Dirty Deeds – DONE! Fix title problems and make money

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we've got Logan Fulmer with Assets Resolution Partners, and Logan flew in from San Antonio, Texas to talk about how his firm processes 200 plus transactions a year involving dirty deeds. If this is your first time tuning in, I am Steve Trang, sales trainer for some of the top wholesalers in the country, and I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. Question I get all the time is how to become one of the 100 millionaires.

The information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become one in the next five to seven years. Take consistent action, and you will become one. When you hear Nugget, please type into the comment section. And after the show, identify your single biggest takeaway and focus on just that for the next five to seven days. If you get value today, please tag a friend below, share this episode right now.

That way we can all grow together. And this is a live show, so please ask your questions for Logan to answer. You ready?

Logan Fulmer: Very good.

Steve: Alright. So first question is what got you into real estate?

Logan: Well, I was working in the oil field, in South Texas. And right about that time, I saw some houses that were rental type products. And I'd always heard folks that made a, you know, a good income, I guess, and a a real, I guess, built some wealth by the end of their lifestyle, but didn't have, like, the big degrees or doctors. They did it through real estate.

Steve: Yep. So I

Logan: thought, let me go give that a try. So it started with a couple rental houses, and they did pretty good, but they weren't kinda as quick as I thought. So that's when the when things started to spool, I said, what else is out there? Mhmm.

Steve: So what you were working out in oil fields?

Logan: Right.

Steve: Yeah. When when was this?

Logan: So this was starting around 2012.

Steve: 2012. Okay. And then you started buying properties, and it wasn't going the way you wanted it to go?

Logan: It was going alright. And at that point, I picked up about five rental properties.

Steve: Okay.

Logan: And there was some income coming in.

Steve: Pretty good.

Logan: It's good. I was happy with it. Yeah. But I felt like there's a little more ambition there, and I thought, well, I want this money to go further also because at the time, I was not using any debt.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: So at that point, I said, man, I gotta figure out how to make this go further. And I was faced with a choice to take on more debt or figure out how to do better deals that I could afford to do more of. So I had to do the second part.

Steve: And then so at this time, I mean, the property you're acquiring, I mean, what was the price point? Is

Logan: that total? Thousand dollar rental houses. In the town that I grew up in, they're about a $100,000 rental houses.

Steve: Okay. It's actually kinda more than I thought it would be. You know, going back nine years ago in San no.

Logan: South Texas. I I grew up in Temple, Texas, which is more central, more more Austin.

Steve: Okay.

Logan: So I'd say the the most expensive one I had was a 100. The lowest price I think I had was about 60 range.

Steve: So you were working in the oil field, so the money was pretty good. Right. Yeah. Okay. But that wasn't enough.

No. You wanna buy rental properties. And then you said, I need to get either debt or buy more or buy deeper. Right. So what'd you do?

Logan: So at that point, I recalled I didn't spend some time in Houston several years before then working for a broker before I went to oil fields, and I saw this side of town that didn't seem very valuable. And when you drive around it, I started to see the land transactions, and I realized people were buying these and doing something more with them. So I was the closest to San Antonio. I didn't live there at the time. I was all around, you know, basically close to the border doing pipeline stuff.

I'd come up on the weekends and see the East Side Of San Antonio. And the only thing separating high value property from low value property was this one highway, 281.

Steve: And

Logan: I thought, boy, if it just bled over, I'd be there.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: So I was I would work two to four weeks at a time, and I have a weekend off. I'd come to San Antonio and ride my bike and jog around these neighborhoods that resemble the ones that I'd seen in Houston, and specifically that one. So a couple months later, I came back and said, I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is. I started knocking on doors. And the neighborhood was actually pretty dang scary.

Steve: So the first thing you did was knocking on doors.

Logan: Yeah. I hadn't I didn't know what to do. At this time, this is ten years ago almost. There weren't a lot of podcasts out there. There wasn't YouTube wealth of information.

So I'm thinking, this is like the stupid guy. Like, well, that guy owns a lot next door I can see on the Internet. I'm gonna go knock and see if it'll sell to me.

Steve: But, I mean, you weren't even, like, pulling a foreclosure list. You were just door knocking.

Logan: Yeah. No way.

Steve: No way. Well, that's ambitious. I love that. So how'd that go?

Logan: Mixed bag. I mean, ultimately, I ended up buying, I don't know, a couple dozen lots out of the deal over the course of probably two years, I guess. But you got anything from, oh my gosh, I'm happy to sell you this. And back then, I was buying them for $23,000 up to 10,000 a piece.

Steve: You're buying lots, not houses. Right.

Logan: Well Right. Later on, I bought houses, but that time I was making lots because I didn't have to fiddle with them. I could buy it. And the property taxes were $200 a year because at this point, they were just they're so undervalued. The appraisal value had them for $5.

So I'd go to someone and say, I'll give you 5,000, and they'd say, great. I'm sick of mowing it. And, oh, by the way, there's $3 owed in taxes. I only get 2. I said, alright.

Fine. Let's do this.

Steve: Right. Why I mean, I get, like, you know, it's cheaper, but you couldn't do anything with it. Or I guess, what was the plan in acquiring the land?

Logan: So I will I'll I'll start out by saying this wasn't quite as methodical as some guys would say how they're brilliant. That that wasn't this. But I did see East Austin and parts of, the Heights in Houston change in a very short amount of time, and I knew that we were I was smart enough to know that we're in a low point in the economic cycle, two thousand ten, eleven, twelve.

Steve: Mhmm. And I

Logan: realized, boy, if anything lifts and this neighborhood gets any attention, it's just across the highway from real value.

Steve: So you're looking at future gentrification?

Logan: I just I thought there would be some value increasing. Yeah.

Steve: Stuff changed. So, so you're banking on on things turning around. You're still working on the oil fields?

Logan: Still working on the oil fields. At this point, I realized I can buy this land. I don't think I'm gonna lose money. I think I can find someone else to buy it from me for what I paid. Mhmm.

So there's no downside risk. But if it goes somewhere, the upside risk or the upside, you know, upside could be huge.

Steve: Right. Okay. So how did that go?

Logan: So it went pretty good. I didn't know what I'd stumbled upon yet. So I bought, kept mine, kept mine, and then, we started getting quite a bit of, pricing pressure on the barrel of oil in 2014. And at that point, I started to realize our company went from, like, 1,500 people down to 900, 700. Mhmm.

Steve: And I

Logan: could see the writing on the wall. Right. So I went and flipped a couple houses. I said, alright. I got a couple more bucks in my pocket.

Let me go buy a I paid 95,000 for the first one, put $20 into it, nights and weekends, working on it myself, and sold it for a 150. So I made, I don't know, $25, I think, $20 maybe. Gotcha. Like, alright. This works.

Yeah. So I started doing that a little bit more. I got laid off, which was really a good thing.

Steve: It's a mixed blessing.

Logan: So I had some cash still saved. I said, alright. I don't have enough to live my life forever, but I got a couple bucks. Lights won't get turned off soon. Mhmm.

Steve: And then

Logan: I got a call from this realtor telling me he was gonna give me $200,000 for this vacant lot that I had. I'm like, this is a scam. No way.

Steve: So I

Logan: was like, alright. Sure. Send me an offer. I laughed it off. He sent me an offer.

$1,200 is a 190.

Steve: Yeah.

Logan: I'm in the thing for $10,000

Steve: Right.

Logan: Three years ago. So instantly when I saw that, I said my life has changed. But that that's where the understanding of the land and the the, I guess, the career took a different

Steve: turn. So you were over oil at this point?

Logan: Yeah. At that point, I'm like, this is oil to me. This is, like, this is oil.

Steve: So you're all in on real estate. Yeah. So then what's your next thing? You get this lump sum, 190 k or whatever the number is after taxes or whatever. What are you doing?

What are you doing with that?

Logan: Nothing. I just did I got that, put it in my bank account, and thought, man, alright. I'm gonna flip some more houses. Because at this point, you can't buy you can't replicate a three or four year process, like, overnight. And I recognized that.

Yeah. But I knew that I could go generate some ordinary income by doing the house flipping. So I did some more of that, and I bumped into another guy who was he had owned some land around where I was at. And we started talking and said, man, let's look at some of these deals. And he said, you ever been to foreclosure auction?

I'm like, no. What's that? So you mentioned the foreclosures. There we go. So this was about 2,000 and, I guess, $14.15 range maybe.

So he'd been buying foreclosures, had a rental portfolio, and he said, let's just go check this out. So we go to the auction and walk away with a couple houses for, you know I think we bought them for about 50¢ on the dollar, the repair dollar, you know, lipstick on a pig, $20,000, cleaned them up, made them safe, and we resold them, and we almost doubled our money there. Yeah. And then I thought, alright. This is the deal.

Steve: Well, it's crazy. Right? Because you mentioned there weren't podcasts and YouTube and this and that. Like, people forget how hard it was not that long ago, and they're always thinking, you know, it's so hard today. It's so hard today.

Logan: Right.

Steve: Right? It's like, you don't know what it was like before we had data. Right? So okay. So you go to Super Tuesday.

You stop buying foreclosures. Then you you partner up with that guy. What was your next step in your journey?

Logan: So we flip a couple houses. Mhmm. And this guy is much older than me, super bright, very experienced business person. I'm looking to him kinda like a mentor, I guess. He's got his company.

I got my company. His companies were a lot more than mine. So I'm thinking maybe I can learn something from this guy. Yeah. He's got some re more resources than I have too.

So we walked away from the auction. One month, we bought one house, and he said I'm I'm not like, alright. We're gonna spend this much to paint it, this much for the roof. And he goes, wonder how much it's worth right now. I'm I'm like, what are you talking about?

Again, it's all this is new. And he goes, what if we put a sign in the yard right now? I'm like, oh, let's try it. How much can we make? And the comps didn't show much.

It was in downtown neighborhood that was changing, but I didn't know. I thought, alright. Well, here's the dummy answer. We paid 40 for it. Let's put 60.

That means we make 20.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: For sale by owner, sign in the yard, my number, sold it to you. The trustee's deed was not even recorded when I had a contract to sell this thing. Yeah. And I'm then all of a sudden, another light bulb went off. Game just changed again.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: I don't have to do construction all the time anymore, which I don't like. So that was another kinda

Steve: Okay. So what were some of the struggles then, you know, along that journey? Because it's not like you just boom immediately doing 200 transactions a year. Like, what were some of the challenges along the way?

Logan: So right around that time, it changed a lot. You know, you start looking at this. This is the deal thing. I'm always good as my next deal or my last deal, I guess. Mhmm.

You start to look at this and say, where's this gonna go? What am I gonna do with this? You'll get the deals over the course of a year. I kinda did a year end review there and started to see which ones were the better ones. Now someone across something that was really interesting, that a couple of the ones that had some hassles seemed to be the ones that I did better on.

Mhmm. And that was another moment there. So there's a little bit of misalignment, I guess. It was just kinda struggle because I didn't really know where it was gonna go, but I'm trying to build, trying to grow, and it it was just really hazy for me at that time, I guess. It wasn't clear.

Today, I can tell you what I do, and there's nothing else that's clear. Mhmm.

Steve: You know exactly what you're doing today. But at that time, you didn't. But I think that there's something here, just kind of a point of emphasis, because everyone does this, is you actually took the time to actually go back and look at the deals you've closed and saw which ones are most profitable. Because that's actually one of the things we do initially when I'm consulting with somebody. I said, well, let's look at the deals you've done.

Where did they come from?

Logan: Okay.

Steve: Well, how much did you make on those? Right? Which, like, which which list did you pull it from? Which medium did you get for them to reach out to you? Like, okay.

If we know the list and we know the medium, like, let's just do more of that. And so There you go. So you had the the foresight, right, to to do that. So that's huge. And then so at that point, you're like, okay.

Now we're gonna go harder on the hassle deals.

Logan: There's one that stands out to me that this particular deal has completely changed my life and business forever. And I remember when I was buying those properties, I was buying most of them with title insurance. And sometimes people would tell me, I don't want it. This they want I wanna go to a title company. I want money at my house.

And I'm looking at my head saying, alright. I got this much saved. I own this much. This guy only wants $3,000. I'm willing to take the risk.

I look in the land records and there's a deed to him. I'm like, this dude owns it. I go to his house with $3 and I call a lawyer. He gets me a deed and the dude signs it, notarized it, we record it, and I got a deal. Mhmm.

Well, I didn't know how to abstract very well. And that one deed was one of eight nine. So I bought one ninth of this dang thing.

Steve: Okay. So it wasn't so much that he had

Logan: He sold me one ninth, not the whole thing. But what

Steve: does it say on what did it say in the deed? Did it say, like, he was one of nine owners, or he just said he was the only member?

Logan: No. A lot of undivided interest deeds don't say that. It Really? Right.

Steve: So undivided interest. So if they own a percentage of it, you don't know how many other people are out there.

Logan: That's the most common way it ends up. Yeah. Interesting. Very. So someone did that to him, and I'm like, oh, there's two deeds.

One from this guy, one to him. Boom. Turns out somebody else in her family passed away Mhmm. That was a sibling to that person who deeded it, and that sibling's children own part of

Steve: it. Mhmm.

Logan: I didn't know any of this because I didn't had no clue what I was doing.

Steve: So I go

Logan: to the title company, and later on, someone said you should maybe get a title report to make sure what the work you did was good. And I was like, whatever. Sure. Well so when I went through that We

Steve: learn one way or another. Yeah. We can listen to advice or we can experience it.

Logan: Right. And, again, my biggest role probably in our business now is risk management and strategy. And at that point, I measure my risk. Right? It's $3,000 relative to the business I'm doing at the point.

It's not a big deal.

Steve: Yep. What could go wrong?

Logan: What can go wrong?

Steve: So you learned what could go wrong?

Logan: Mhmm.

Steve: So what did you do about that?

Logan: So I went to the title company and said, oh, man, what do I do? And they're like, yeah. I call real estate attorney. So that takes me down this different journey. I've probably worked at 20 or more 25 real estate attorneys.

And it's just like a doctor. Oh my gosh. I have a problem on my ear. I might go to the doctor. Well, you're in a heart doctor's office.

That doesn't work.

Steve: And you

Logan: go to the heart doctor, but you find out there are 10 different heart doctors. Real estate is the same way. So after sorting through a bunch of those guys, they bring out this big old brown book called the Texas Property Code. And then the other one is the trust code and the estate's code and the tax code, sorting through it. I'm just paying these guys hourly working through this process.

Yeah. So I did that. After I learned on that specific one, this took a lot of time. I did this for about two years, and that's how I started to learn it. But that specific one, I'd say, well, what do we do about this?

He said, well, the law says you can or can't do this. How about that? Nah. That's not gonna work either. He's going back to his book.

And he'd call his friend and give him, you know, an experience. And in the end of that specific one, it turned out there were some airship documents that needed to be completed.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: And I started digging up the other family members and calling them and saying, look. This is an honest mistake. Big mess. Can I buy you out? Mhmm.

They all agreed. At the time, the property wasn't real valuable. So I was able to buy each person at a time and then pay the attorney to help them do the airship work.

Steve: Right.

Logan: But at that time, I got to watch and see exactly what he did to learn it.

Steve: And this is something that, you know, we've had, we call him crazy uncle Carl. Right? Carl Spivogel. Right. And this kinda, like, sounds a little bit what he does.

Right? I mean, he finds properties with challenging title, and he he kills it with those. So it sounds like that's kinda what you, happened upon. Yeah. Right?

So you did this deal. You're able to buy out. You found everybody else.

Logan: Uh-huh.

Steve: You bought out everybody else.

Logan: Bought it out.

Steve: And then you've done your first challenging deed.

Logan: Yep. That was a tough the first tough one.

Steve: And that was the one that when you're doing the year long review or a year end review where you see this is like, oh, this is our our most profitable.

Logan: So I hadn't sold that one yet. Okay. But I started getting those calls again. And I was the guy that called the neighborhood clearly way before everybody else, but then the next round of movers, I actually sold it for less than it was worth, I found out later. And somebody made money on top of me, which I'm totally happy with.

Yeah. I started to get those calls, and and they started telling telling me they'd give me this much and that much. I got multiple calls. So in my head, that was my number at the moment. And even though I hadn't sold it, I knew that was kinda gonna be one of my better deals for the year.

Steve: Okay. And then this is when you doubled out on that?

Logan: Yeah. At that point, I said, alright. I'm willing to try more of these, but the problem is this took me several years. So at this point

Steve: Several years on that deal?

Logan: That deal took about a year. But to understand this model and to really get the resources behind it and what it took to effectively do it. Yeah. That took several years. So that would be about 2017 probably is when it started to become fairly effective.

Steve: Got it. Okay. So that was the first one that was challenging. Were they all challenging? Did they get easier with experience?

Like

Logan: No. Well, it was more about how to think about it and having the right resources and figure come into the right solution. So there are countless amount of title problems. I can tell you probably the top five that I encountered. That's your Okay.

Breaking the title chain is probably one of the most common ones. Fractured interest

Steve: Let's explain what that means.

Logan: Okay. So breaking the title chain means you buy a property Mhmm. Maybe in the seventies, you sell it to me. Mhmm. And then you don't record that deed or I don't record it.

Somebody makes a mistake, but I'm moving the house. It's mine. Now I sell it to Johnny. Johnny sells it to Jenny. And in 2021, the owner of the property at that time wants to sell it, but there's a gap in the title chain.

There was a missing deed. Mhmm. So it's most title company won't don't wanna insure that because they don't know what happened there.

Steve: Right. Okay. So what what'd you call it? A break in the

Logan: Breaking the title chain. Yeah.

Steve: Breaking the title chain. Alright. So that's the first one.

Logan: Sounds really common. Landlocked land is I won't call it a title problem, but it's certainly a defect. It's uninsurable by most title companies that you gotta solve.

Steve: Alright. You're talking about, no, ingress or egress. That's what you're talking about.

Logan: There's no valid instrument that gives unrestricted in ingress, egress.

Steve: Yeah. So they can't park their car at the house. They would literally have to walk across somebody's land Without trespassing. Yeah.

Logan: They can't get there without trespassing.

Steve: Right. Okay. So number that's two.

Logan: Yep. Scriber's errors or invalid instruments

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: In the title chain. There are tons of Which one? Scriber's errors. Scriber's. There are tons of mistakes.

Attorney's gonna make your document, your deed to sell your property, and he gets his template, but he forgets to change the whole legal description, just part of it. You have the wrong legal description. And you bought your property through title or where else, but you think it's right, it's wrong. Mhmm. So a lot of times, you have to go back and correct that.

Or maybe if somebody sells a property and they're an administrator or executor in a state, and they just sign it individually Mhmm. They didn't sign it in their correct capacity, now you have an erroneous

Steve: Yeah. Invalid or avoidable. Right. Yep. And then what's the fifth?

Logan: So orphaned estates, or fractured ownerships, probably the toughest problem to deal with. That's like the one I told you about the first one. There's that one. So then Oh, judgments and liens are huge. What does that mean?

Credit card liens or judgments.

Steve: But you can

Logan: find a credit card.

Steve: Right? Or no? You

Logan: can. But let's say you're selling a $100,000 house. They got a $80,000 loan, so they have 20,000 equity and the credit card bill is $30. Mhmm. Or child support in Texas.

Some in Texas. I've gotta go back and say that. All the laws are crazy different in different places. Yeah. But we have a ton of AG, leans attorney general, and those are child

Steve: support. Yeah. So I'm thinking as far as, like, you know, scriber or is it scriber errors?

Logan: Scriber's error. Yeah.

Steve: Scriber's error, landlocked. I mean, aren't these things that the title company should have figured out and title insurance would just pay out?

Logan: You know, it doesn't really work like that. Title insurance is a thing now, but if you start to travel back in time, probably around the fifties or sixties, so many transactions happened without title insurance. So you see a lot fewer errors currently Got it. Like in in recent deals. But old ones, they're everywhere.

Steve: So those are the the most challenging issues.

Logan: Yeah.

Steve: So and you were running into it repetitively. So this is the problem that you're like, okay. If I can solve this problem, I'm gonna have a real, like, do our business. Yeah. Okay.

So what was the first step then in creating a business around this?

Logan: So I had to be I get I had to get good at it. Mhmm.

Steve: So I

Logan: just spent a lot of time figuring these out. And is there a lot of technical details, but I had to find the right law school? No. I didn't. I looked at going to it several years ago, and I found that it was gonna work better for me at quarterback all the attorneys I hired Mhmm.

Because I would simply lose a lot of money by becoming a lawyer, basically.

Steve: Because of education cost?

Logan: No. That was not a big deal there. It was the time.

Steve: Got it.

Logan: Being an entrepreneur's life time the enter opportunity cost is huge.

Steve: Okay. So instead of going to get your JD Mhmm. You decided to hire a bunch of attorneys. Yep. So is that like a law firm?

Logan: No. Not a law firm. Okay. So I'm a principal in a property, so I buy it. These folks are my representatives, my agents, my attorneys.

So So they're wrapping me to solve problems.

Steve: Are they attorneys that work

Logan: For me. They work within me.

Steve: Is it are they all at different law firms?

Logan: Some of them are some of them are independent guys. Some of them work for firms. One of them is our corporate counsel. That's us completely.

Steve: Gotcha.

Logan: And those, again, and Brad told you about, they're different attorneys all the time. One is incredible at drafting docs, incredible at case law, incredible at research. One of them is the mouthpiece. He's a wheel and dealing son of a gun, and he's horrible paperwork.

Steve: You know, Louie's wheel and dealing. He's not gonna be good at paperwork.

Logan: Right. Yeah. So we were able to narrow it down to about four guys that are

Steve: Okay. So you have four or five guys that you work with on a regular basis. Are are that retainer or how does that work?

Logan: Yeah. Most Three of those four are one of them works directly with us all the time. Gotcha.

Steve: Okay. So you you sought out to solve this problem. You you're quarterbacking attorneys. Mhmm. So when did you first realize that this is something that you could capitalize on as a business?

Logan: So I I guess as a technician, you know, I became good at it. So I'm still in the deals, working on them exactly, and and that's exactly what I'm doing. And then I ran into this guy that I went to college with his, well, I've known his sister or his wife and her brothers for my whole life.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: He says he wants to do a real estate deal. He's been looking on bigger pockets, and this guy agreed to sell him the house.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: And he didn't know what to do. I said, alright. Let's go. So I'll go with him. We get a contract signed.

I tell him we're gonna split this thing up. I'll help you. We do it, and it comes out to be a really good deal. Calls me back the next week. And after about three or four of those calls, I'm like, alright, Ryan.

Name is Ryan McDonald. Mhmm. He's now a partner in our company. But I called and said, you know what? There's something more here.

Steve: If you

Logan: think you wanna do this, let's do this.

Steve: So I

Logan: started to support him, teach him what I built over the last several years, and let him kinda take the ball and run with that. So that's when it started to become a business with more than just me and one guy doing a couple of deals.

Steve: Okay. So when you were doing it regularly as a as a technician, when was that?

Logan: '17. Right?

Steve: '17. And that's when you, created, asset resolution partners?

Logan: So, you know, we were just kinda operated, as most real estate operators do, you know, a couple of LLCs, and you're just doing deals and depends on where they go.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: But ARP, the the formal branding is about two years old.

Steve: Two years old. Okay. And then you got three, four, five guys there. Right. Alright.

So walk me through a deal today. Right? Like, let's say, when would I call Logan? Right? I'm a real estate investor.

I'm in Dallas. When am I calling Logan?

Logan: That's a really, really good question. So the way that works, most of our business now comes from wholesalers, realtors. We have folks from title companies. I get attorneys, judges in Bexar County even call me sometimes and say, here's this problem. Either I need an answer because you understand it or we want you to help these people.

Can you do that? So usually, I tell people, you need to solve try to solve this on your own. Go do that. Here's some information. And folks have to try.

Otherwise, they don't realize what we're really able to do for them. Right. So they gotta go and get beat up, waste some money, get headaches.

Steve: They need they need to appreciate the value that you bring. Completely. Otherwise Otherwise, they're like, this guy's ripping me off? Is that kinda?

Logan: Yeah. They just say, we I've gotta discount the deal because I'm I've gotta make a living. I don't understand that upfront. So I encourage folks. Usually, the first call, if they haven't gone through this process of title company telling them it can't close and the realtor or the judge telling them it doesn't work, I usually give them as much free advice as I can Mhmm.

And say, I encourage you to go try this because this is how you're gonna do the best on it. If that doesn't work and based on the problem, I know if they're coming back. If it doesn't work, call me back in a month or two, and then we'll take a different look at it.

Steve: So plan a, go do this on your own.

Logan: Yeah. And I'll tell them someone in our office is very we're very open with it. We'll tell you everything you should do.

Steve: Mhmm. And then they're like, hey. This sucks.

Logan: Yeah. They're like, here's the kicker. They go find an attorney. The first attorney says, forget about

Steve: it. Mhmm.

Logan: The second attorney says, I can't promise I can fix this, but I promise I'm gonna bill you every month. It's $300 an hour. Let's have our first meeting. And they're like, you know? Alright.

So at that point, they're really frustrated.

Steve: Mhmm. So they come back to you. Yep. And then they're like, Logan, like, do do they just sell you the deal? Like, what's that process?

You know,

Logan: it depends on who else involved. I mean, we've gotten like I said, the most the majority of our business does come refer from referrals these days. And, it depends on who is if they if you got a realtor or a wholesaler or somebody involved, I'm happy to pay them their fee or whatever it is. If they wanna participate, we'll let them join us and take a ride. They can learn Mhmm.

Some of that. So a lot of times, folks are fatigued and they say, just pay me out. I wanna go so we can pay them a fee too.

Steve: So more often, they'd rather just take a lump sum today?

Logan: I'd say about half, I'd say.

Steve: So half will take a lump sum today. The other half would be like, hey. Let's I'll

Logan: take a ride. Let's go.

Steve: And then when they take a ride, like, what is the expected payouts, like, mean?

Logan: Oh, it is so anywhere from $1 to a $100,000.

Steve: I don't know.

Logan: It is such a huge range. It really depends on the work we've gotta do. And you

Steve: don't know until it's done.

Logan: You don't know until it's done. Gotcha. So when folks come into our office and and we say, look, this is conceptually how this might work. If they say we're interested in that, I tell them, alright. Look, we're gonna talk in a week.

And me or one of the guys in the office need to do a little bit of prelim research, and we're able to flesh out an abstract of what we think it's gonna look like, we can kinda hit the nail on the head pretty close now. We go back to them in a week and say, look. We've identified you have 37 owners to this property. You have a break in the title chain and about 15 judgments against these other owners that never pay their child support.

Steve: This is

Logan: what we think it looks like based on that and the market value. Internally, we think we're gonna bill this much to ourselves for our genealogist that's in house, our attorneys in house. Yeah.

Steve: Genealogist in house.

Logan: Yep. Gotcha. That guy's a game changer for us now.

Steve: He's like an ancestry.com.

Logan: Oh, he's like he is ancestry.com kinda.

Steve: Okay.

Logan: So So then we go back to him and we say, this is what the deal is gonna look like. I'm willing to make you a partner with me, or I'm gonna pay you this amount today. You give me your interest. I'm now the owner, and I'm gonna go fix these problems on my own. Got it.

That's probably the most common one. Folks say my family's fighting in the in the airship problem.

Steve: When when

Logan: it's the landlocked deal, they just wanna sell and walk. They're done.

Steve: Oh, yeah. I would definitely, for landlocked, I'd rather just take it myself. So let's say we got a landlocked deal. How do you fix that problem?

Logan: So it's interesting. On that one, more less land less land is locked than you would think. Mhmm. About half the land that folks call locked is not locked. But the problem is people that write easements are people that are fighting with their neighbors.

They're selling off their cousin's portion over here. They're gonna keep this one. It's never clean development deals. Mhmm. Docs are screwed up.

And half the time or more, they have an easement. It's in the land records, but no one can find it. Gotcha. So the way we figured this out is we bought a great property for a fraction of the value. And one of my guys sat down and we started thinking through it, and I said, there's an easement here.

I know it. Based on the way this is laid out, there's no way there was not an easement based on the fact pattern we know, what the neighbors have told us. So we sat down. There was one, two, three, four, five tracks that had joined it. Wrote down the legal descriptions and abstracted each one back for a hundred years.

Found every buyer and seller of that land for a hundred years. So we had, you know, a ton of people. We started running grantor grantee searches, and we found a partition deed that was back from the sixties or fifties, I think.

Steve: Mhmm. And

Logan: our easement was right there shown on a plat they drew. Yeah. Printed that out, sent it to the title company. They said, oh, we'll insure on this. No problem.

Steve: So this sounds like a nightmare. Yeah.

Logan: Like, let's say You gotta be gliding for punishment.

Steve: So let's say, like, alright. I'm I'm sitting here. I said, man, like, Logan's business sounds awesome. He's doing 200 plus transactions a year. I'm gonna move to Texas, and I'm gonna compete against Logan.

Logan: Dude, come on. What's the I'll help you.

Steve: And what what what would be involved? Right? I mean, you get all these different people. Like, what would I have to do to compete against you?

Logan: You know, I think that's a challenge because you've gotta have the resources because these deals don't close quickly. They're all long and slow. So you gotta have the resources. You gotta build the knowledge. Mhmm.

You gotta have the patience. And I think it takes a special personality. Typical real estate investors want it to be fast, cheap, and easy.

Steve: Yeah. Sounds great.

Logan: Right? And we're the opposite of every one of those. We're slow, hard, and expensive. Yeah. So I wouldn't really wish it on anybody and it you really have to build up.

I mean, it's it's tough. Folks, a lot of times, will call with a deal that they don't wanna work with us. They think they wanna do it. Families call in the city they've been referred in. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Logan: like I told you earlier, I'm willing to give them every piece of the puzzle. Yeah. The problem is they're gonna have to spend $20,000 in legal fees over a year. They're gonna be knocking on doors across Texas, And most for that.

Steve: It's a slow build. I mean, this kinda reminds me back in the days when I was doing a lot of short sales. Mhmm. And I I would get a listing, and I would work with the seller, and I would work with the buyers and this and that. And it was, like, nine months of, like, banging my head against the wall.

And then maybe I get a yes. Yeah.

Logan: So that's the kicker.

Steve: So for you, I mean, someone brings a deal to you, like, are you closing a 100% of them? Or

Logan: A 100% of the deals that we commit to do, we close. Okay. And when we run into risk, sometimes we have to wind up in the courthouse. You know, a lot of folks don't wanna have to deal with that. I don't truthfully wanna have to deal with it either.

And I would say a very small fraction of our deals actually wind up there.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: But, you know, for example, you got 35 people. I sent you that an airship document

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: That we could show soon. Yeah. And whenever we do show that, you look you'll visualize all these people.

Steve: Brian, can you pull that up? Let's see if you can pull it up here. Let's talk about that. So that was was it not Picadilly, was it? Diller?

Diller. Diller. Really? That's, like, the real street name? No.

Logan: But that's a lucky a lucky a Lucky thing we have.

Steve: Okay. Alright. So let's talk about this property. What prompted you to how did this property come to you?

Logan: So we got a call from a neighbor on that one, and a neighbor knew a realtor in the neighborhood. And the neighbor said, there's something going on at this house. It's been vacant for as long as we can remember. The weeds are really tall. The city cuts it every couple weeks.

The houses looks like it's falling over. No one's been here in ten years. Do you know anything about it? I said, I don't know anything, but let's have a look. Mhmm.

Steve: So he's got it right here. We're seeing the paternal side, and there's also a maternal side.

Logan: That's one.

Steve: So look. We're looking at the paternal side. So what am I looking at on the paternal side?

Logan: So you're looking at there were two owners

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: And they were married. The the maternal paternal sides are more or less similar, but, ultimately, you're looking at multiple layers of ownership, what I would call fragmented ownership and unresolved estates, orphaned estates. So you've got a lot of different problems here. Airship work's not done. You have tons of unknown and unidentified errors.

And And we and that genealogy information had to be built in our office because no one else has a record collection like that for the property.

Steve: So I'm I'm counting all these boxes here. There's about 30 some on just the 30 plus on just the paternal side.

Logan: So there are about 60 total.

Steve: Same thing on the maternal side.

Logan: There are about 60 people. About 30 of those were dead, and about 30 were alive. So the

Steve: ones that are dead wait. I mean

Logan: So when they die, their interest would divest into

Steve: Their kids.

Logan: Their kids or sometimes they don't have any kids. It's gonna go their siblings or up to their parents and their siblings.

Steve: So in each one of these boxes, you had to reach out to somebody?

Logan: Well, the the deceased ones, no. But we had to collect information about them to find out who to call about them.

Steve: And we Right. So you're calling them. You're calling someone else.

Logan: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.

Steve: Exactly. Each one of these boxes, there's at least one call to have, like, a weird conversation. Like, hey. I'm calling you about this property on Dilly Dilly. Right.

You know anything about that? And what what let's talk about that conversation. What is that conversation? Right? You're calling me because someone that, you know, one of my parents had interest in it, and they passed away.

Yeah. You're calling me totally unexpected call. What is this conversation?

Logan: You know, it's going a lot of different ways, but we've gotten to the point where it's very similar now. We just say, look. We're a real estate company that gets referred in to projects like this. This is an abandoned a vacant, a vacant abandoned house. It's got a ton of money owed in taxes.

We're and we're interested somewhat. This is the kind of case we deal with. If you're interested in working with us on it, we would like that. If you're not, okay. Mhmm.

Steve: You

Logan: know? But we just kinda it's a lot of real estate folks are real aggressive in their calls and really pushy, and we try not to be like that Yeah.

Steve: Because they

Logan: didn't get you anywhere. And in this case, they may not wanna work with us. If a bunch of them don't, doesn't work.

Steve: But you're but if you commit to it, you're closing on it. So, like, how does that conversation work?

Logan: So we well, we haven't committed yet. So these are all these calls. We may call 30 people.

Steve: Okay. So you're doing all all the due diligence prior to committing to the deal. Right.

Logan: So A

Steve: lot of due diligence before you even have the deal locked up.

Logan: So sometimes what we'll do is when we see the airship chart start to fan out like this one, I'll tell the guys the office, woah. Identify two or three who don't call them. See if anybody even cares

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: Before you spend all this time. So the early conversation, it's gotta set in. Folks have to think about it. They have to make sure that we're not some Algerian in a Croatian basement trying to steal money from their Bitcoin account. You know, that's that's what they think.

Yeah. Because this is like a crazy claim. Hey. You are a 7% owner in this property that you've never been to. You didn't even you never been in that city.

Steve: Never heard of.

Logan: Right.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, I wanna take a couple steps back here. You you said you're really good at pulling abstract title. Yep.

Right. So do you have an in house title company? Is that one of the attorneys, or is that something other?

Logan: So that's us. So initially, when I was working with these attorneys, they kept telling me the law. Well, I'd go back to the title company and say, this is what the attorney told me, and they say, but we won't insure that. So I'm like, well, it says in the property code right here. And they say, look, we're a risk rider.

We underwrite risk. We're no different than farmers for your auto insurance. If you got a bunch of tickets in DWI, your rate, we might not want to underwrite you. We're not gonna underwrite those decisions. So there are title underwriting manuals, tons of them.

Each company has their own. Mhmm.

Steve: So

Logan: I start finding these, getting a mask and begging, paying, and start to read them. I started to see some common themes through them. Yeah. And I was gonna start to understand how does that apply. And that's where our decisions have to start, actually.

Steve: So you're So probably more sophisticated than a title insurance underwriter at this point.

Logan: I'm I that's how I feel.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So you can see something that's like, okay. That's a good one. That's insurable.

That one's definitely not insurable.

Logan: What you run into is you've got the judicial system, which is made up of judges, attorneys, codified laws, and case law. And then you've got title companies who are willing to insure and underwrite this stuff. And then you have somebody who's gonna make a business case out of it. So those are kinda like three big circles. And we're right there in the whole of the defensive line, very in the middle where they all overlap.

Mhmm. Because the attorneys know the law side title, they know a lot of the law, but there's some parts that they don't get on the business case.

Steve: In the

Logan: business case, people miss a lot of that. So we're, like, kind of in the middle.

Steve: And then you also mentioned you had your person that was basically Ancestry. Where does one go? Like, let's say again, you know, hypothetical, I'm going to Dallas to compete against you. Right? Mhmm.

Logan: Where do

Steve: I find a genealogist?

Logan: Google. And they're, like, they're very special people. They're engineer minded. Okay. Typically very reclusive.

They like to dig and research, and they're what you might think, kind of.

Steve: I mean, they're they're I'm I'm kinda picturing, like, this is someone like, was it Julie Roberts and, like, is it with the Pelican Brief where she's, like, with the microfilm? Right. Okay.

Logan: That's that's that's perfect. There are a ton of different, websites, tons of, libraries you have to subscribe to that have biostatistics, historic data, things like that, you know, across The United States Yeah. That, they're part of. So we can get a lot of information.

Steve: So, this is not a very exciting business.

Logan: Depends. If you're a nerd that likes this stuff, man, it's super exciting. So You would not believe the conversations we have guys running around the office in that they found the death certificate and the adopted child is not listed on there. Like, everyone goes bananas.

Steve: Yeah. But I'm bringing this up because you're a very well known commodity. Right? Like, when, we posted, like, you know, we got Logan coming on. It's like, so many people came out.

I was like, oh my god. Logan's the best. Logan's a great resource. This is in that. So given this world that, again, you know, I'm maybe biased.

Like, it's not terribly exciting. Right? It's not like I can't wait to do dirty deeds. Right. Right?

Because it's like, I can't wait to do a short sale, I guess, or I can't wait to do a a probate. It's like Yeah. The payoff is good, but you're not excited about that long wait. How did you come

Logan: about to be This is what folks if you're very curious, very interested in a person that can't live without the solve, once you get in, you have to solve it. That's the kind of person that should deal with this stuff. There are a

Steve: ton

Logan: of people that I think really should spend some time to learn, like, at a high level because 50% of this stuff can be solved relatively easily once you understand the process and really make through it. The other half is stuff that I would never recommend anybody do unless they're a specialist.

Steve: And, you know, going back to, Carl, you know, I've had a couple of conversations with him. And basically, what he says, like, look, you don't have to learn all this stuff. You just have to have attorneys available to answer a lot of these questions.

Logan: So it's interesting. I know Carl pretty well. Mhmm. He brings in the attorneys much earlier than us. Yeah.

We are more technically oriented, and the attorneys come in when it's document drafting time, lawsuit time Mhmm. You know, settlement time. They come in at that point. But Yeah. A lot of the early work we do, and and he was like, let's just go to the attorneys.

It's just different ideology, but, I had to understand what was right or wrong and what attorney was going down the right path at.

Steve: So I

Logan: had to learn the process before I even knew which attorney to hire. Hire. That's how I felt.

Steve: Now going back to what I was asking earlier, like, you're obviously well known in Texas. What did you do to become well known in Texas for I've got a challenging title. Let's call Logan. Ah. It's like you're like, call Saul.

Logan: You know, a lot of that was on the Internet. Folks, like we talked about now, the digital era is a game changer.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: And I spent a lot of time thinking this does two things. This is good for other folks because I can help share my experiences with them, and I may have the opportunity to get some new business. Mhmm. And it's interesting. No one talks about the clean, easy deal.

It's simple, and they made a fair margin and moved on. That's you don't hear about that on the Internet. You hear about the train wrecks or the home runs. And it's fifty fifty. Right?

So I'm thinking, well, I like a good train wreck. So when You love NASCAR. Yeah. Yeah. So I spent a lot of time on the Internet doing that and realized a lot of folks were interested.

And then, I spent a lot of time just going out to events, title company events, meetups Mhmm. And just talking to people.

Steve: I mean

Logan: so Once people realized they could trust us and we were we understood what we were doing, the word spread really quick because not really anybody does it.

Steve: Alright. Was it a lot of networking or was it, like, a lot of panelist work, speaking engagements? Like, what?

Logan: You know, only in the last couple of years I've started doing the speaking stuff because folks say it's interesting and folks won't hear about it. But before then, it was, let's go to this REI meet up and shake hands and talk to you. And guys, at that time, there were three of us. Alright, guys. Each person is seeing about 25 cards.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: Like, that was the deal. We gotta cover canvases. This is guerrilla marketing, like knocking on doors.

Steve: Right. Gotcha. So it

Logan: really, really helped spread it out. But the Internet is what helped opened it up beyond our town. Well, elaborate on that. The Facebook and other social media platforms

Steve: are really important. Posting content? Are you in Facebook groups interacting with people? Are you recording stuff on Instagram? Like, how are you leveraging Internet

Logan: to social media? Posting detail oriented stuff. Our business perspective has a lot of common sense, risk management, good solid business principles. So I like to talk about those along with the nasty real estate problems. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Logan: people are interested because, surprisingly, the good common business principles aren't as common as you would think.

Steve: That was nice.

Logan: They're common sense. So Yeah. We started to share that a little bit because folk we started to get good feedback and folks said, man, these are decent folks. They got a good head on their shoulder. They're pretty darn good technicians.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: Let's reach out. So that's what my inbox is full of. The phone's ringing off the hook. We have problems.

Steve: That's awesome. Right? To be the the problem solver, you're kinda like, I can't remember the name of the guy in Pulp Fiction. Right? Was it, like, tiger or whatever?

Like, the lion? The fixer. The fixer. Yeah. Right.

I was like, hey. Let's get the fixer involved.

Logan: So, you know, this is the positive side. There's also a side that's less fun because you're solving a lot of folks' problems. But every once in a while, you okay. Let's go to this. You have 30 people.

Right? The chance of getting everyone in those 30 people to be normal, sane, reasonable, rational, and interested is low.

Steve: So it's almost zero. Okay.

Logan: So there are gonna be times where that happens, and you have 25 family members who wanna do something and the 26 doesn't.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: And that might be the reason that this thing hasn't gotten fixed in the past. Mhmm. So a lot of times, we have to to deal with that, and that's the fun that's not the fun part. That's the part where they're mad, they're unhappy. But that we normally find the person that stops the problem from being solved, if it's not too crazy, they're the aggressive person, the mean person, the bad person.

That's usually the kind of the last hurdle there.

Steve: How do you fix that?

Logan: There's usually a solid judicial system for that. Usually.

Steve: So, like, like, you run into a situation. Right? Like, you know, this is your deal that you you're doing now. Like, how do you solve that problem? What what is step one, two, and three?

Logan: When there's a problem like that, I push it off to the end. Say, look. We're in this thing. We've already bought in. We think we wanna do this.

Let's just work our way through it until the outstanding problems are major problems. It's not the little ones we know how to fix. And we wind up at the end. And I'll give you an example. Like a landlocked deal, we really thought we had the thing solved, and a couple people didn't wanna sign the easement, which actually benefited them because it allowed them to traverse other property to theirs and allowed us to do it as well.

They changed their mind. So there are several different types of easements, the Texas property codes. We had to file an easement lawsuit. And at that point, you know, we get the easement because in Texas, you can't. You're not supposed to have land that's landlocked.

So there's a solve one way or the other, several different easements.

Steve: There's different definitely ways to solve it. But let's say we got five heirs Mhmm. Or wanna work with you. Fifth one's telling you to piss off.

Logan: You know, it's crazy, man. One guy says, I haven't paid taxes in twenty years. I never cared. Most of these are family problems too. But he says, I have a bad history with Johnny Boyer.

He beat me up when I was 13, and I still hate that SOB.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: That's the deal. Ultimately, we look at the whole case and say, are we looking at one guy who's really obstructing this entire thing? Okay. If that's the case, is everybody good people? Are they lying to us?

Are they honest? Then we're gonna take we're gonna buy their interest. We'll explain to them what the process is like. And in that particular case, we file a partition lawsuit. There you go.

You know, ultimately, we like to get the property and do something with it here. You know, section 23 of the property code is partition of real property.

Steve: Yeah. And partition that we've we've we've done very well with partition sales in the past. Okay. So we talked about your journey, like, how you got to here. Yeah.

So now you're here. Right? 200 plus transactions that you guys process.

Logan: Yeah.

Steve: What does it look like today? Like, what does the is that a firm?

Logan: Not a law firm.

Steve: But It's a company.

Logan: We are a company.

Steve: So what does that look like today?

Logan: So, about a year and a half ago, I got lucky and was able to buy the Gibbs Mansion, which was an old, soldier and businessman in San Antonio. He built this house in the eighteen eighteen eighty four. So we're able to buy that, make it our home office. Super cool. About 6,000 square foot, you know, colonial gothic revival mansion.

Awesome. It's in historic district right by downtown. So we bought that, redid it. That's our office now. Combined with everybody with admins and partners, the attorneys, we've got 15 people.

Mhmm. That's what our office pretty much.

Steve: Yep. Okay. And what does your overhead look like in a business like that?

Logan: You know, it's interesting. Our overhead is, I guess, it's lower than a lot of folks for that kind of operation because we have a lot of partners. So where you might hire more employees, you have overhead for those employees. For us, we don't have that. They take owner distributions.

Steve: Gotcha.

Logan: So it's lopsided. Our overhead, we're about $25 a month, more or less. We own our building. We've got admin support. We got subscriptions, things like that.

But overhead's relatively low in that regard, probably. Now our legal bills, if you wanna consider that overhead, which is fair, that's between 20 and 40,000 monthly. A lot. So that's more than our support staff. Yeah.

Even lawyers, man. Let me tell you.

Steve: Alright. So we got a lot of people saying you're doing legitimate, love your wealth of experience. Robert Sterbel wants to know, is anyone doing this in Pennsylvania? Do you know?

Logan: You know, it's I don't know. I looked through The United States. I found a guy, an attorney up in Missouri who's pretty solid guy that does it similar. Carl does some stuff like this. There's another gentleman in Dallas, older guy who does it here and there.

I could probably pick out four or five people in The United States that I know that do it. Yeah. Other than that, I don't know.

Steve: And then LS San Jose wants to know how would one go about getting an underwriting manual?

Logan: If you get on Google right now and Google Google Stewart Title Underwriting Manual, older public underwriting manual, I've found that in the last several years, a lot of them are published.

Steve: Oh, that's awesome. Simple enough.

Logan: Yeah. It used to be different. You have to go to see who you have a relationship with and beg.

Steve: Carl wants to know what is the most challenging deal you have? Is it the one on Dilly Dilly or is it a different one?

Logan: Actually, we're probably in the middle of one of those.

Steve: Okay. So what

Logan: We've got a we're working on a track right now that's a 100 acre track in a very good metropolitan area on a highway that's high probability for development. There so far we've identified between hundred and fifty and two hundred heirs for that range.

Steve: So you have to be a little bit of a glutton for punishment too.

Logan: This is we're looking at probably I think it's got about a $150 owed in taxes too.

Steve: Okay.

Logan: So the entry is not cheap on that one either.

Steve: No. It's not. Yeah.

Logan: But you're right. So I've got a friend that's an attorney. He's he doesn't practice a whole lot because he likes being a real estate guy more and he likes being a lawyer for others.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: So we've been working on that one for probably the last month together, and we're at the point where we've got enough information together. We say, alright. We're gonna do this.

Steve: Alright. And by your estimation, given a 100 plus errors, how long is this gonna take?

Logan: That's tough. I would call this probably a two to four year project. Two to four years. So it would be no different than the person that might develop a 100 acres. It's a two year four two to four year project.

You gotta buy the land. You gotta get your stuff your entitlements approved. You gotta do construction plans, get financing, do the construction. It's a two to four year project for us.

Steve: Wow. Alright.

Logan: So those are less common, but we got them like that now. Got it.

Steve: Luis Garcia wants to know, and I think this is, a simpler question is, you know, when you're flipping your property, are you flipping it under your name or under an LLC?

Logan: Most of the stuff is LLC. There's some s corps in there.

Steve: Yeah. And Raylan White wants to know, would you pay for a probate to buy a house if the heirs don't want the house but want but won't cooperate for a buyout?

Logan: Well, it's a challenge. It depends on what kind of probate it is. So in Texas, you've got an independent and dependent administration. If there's a will, most of the times, you can get an independent executor because it's listed in the will. But if that executor doesn't wanna act, then you'll have to name one of the other heirs

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: Or maybe a separate attorney as the executor, and he's gonna be independent. He's gonna be dependent. What that means is dependent on the court. Gotcha. So the court has to go through approvals on everything.

And if he thinks he's gonna get a fair shake on that and maybe wanna get a good deal, if everyone agrees, he can probably get a good deal for helping him. But if it's just gonna be a completely straight transaction, it's a lot tougher in a dependent administration to pay less than fair market Mhmm. Based on an appraisal. Got it. Because that can be part of the process a lot of times.

Steve: Got

Logan: it. So it depends on the kind you have for sure.

Steve: So Ingrid Hernandez says this guy is the ultimate integrator. So let me ask you this. You know a lot. How much are you integrating or how much are you relying on everybody else in the company to build out ARP and do all this work?

Logan: So I started me and my one partner basically doing this on our own completely.

Steve: It's a 100% technician.

Logan: 100% technician, finance, like, all hats. Right? And at that point, start let's bring some people in. So now I spend a lot of time time quarterbacking the guys' deals, helping with their finances, helping them decide, am I gonna make a distribution? Am I gonna retain some earnings?

What am I gonna invest in? Am I gonna hire another person? So I spend a lot of time building each of their businesses. So I would say this is each

Steve: one of the partners.

Logan: Each and one of the partners build their own business. Yeah.

Steve: But you're you're helping them Yeah. How to run their

Logan: Now I got a stake in everybody's business, so naturally it makes it worth my time.

Steve: Sure.

Logan: But, yeah, I I spend a a better part of my time doing that in business development these days.

Steve: And Ingrid says dirty debt dirty dirty deeds not done. They're cheap. Is there a professional or trade association that'd be a great place to be known to get situations referred? So we're you're getting, you said, you know, from wholesalers, realtors, title companies, judges.

Logan: Mhmm.

Steve: If Ellis wanted to go, you know, be referred these types of deals, where do you recommend he network?

Logan: Man, that's a good point. I find the REI events are probably the best, and the reason is because there's such a high volume of transaction coming through those folks. Let's just say, you know, Joe Blow real or wholesaler sending out a whole ton of texts or letters or calls this week. Mhmm. Out of hundreds of them, he's gonna have problems, and he doesn't really know what to do with those deals.

So if you're talking to that guy, as soon as I tell people this is what we do, the first thing they say is, oh, there's this one deal. Mhmm. And the light the light goes off in their head, and I know that we've got something to talk about. Gotcha. So I'd say the REI then has been the best for us.

Steve: And then Rayanna White wants to know, are you only doing this in Texas?

Logan: Man, it's funny you say that. Over the last couple weeks, I've been thinking about other states because I'm starting to get that question more. And I realized we understand the process enough that I could probably start reaching out to other states after establishing the attorney alliance there. Mhmm. I'd be interested.

I think it's on the horizon, but there's not a model for that at the moment. Gotcha. If he has the if that person has the first deal, they should call me, and it's time to talk.

Steve: There you go. And Walter wants to know what this partition mean. Walter just call us right over what partition

Logan: sounds like. Last name?

Steve: This is m. He's from Texas.

Logan: M. Okay. Different guy than I was thinking. What the partition is is it was actually not designed for houses. It was originally designed for larger tracts of land.

This is a very old statute back from the seventeen hundreds, but it's to partition in kind. So let's say you have a 100 acre ranch and there are three kids that inherit it and they're arguing about it. You go and petition a judge for the partition to put partitions in the property lines drawn between it. You're gonna split the 100 acre ranch into three thirty three to third acre tracts equitably to make sure they each have access, they each have fair amount of flood plain, each have usable land, and somewhat fair timber.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: So that's how it's originally designed is to split property up. What you're what you're probably familiar with when there's a sale involved is a single family house. How do you cut that into three pieces?

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: You can't. So the judge says everybody has access to their equity in Texas. There will never be a time when the law changes where that's not available. So the judge says

Steve: So I can be like, I love Lucy. We're, like, we're gonna cut the house down the middle. You got the kitchen and the and the bedroom, and I got everything else.

Logan: You get the dog house. Yeah. So the judge sells the property in effect.

Steve: Right. So long story short

Logan: This is when people can't agree. It's when they can't come to terms. They can't become business partners. They can't sell together. They can't buy each other out.

This is the

Steve: very last resort. Yeah. And you're forcing them to sell. Ingrid's question is, are you thinking about franchising? That's an interesting question.

Logan: It is. You know, I almost would say our model is somewhat of a franchise in our office with the guys and the training and all. But, you know, one of the business partners mentioned that at one point. I just I don't know what that looks like yet.

Steve: Yeah. Man, that's gotta be crazy because there's so much specialty. So much like, each one of you guys is like a surgeon. You're right. You guys are not like pimple face cashiers.

Logan: So you can you can build a McDonald's and put that same machine in there and have a same training manual, and you're cooking a burger and Yeah. It's not that technical. You can replicate that very easily. They're freaking. Alright.

This is a little different,

Steve: I think. There's a there's a lot of specialty in here. What are some of your ways you reverse the risk to sellers to protect your

Logan: transaction? Ultimately, the risk we're looking at is a financial risk and a time risk. So we have to make adjustments there. If I think it's an easy deal and a short deal and there's very low risk, I'm willing to pay more Mhmm. For their interest that I'm gonna buy to enter the deal.

If I think there's a much greater risk and a much longer timeline, I've gotta buy my risk down. It's no different than any other business deal. I've gotta buy my risk down. So I can't give you 50,000. I'm gonna give you 10,000.

Right. And I'll ultimately explain to them why I've gotta assess a dollar value to each parts of those. And there are a lot of times where I say, look, I don't recommend you do this. This is not really a case I want. I'm willing to take it at this price, but it's not necessarily something that I want.

Right. And when they see that you're transparent and you're not really trying to pull the oil over their eyes, you know, they look at you more seriously.

Steve: Yep. And David Zuniga. I'm hoping I'm saying his name correctly. Huge fan for fixing these kinds of issues. Is it possible for one of someone like that to visit your office?

Logan: Sure. We have folks stopping in all the time. We welcome visitors. That's you know, again, we're really open. We share a lot.

So come see us today.

Steve: And then Luis Garcia, if the deed is in the land trust, repped in an LLC, and hidden out of state under s corp, are those easy to find?

Logan: Easy or cheap? Probably not quickly. But if there's a lawsuit involved, you can start to do a lot of stuff in discovery if it's relevant. But that's not cheap to get to that point. Once you start having a lot of those layers, it becomes a little more of a hassle.

But that sounds like a sophisticated ownership model already. So I guess my question is, why are you trying to solve something that's old probably ultra sophisticated anyway?

Steve: Right. Yeah. That person

Logan: I would call a trustee. And if the trustee is not willing to talk to you, my I'd forget about that.

Steve: Yeah. He probably does not want to be found.

Logan: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So let's see. What is what is your biggest struggle right now with you know, you got this business, you got up and running, and you're you're kinda seeing, like, you're getting people sending you a business on. Like, what is your biggest struggle in your business right now?

Logan: So it's becoming a it's becoming more of a business. So remember I told you earlier, we have guys. We have some admin help. Now we're looking at that and saying, how do we how do we make this run smoother and become better business owners? And we started out I was working seven days a week for many years.

That's and I love it, and I'm good with that. But I got four kids. I got a lot going on. I'd like to not work so much. Mhmm.

So we start to hire the right people and start to train them, and it's a challenge. You gotta back off a little bit as you do that because you realize they're not gonna do exactly how you want it. They're gonna do if you can get hired 70% of what you do, you do that. Right. And we've got a wholesaling line.

A lot of folks don't know about that, but last year, we did about 60 transactions. We're on pace to probably do 70 or 80, maybe 90 this year. We're really moving. Mhmm. And we really started to hire more on that side, to really get that process moving along.

And that's been a huge that's been a big game changer for people's time. Yeah. But it's it's really putting the right people in there and just kinda stabilizing it. I wanna work forty hours a week one day.

Steve: So what are you doing to make that happen?

Logan: So we've been aggressively hiring and training right now. In the last two months, we brought on two people. We've spent intensive training on them. They've been home run hires. Awesome.

And they've just yeah. As as you know, you have folks in your organization and and you know how great or how bad that can be. Mhmm. But we're really good at risk management and really good at thinking things through. And and through that interview process, I think we did a really good job of pick good picks.

So

Steve: That's awesome.

Logan: Yeah. It's been a game changer.

Steve: What is your superpower?

Logan: I've probably gotta go back to the risk management and the strategy because that's the part where I think a lot of a lot of practitioners miss in this deal. A lot of real estate operators, they really wanna try it, and a lot of them take a stab at it. And I've heard some of the worst horror stories that you can get of folks giving it a shot, and they really botch the deal. But I think that applies to everywhere in our life

Steve: Mhmm. Or

Logan: me and my family's life, I guess. But I think that's probably what I'm best at. And I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to connect with people, make them understand, communicate well with them. Between those three things

Steve: Let's take a step back. Horror stories. Oh

Logan: my god. How How

Steve: can this go wrong? It seems really easy.

Logan: You you gotta ease your way into it. There's a guy in town who a nice guy. I've talked to him a ton of times. I help him out, and he wanted to go do a deal like this. He ended up we buy we don't buy with title insurance at all.

Even by pre foreclosure these days, we'd abstract ourselves. Let's just close our offices money. The guy bought a pre foreclosure, and it was too close to the deadline. So he got an investor to pay, like, $150 for this house, and they signed over a deed to him at the investor's office for the money. So you got investor with money, investor that put the deal together.

Turns out there were all kinds of title problems. There was a husband that was an owner of the property. He didn't sign that deal. There was one other, and they had a $150,000 locked up in a $200,000 house, and they were they only owned half of it. So they were upside down their equity.

Steve: On day one.

Logan: From the beginning.

Steve: Yeah. It's

Logan: quick way to lose money.

Steve: Well, we see this in Phoenix. You know, when people are trying to buy a foreclosure sells, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Right? But if you can't do a good title search, you might buy second position.

Logan: Oh, yeah.

Steve: And then you literally have zero equity that you just dumped $60,100,000.

Logan: And someone's about to foreclose you off.

Steve: Yeah. Exactly. Right behind you. Ellis San Jose wants to know what qualities does a home run hire look like for your company?

Logan: You know, it's not about real estate. The last few people we hired didn't know a thing about real estate. I cared that they had a really good IQ. I cared they were very interested folks. And when I asked them questions, it wasn't the candid, boring just response that they've been memorizing.

They would start to talk about something, and I could tell that they cared, and it was important, and it was in their heart. And when I could see that that was a special kind of person that stood out from the others, that was a big deal.

Steve: Passion is really important. Dude.

Logan: Yeah. If they can be passionate about the job that they were building for special education schools, whether it was their career field or not. They're so passionate about that. And they came in and started answering questions like that, and I thought, they're here. They wanna work with us.

If that passion transfer, man, we got something.

Steve: Yeah. And Ingrid Hernandez wants to know what are some of your most important KPIs. What metrics are you tracking?

Logan: Oh my gosh. This is the one where I sound like a complete buffoon. We don't at all. In our wholesaling stuff, we do some, and it's very, very high level. We'll send out 2,000 correspondences.

We'll wind up with three deals.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: That's basically what it boils down to Yeah. On the wholesaling side. On our other stuff, we don't have KPIs because folks are calling us, and we size it up quick and say, do I want this or not?

Steve: Yeah. Well, you kinda have a little bit of a blue ocean. Right? Like, there's no one that compete against you. So when they call you, like, you're, like, the a team.

Logan: So that was one of the factors that I looked at when I was looking at this. I considered wholesaling or considered just flipping, and I realized not a lot of people were doing this. And I do use that somewhat to my manager these days when folks call me and I say, this is the only way I can do the deal. Otherwise, there's not an affinity for me or doesn't work right.

Steve: Mhmm. And

Logan: they say, okay. Well, we're gonna see what our options are. And I encourage them to do that. I actually encourage them to call some real estate attorneys because if they wanna sell that property, they're gonna come back, and I know that. Yeah.

Steve: Is there a book you've gifted more than any other or read multiple times?

Logan: Oh, man. There's two of them. How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Steve: Mhmm.

Logan: That is just a home run. The Carnegie book. Yep. And then another one about a local real estate operator in our off in our, in our market, Mitch Stevens, My Life and a Thousand Houses. Do you

Steve: know Mitch? I've been told to get him on the show. Dude, like I've been I think we've corresponded, but Okay. I'm just very not I'm not as good at reaching out.

Logan: I'm glad you responded when I reached out. But Yeah. What I liked about the first book is people do business with folks that they like. And I realized I need to figure that out, but it's made me a better husband, a better father, a better business partner, and a better business operator when I'm doing my own sales role. So I that was an incredible book.

I've given that to everyone in our office and more people. And then the Mitch Stevens book, it embodies the entrepreneurial distracted ADD American success story.

Steve: What do you mean?

Logan: He's he's all over the place. He's a 100,000 miles an hour. He's very charismatic. He's tried all kinds of things, and he figured out how to buy and sell or finance houses and do great. And he's done it for twenty five years, so a thousand houses or whatever that comes out to be.

And it's just an exciting, interesting, and very insightful book. And I think entrepreneurs should read it, specifically real estate, because they get the lingo.

Steve: Absolutely. That makes total sense. So I'm gonna make a couple quick announcements while you think about anything you wanna leave the listeners with. Guys, if you got value today, please like, subscribe, share, comment. That helps us in the algorithms, helps us reach more people so we can create more millionaires, which I think you mentioned, we created one of millionaires that you know.

Logan: That's right. That's right. One of my partners when we came in, he made that point. He saw your license plate, and he said, I've gotta tell him because of the information I've gotten for him, that's what helped get me there.

Steve: Yeah. That's awesome. That's what we live for. So the more you share, the more people we can reach. We do have our all day sales training.

It's in two days. So if you guys still interested, go to send me a DM. I'll send you the link. And then next week, we got my good friend, Mark Dela Torres, someone I look up to a lot. He's flying in, and he's in, like, eighteen, twenty different markets.

It's crazy. So be sure to tune in. Next week, we got Mark Dela Torre coming in from, I wanna say Kansas City. So what message you wanna leave the listeners with?

Logan: I would encourage everyone to stay interested and cautious. Those are two very important things. With this, if you're interested in doing this, I think a lot of people, they wanna take a stab at it. No matter what I tell them they want to, stay interested because that's where that's what is gonna get you there. Mhmm.

But stay cautious. Don't be stupid. Just because you could, doesn't mean you should. And I tell that to guys in my office all the time. You can solve that, but that's gonna be your pet project for the next four years.

You want no deals for four years or that one? So I I think it's very important to keep out of mind here.

Steve: Absolutely. Real really good advice. So, if someone wants to get a hold of you, how would they go about doing that?

Logan: Facebook, Internet. If you Google Logan Fulmer or Asset Resolution Partners, there's tons of contact info there. Email address is logan@arpusa.com.

Steve: Awesome. Thank you very much. Again, guys, please like, share, or comment. Thank you very much.

Logan: Thanks for having me, Steve. Yeah. This was fun.

Steve: Thank you guys for watching.