Power of Relationships

Hello again, fellow investors

In the aftermath of all the Valentines Day hoopla, let’s talk about relationships.

And no, I’m not Dr. Phil about to give you the latest marital advice; I’m talking about building relationships in your business. You’ve heard it time and time again: build relationships. Well I hate to sound like a broken record, but I’m going tell you again “Relationships is a key component to your bottom line as an investor.”

Let me tell you a story about a deal I did a couple of years ago to help emphasize my point.

There was this gorgeous property located in a fairly elaborate subdivision called Heathrow. Most of the homes are pretty new and are all brick with very nice amenities. The property was a large 3-bedroom brick 2-½ bath.

I saw the foreclosure notice in the newspaper, so I immediately start calling some of the family to make a deal on this property. I get in touch with a lady lets call Susan for the sake of privacy. Susan and her husband had built the home around five years earlier. The house was vacant and had been vacant for months. I discovered after talking with her, that Susan and her husband had a very rocky marriage and were now divorced. She was doing all she could as a single Mom to make ends meet. Her ex-husband had a medical discharge from the military from a rare disease that left him paralyzed. Susan was ready to move forward. She’d been through an ugly divorce, a bankruptcy, and now was going through a foreclosure. It was really tough on her. Now, her ex-husband had already moved to Washington and was re-married.

Here are the numbers on the deal:

Value: $165K
Owed amount on mortgage: $100K
Behind: $10K

I dealt with what seemed like every family member that could have had any possible interest in this deal and tried to get this deal sealed up, but to no avail. Susan, the ex-wife had already signed her interest over to me. However, the ex-husband that lived in Washington kept stonewalling my efforts and wasn’t willing to deal. Then, I get this phone call two days before the auction. No kidding, it was 2 days away, and now all of a sudden the husband wants to deal. With only two days before the foreclosure auction, I can get a deal done if the people are in my area so that I can meet with them. I’ve done it numerous times before. But when you add the fact that this guy was on the other side of the country, it makes it almost impossible. That is, unless I happen to know someone in Washington!

See, I happened to meet a guy named John at a seminar several months beforehand and we became friends. We emailed and talked on a regular basis about how to improve our businesses. So, I called him and asked him for a favor and told him I’d make it worth his while. And so, John agrees and gets the deed signed later that night and sends the docs overnight via Fedex to me. I reinstate their loan 1 hour before the foreclosure sale and the deal is complete. Whew!. “Take a Deep Breath” right?

Now, after the deal closed I sent John $2K for his troubles. Anyway, my point is this deal would’ve never happened if I’d not built a friendship with John. And notice that I just didn’t call him out of the blue asking for this favor. We were already friends and had already established this friendship months before. The moral to the story is to use the Golden Rule in all circumstances. I’d never thought in my wildest dreams that John could’ve helped me in Alabama. And the truth is that there’ve been more people to help me because I go out of my way to build relationships with others.

The simplest way to accomplish this is to treat everyone with the utmost respect even if there’s no financial gain for you.

Anyway, I’m about to leave to go look at a 4-unit apartment building that’s in the process of being condemned by the city. I’ll try to show you some pictures of this beast of a building in a few days.

Until then,

Derek Pierce