Seniors selling their homes is a part of normal life stages in this modern world. It is when they must move to spaces that are well suited for the demands of their age and capacities for their activities of daily living. In this episode, real estate investor and CEO at Mom’s House, Phillip Vincent, joins Scott Carson to discuss how he and his team are working with seniors and families of seniors to help liquidate and sell their unwanted or lived in homes. Phillip discusses the mindset, some interesting case studies, and how this niche of real estate investing can be a true win-win for you and the homeowners who need to liquidate their property to pay for senior care facilities and new living arrangements.
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Selling A Senior’s Home Through Mom’s House With Phillip Vincent
Our special guest is a guy who’s been killing it. This is not only applicable to the note business, but also to those of you in Note Nation across the country that are reading this that are in the traditional real estate side of things. We’ve got my friend, Phillip Vincent, joining us here from Kansas City, Missouri. He’s got years of experience. He’s been doing hundreds of deals. He’s good friends with Ben up in that neck of the woods as well. I’ve known him for years. He is going to share how investors from all across the country can find the best leads for your business with a secret strategy that helped him close on 50 deals alone in 2019. I’m excited to have Phillip Vincent join us here.
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What’s up, Phillip?
Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
I’m glad to have you on. Before we give away the secret to everybody who’s excited out there, talk a little about your real estate background and how you got to where you’re at now.
I’d love to say that I started this business backwards. I started when I was twenty years old building my first house. I started with new construction and I graduated in 21 years all the way to wholesaling which I find funny because everyone wants to start over wholesaling. There were a couple of wholesales, I’ll put down money in the rehab and then rentals and then they go do new construction. I did it backwards. The reason why is, you figure out what you’re good at or what you want to spend your time doing. I wasn’t a very good adult babysitter. I didn’t like the contracting side. Wholesaling is fun because it’s always new. It’s always ever-changing, so monotonous. I like working with families. That’s what I’ve succeeded at is trying to figure out that Rubik’s cube of problems that they have and trying to put together for the families. It’s never a dull moment with helping families in this time of need that I helped him with.
That’s the thing is we’ve all got family and we’re all getting older. As they say, one of the top five market segments is working with the elderly. People that are getting older who need help in a variety of ways whether it’s health, healthcare, housing or helping them with other things of that aspect.
What I do is a marriage of all those things that you said. Simply put, I help the adult children of seniors that are moving mom into senior living. If you’ve been in real estate long enough, you’ve already been helping this type of customer anyway. I formalize that. Back in 2011, we only did 66 deals that year. I said, “What is it about these 66 deals that are similar.” I’m a curious person. I’m always trying to find the fountain of leads, the best leads. I’m never content because if you’re in real estate, you realize you’re in marketing. It’s never done. We used to do yellow pages and we’d get ten deals a year. That’s graduated all the way down to one deal a year. What did work doesn’t say the same?
This day’s trends are simply cold calling and RVM. That wasn’t even a thing to be five years ago. With all of these trends, I call them waves. The thing about a wave is they’re crashing. What I’m doing with helping those adult children moving into senior living if you want to talk about how big this market is, is that 7 out of 10 people over the age of 60 are going to move into some assisted care in their life. That means that they haven’t passed away, they’ve just moved into this. That is the moment when they need to sell the property to pay for that care. I love probate leads. We can talk about probate leads, but let me share with you quickly how much better these are than probate leads.
Let’s say you and I are brothers. We lose mom and the house wasn’t probate because she didn’t have her stuff set up. You and I, it’s not greed, but it’s more what’s in it for me and you. We’re concerned about us and what’s going in my pocket. With these leads, it doesn’t matter as much if you pay $74,000, $82,000 or $91,000 for the house because that money’s going to mom’s care. The kids are more inclined to go with somebody trustworthy because they don’t want to be messed around with. Sometimes, they go talk to the real estate agent. The real estate agent comes in and says, “Clean this house out. There’s a two-month past. Rehab this house before I put my precious name on it. I’ll take pictures and then I’ll sell it.”
In a perfect world, you’re talking about kicking the cans six months down the road. These families don’t want that uncertainty. They found out that mom’s new care is $8,300, $9,000 a month. Let’s talk about this American thing that is senior living. There is no offer of senior living in China or India because you moved them in with your house. It’s an American thing to do that. The adult children have this guilt built up. What do you do about guilt? If you have guilt, you try to over splurge for mom and you get her the nicest one. The nicest one is also the most expensive. It’s funny how that works.
That pressure where that’s going to be paid for and from, very quickly, we go back to the house. When I think about what a perfect lead is for me as a real estate guy and why I was so excited about this since 2011 when we figured it out was that the two things I’m looking for are motivation and equity. That’s the perfect lead and these are those leads. I’ve been keeping those as a secret since 2011. The reason why is I didn’t want anybody else to do it. In my curiosity about life and growth, as a human, as a person in business back in 2017, I set out to say, “If I do this much good for my community in St. Louis, what can I do at a nationwide level?” What I’ve started to do is create these relationships that are big data and getting to these leads.
As I said, if you and I were brothers, if we needed to help mom, do you think we’re doing a Google search to help mom find senior living if we don’t need it? No, of course not. We’re not for that stuff. When somebody does that search, they need this situation to be handled right then. Those leads are the best leads ever found. What I’m doing is trying to build out a nationwide network of trusted investors and heavy on the trust side, as you said earlier about those market segments where there’s good money to be made or a future. True, but what else do you know about the seniors? There are also some of the most taking advantage of the groups. For me, the integrity side and the trustworthiness is more who I want to work with than anyone that wants to buy a real estate lead. That’s not what I’m shooting for. That’s what I’m working on with Mom’s House.
You got to help those people. They are taking advantage, unfortunately, because a lot of times they may not know and are embarrassed to ask questions or to check or even talk with other advisors about stuff. Also, with health, if they’re looking at that, usually their health is deteriorating and that’s the number one priority. Let’s try to find the best healthcare, how to take care of ourselves or mom and dad. They don’t want to deal with having to fix the house up to get it moved or listed. They’d rather have somebody come in and take care of that and make it a win-win across the board. Most of the time, good senior healthcare is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, especially if you’re in bed with deteriorating health. You don’t want to put mom or dad in a roach motel either. You want to help out. Your general lead strikes off of internet searches and you’re putting it in a database and then finding territories or how’s that working there for you, Phil?
In essence, that’s what we’re working on considering in phase two. I don’t want to jump the gun. What I’m doing is finding those people that I might work with in the future for those leads. In St. Louis, I’m teaching people right now what I’ve done to build that channel. The sexiest part about the channel is that once you build it, it’s free. We spend a lot of money on all the other types of marketing. You don’t need to list them all here, but every other type of marketing, we spend money on. They’re good too. They have their attributes and why they’re good and some are worse than others, but these are the best. The older I get, I’m getting to that point where I’d rather talk to ten people and buy five houses than I would want to talk to 150 to buy five houses.
The more you can streamline things and deal with the truly motivated people that want to make something happen versus those that are tire kickers or kicking the can down the street is for sure.
I’ll give you a good example. All the phone leads we’re getting these days, what do they say? “Yes, I’ll sell my house at the right price.” Only every day do we hear that. That’s not this type of leads. That’s the exact opposite that they need to sell the house. Their concern is mom’s care. If he does what he says, this takes a whole burden off of us. You’re fishing in the right pond.
Selling A Seniors Home: Seven out of ten people over the age of 60 are going to move into some assisted care in their life.
With us buying distress debt, we see a lot of borrowers, the elderly side, that can’t pay their mortgages or can’t pay the taxes or they’re living on Social Security. We deal a lot without the family members negotiating with that house. It’s the same thing, “Let’s work on something. Let’s do a Deed in Lieu or some fashion to help you out and let you walk on and stuff versus being on foreclosure.” Not only being on the winning side, but true win-win is also what we all want out there. It makes things a lot better in life.
I feel like the money side of real estate is going to come. I don’t worry about that as much. If I help the customer the right way and keep my reputation in senior living, I know the greater good is still coming. You got big of a deal it is when a $50 million senior living community refers to you. How much trust they have to have in you? I’ve got nothing against the bandit signs. I look at a person that puts out bandit signs versus what I’m doing. They couldn’t be further apart from each other.
The shady guy in the corner, they want to buy a lot from me.
From an old person, are you kidding me? It’s like, “You’re going to make this worse.” That’s what I’m teaching. It’s done at the granular level of how all the stakeholders in this senior industry, which is very insulated, want to be dealt with. If you unlock it, it’s magic. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in our business. That’s why I’m so excited to talk about it.
I’m sure you are but besides the local senior living facilities there in Missouri, you’re reaching out to other places in the country.
I’m building nationwide networks. There’s a lot in the data side of when you’re starting to go through this with your family, what types of searches you’re doing and you get caught in these webs of this is the time that they need to be talked to you. For me, everything with marketing is a timing thing. If the timing is right, we have a value. If it’s not, then they’re not that good of leads, we go driving for dollars. I love driving for dollars. They’re great but because you drove down the street and that house looks crappy and you put it on your list, that house might’ve been crappy for twenty years. It doesn’t mean they need to sell. I’m not here to bash other types of marketing. Comparatively, these have been the best.
Have you found any correlation with some of the homeowners having reverse mortgages because that’s often an elderly product for quite a bit of time? Have you seen that?
I do. One out of ten might have had a reverse mortgage and I’m going to tell you right now, every one of those, one out of ten, don’t understand what they had. Almost every time. They’re like, “No, we don’t have a mortgage.” It turns out they owe $140,000. I don’t know who to blame on that one. I know that industry, I don’t think they understand what it is. If there’s a reverse mortgage, I always say that the average is the best thing for mom anyway because she got to stay in the house longer. Good for her. I don’t know if that’s winning or not. I’m not old enough yet to tell you the answer, but staying in my house as long as I can is the win in this life. We’ll see. I’ll let you know.
The United States is such a different animal compared to other countries where other countries’ elderly are worshipped or taken care of. It’s the whole goal to have the parents live with you, to take care of them, to show that respect that they’ve earned over time versus here in the United States. It’s not that case, which is unfortunate. It says a lot about our society as a whole.
It’s a throwaway society.
It’s sad. That’s the one thing, mom and dad don’t want to stop driving. They don’t want to stay home. They’d like that independence no matter how old they are. I don’t think anybody else wants to go through that. Anytime you can help them out and make sure it’s a true win, trustworthy and help them out of a bad situation because most of these elderlies don’t have the time. They don’t think they’ve got the money to fix the house up. They like the brown shag carpet from 1970 in there. They’ve lived in it for years. It makes for an opportunity for both places to come out smelling good and then doing a lot of good. I’m sure you’ve had some amazing stories from some of your clients.
Do you want fine, bad, weird ones? What do you want?
Let’s do a good one and then a weird one. Why don’t we talk about that? Everybody loves stories.
Good one, I save the lady from getting catfished one time. She wanted to sell her house. I find out why. She’s moving from a nice house. It’s paid off. She seems to go to independent care. She needed to unlock that money to send it to her boyfriend in Africa, who was working on a $500 million deal, but he needed $85,000 to unlock some permits to get the $500 million so he could come back home and live with this princess forever. I’m like, “I don’t think so.” It’s so sad and it haunts me to this day. I go to pick her up and take her to close. I keep asking her, “Are you sure you want to do this?” She goes, “I don’t want to be alone. I am a very jovial personality if you can’t tell, but I try to be happy.” Everything I do and we’re dealing with life and death matters and sad things. There are crazy stats in senior living that blow your mind. 60% of people living in senior living don’t have a visitor. Think about that. We’ve got families, kids, life and we complain about how busy you are.
One day, no one ever comes to see you again. Life is short, you got to enjoy it. I love my job. I always love real estate and now I get the joy of helping these families too with this burden. You talked about the kids and the shag carpet and all this. A lot of times, the burden falls on one of the kids that is still in the hometown. The other kids live 400 miles away. They all think that the sister who’s in town that says their mom’s deteriorating, “You’re crazy. That’s in your head. It’s not as bad as you think.” When I say kid, she’s 60 but their kid here is dealing with mom. He’d taken her to the appointments. It’s a very emotional time for families. That’s why I’m talking about this. I want to work with the best of the best. The people that would rather lose a deal to save face than to try to get one over on somebody. That’s not it at all. This is more put people first and do the right thing. In real estate, we already know that the houses that need updating is where we invest our opportunity to add value. That’s what I’m doing.
That was a great story there. What’s another story you got?
Selling A Seniors Home: 60% of people living in senior living don’t have a visitor.
The craziest one is a lady who sold me a house. It was worth $250,000 for $50,000. I’ll never forget because this was a nice house in great condition. She goes, “I need you to have a seat before we tell the story.” I’m usually asking them to take a seat. She goes through the whole thing. Long story short, her husband did something bad and the FBI came after him. He fled the country for years and she was rich. Here’s a crazy thing. She spent millions of dollars that they had over those years when they finally caught him in the divorce. She owed him half of that money, even though he was gone on the run. It gets better.
From prison, he took the house out of her name and put it back into a trusted name that he had. When you’re in prison, you have plenty of time on your hands. He got the county convinced that it should go through the quitclaim deed. He got to put it into his name. She had to fight with lawyers to get her house back to herself. We had one where a lady signed as a wife and it was his worker. It was a mobile housing. We’ve got to clean out the house and the wife shows up. The husband never told the wife what was happening. We’re dealing with humans. I have two sisters. The brother passed away. He had a three-bedroom house, a master bedroom, an adult movie room and a prayer room. The sister said, “We’re not going back in there again, just make us an offer.” We’re dealing with humans.
The world goes round, doesn’t it?
I like it. If everything was normal, I wouldn’t like it. That’s the fun part. You’re unlucky. I would like to say I’m a puzzle piece. I either fit in really easy or I don’t and either way.
Are you seeing issues with family members that are set benign and trying to get emotional and stop things from happening, greedy or anything else all the time?
In St. Louis, we’ve got a lot of Catholic families. There’s a lot of families who have 6, 7, 8 kids. One of them doesn’t grieve the same way or they are not ready for this with mom with the things aren’t the way they used to be. You’ve had to be loving and kind in what you do but you also have to help them get to their goal of getting that house liquidated back for mom’s care. I teach very good strategies on how to work with that person who’s not ready. A good example is an inherited situation. If one person thinks it’s worth $1 million and there are four kids, the one that thinks it’s worth $1 million, I always say, “You should buy your brothers and sister out for $750,000 and then you can do whatever you want.” You see their tone changing, their strategies for all of this. I like a loaded question too. If they ever say, “We might rehab it ourselves.” “What color of the kitchen would you put in here?”
They’re like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “You’re going to rehab the house. What color of the kitchen would you put?” They’re woefully unprepared to rehab a house. Sometimes it’s the money but it’s more of the time. Who has time to come chase down 27 contractors and get three bids? These families are wanting to get money quickly, not spend money to try to get a couple of extra dollars. Have you ever heard of something called the cost versus value guide? It’s an amazing tool. You spend $10,000 on a deck and it’s worth $7,600. Almost everything is that way. There’s one thing that I know of that gives you more value than what you spend. I’ll tell you right here. It’s landscaping up to $1,500. It’s the only thing that gives you more street value than what you spent. These are the ones that I can say on camera.
Are most of the deals you’re doing primarily right around your area or are you doing stuff in other parts of the country for the most?
For me locally, it’s St. Louis. What’s happening with my lead sources is that for a start they ask me, “Do you have a buyer in Albuquerque? Do you have a buyer in San Diego?” When you’re in real estate long enough, we know a ton of people were friendly but I’m trying to find the best of the best in every city.
What’s the best way for people to reach out to you? I don’t want to say register a territory, but get on your referral list or things like that.
It’s Momshouse.com
It’s easy. I loved that one. Ben, sent that over to me and I was like, “Brilliant.”
Do you know why it’s that way?
Why?
In the industry, even if dad is the one that’s still alive, I swear the caretakers, the people that are in the industry, me, “What are we going to do with mom’s house?” That’s what we call it. That’s because mom was the caretaker of the home. It’s mom’s house. That’s what it’s called. That’s who we’re helping. I love that. Any good domain name that a seven-year-old could spell is good. This one’s on the nose of what I’m doing.
I could not hit it harder on the nail head for you there, Phillip. I love what you’re doing. Once again, everybody, check out his website. We’ve got readers all across the country on our radio networks and watching YouTube, of course, listen to the podcast so highly. Take the time, reach out, schedule a phone call, see if you’re a fit, if you want to have some experience in doing some real estate stuff, so that know what you’re doing for sure. That’s one of the things I love about Ben, your partner there. I’ve known Ben for years. He’s an absolutely high-quality guy, the same thing with you. I have to say this, sometimes, you put yourself last in a lot of the deal flow you’re doing because it’s the right thing to do. It’s not a fit and let’s move on or refer it out to somewhere else and go from there. That’s the beauty of it. Phil, thanks so much for coming on the show. I’ll be reaching out to you.
Selling A Seniors Home: An agent has to be loving and kind, but also have to help them get to their goal of getting that house liquidated back.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Thanks for being here. Check out MomsHouse.com. Get on the phone with Phillip and see if it’ll fit for you. See if there’s an extra way to find some deals and add some deals into your deal flow. You go out and take some action, help some people, make it a win-win and we’ll see you all on the top.
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About Phillip Vincent
Phillip VIncent does development, wholesale and real estate investment in Saint Louis and has closed hundreds of deals. His experience and knowledge led him to create a new venture called Mom’s House where they teach real estate investors all over the country on how to find the best leads in the real estate investment space. In 2019, Phillip closed more than 50 houses just from this one strategy or lead source and is going to share it with us on today’s show.
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