtors who work with PG and make a lot of money. The level of success has everything to do with how efficient the realtor is with the type of deals they offer, the type of background work they’ve done on the deal, and the effort they put in to analyze the deal before sending it out to the realtor. Greg says we know who has done their homework and are more likely to work with them.
3.Know How to Run Comps
A realtor must know their numbers. There’s no one formula. Every property is unique to itself. Consider what the property needs, the condition it’s in, and the market itself. Know how to analyze a specific area and what a property should really go for at exact square footage with or without a pool. Every area is unique in its own kind of pocket, so agents really need to do their due diligence based off of which area they serve – not just based on zip code based on the neighborhood.
Greg says, “I don’t expect agents to know exactly what I’m going to spend on the property, or I’m not going to expect them to know exactly where we have to be price-wise, but I would like to know that they have a general idea of where I would have to be because that would show me that they can actually guide their sellers to take my offer.”
Greg says, there is money to be made, “if you’re a realtor and your niche is not selling luxury properties. Then you can make your niche the beaten down properties. If you market to and get properties that need a lot of work – that would make Prospect Group your permanent client.
If you want to contact us write us at contact@prospectgroup.net or prospectgroup.net/realtor
For the full conversation with Greg Davtyan see below:
Silva [00:00:00] Hello, everybody, I am Silva. Welcome to Prospect Group. This is the channel where we talk about investing, real estate, and how to make you lots of money. Sorry, my eye-line just changed because there’s somebody on the roof across the street. I can see out the window. All the things that you don’t expect to see here. We’re on YouTube. We’re on a podcast. Make sure to check us out on one of those channels. Today, we’re going to talk about real estate tips, specifically how realtors and agents can sell to investors because we’re an investment company. So with me today is Greg. He is our acquisition and investment property specialist. I think I butchered your title.
Greg [00:00:45] Investment specialist.
Silva [00:00:47] Investment specialist. Thank you for correcting me. The title isn’t as important as his knowledge about investing and the depth of relationships he has with agents and realtors across Southern California that continue to bring him deals. So, he knows a thing or two about what it takes to work with us. And, there are quite a number of realtors that consistently send you deals, and sometimes they’re all deals and we call them pretty quickly and sometimes they’re not until they are. Right. So if we have a realtor out there or an agent who is interested in working with us, what is the best way they can go about doing that? But before you answer that question, make sure you subscribe to this channel. All right. Go ahead.
Greg [00:01:41] Well, a couple of things. I mean. Just be smart. One thing.
Silva [00:01:48] One thing. Just be smart. What does that mean?
Greg [00:01:50] That’s it.
Silva [00:01:52] What does that mean? What does that mean? Be smart.
Greg [00:01:56] What does that mean? That means put yourself in an investor’s shoes. I think so many real, real estate agents are not able to plug themselves into an investor’s shoes even though they’re in the industry.
Silva [00:02:09] Hmm.
Greg [00:02:11] They are not able to plug themselves into another perspective, and they don’t use data to help themselves get on the good side with investors or companies like us that would have me want to keep them close to me and constantly bring us like a flow of deals, you know? You know, we pick and choose who we want to work with, you know, because there’s a lot of realtors that can waste their time. There’s a lot of realtors that we enjoy working with. There’s a lot of realtors we do work with, you know, make a lot of money with. So it really depends on, you know, how efficient the realtor is with the type of deals they send us and, you know, with the type of background, you know, the effort they put to pretty much analyze the deal before sending anything out to us. You know, we stay busy, so I don’t want to just win any deal. When I run something, I want something to be at least close, even if it’s not on target. Yeah. Based off the crazy market. It’s been tough for a lot of realtors to bring us deals, you know.
Silva [00:03:30] Because they’re selling deals on the market, you know, to the end consumer with multiple offers and over asking. Right. But really, I want to break this down a little bit because there’s multiple things that I think happen, right? There are those who are just focused on that one deal and they may lose sight of the fact that this may be one deal, but this investment company is in the business of buying, which means if I figure out a way to make this deal work and this these other deals work, I can increase my volumes significantly because this investment company is buying. Right?
Greg [00:04:24] You know, that’s that’s the part that’s kind of crazy to me. You know, sometimes they don’t have a choice. Sometimes the sellers really just want to take the higher offer.
Silva [00:04:33] Right.
Greg [00:04:34] But it’s also up to the realtor on how much they’re able to really impact the decision that their seller makes.
Silva [00:04:47] With data. Right. We’re not we’re not saying with supported data to say.
Greg [00:04:52] Exactly.
Silva [00:04:52] Because I’ve seen you guys work. So I want to be clear about this. I’ve seen the acquisition team work. They they they really do do their due diligence. Right. You guys spent hours on comping a house. You take it. I asked you yesterday about some specifics about a comp. And you said everything… it has nothing to do with just numbers and it has to do with the square footage has to do with how much work it needs. It has to do with the foundation, has to do with the driveway, has to do with when when was a kitchen updated? There’s so many moving parts that actually impact the price of a property that you can’t just look at it just there’s no there’s no one formula.
Greg [00:05:35] No, there’s no one formula. You know, every property is unique to itself. So, you know, the stuff it needs, the condition it’s in, you know, there’s so many different factors to a property, whereas you can’t just take one and take another has the same. So I mean, we don’t expect, I don’t expect agents to know exactly what I’m going to spend on the property if they get, you know, if they send me a deal. Right. Or I’m not going to expect them to know exactly where we have to be price wise. But, I would like to know that they have a general idea of where I would have to be, because that would show me that they can actually guide their sellers to take my offer. Right. But if they don’t understand my positioning and why we have to be where we have to be, then how is that seller going to understand, you know, because they’re being guided by that agent.
Silva [00:06:27] Right?
Greg [00:06:27] So my whole thing is having agents understand, you know, the true data statistics costs, right? Updated costs, because we are in, you know, the line of work every single day working with contractors day in and day out. Our project management team constantly gives us updated cost, and that’s my specialty. I have to crank in all the numbers and I have to make sure I know all the numbers constantly, you know, and make sure the offers that we provide agents or offers that we know we could perform at because we don’t like to make agents look bad. When we you know, when we give an offer, we want to make sure we can perform. Whereas, you know, that agent will have credibility with that seller and hopefully be referred to other clients. And you know, those other clients could be potential sellers and we could be the potential buyer. So those other product.
Silva [00:07:15] And that’s part of our core values here at Prospect Group and it’s part of our integrity is when we put an offer in, we have crunched our numbers and we know that at this at this rate, with this with these combination of things, we can actually perform. Right? Because there’s nothing that makes an investment company look bad more than not being able to actually perform on a deal. Yeah.
Greg [00:07:41] Realtors just really need to kind of just do their due diligence when it comes to just like, running their own numbers, learning that because a lot of things can be learned, you know.
Silva [00:07:52] How do we help them? This is ultimately the the point of these series is to help them make more money. And one of the ways we can help them make money is by letting them know that they can bring us deals that we’re buying, right? But before you do that, here’s what you need to know.
Greg [00:08:14] The biggest thing they need to know, learn comping, learn how to analyze a specific area and what a property should really go for at an exact square footage with or without a pool. Every area is unique to its own kind of pocket, so agents really need to do their due diligence based off of which area they serve so that they can actually know, hey, a 2000 square foot property for an investor per se. Would probably be a buy at 1.4 million. Based off this, this, this.
Silva [00:08:53] And this specific neighborhood, for example.
Greg [00:08:55] Specific neighborhood.
Silva [00:08:56] Right.
Greg [00:08:57] Right. And it’s not it’s not it’s not a Zillow type of, you know, that to take in, you know, in one whole zip code where different pockets can weigh differently. So you have to, you know, focus on one specific area. And based off that, you can do marketing and then you can have those people you’re marketing to, expecting a price that you can actually deliver on, you know, because a lot of agents try to get listings based off of all these ludicrous numbers that they, you know, tell a sellers that they can sell it. Then when they get the listing, they’re not able to do that. And then guess what? They lose it and that person goes to somebody else and then that somebody else is able to explain to them why they should take, per se, not 3 million, but 2.6 million. Right. And then because of that, they get the listing.
Silva [00:09:48] Right.
Greg [00:09:49] And they’re able to make, you know, their commission. And you’re not. Yeah. So that’s what it comes down to, really doing your research.
Silva [00:09:57] I’m going to toot our horn a little bit and say that we are really good at working with agents. I’ve heard you guys spend time explaining all of this to them. So our door is always open. We always welcome agents calling us and connecting them with 1 to 1 of you guys and acquisition managers and experts. And you can look at a property, you can look at the square footage and the condition of the property, and you can you usually give them a pretty good assessment as to this is what we can pay for it and here’s why and here’s how you can explain it to the seller, and if you can make that happen, we’re ready to to make this work.
Greg [00:10:41] A lot of people, they do go going back to, you know, that thought process of them not looking long term when it comes to business. It’s because I think a lot of agents are at that point where they feel like it will happen, like longevity-wise.
Silva [00:10:59] Longevity-wise. Yeah.
Greg [00:11:01] A lot of people in business, just not in real estate, but they don’t really believe in themselves. They don’t really believe they’re going to stay in an industry for so long. So that non-belief factor causes them to just think about the now. They don’t even think, hey, if I really work with this guy, because a lot of offers we go against that, investment companies go against are retail buyer offers. Right. And a lot of them consist of a loan.
Silva [00:11:33] Right — end user.
Greg [00:11:33] User. Yes. And and just because you know, just because some buyer has a preapproval letter, that does not mean they’re guaranteed, you know, to be approved during the underwriting process. Right. So things can still fall through.
Silva [00:11:47] Or that it will pass inspection or that all the contingencies will be removed.
Greg [00:11:53] Or if it doesn’t appraise and if they’re able to pay that sum of cost. So, there’s different factors and there’s a lot of risk associated with taking that. That’s why a lot of people do come to us at times. Right. And takes, you know, let’s just say more of a sure thing. Yeah, right. Not a guarantee, but more of a sure thing. And, you know, we make it easy for for sellers and we make it easy for agents, you know, because we have an amazing staff team and we have, you know, a structured, you know, organization that’s able to provide, in a company to whatever tasks are needed in escrow.
Silva [00:12:28] Yeah.
Greg [00:12:29] Not just leaving it on, you know, the responsibility of the seller. So selling sellers agent but you know, we try to help them with the process of getting things complete when it comes to the transaction. So we try to make it a quick process for them. So we make sure that, you know, they’re not left in the open. They know, how we work and we make sure that we work with agents that are very transparent, honest. They do good work, they’re not trying to beat around the bush and do weird stuff. You know, we keep it transparent with them.
Silva [00:13:00] In reality, we buy properties for cash sometimes pretty quickly and have historically helped a lot of people out because there’s people that, you know, want to sell their property and get out of it. Sometimes they don’t even want to move their stuff. They don’t want to make any updates. They don’t want to, you know, do any any, you know, outdoor gardening work. They don’t want to cut the tree down. They don’t want to, you know, move, remove the carpet. They don’t want to spend another dime on that property. They want to sell it and be out of it for whatever reason. And this is a good way for a realtor to know that this is a property that’s good for an investor. Because the end user will have to spend that money, will have to spend the time to do the remodeling, to do the upgrades, to do the repairs, and also haul out all that trash and all everything else that’s associated with it. The property is in market when it’s in that condition. Right. So if you’re a realtor and you have a property that’s not going to market well to the end user, you may want to consider potentially, you know, connecting with a real estate company and a company like us that is reputable, you know, might be your bread and butter because if you bring this a good deal, can continue to bring us good deals.
Greg [00:14:23] I think we’re the best partner to realtors. Yeah. Who are not so after just luxury listings. Yeah. But for those realtors who are able to market to and work properties, you know, in the condition that needs work.
Silva [00:14:39] Yeah.
Greg [00:14:39] And, you know, if you’re a realtor and your niche is not selling luxury properties. Then you can make your niche to be marketing to and getting beaten down properties and coming to us as your permanent client.
Silva [00:14:55] And you can do volume.
Greg [00:14:56] And you can do heavy volume because we do close about a dozen a month, if not more. Right. So we’re we’re constantly buying on a heavy basis. We’re constantly working on properties, you know, and flipping them and having agents. A lot of times relist these properties and find a nice buyer for them. So we try to do what we can to be fair to agents and to motivate them and to really teach them how we work, how we look at things, and what they should look after when they send us stuff. Yeah, just so it’s more of like a partnership and not as much of, you know, you’re an agent. I’m an investor. You know, you have your role, I have mine. It’s more as, you know, let’s collaborate, let’s talk about things, let’s discuss them and why things are the way they are. Yeah. And go back to your client and try to guide them the right way. Because a lot of times, you know, new realtors especially, you know, sometimes aren’t given the heads up on like how they should really explain things to clients.
Silva [00:15:55] This has been really informative and really good. I hope it was helpful to realtors that are watching and agents and anyone who wants to, you know, get educated on how the industry works. I think it’s all really great information. But that said, make sure you subscribe, make sure you like, and comment for more information and some breakdown of the conversation we had, take a look below this video. If you’re listening to us on a podcast, check us out on YouTube and subscribe to us as well. Thank you. Thank you. A wealth of information. I’m Silva. This Prospect Group. See you next time.
