A $150,000 Pay Day

Something happened in my life I think will really help you as an investor, and even as a person.

It’s a story about…

The passing of my great grandfather…

The first real estate transaction I ever made for $850,000 at age 23…

What I did to make $150,000 more on a two-family house than anybody said was possible…

How I may have very well broken the law in the process…

And what you need to do to start breaking past the walls and roadblocks in your own life.

Come on a flashback with me to just about every Christmas eve I can remember.

We’d always spend it at my grandmother’s house in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Borough Park is an almost entirely Orthodox Jewish community. So it was a bit of an unusual place to spend Christmas Eve.

Still, my grandmother always whipped up the traditional Italian feast of seven fishes. My brother Paul and I hated fish so my mom was good enough to brown bag some chicken parmigiana for the two of us.

Around 8 o’clock my great grandfather would finally come home. We’d never start the meal without him. He was a pharmacist by trade and just about the most fun you could ever ask for in a great grandfather.

My grandmother used to make me sit at the head of the table at his right-hand with a spare tablecloth under our chairs. You see, we both enjoyed eating far more than good table manners.

And he’d have us up all night because he thought it was a good idea for my brother and I to develop a taste for espresso at a good young age.

Good memories.

My great grandfather owner the building he lived in which was a big brick front two-family home. Even beyond the fact that it was a very large home in New York City, it was in many ways a one-of-a-kind.

You see, like I said Borough Park was almost entirely Orthodox Jewish, which if you don’t know is an extremely close-knit community.

So once a family moved in and bought a home – that was it. They never moved out.

My great grandfather’s house was one of the last chances for a new family to ever live in the heart of the Orthodox Jewish community of Borough Park.

It would one day be the responsibility of my father and his two brothers to sell and divide this property.

As the years went by and I grew up, I promised my dad that one day when the time came I would help them sell that big ol’ brick house.

You see, my father and his two brothers are all very bright, very honest, very hardworking men.

But they jokingly have the Lanfranchi gene when it comes to family finances.

(I now have come to believe that the gene skips a generation).

So just as life is, the time passed and eventually so did my great grandfather.

One of the last remaining homes in Borough Park now had to be sold.

Word spread like wildfire and my grandfather (not great grandfather) was already getting calls about whether the property was for sale.

I was only 23 at the time and didn’t have a lick of experience in real estate.

Anyone in their right mind would have said putting this transaction into the hands of a totally untrained, inexperienced kid like myself was nuts.

Not to mention, I was like an alien in their community. Every man, woman and child was dressed in a way that set them apart. They acted differently. Spoke differently. I was a complete foreigner.

But I was a trained account, experienced salesman and most of all, I had made a promise long ago to my father that I would step up to the plate.

So first things first, my uncle decided to contact a friend of the family who was a realtor in the area to get a CMA.

She came back with a value of $650,000.

She said maybe $700,00, if we wanted to be pigs as my uncle put it.

The family was so grateful. That was more money than anyone had ever seen.

But it all didn’t sit right with me.

This house was one of a kind.

And the phone was already ringing off the hook even though we didn’t tell anybody it was for sale.

I’m sure this realtor meant well, but she wasn’t our answer, not when it came to selling a house like this.

What if someone was willing to pay $50,000 or $100,000 more?

How would we ever know if we only asked for $700,000??

So much to my uncle’s dismay I told him to politely thank the realtor family friend and let her know we’d be selling on our own.

Now came the tricky part…

How do you sell a house for top dollar in a totally foreign community?

Oh yeah, to make the matter more difficult the property was about 1 ½ hours away from where we lived so it’d be a huge headache to show it every day.

Then it hit me.

I called up my dad and his brother’s and told them the plan.

We were going to have 1-day only exclusive open house –

Followed by a 1-week long silent phone auction.

My uncle was like, “Can we do that?”

“Why not!”, I pompously said.

Now let me confess – this is where my inexperience could’ve landed me in trouble. I should’ve done my due diligence here to make sure entertaining multiple offers and what have you like this was acceptable. To this day, I’m not sure if I technically broke any laws and honestly what’s done is done and I’d rather not know.

The plan was set.

I had the entire property emptied out and broom swept.

Then I went into the community and handed out fliers to people on the street and owners of the local stores.

“One-day only – if you want to see the house, you’ve got to come this day.”

Lots of folks tried to twist my arm and get into see the house sooner.

But I wouldn’t budge.

This was the vision and I was sticking to it.

One time, by accident I almost accidentally barged into a synagogue during a prayer ritual!

Well the open house was a smashing success.

We had something like 20 to 30 families come through.

And I’m sure as you guessed, lots of them wanted to make us an offer on the side and avoid the whole phone auction. Some of them were downright annoyed we were selling the house like this.

Even my uncle’s questioned whether or not I knew what I was doing.

“Yes, sir.” Full steam ahead.

The next week was probably one of the most exciting experiences I ever had.

The first offer arrived almost instantly and was waiting on my answering machine.

It was already MORE than the realtor had suggested.

Every day after I’d get a new message with an offer sometimes $10,000 or $20,000 more than the one before.

When all was said and done the top offer at the end of the week was for $850,000!

$150,000 beyond what the realtor told us was top dollar.

And we didn’t pay a cent in realtor fees, so my crazy auction idea really brought in $200,000 more than we would’ve otherwise made.

What’s the lesson in all this?

Well of course there are a lot of good tips here about creating exclusivity and urgency when selling a property and how-to generate a buzz in the community.

But there’s an even more important lesson – a life lesson.

Whatever it is that makes you passionate about real estate investing, I bet it has something to do with not wanting to live the average or ordinary life.

That’s why you’re reading this email right now.

Commonsense said I should NOT have been the person to sell that property.

A real estate professional told us we could NOT get more than $700,000.

My uncle’s told me we could NOT sell a house by auction.

And even the buyers told me we should NOT be selling a house the way we did.

When commonsense and popular opinion says to go one way, what does the “average” person do?

They go that way of course.

By definition that’s what makes them average.

What about you?

When it comes to your real estate investing, and in the even bigger picture your life, do you really want to do something extraordinary?

To live in a way that is anything but average?

The question becomes – are the decisions you make average or anything but average?

Really think about that.

It’s the single biggest life mistake people make.

They want to live an extraordinary life, yet they keep making average decisions.

In fact, I’ll tell you the surefire way to start leading an “anything but average” kind of life.

Next time you have to make a big decision – ask yourself, “What would the average person do?”

Then – do the exact opposite!

I mean it.

This isn’t a joke.

If the average investor in your area is selling houses by having an open house and putting an ad in the paper, well unless you want the same average results they are getting why would you do the same thing?

This is exactly the reason we developed the technology we did – because we know that investors will never achieve the wealth they desire if they’re stuck doing the same thing ever other “average” investor is doing.

It’s not only about training your self to seek and desire “anything but average” decisions, but it’s also learning this.

When you hear the masses and popular opinion shouting “No! Turn back!” it’s a good sign that you’re on the road to doing something extraordinary.

So I ask you this – what un-average decision will you make today to start breaking fre.e of ordinary life and start living an exceptional one??