Negotiate From Strength With Dimitri Van Camp From Belgium

Hey guys, super excited. I've got a good friend, Dimitri van camp on with me today, and I promise you, this is going to be an awesome discussion that you want to stick around for, because Dimitri not only has been a friend of mine for quite a long time, but he's got a very unique way of doing business. A different angle than a lot of people in his space are doing. He's really a mass, quite a bit of wealth doing it. He is going to be able to go inside behind the scenes and tell us kind of what he's doing, how he's doing it. And we're going to talk a negotiating. We're going to talk wholesaling. We're going to talk commercial real estate, residential real estate. You name it. This dude's smart. He not only covers real estate as an expertise, but he also understands several other asset classes very well. Him and I have done quite a bit of business together too. Stick around because we're going to have some fun. Dimitri, Hey man, thank you so much for getting on. This is fun. I forgot to mention the most important part and that is you're not even in the United States, you're in Belgium, investing in real estate in the United States. So Hey, thanks for hopping on, man.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation and yeah, I'm actually in Belgium right now. I'm in a small city in Belgium and in the streets, which America's probably would have a hard time pronouncing, but it shouldn't stop anyone from doing business in the United States because it's a very open market. That's, I guess what we're going to talk about today?

Heck yeah. All right. So, oh, another expertise of Demetrius is tax law, which is kinda cool. Let's just dive into this . I mean, you're about my age, you're in your thirties, you're in Belgium. You decide that you want to start investing in real estate in your late twenties. Right? How does all that kind of play out? How does Dimitri go from whatever he was doing before to start investing in real estate? How, and where are you at right now? What are you doing now?

Right, right. Well, I don't know how far you want me to go back. Basically when I was at university, I was studying engineering and I was looking at a chart one day of the salaries that you could make as an engineer. Especially with the income tax being very high in Belgium, I was like, man, that's just not gonna cut it. I was in my fourth year, I started reading books about like, personal finance and things like that. Most of those books were actually, they were written by Americans. In the United States, there is a very big industry teaching industry about finance and several subjects within finance, which we didn't really have in Belgium or in Europe in general, it's less of a market here. I started reading about it and that's how I got into real estate in the United States, bye by reading books. And that's how I went to seminars. I first, stumbled around . I remember reading a book one day about real estate options. That that was actually the title of the book. I took that book to an attorney in Belgium. I was like, this is what I want to do, but I want to do it in Belgium. Which I did with moderate success. I did it, I did a couple of deals. I started partnering with someone to do deals in Belgium to get capital, to go to the United States. We successfully, flipped a few dozen houses in Belgium. And then I took my bags. I went to the United States and then, I stumbled around at the beginning as well. I did one deal, another deal. In the last few years, it really started to accelerate in terms of the volume that I started doing, which is probably kind of congruent with the general knowledge that you have to do something for like something like 10,000 hours before you can really good at it. So, so that's where I'm at right now, where, you kind of feel like it's easy now. It's not really easy, but you become competent in it. So it feels easy. So, so that's basically, and this spends by the way, like a 10 year period. Just to make sure this is not like six months or something. This is like 10 years. So,

What I love about your story is you are in Belgium, okay? You grew up there, you live there. You've been in Europe, your whole life. You say, what I want to make something of myself. I want to go out. I don't want to have this nine to five job. I don't want to go work for somebody else, make this week income. I want to get wealthy. You start reading up and you go outside of your comfort zone, probably looking at, reading books that are outside of the outside of Belgium, American books. You say, what, I want to start investing in real estate. You actually come to the United States and attended some seminars and courses. I know that's where him and I met Dmitri and I met in Orlando. Geez, what year was that?

2013 in January.

So we're going on? We're going on 10 years next year have known each other. That's crazy. How, how fast the time has gone. Him and I both met and in Orlando because were both learning about buying apartment buildings. So, I mean, going back, that was Dave Lindahl's course. I just remember Dimitri being super aggressive, super motivated. He was unique because he was from another country. Nobody else was from Belgium there. It was just, it was pretty cool. We actually hung out quite a bit on that trip. Ever since we've been friends and been working on deals and stuff together. So, so now let's talk about what you're doing now. You're wholesaling, you're wholesaling homes and lots in Florida from Belgium. What's interesting about this is heard a lot of people talk about, they're having a hard time finding deals. They, they're having a hard time, getting appointments, set up to go look at houses and meet with sellers and all this stuff. And, I would just want to point out that it's not like Dimitri has the luxury of going and meeting with the owner on every single transaction. He actually never sees homes and properties. It's kind of a running joke that we have going that it, we don't want to look at property. Right. Dimitri, can you just kind of talk about, high-level how you're able to do these transactions, wholesale single family homes at very high volumes without ever seeing the property.

Yup. I want to straighten out something that you said at first that a lot of people are seeing, like there's no deals. I've been hearing that forever in the United States. If you go to like a Rhea or something, there's always these people and I'm not making fun of them, but they, they attend every meeting, they read all the books and then when it comes time to do the difficult things there, they're like, yeah, but there's no deals. Now. This is the point in the market where everybody, every property is going above asking price and there's just no deals. You tell them, yeah, but I get a duplex where 300,000, they got it last week for 180 and I wholesaled it for 4, 2 20. I made $40,000 and there, and then they look at you like, are you, is this real? Or so the first thing people really have to do is understand if you're in the United States, there is an endless amount of deals. Now that's not to say only one out of maybe one out of 52, 1 out of hundreds, people that are actually going to sell are going to sell at wholesale price. It's similar to when you have a bond shop, like a lot of people that walk in, they're not going to be your customer because they're going to want too much money for their use TV or for their whatever. So, so a small percentage of the people that are selling are going to be your customer, but you're in a country with over 300 million people. Do what that's that's in a few years, it's probably close to half a billion people. Like there is like one house for what, every two people in the United States. There's roughly like a hundred million houses or something in the United States. That's not to talk about all the vacant land, like in, in Florida. There is, I think about 2 million vacant, lots.

Chase.

In one state, in one state. There's an endless, so get that in your head first, there's an abundance. There's not, there's no shortage of things. So, because the problem is, if you start with that, if you start with the approach that there are not many deals you're already behind because you're already weak. We start talking with people, they're going to feel that you're operating from weakness, which we're going to talk about maybe later when we talk about negotiating. You have to start from the, like, I have people sometimes. And, and, and they start haggling and I'm like, I just tell them, look, I can buy it at this price if you don't like it. That's okay, no harsh feelings, I'm not interested. And, and people, because a lot of times they just come back to you because they're like, wow. He really, he's really not begging me to do these deal, and they feel that you're certain about yourself. You have to start with the approach that there's an abundance, if you don't do that, you've already lost. So yeah. So there's an absolute abundance. That's the first thing I wanted to start with. So.

Yeah, I think that's a great point, Dimitri, you're, you're doing something from, with a detective. Well, I wouldn't call it a disadvantage, but some would call it a disadvantage. You're not physically in the country. You had to learn not only a language, but you also had to learn a culture. You have to learn technology here in the United States, how things there's a lot of complexity. The fact that you're doing it at the volume that you're doing it at, and you still had all those other hurdles you had to get over. It's really no excuse for anybody here to not be able to do it at, at whatever volume they want to do it. Your mindset Dimitri's mindset is definitely of abundance. It's definitely on, Hey, look, this is what I can pay us so I can do I agree. We are going to talk about negotiating because I think Demetrius is probably one of the best negotiators I know, and he's very solid negotiator and I love his strategies. He's fair too, which is kind of rare. So, typically when you get very aggressive negotiators, they're not fair with people and he is so let's talk about this further, you've got a deal that you, that you're talking to an owner on, okay, you do your different marketing strategies. You get an owner on the phone and they say, Hey, come over, sit down with me. Let's talk about the house. What's your response to them? Just curious.

Well, Mr. Sellers, we typically, we don't go out to properties before. We know that there's some type of a commitment because we don't want to be driving around. If we would drive to every house where people would call us for, then we would be driving around all day. And it's not to say I'm interested. I'm absolutely interested. A hundred percent. I just want to make sure that there's a reason for me to come to the house.

Yeah. And so maybe you.

Can, maybe you can tell me about the condition we can go into that. It's about the condition. We can see if it's something that would be of interest to us.

Notice, he's not making it a big deal that he's not able to get there. He's not, he's not going to hop on a plane. He never mentioned I can't, but he's basically making it about, he's making it a qualifying statement is qualifying discussion. Like, Hey, let's just make sure this is a good fit before I come over there. I think really confidence and everything definitely comes into play when you're talking to them, it's, do you want it? Is it a good fit? You don't want to waste their time or yours. What also, so just to be clear for those who are listening, that, want to understand what Dimitri does, he's wholesaling, single family homes and vacant lot land in the United States. What that really means is that he is going in sourcing, sellers who need to sell. They're more interested in a clean sale, a fast sale, quiet sale than necessarily getting full retail price for it. He goes in and makes it convenient for them, makes it a smooth transaction that they can be confident. What he does is he gets a tied up under contract. He sells that contract on the backend to another buyer. I know a lot of people already know that listening to this, but I just want to make sure maybe you got some entrepreneurs in here that are more focused on other businesses, other than real estate. He's essentially selling contracts on real estate and doing it at pretty high volume. Dimitri, what's kind of the, what's the hardest thing that you're, that you have to kind of get over or deal with when you're dealing with people in another country other than yours. I mean, like, what's that one kind of hurdle you're like, this is kind of annoying.

Yeah. Well sometimes, people might start say something about your accent and they're like, what language are you speaking? Because you talk with an accent or something like that, but that's okay because they're typically not going to sell to you. Anyways. I found it one time where one guy told me like, what language are you speaking? And then he called me back. He said, wait, I heard you say at the end, something about that vacant lot. I want to sell it them and actually ended up the, and then he apologized. He was like, sorry, man. I just get so many calls from people. And, but I think, I think there's not really that many hurdles, like obviously there's of an adaption to the culture in terms of like, I mean the first time when a lady told me, like, what I'm saying? I was like, yes, ma'am I hear you loud. Clearly there's a, we have a good connection on the phone. I hear what you're saying. There's kind of some things where people say something it's like a rhetorical thing that they're saying, and you kind of answer it, which is not, you're not supposed to do that. But, but besides that, I think the biggest hurdle is really in, in people's heads. Really? I I've noticed this like even to some extent, the fact that we're talking about like, wow, how are you doing this from outside the country? Well, it's not really different if you're doing a deal in, in, let's say in Cape coral, in Florida, if you're doing that deal from Belgium or you're just in Orlando and it's too far, you don't want to make the three hour drive. It's the same thing. There's no difference. Like, if anyone can explain the difference to me, I don't think there is any difference in both cases. You're not going there. So, and that's why I'm doing a lot of vacants of other vacant lands. I have five contracts to be signed today. I have five S five properties in escrow, all vacant lands. There, I mean, they're obviously much better than houses in the sense that houses do give some complexities in terms of someone at one point has to go to the house and take a look at the condition. Whether it's someone who's just taking pictures for you or someone who is the cash buyers or a realtor, or however you want to organize it, you don't have that with vacant land. So you can do a,

It's more of a commodity trade than anything, right? I mean, it's just, it's there other than the acreage and kind of whether it's got public or private utilities, it's pretty much just a widget for the most part, right?

It's a widget. A lot of times, one other thing I want to talk about is a lot of people have the misconception that you need to know everything about a house or a lot. I'm not saying that you don't have to be educated, but what I'm seeing is there's this concept, which I try to explain to people a lot of times, and they don't understand it. It's in the price, it's in the price. If I can explain that for a second. So, If you have, let's say you have two vacant, lots and or two houses and they're right next to each others, right? One of them you want to buy and the other one just sold. You have a good compare comparable sale. Well, the one that sold, let's say it's sold for a hundred thousands. Well, it's simple mathematics. If you get yours for 70 and you sell it for 80, or you get it for 50 and you sell it for 70 or whatever you make that spreads. Right. Which is the goal of wholesaling. That's what we're talking about right now is specifically wholesaling. Well, a lot of people will say, yeah, but in that street, the school district is not that great. Well, that's in the price. If the school district was great, that $100,000 lot would be one 50 or one 40 or one 60. It's in the price or someone might say, yeah, but in that street, you don't have city, water and sewer. You have like set septic, it's in the price. Everything is in the price. So, so the, the value of the real estate, what it's selling for right there, it reflects all those fundamentals, whether they're good or bad. If you're just doing a transaction where you're buying and selling, it is not that important. Even if you're taking title, it's not that important to know about the school district or, it's a long drive to this city. It's a, it's a one hour drive. It's in the price. If it was a 20 minute drive and everything was the same, I'm sure the lots would be double. All those things are in the price. That's important to understand, because if you don't understand that, then you're going into a new markets because I do business in about a dozen different counties. If you think you have to know everything about every street in every county, you're just gonna, you're gonna paralyze and you're never going to do business. Just look at what's what it's selling for and how much you get 400 contracts and then make the spreads. Now, I'm not saying that's the same thing. If you're buying and holding property, that's not the same thing we're not talking about. We're not talking about that right here. If you're buying and holding. Especially if you're going to live in it, you want to know everything about the school district, or you want to know everything about the, all the details. So, and also if you're buying and holding, you need to know how things are evolving, which is an entire different story. We're not talking about that today.

I'm glad you clarified that Dimitri. Cause we are talking about a trading model, not an investment model for long-term and that would you're right. Totally different game plans.

This model is actually, you can use that to create a cash, to buy the assets that you do want to hold on to. That's one other thing, by the way, a lot of times I see people passing on deals because they're like, I don't, I don't like this duplex speakers, whatever the, the city, the city water and sewer is this or that. Well, wholesale it, you can get it under contract. Don't worry about those things. Get it for much less than it's words. Once you've done that, you can decide what you're going to do with it. You can also let, you can buy it and hold it. You can pay cash for it and refinance or whatever you want to do. All these games you can play in the United States with a real estate. You can decide that from that point, what you're going to do with it. So,

That's, and that Dimitri, you brought up a great point. One of the, one of the main things that I think people can get out of this discussion is somebody who's got, maybe some rentals and a full-time job, they might be thinking, well, what is wholesaling have anything to do with what I'm trying to do? I think you hit it on the head. This allows you to generate large amounts of cash to then reinvest into other cash flowing assets. And it's a moneymaker. Yes, it is a job. You do have to continue to find widgets to flip. The point is you're getting large chunks of cash. You're not going to get that much money from the cash flow of property, as you will from large transactions like this. You're positioning yourself to build up your capital, to then go reinvest into other things. That, and there's there, everything you're talking about also applies to commercial real estate. We've got a lot of commercial real estate investors that listen to this. For me, I'd rather tie up the mobile home park or the self storage facility or whatever I'm looking at and determine if it's something that I want to move forward on. You're not going to do all your due diligence upfront. Often what I see people do though, is they tie up that property. They do of due diligence. They quickly figure out that it's not a fit. They just cancel when all they had to do was put it out to their network of people who are already investing in that asset class. They can sell that contract and make some money on it. It's the same thing, whether it's residential or commercial.

Yeah. If you call me tomorrow, you say, Dimitri, do you buy gas stations? Yeah, absolutely. I do you buy cemeteries? Yeah, absolutely. The first thing I will ask you is do you own one and do you want to sell it? Why what's your situation? And then I listen. If I hear that maybe you got a, a gas station for seal. I figure like, you get some things you can figure out pretty quickly. Like if it's selling, if you're asking prices way below the tax value and it's, or you can quickly do a calculation on the cashflow and you see if you're getting it, that you're selling it to me at a 10 cap rate or something, then you're getting an extremely good deal. You want to go deeper into it. I mean, it all starts with the motivation of the sellers, which a lot of times in commercial real estate, you're dealing with a different client base than someone who is selling like a vacant lot. They inherited from their auntie and it's now worth 50. They just want to get rid of it. It's a different client base, but there's similarities, obviously, because in the commercial space, you also meet people. There may be in a 10 31 exchange, which, I mean, I'm sure most people know what that is, where you're basically buying a new, you're treating up a property and deferring the taxes. They, they need to sell something because the thing that you're buying requires additional funds or something like that. There's always situations where people might be motivated, even if it's not motivated in the sense that, they need money for the rent of next month or something. So.

There's.

Different types of motivation.

You're, you're very right about that. I mean, the motivation may be different, but there's also, there's often a motivation behind the scenes that's happening. Although in the commercial real estate side, a lot of times the sellers are more, close to the vest on what their motivations are. Cause they're sophisticated negotiators, but that doesn't mean that there's not something behind the scenes, pushing them to sell that it can be divorce. It can be death, they can be all kinds of different things. Like you said, they need to free up capital to go do something else. They're willing to take a discount because it's a clean fast sale.

Yeah. I mean, look motivation. Doesn't it doesn't have to do necessarily with your, your you're not smart. And because of that, you're motivated. Like if I need to leave the country tomorrow, I'll sell my car at, at, a third less for what I own it or what I, what I bought it for. I mean, because I'll be fine with that because, it's, I, I want, I, I need to get rid of it. Right? That, that might not be my, that might not be my creation. I think the difference is if you're dealing with someone who is a good negotiator, they will not show their hands as easily. That's the difference. They will not. They'll be like, yeah, maybe I'll sell it, but they know they're going to sell it within the next seven days. So that's just a big difference. A good negotiator is typically someone who is not putting older cards on the table. I don't know if you want to, when you want to go into.

Let's, let's talk negotiations, Demetrius chomping at the bed. He wants to talk n***a negotiations. I want him to, cause I got my notepad and pen right here. Ready to take some notes because this dude's good. Dimitri, what can we talk about on the negotiation side that people are going to leave? Like just, you know, learning a lot. So,

A lot of things I've read a lot of books on these things and I've done like maybe four or 500 real estate transactions by now. I've learned from the books and from doing, and I, I spend a lot of time thinking about all these things. I'm just going to share what I, my conclusions with you. One, there's one very big rule that I always, it's my main rule when I'm negotiating. I, I've never actually read about this, this rule, but it's basically something I just came up with in, a few months ago, whenever you're negotiating, you always gotta be talking to the other person from a position of strength and all it's very general. It's super general, but you see it in a lot of situations where you start talking with a seller and immediately they take control of the conversation. They take control of what you got to tell them, who are you, what company are you with? What's Mario, what's your real estate license. What's your real estate license numbers. So they start asking you all these questions and you're losing control of the situation. Once that happens, you're better off almost of blowing up the situation. What I mean with that is, okay, you don't get to blow it up every time someone asks you a question, that's not what I mean, but when they start to take the upper hand too much and they start telling you, asking you almost unreasonable questions, like sometimes people ask me like, where do you live? I'm like, I'm not going to tell you where I live. Like, so when people do that, they're trying to take the opera hands. What you gotta do is you got to take control again. The way you do that is by reflecting with them, with the question to them. If somebody asks you, where do you live? You could say, well, I live in Cape coral, but why would you ask me that? What, what do you mean? You don't want to be rude or something, but if they're at that moment, you will see if they were just asking a question or if they were trying to take the opera hands and controlling everything. If they're in a situation where they try to take the opera hands and control everything, and now we get to the, to the general look and you're in the weakness, you're dealing from weakness. Well, then you're losing. You're not going to get a deal because if they take the opera hand too much, it's like, they're unreasonable. If they're unreasonable, they're not going to give you a good deal anyways. So, but you feel this always in different types of situations where sellers, they tell you, like, okay, on the agreement, change this, change, this, this, and this. Are you going to agree to everything? Or I don't do it? Well, probably the deal is not going to work out because it's very likely that you're dealing with someone who is, and I, I I've heard this many times before. They might a few days before closing, you might come with more concessions and more concessions. What you want to do each time, something like that happens if they come with, I want this and this and the agreement, then you're like, okay, but you hit them back with the concession. So that's okay. It's reasonable that I take this and this, or I could this and this into the agreements. Right. That sounds.

Fair. Anything away for free.

Yeah. So, but the general rule is you always want to be dealing with you. You always want to stay in a position of strength. That starts with the basic conversation where you keep control of the conversation. Once it goes off the rails, and you're just sitting there answering all the questions of the seller, like, okay, I live here and this is my real estate license numbers. No, I had no complaints against me filed and this and that, and you've lost. You, you get to take control and keep control of the situation in a balanced way. You want to be reasonable,

Do that without being a jerk. Dimitria how do you do that without just being a straight up jerk the whole conversation and trying to like, be overly aggressive with them.

Yeah. Sometimes it's hard, and you gotta feel it out. After a few minutes, you typically know who you're dealing with, but how are you know that? Well, you're just friendly and polite, but you don't, you, you, you can refuse to answer a question in a polite way. You don't have to say, you never want to have a collision. That's something that's never necessary. Even if you're blowing up the situation, you rather just blow it up or reflect it back to them. By asking them another question or asking the differently way. Like, why is this important to you? Or, you don't have to collide with them, but you typically, if they start asking you a lot of unreasonable questions, you reflect it back to them. That's that's the whole point. If they start refusing, if they start refusing you reflecting the questions back to them with another question, then it's not going to work.

Yeah. You can kind of gauge, you can tell that they're not in a deal-making mood, they're there wanting to control the situation. It's probably not going to be terms that you're comfortable with, or they're just wasting your time. So, so in that situation, I mean, somebody kills somebody's coming at from a standpoint of kinda more aggressive and you have to kind of blow the deal up. Like you said, you follow up again then, or how does that, or is that normally just a dead deal?

No, I, I never follow up with a deal like that. The only things I follow up with is if people from the beginning sounded motivated and then you made an offer and maybe they don't respond or they don't respond, or they refuse to your offer or something like that, then you want to keep following up. You want to keep following up, like forever until they tell you, stop calling me, or it's already sold, or I close with someone else or something like that. I've had my best deals come from where someone said, okay, I'll sell to you for that price. You send them the contract through DocuSign. They never, they never sign it. They never response. Or you call you, I follow up twice a day. So I do that. I might skip a day when I take a day off.

The Docker,

You have to, you have to do so it, you call them twice a day. And, and I might call them like six days in a row, twice a day. After the 16th, they might pick up. They're like, yeah, the reason why I didn't call you back. And they immediately started apologizing. Like they pick up and they're like, I'm sorry, I didn't speak up for a few days, but I just wanted to make sure that I was ready to sell and I'm ready now. Or they might also say, yeah, sorry, I didn't pick up. My brother-in-law told me the property is actually worth six times what you were offering. That's probably the not true that the brother-in-law is probably not, it's probably overestimating it, but that's okay as well. So.

How do you handle that? They say, Hey, I think my property is worth a lot more. I mean, is it cool? Call me when you're common when you're ready to sell then? Or is it more like, well, the reason that I feel like the reason that it's not six times and what's kind of the response to something like that. Cause I think we get that a lot in this market.

Right? The first thing I want to point out is there's a difference between an objection and a complaint, and you gotta make sure you don't confuse the two because a complaint is, and I've had many complaints. I don't mean complaints against me, but complaints in the sense that people get to closing and you call them on the phone. They're like, man, I really just don't want to sell this lot for 20,000. I mean, I feel like it's worth more and it's just a low price, $20,000. They might say that I'm not assuming it's an objection, because if you assume it's an objection, you start to adjust something maybe that you shouldn't adjust. In other words, if somebody tells you, well, Mario, the price that you're offering is low. It's ridiculous. Then you tell them, I agree. It's it's just, it's ridiculous. Yeah. I agree.

I agree. I know it's so low. I'm so cheap.

I agree. I agree. It's ridiculous. Like I sold my car the other day to the dealership, the price, it, me, it was ridiculous. I felt it was ridiculous. At the same time, I realized I did the deal with them. It was done. I had my money right away. I didn't have to pay any fees or commissions. That's a completely different price than selling it for retail and going to a lot of hassles. That sounds fair. Doesn't it. And then that might feel,

Feel, found way, feel, felt found, or what is that?

I know how you feel. I felt the same way, but what I found is when I sold it, that's what I got from a course that we took together in the lingo course. It's right. But that's absolutely the feel felt found. I know how you feel. I felt the same way. What I found is, and that's very important thing to do because you're showing that you're, you're, you have empathy with them and you have similarities with them. But while.

They're calling you cheap,

While they're calling you cheap, but you don't want to assume it's an objection. You want to assume it's a complaint because if the seller gets close to the closing and you're on the phone with them for one last time, and they're like, I'm going to send the closing documents in. I just feel that price is just, it's just too low. You tell them, I agree, it's too low because they haven't said, they're not going to sell to you at that price. They haven't said that. That's the first thing you, you assume it's a complaint, not an objection. If it's an objection, then you start talking about, then you can put in the feel, felt found. I know how you feel. I felt the same way when I sold my car, when I found this is that it's actually worth something to have an easy transaction. That's fast where I don't pay any fees or commission. What, at that same point, what you do, you push them away, which I know sounds weird. At that point you got to push them away. And you might say, you know, Mr. Seller, maybe this, and I'm not saying the day before closing, but I'm seeing in the initial negotiations, if this happens, right. The day before closing, you tell them like, look, we already wired in the money. I mean, you want to push them to closing, of course, but when you're in the initial negotiations and you might push them away a few times, because you might tell them like, look, this might not be for you because I don't know. What's important for you as a seller. For some people it's important that they have a fast and a clean sale, which doesn't mean, I understand you don't want to give it away. Nobody wants that to do that, but it might not be worth it for you to take a, to sell the discounts and to have a very clean and fast and easy sale. Maybe you just want to hire a real estate agent and you can put it on the market. After a few months, maybe you can lower the price one or twice, and maybe you'll definitely get a higher price if you do that, by the way, Mr. Seller. It might take you 6, 8, 10 months. Maybe you need to change the realtors once or twice. That's okay. I don't know. What's your situation. If you have all the time in the world and you just want to see an outer market reacts to your, to listing your property, maybe you just want to get a real estate agent that might better for you.

You're giving them all the pain points and know with a smile. You're like, yeah, but you can do that. That's perfect. You, you can wait 10 months, like you can fire three agency, all the pain points cause their motivation. And so you're giving it to them. You're, you're giving them, you're pointing out the value that you provide. Yeah. They're paying for it and a bit of a discount, but you're kind of reminding them of why they want to sell to you while you're putting.

Yeah. And it's also true. Right? What you're doing, what's called takeaway where you're taking away the possibility of you buying it. It, that puts them in an emotional state where they feel like, wow, maybe I am gonna have to put it on the market for a year before I sell it. Which might be true by the way you don't know, or the market might turn down or whatever, you might have all kinds of situations where the sale is not a certainty. You want, you definitely want to push them away at the moment to do that is whenever they start to, to put you in a situation where they want you to up your price, or they want you to give them all kinds of concessions or where, when they want to make it look weird at you're not being the full retail value for it. Because some people they might say, my locker is worth 50,000. I want you to buy it for 50,000 and closing two weeks and be able to closing costs and not take the time to do a survey and all those things. You have to explain to them, I'm sorry, this is not, you can't drive your car into a what's that place called CarMax and get full retail. Like, I mean that doesn't the world doesn't work like that. It's you either you have three things, you have speed, convenience and price. Right. You can only get two of the three. I heard someone say that one time. It's very true.

That's so true. One thing, go ahead.

The convenience speed and convenience is when you sell to a cash buyer or a wholesaler or something, you give a price for it. Yes.

Well, and what's interesting too, is when you're telling someone, when you're doing that subtle takeaway, you're kind of agreeing with them, Hey, it's cool. If you don't want to sell it to me, you can do all this other stuff. These are the pain points you're going to feel in response to not, to getting a higher price. You, you're also going to feel these pain points, but you're also ready to walk away. I mean, you have.

To be ready.

You, you can't do a take away and be willing, and then come back like, well, no, you, you need to be ready to walk away and they have to feel that.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why it's important. What we said from the beginning that you need to have, you need to believe that there are a lot of deals in any asset class. And, and once you believe that you get into a state of mind where you can do the takeaway where you can walk away and where you can talk with confidence because I get like 30 minutes a day. If somebody tells me like, Dimitri, I, I think I'm not interested in your price and whatever. That's okay. Good luck with selling the property. And can I go now? Because I have like a lot of other people wanting to talk to me, so I don't tell them that would be rude, but that's the mentality that I have. So yeah.

You ha you, yeah. You have to be willing to walk away. I've actually talked about this before that if you feel like there's not enough, if you feel desperate to get a deal done, it's because you don't have, you're not looking at enough deals. You don't have enough deal flow. You don't have enough lead flow. Like you said, the reason why you're willing to just be like, what, forget it. It's, I don't care. There's background noise. Cause I've got a huge Florida thunderstorm going on. So ignore that if you hear that. Yeah, you have to be, you have to have enough lead flow to where you're picking out deals. You're, you're picking and choosing deals. You're not desperate for deals. As soon as you start to get that feeling like I gotta make this work because you're not looking at enough deals and that's your solution. Right? It builds confidence because you're just sorting through the ones that are going to work.

Yeah. You need a lot of deals. I understand if somebody is working a full-time job, but it might be a challenge to make sure you have a lot of leads and everything. I, what I think happens a lot of times to people who are in real estate of any kind is they don't have a lot of lead flow. They get into their cars, they burn the fossil fuels and they drive all the way to the house. Distances in America are pretty big. You spent four hours in a day driving all over the place and you go to three people who are absolutely not interested in your business. And you've just wasted a whole day. In that day you could have gotten like 30 leads. Two of those might've been qualified or one of those might've been qualified that you might have done the deal without leaving your house, you and your wife. When I work, my wife is in the other room. I love it. You know? If you leave your family, make sure you have a good reason to get out of the house. Don't get out of the house because somebody tells you on the phone, like, if you want to make me an offer, then first come and see the house, then, or first, I want you to take a picture of the lot. So I know that you're serious. Okay, Mr. Seller, I think maybe you're not very serious, so I'm not going to make an offer on the lot. So, and that comes back to what we also said. I'm talking from strength. I'm not talking from weakness, right? So, so th dealing from strength is a mentality, but it's also the situation you put yourself in by having enough lead flow.

Yeah. If you're not afraid and operating in fear that you might not have the deal, the next deal coming down pipeline, you see, it's naturally, you're going to try and force deals to work. That's a recipe for failure because either you're going to buy bad deals or you're going to waste a lot of time on things that you should have never wasted time on because they're going to fall apart anyway. So that's super good point, Dimitri. So, so what other things would you say strategies you use when negotiating with sellers that really give you the upper hand? I love that negotiating from strength. I love the feel felt, found. What else? What are some other good nuggets?

Well, the takeaway, making sure you have enough, make sure you have enough deal flow. Also, one other thing, you have to assume that everyone you talk to is gonna do a deal with you. Let me explain what I mean with that. So let's say I call you Mario. I'm actually picking up the example of a deal that I did about a year ago on the duplex, because I remember that deal very well. And I also called a person. So I, I remember the conversation. If I call you and I assume that I'm going to do a deal with you in that situation, I called the person. I said, hi, I noticed you have a duplex on this street on this address. And I'm actually interested in buying it. I did some due diligence before I called you. I was wondering if you have an interest in selling it. He said, yeah, I'm interested in selling it. He was two months away from tax foreclosure, by the way, which also is about putting yourself in a position of strength, because that already puts me in a position of strength. You see how that general principle always comes back?

You know, his motivation.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so I asked him, do you want to sell? He says, yeah, I want to sell. He didn't, he didn't know about the price or anything. He, he asked me, what price do you want to sell you? That I told him, I'll sell it for 180. I'll buy it. Sorry, I'll buy it for 180. I said that with certainty, I assumed he was going to sell to me for 180. If you're going to assume that it's not going to work. Maybe you have a bunch of negative thoughts, like I'm doing these people a disservice by buying the property, instead of I'm helping this guy, because without me, he would have zero and he might lose his, his personal home. Maybe if, if he's in trouble or whatever, you assume that the deal is going to work. And, and you also understand that you're providing a service because the problem is this, a lot of times your subconscious thoughts, they're going to reflect back into your tone of voice. They're going to reflect back in how you structure your sentence. They're going to reflect back in many ways. If I would have called him and I was not served, and I'm like, I don't know, like, like 180 could you, could you do 180? Probably. Probably not. I don't know. If you're talking like that, of course, it's going to say, yeah, no one idiots way too little. I'm not going to sell it exactly. As he might have sold to you for 180. If you say, yeah, to plexus like this, I buy them for 180 and that's with me covering all the closing costs and all the fees and everything. In three weeks from now, the deal is closed. You basically, you would go to bed tonight knowing that it's a done deal. Well, that's fair enough. He told me, after he told me after two minutes on the phone, he said, yeah, it's okay. That's a rare, that's a rare occasion. That's also why I used that example because it was a very simple, straightforward conversation. Most of the time you have to do some followup and all those things, but that's, that's the main thing is you want to make sure that you're in the mindset of assuming that the deal is going to go true. If it tells you 180, are you crazy? You tell them like, oh, you're not selling it for 180 to me. Huh? So you're shocked. You're shocked that they're not doing business.

Equally shocked,

Equally shocked. Yeah. You matched their shock. So, so you assume that they're going to do business with you. It's like it's with many parts of life. If you're just assuming that you're gonna win you're probably gonna win. Like I heard Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. I heard them, they repeat this one sentence a whole time where they say never underestimate the man who overestimates himself. I think that's kind of a reflection of that. Where, where your kind of your mindset is really reflecting your actions and also the way you talk and your tone of voice and all that, all those other things. So.

Yeah, your mindset is what gets you over the finish line. It's what makes you successful. Sometimes you have of overconfidence, but that can push you over the edge to get it, to get where you want to go. Where if you're constantly doubting yourself, you're constantly, thinking of the negative and what's not going to work. You end up showing that through your actions, your tone of voice, your body language, all of that stuff. It comes through subconsciously you're projecting that. The results then come back, because of it. I, I think that's a super good point. You got to go in with confidence, you got to go in with expectations of I'm offering something good and it's gonna work. They they'd be like my price. You're, so you're surprised is actually legit. When they, when they balk at your price, like, huh? I thought I was offering you a good price. Yeah.

Well, that's my reaction to, they say, if they say, I'm not going to sell to you for that price, I'm like, oh, and well, one other thing, one thing. Okay. There's two other things I want to talk about when this is.

Taken.

If that's okay. I want to mention two other things.

Absolutely.

So I forgot one, but okay. One other thing is.

Trying to take my show.

Okay. No, no. I remember. I remember. A lot of times, and most people know this. Most people know this when they're negotiating, like you should not do too much unnecessary talking because if a lot of times silence is power. By not seeing anything, the other person will often start talking. By talking to reveal their hands, it's.

More silence, pushes them to talk.

Absolutely. Like that's also, when you make an offer, stop talking, make the offer. Yeah, I would buy it for 180 thousands and you stopped talking.

That discomfort makes them actually say things. They maybe wouldn't have said if they were comfortable. Right.

Exactly. So, so if you say I'll buy for 180,000 and then they're like, no, and then you start talking right away. Okay. I'm sorry, Mr. Seller, I apologize for butter. I divide for 180,000 and you start talking and talking, well, if you would have not talked, maybe they would have said, are you crazy? I'll only sell it to you for 180 5. You're like, oh, I'm not sure if we can do that, but maybe I can do something about the price. Let me, let me check on that. I'll call you back tonight. Maybe you buy it for 180 2 and you, instead of making 22,000, you'll make $20,000. So that's also good. So, so don't talk if you, if there's no advantage in talking and especially don't talk when you've made an offer and don't talk when the other person might start talking and reveal information to you, because silence is gonna lead them to start seeing things that might have them show their hand to you.

Love it.

Yeah. One other small thing is don't give people concessions if they're not asking for it.

So, so that, so what you're saying is negotiate differently that then you let me rephrase this. In the beginning you talked about when somebody takes, make sure you take back,

Take actually a little bit.

Yeah. Don't expect to give. And I like that.

Well, it's actually what I meant earlier with, if they ask for a concession that hit them back with a concession to keep a balance of power. Right. But, but what I mean, what I, what, I mean, what I just mentioned about don't give them a concession, unless they're asking for it is you might sell it. You might also try to wholesale a house to someone and you say, they ask you, maybe you got it for two hundreds and you're trying to sell to them for two 40. And let's say the house is vacant. Okay. They go by the house and they send you a bunch of pictures. They're like, man, this house is really rough.

Yeah.

Well, a lot of people, what they're going to say is, okay, okay. I'll do 2 35. He's never told you. He's not going to buy it for two 40. So don't start giving people concessions. If they're not asking for it, don't start giving away things. If nobody's asking for it. So a.

Lot of negotiating against yourself thing, right?

You're negotiating against yourself at that point. Don't start, don't start giving people things. If they're not specifically asking for it, I'm not saying if they ask for it, just give it to them. If they're not asking for it, then don't give it to them. Because a lot of times, especially when you're wholesaling, these cash buyers, they might be experienced. They might be like, did you see this picture? I sent you about the hole in the ceiling. That's rough. That's true. They're smart because from, from their sites, from their sites, they're not saying they're not gonna buy it. They're just seeing if you will reduce the price automatically and you have this situation in different shapes and forms. So just be aware of that. That's what I wanted to say.

Don't offer it, unless it don't even think about offering it until they start pushing for it because you might be giving up something you didn't need to give up. That's good. That's good. Again, that's that whole discomfort thing, right? Sometimes we get into a position in a negotiation where you feel uncomfortable. You feel like you've got to step in and save the deal when that's really not even what they're, well, they might be hinting at it, but it's maybe not a big enough deal to actually kill the deal or to have to renegotiate. But they're testing the water. You can end up giving and who knows, maybe they do come back and they say, well, because of that hole in the ceiling, I need a thousand dollars off or $2,000 off the price when you would have sold. It's okay. I'll just give you five grand off and we'll make this all right. You may have actually offered more than they were going to ask you for, but you don't know that because you jumped the gun and you tried to, you got anxious, right?

Yeah. That comes from fear because you don't want to lose the deal. Yeah. But yeah,

It's, it's all about that confidence and that, that boldness, because you've got other deals coming down, the pipeline, your work and other stuff, it in commercial real estate, that happens a bit because you spend so much money, doing due diligence on these deals. Like I'm brought to close on a deal right now and I'm doing the math and I'm like, whoa, we spent tens of thousands of dollars figuring out if this is something that we want to buy, that's a lot of money to lose if you ended up canceling. You, so you can get that feeling very easily. Like crap. If I, if I cancel it, I'm losing 30,000 bucks, is it, how much is it worth to me? Of course there is of mathematics behind the scenes to make sure that you're not walking on a deal over something small, because you're worried about due diligence costs. It's a matter of just saying, Nope, I'm going all the way. This is, this deal's going to happen. Yeah, it does create, you do maybe take some extra risks, but it's worth it because the deal's worth it ultimately. So.

It's always a balancing act. I I'm sure you rather lose 30,000 than overpaying by $2 million. Some situations, it's obviously very clear that what you want to do, but it's always a balancing act. So.

It is. Let's talk about the market Dimitri and, I want this to be kind of an evergreen discussion. I don't want to get too granular on what interest rates were yesterday or something like that. Cause it may not be important, but three months from now, if somebody is listening to this, but generally speaking, it's, May 3rd of 20, 22. There's definitely been some sketchiness in the, in the economy since the first of the year. Right. What's kind of your vibe on, buying real estate, knowing that there's maybe some lingering risk out there. I know you're not shy about where you think the economy's going, but what should someone be thinking about if they're either just getting started or thinking about getting started buying real estate kind of with in today's economy.

Okay. You're asking a very interesting and very complicated question. Of course. Yeah.

Dimitri can go super in depth on this stuff. I would say keep it at a level that we're going to follow you.

Yeah. Yeah. We're not going to make this an economics discussion, but I want to talk about something different, which is spin off structures. We have structure. I mean, with that, I know it's outside of the box because you normally don't hear about this when you talk about real estate, but there's this altar Nassim, Nicholas Taleb. He actually wrote a book it's called antifragile and the concept of the book. I can verify paraphrase the concept of the book in 30 seconds. He basically explains that whenever you make like financial decision, there are three typical payoff structures. One of them is fragile. The other one is robust and the other one is anti-fragile right. When you talk about fragile, I mean, everybody knows what's fragile. It's like a glass and it easily breaks. Whenever it breaks, you can't fix it anymore. And things like that. Well, in real estate, you can also do a deal that's fragile. And, and the reason why I'm bringing up these payoff structures by the way, is I wouldn't focus as much about what the economy is going to do because nobody knows. I would try to focus on the payoff structures that you're getting yourself into. I would stay away from real estate transactions that are fragile. What's fragile. It's very fragile. If you're buying a $200,000 house for one 70 and you're financing a hundred percent of it with hard money, with an 18% interest rates and three points at closing, if the market just drops by 10%, like, and you sit on it and it drops another 10%, you have negative equity. That's very fragile. What's also fragile getting yourself into a commercial, a piece of commercial real estates, where the cap rate is 6%. The interest rates on the financing is four and a half percent. You have almost no cash flow. The lender barely accepted it because your debt coverage ratio is actually kind of marginal. You have to refinance it in three years. Right? That's very fragile. I would tell people stay away from older fragile stuff, especially at this point in the market, because in 2013, 2000 14, 15, 16, you could say, okay, I'm buying a property at one, that's worth 200. I'm buying it for one 70. Maybe you're financing it and things like that. It'll probably go up and you resell it or whatever. I mean, I still wouldn't like to do it like that, but I could understand that. In this markets, I think I would stay away from anything that's fragile because you don't know what's interest rates. What interest rates are going to be. Maybe they'll drop back. Maybe there'll be 10% in two years from now. So we don't know. So stay away from other fragile stuff. The second piece of structure is robust. Robust is something that just doesn't really break, right? It's it. If you give it, if you hit it will not break. It's like a wooden desk or something. You can hit it. It will just maybe worst case, a little bent but you're not going to break it. That's, what's the comparison or what's the situation. If you're, if you have something robust in real estate, I would say that's, maybe you're buying a rental property. You're being cash for it. Or you're buying a good commercial deal. You get a fixed rate for 15 years and you're buying it with good financials. You have a good debt coverage ratio. That's, fairly high and things like that. We put a big down payment or things like that. It's it's not going to break. You're going to keep what you have. I would focus on, I mean, I would definitely get into something like that. That's robust. That's where you can store your wealth. Store your wealth in a robust way. In other words, if interest rates double or triple don't get wiped out. If the market drops 30%, make sure you're not wiped out. If utility prices double and maybe if you're being utilities for your tenants, then that's not a good thing. Make sure you're not wiped out if that happens. Make sure that whatever para meter goes up or down, you're not wiped out. Then you're robust. The third thing is antifragile. This is what I love because anti-fragile is where you put yourself in a situation where you cannot really, you can not get hurt. You can only gain more. And that's what wholesaling actually is. A lot of people don't understand that because when you're wholesaling, you're basically buying options for super low prices. Once in a while, it just explodes. I've had experience with that outside of real estate as well. And, and it's something that I really like, because if you lose, you're not really gonna lose a lot. If you win a lot. So why it's so big, You win big because why it's pulsating like that? Well, if you have a good marketing system, you might get a deal for a hundred dollars, $200, right? Well, if I give that a shock and let's say the deal was 10,000, if I give that a shock, right, then the deal might be gone, but you're not going to break the bank because it's a hundred dollars. Like you're not going to be wiped out because of a hundred dollars. That saying the other direction, I give it another shock. This time it's not going to hurt you, but it's going to help you. Maybe the a hundred dollars. It's not going to be 10,000. Maybe you got a really good deal. It's now 40 thousands. That's anti-fragile so my advice would be to people, make sure that you're doing things that are either only robust, only anti-fragile or a combination of boats. And, and the way that you're robust typically is just don't get yourself into trouble with death and things like that. So that's the same in any, yeah.

Well, head yourself, really head yourself against risk. Not only don't only protect yourself against risk, but hedge to where you've got a lot of upside when things go bad as well, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can keep cash and things like that. There's many ways that you can be robust against, but the problem is we don't know what's going to happen. You want to make sure you're prepared. If the market gets cut in half, you also want to be prepared to if the market doubles or whatever, but just make sure you don't get wiped out. Because I think a lot of times people are like too much people are too much involved with the mathematics of if I put down less than my cash on cash is higher and things like that. In the real world, like there were people I'm sure in 2004 explaining how you should put down less and then you have a higher and they show the mathematics behind that. If you get wiped out, it all that mathematics doesn't matter. I think in many ways, not getting wiped out is a better results than a lot of people understands,

Downside,

Protect your downside, make sure you at least do okay, and then create an upside that can really explodes your, your welds to the up sites. You can do that in many different ways. You can get a good commercial deal. You, you can get good wholesale deals or really good flips, but make sure you don't get wiped out. I would say.

So, Dimitri, we got just a couple of minutes left here, but let's shift gears briefly outside of, necessarily directly real estate. You know, you're a married man. How do you, how do you handle the work life? I don't want to say balance, but how do you handle, doing the transaction volume that you're doing while still keeping your wife happy and you have a pretty awesome lifestyle. Has it hurt? His wife is all over YouTube. She's got a pretty awesome YouTube channel. How do you, I mean, how do you keep up with her and all the fun while still getting these deals done?

Well, I think the first thing is, and I'm talking specifically about wholesaling, but I think it also applies with other parts of real estate. My marketing is a hundred percent automated at this point. I, I need to do a few things once every month, but the marketing is always there. The reason why I'm mentioning that is because if you don't make sure that it's always there, then it's not going to be there at one point when it comes to married life and things like that, my wife is actually super supportive of what I do. She's happy that I'm, working a lot and things like that because it's good as a, as a husband, if you're providing and working, it's better than not working. So, so I it's important if you choose your partner that you choose your partner wisely and you choose a person that's not going to be angry if you're on a Saturday morning working or something, instead of doing whatever, but obviously at the same time, you gotta make time for your wife. We do make, we do have like date nights where we go out and we get when we have really quality time. So, yeah.

That's awesome. As we wrap up here, number one, thank you for being on here. I love how Dimitri is so data-driven, but yet he still looks at the real world. Like I've I know some people that are super smart, all brains, like all data, but then they don't look at, the real world investing as well. Very, some very tangible tips today that we can take and run with. So thank you for that. Thank you for being on, how can people get ahold of you and maybe is there something that you could do together? There something that if somebody needed, w how could they get ahold of you and number two, what is maybe what's a value proposition or something that you could either do for them, or they can do for you?

Okay. You can get a hold of me. I'm on Facebook. My name is Dimitri VanCamp, D I M I T R I last name, van camping, two words, V a N C a M P. You can contact me through there. I'll be happy to be your friend if you're also in the business of real estate. Yeah, in terms of helping, I occasionally do a joint venture deal with someone. If they need someone to help them to market a property I'm in Florida. And I also provide consulting. If somebody wants to get some more into the specifics about negotiating or marketing or something like that.

Love it. All right. So, Hey guys, hope you've gotten a ton of nuggets out of this. Like I have Dimitri, thank you again for being on, and I'm gonna have Dmitri on again. I know he's going to end up being a regular on the show, so I'll see, I'll check you guys on the next episode.

It was great fun. Thanks for having me.