Are you ready to uncover the power of creative financing deals and thrive in today’s unpredictable real estate market? Forget the cookie-cutter strategies—this episode of the Note Closers Show with Scott Carson brings you a true real estate rockstar who’s been quietly dominating from the charming streets of Rhode Island to the hustle and bustle of Boston. Zachary Beach isn’t just flipping properties—he’s engineering smart, creative solutions for distressed homeowners and transforming overlooked assets into goldmines. From humble beginnings as the “chief bottle washer” to leading the charge at Smart Real Estate Coach, Zach has weathered the highs, the lows, and everything in between. He’s here to share the insider strategies most gurus never talk about—notes, distressed assets, and the art of building serious wealth by helping others. Buckle up—you don’t want to miss this one!

Want to talk to Scott? Book a call with him HERE.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Creative Financing Deals Uncovered: The Roadmap To Real Estate Success With Zachary Beach

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to this episode of the show. Jacked up, guys. We have a very special guest here, a buddy of mine known for a few years now. Got to hang out with him a couple of times in Newport, Rhode Island, and Boston and Massachusetts over the last couple of years. Just honored to have him on here.

I know he’s definitely going to share some nuggets with you guys out there who are investing not only in notes but also in distressed assets and working with distressed borrowers out there, people who are facing issues. I’m talking about the rock star out of Rhode Island. The guy that’s doing amazing things all across the country. He is one of the brainchilds, the chief bottle washer, the head trainer from wicked SmartRealEstateCoach.com out there, guys. He is just a phenomenal guy. It’s my buddy Zachary Beach. What is going on, Zach? How are you doing, bud?

Got excited to be here, my man. I appreciate that head. Bottle washer, yeah. I’ve done it all for sure. I know it’s going to be fun. We got a lot of cool stuff going on.

What I love about it, too, is that you and I have a similar background of being in the bartending space. I don’t think you’d ever stop being a bartender wherever you go at some point. The chief bottle washer is what I always say when I see something like that because you end up doing everything. You’ve been an investor for a while, and you have a little bit different diving into it almost being drafted, I guess it would be the best way to say it a little bit. Can you explain how you got started doing what you’re doing now?

Starting In Real Estate And Initial Challenges

For over a decade now, I’ve been investing in real estate. It’s all these gray hairs. People usually think it’s my kids, but it’s like each real estate deal I did gave me another gray hair. I was a bartender in personal training about a decade ago. I was trying to figure out a brilliant way to change my lifestyle. About 24 years old, and I was getting super burnt out. I approached my father-in-law Chris, who was getting on a 2008 crash and needed to create this new business model to get back into real estate. Back in the day, they called it buying and selling on terms. No,w it’s buying and selling on creative financing.

He started that. I approached him, and I said, “I don’t know if I’m going to like real estate, but it’s going to be better than what I’m doing.” I slapped another thing on my plate, and I started cold calling in the hours between like noon time and 2:00 after one of my power naps. Just started in real estate that way. Eventually, it took me about six months to get my first deal. At that point in time, I saw a proof of concept. I burned the ships and got out of every other aspect of my life other than real estate. It’s been ups and downs ever since, but I wouldn’t choose any other way.

True. Getting in at the downturn is the best time to get it. You may think differently because of all the rigor mortis and all the other things that happened. I know Chris’s story. We’ve been through a couple of ups and downs and stuff like that. Basically, having to start over from square one and ground zero again allows for you to correct the mistakes you did, but also, I think you’re a little motivated because the ships have been burned, right Zach?

For sure. I was looking for something that I could hang my hat on. Growing up. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life. Quite frankly, I did a majority of things because my teachers told me I couldn’t do. The only reason I went to college is because they were like, “You cannot go to college.” I was like, “I’ll show you, I’ll go to college.” When you get to college, you’re like, “I have no idea what I want to do.”

I did what every smart, intelligent college graduate does. They go became a bartender. It was a bit floating out there, and I was trying to find out what was right for me. I knew entrepreneurship. When I was a young kid, I used to sell golf balls on the golf course for a dollar, which is insane because I was leaving so much money on the table. I knew that that was inside of me.

I think when I started to find real estate, was like, “I can start to see where this could play out as I became my own boss, even though I had partners that I was able to run my own schedule and I was able to make as much money as I was able to personally grow.” It started to fit in that context. Now, of course, Chris has built a portfolio. We’ve sold the majority of our portfolio. I’m building another portfolio, and we have this amazing coaching company that is impacting people all across the country, which has been fun to grow over the past about eleven years as well. It’s certainly been a journey.

That’s awesome. You guys do a tremendous job, and what you guys do works so well with what we do in the note business. That’s why we partner up on different things. Now that you look back over the last ten years, and you’re coaching people, what are the fears that you see pop up the most that you have to chuckle? You’re like, “I felt that at one point, or I went through that.” What are the three biggest hurdles or facades that people put in front of themselves to avoid taking action and finding success?

What’s the thing that leaves most people on the fence day one is they don’t make a decision. I’ve tried to instill that in my seven-year-old son. He is always like, “Dad, I need help.” I’m always like, “Remy, you just got to make a decision and commit instead of sitting on the fence because you never know what’s going to happen unless you commit.” I would say a majority of people, before they even decide to even join coaching or doing anything, they usually need two questions answered. Number one, does this work?

You have to make a decision and commit—sitting on the fence won't get you anywhere, because you'll never know what could happen unless you go for it. Share on X

We’ve tried to every single month as we’ve done more real estate deals, try to provide proof of concepts so that way people can get off the fence. Number two, does it work for me? That’s why we’ve really created some additional lower. I call it lower-end programs so that way people can get a peek behind the green curtain, which we call the apprentice. That way, they start to see they can do it. They might not be able to see every aspect of the real estate business, but they can see like I understand the actions, and I can see myself doing it.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s about putting in those action items consistently. Those questions always need to be answered as fast that we can help somebody answer those questions. The more likely they’re going to get into real estate. From there, though, I would say the number one thing is that we need to set realistic expectations. I feel like a lot of people have unrealistic expectations. They’re watching a lot of Instagram. They’re watching a lot of YouTube. Quite frankly, they’re seeing people who are many years into the business seeing success.

We need to set realistic expectations. A lot of people have unrealistic ones—they’re watching Instagram and YouTube, seeing people who are many years into the business finding success, and wondering, 'Why am I not accomplishing that yet?' Share on X

They’re wondering, “Why am I not accomplishing that success?” You even see some of those people that have the stories like, “I got my first deal in 30 days or I made a million dollars in twelve months.” They don’t see all the struggle that came with everything before they got into real estate or that they might’ve used a different technique for a long period of time, and it just didn’t work out. They stepped into this one, and now they’ve pulled those skillsets and that experience. Setting realistic expectations because most people then feel as though they’re failing, which they’re not.

They’re growing, and then it’s the inevitable actions that they take that eventually lead to results. I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here, but I haven’t talked about it in our community. I say it’s hard when we say at the beginning of a year, “I want to get this many deals. I want to make this much profit.” All of those things are lag metrics. They cannot control it. You don’t know how many deals you’re going to get and how much profit you’re going to receive from those deals.

Instead, I try to teach more, or as a community, we talk a lot about more of like minimum standards or like daily action items because it’s the phone calls, it’s the conversations, it’s the offers, it’s the appointments. Those are what you can control. It just eventually becomes a numbers game as your skill set improves, and we can get better numbers. That’s the main point that a lot of people get lost in. That always leads to mindset challenges. They don’t believe that they can do this business, yet they’re making progress, but they don’t know it until the deal happens.

That’s a lot of that we work through, which I’m sure you work through in your community, too. It’s 90% mindset, and it’s trying to create an environment where it’s not just about dollars and cents. It’s about creating a skillset you have long-term. It’s about building something long-term. If it takes you six months or three years to get to your first deal, as soon as you can get there, it’s just about duplication, and you just continue to grow from there.

True on that. People we’ve always found that people have no patience. They want their instant gratification.

I don’t have patience, either.

It aggravates me. What do you mean, I got work? What do you mean, I got to work to do that? That’s the big thing. You guys do a lot with calling borrowers or calling distress donors, stuff like that. We do think when we’re calling contacting banks and people say, “This doesn’t work.” What do you mean, it doesn’t work? How many dials did you do? They didn’t want to attend. That’s not enough.

Come on. You got to put the time in. I love what you said. Everybody comes from a different situation, and we all know that this stuff works. If you’ll just A, build your skills, build what you need or outsource what you’re not good at to get somebody to do it, and you focus on what you’re good at, but hiring a VA to dial for you or to reach out to people. If you’re not good at it or don’t have the time to do it, you still have to do the basic activities. Either do it or find somebody else that can do it for you, right Zach?

Mental Challenges Of Growth In Real Estate

Yeah, because then it becomes inevitable. It’s not if, it’s when. Unfortunately, we don’t always know when because everybody has a different path in which they’re coming to fruition. I can give you averages, but it doesn’t mean that that’s you. What’s always interesting is if you give somebody averages, they always think they’re better than the average. Yet when they come in to do the work, then it’s like, “Almost I’m okay if I’m not at that average point.”

I say that because even though we could set realistic expectations on someone’s behalf and look, I’m just as guilty as everyone else. I look at the next person, I’m obviously going to be better than that. We start to realize as we do the work that there are a lot of things that we weren’t prepared for. Maybe the skill sets weren’t there, or maybe we have challenges mentally, or there’s a lot of things going on with our ego or our self belief. Quite frankly, a lot of those things pull on it way more than in self-worth and the actual activities.

It’s because then you go home and now you got to tell your wife or your husband or your kids like, “Dad’s working hard at this. I’ve been putting in a couple of hours every single day, and we haven’t got that result yet. Still, be able to have that confidence to say, “Just getting a little bit better. I’m getting a little bit better.” It becomes inevitable as long as they stick with it. The only way you can fail in this stuff is if you quit. I’ll make one last point. This isn’t to like continue to beat up the people that want to get involved in coaching.

It’s just more of a setting, like a reality. I talk to hundreds of people all the time, and they’ll come in, and a pretty common scenario is, “Zach, I’d like to make somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 a year in real estate.” It’s in the higher salaries, but it’s usually a good lifestyle. Quite frankly, if you want to live in the United States nowadays, especially along the coast or even where I live in New England, you have to make at least $300,000 to even have a decent life at all. They always say that 10 million is a new million.

It’s like just to make a million dollars nowadays does not mean that you have like this fantastic life anymore, especially if you live in expensive places. They’ll usually say that. I usually ask them, “How much do you make?” They’ll be like $50,000 or $75,000.” I’ll usually say to them, “Just so you’re aware of how this works, you need to bring double the amount of value to the marketplace in order for you to make $150,000. That means that you have to grow almost twice personally in order to make that $150,000 because unless we got lucky, none of us have found a way to make more money than we deliver in value.”

Usually, they’re like, “Okay.” They don’t get the concept at first, but then when they come in, they’re like, “I’m providing solutions to sellers, and I’m providing solutions to buyers. Now, I’m solving problems. Now, wholesalers and realtors are now seeking my advice.” I’m like, “Now you’re going to start to become a lot more wealthy than you used to be because you’re bringing significant value to the marketplace.” That takes time, and it takes effort. It takes, frankly, a lot of work, a lot of things. They talk about characters, what you do when nobody’s watching. That’s where this comes into play. Eventually, one day, you become wealthy in real estate. Now that we’ve said all this, nobody’s going to do real estate anymore.

You're going to start becoming a lot more wealthy than you used to be when you bring significant value to the marketplace—but that takes time, effort, and frankly, a lot of hard work. Share on X

Shifting Mindsets And Creative Solutions In Real Estate Transactions

It’s the honest approach of it. It’s not blowing smoke up somebody’s ass. It’s not showing them falsified things. It’s like it takes work to do what we do. It’s not for everybody. That’s A-OK if it’s not for everybody. That’s the biggest thing. Like, I love what you said because my mentors have said that, too. If you want to go from $50,000 a year to $100,000, you’ve got to develop that $100,000 mindset. If you want to go from $100,000 a year to half a million, you’re doing different activities. You have a different mindset about things and what you’re doing and delegating. People are notoriously cheap about spending things to help them take it to that next level.

Training, mindset, reading books, listening to podcasts, or going and getting coaching to help people go from 0 to 60 in six months versus six years. I know you’re passionate about coaching and mentoring, just like I am, because it’s helped us get to where we’re at. Let’s shift it a little bit here. You and your team are also talking to a lot of folks who are going through different things and working to get them to work with you and your team to create a win-win scenario. It’s a win for them and moving or selling the asset and a win for you guys as well too. Can you talk a little bit about what your niche is and what you guys focus on, and we can go from there?

We’ve been buying and selling real estate on creative financing before it was cool. Now it’s cool. Everybody wants to talk about creative financing, and most people don’t know what it is still, but it sounds great. We’ve been buying on creative financing. What that means is that we solve problems that the traditional market typically cannot solve or chooses not to solve. We do that by these couple of strategies.

One, seller financing, where the seller is the bank instead of going to get a bank loan or buying a property subject to the existing loan. This means we just keep the existing debt in place that the original seller already had, and we will make those payments on their behalf. A lease option, which means you just control the asset without ownership, which gives you the ability to then go sell it. We sell all of our properties, and our rent-to-own is our primary exit strategy.

All of that, what all just means that when I’m communicating with a seller and I’m identifying that their problem is not going to be solved by the traditional market, or they’re choosing not to. All of a sudden, I just look at what’s important to them. Why are they selling? Where are they going? Buy when? What are the finances attached to the property? What makes a good deal for them? Now that we have all that information, we can now solve it with one of our solutions because most of the time, a cash offer at $0.60 on the dollar is not a solution that they want.

Quite frankly, sometimes, even listing the property on the open market with an agent isn’t the solution that they want. You have all of these people that sit in between those two scenarios. What happens? They don’t have a solution, or nobody’s providing them an additional solution past what they’ve been taught their entire lives, which is to go list the property with an agent who’s most likely a friend. Especially during COVID, every single person on this planet was an agent.

You go listen in, and then they have a choice that either sells right away, which would be awesome. That’s the most ideal scent, or they or it doesn’t sell. Now, they have to keep lowering the price. They have to go do what everybody’s recommended. You got to go fix up the kitchen, or you got to go upgrade this and upgrade that. Some people just think that’s not the solution. Instead, we go and we say, “Look, I can buy this property directly from you. Here’s one of the three different ways we can work together. If these make sense, now I’ll just go ahead and buy it and they can now move on.” We provide additional support to the buyers that cannot qualify for bank loans. That’s how we make money.

You’re right. People love the fact that we had low interest rates and everybody could get finance previously on a day. Now, you have to get creative. You cannot sell it traditionally. People overpaid for assets as values were going up in a lot of markets and are corrected. You have some folks that are a little bit underwater, or you’ve got folks that have to sell property, but it needs work. There might be equity, but it needs a lot of work. I like what you said, though. Sixty cents of value isn’t always a good deal. It might be for a good deal for the person buying it, but it’s not necessarily solving that equation for the people that own the property or living in it at that point.

There are a lot of variables that come in with selling a property. I’m working through a deal, and this is a little bit of a mixture. It’s going to be a sub to, and we might flip it general, but it’s a probate. I get called in. I had a wholesaler friend. He then prospects called an agent. Agents like, “This deal, the seller is just going to let this thing go because her mom passed away. She doesn’t really want to pay money for probate. There’s a hoarder-type situation, and she just doesn’t want to go spend a whole bunch of money if she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to make money off of it.”

I was like, “Let’s dive in.” We started to dive in, and we started to discover, “There’s a first mortgage on the property, and it’s like $150,000.” She’s behind like $7,500.” I was like, “Great. That sounds pretty reasonable considering ARV on this property is probably $600,000.” I said, “You told me there were multiple liens.” Now, there’s a secondary lien. It’s a personal lien, meaning that somebody had a discrepancy with the woman that docked. They put a $190,000 lien on the property with some interest.

I was like, “That’s going to be negotiable because the seller already told me, they’re selling to you guys or I’m letting this thing go to foreclosure.” Now it’s a simple conversation with that lien holder to be like, “I’ll give you $0.50 on the dollar for it. If not, the numbers don’t work for me, and you get nothing. Let’s try to figure out a way where it all works out.” If that ends up happening now below $300,000 in a market that’s RBS, say $600,000. It’s not that I do some flips every year, but it’s not like I’m constantly training our community members to do this.

I put $100,000 into this property, and even if $150,000 in this property is still $150,000 in profit. I was like, “Let’s try to figure out a solution through this process.” That’s a deal that I’m currently working on, but that’s just a prime example of that’s the cookie-cutter market is not solving that problem. No, this is somebody that like we got to dive in and we got to look at all the different layers of it in order to create that profit and because we’re able to do so, as we can see, there’s lots of profit left on the

table once it’s been completed. Most people aren’t going to think through those types of creative solutions.

Lead Sources For Creative Financing Deals

What are the leads or the lead stuff? Probates, FSBO, rent to own. What are some of the different leads that you guys target?

We don’t do a ton of probate. Quite funny that it just fell in my lap. Primarily expired listings because when we buy, like I say, 90% of our properties, they’re nice, moving ready properties. That way, we can go sell them on rent to own right away. Expired listings love those. They were on the market at one point but didn’t sell. Now, they need an alternative solution. Now, we get to step in because they’re still motivated. Sale by owners. They think the reason why they’re a for sale by owners. They think they can sell on their own.

Now you play toward that because they don’t want to necessarily pay commissions or closing costs or things like that. We buy those. Pre-foreclosures are huge. You always have to be careful on how you market your pre foreclosures, but there are lots of lists out there that associate with that. Referrals from realtors. I’m seeing a huge amount. There’s a couple offers I made just recently of deals that are on the market that are saying, “I want to do seller financing.”

We’re just reaching out to those agents on the market or even directly to sellers if there are FSBO saying they want to do seller financing and structure and deals. Of course, wholesalers and things like that as well. Over the past ten years, this is the most amount of leads I’ve ever seen where like you could just slowly step outside and you might see a credit financing deal versus I was digging for the first 5 or 6 years because I had to educate everybody on it. Our entire team did, or if you’re a brand new investor in Creative Finance, you had to educate everybody.

At least the market’s a little bit softer now. I that’s positive. The problem with that is there’s a lot of people doing deals that they’re doing it the wrong way. That’s why me and Chris have doubled down, and I’m traveling all across the country many times now because we’re going to do it the right way so that way we don’t have legislation and stuff come in that eliminates this awesome solution for people. It’s about doing it the right way as well, which is important. Those are some of our main lead sources. From there, we work them through our process.

You guys, I love it. The three payday system. That’s right. You guys are well known for. Can you explain that to our audience? I know what it is. I have my own three payday, but your three payday system, I love.

The Three Payday System

The way in which we’ve always set up the business is we buy creatively, we sell creatively. If we look at our main business model. I walk you through how we acquire them, but how we sell them is we sell to people. Roughly 82% of the market cannot walk into a bank and get a loan. It’s like 75% of Americans have a 650 credit score or less. That automatically takes out like 75 people in order to get decent bank rates. For the majority of the properties, we have an affordability issue. Now, you have all these people that want to be homeowners, but they cannot.

 

How do we provide that solution? We buy them correctly on creative financing. We had good debt on the property, and we got good seller financing terms, which allowed us to say, “We can make some money from this deal. Now that we can do that, we’re now going to go sell the property to somebody that needs a rent-to-own program. We then collect our first payday, which is a non-refundable deposit. That’s anywhere from 3% to 10% of an elevated purchase price.” That means I sell it on day one, and I get a nice large non-refundable deposit.

That’s how you pull some equity off the table. That’s how you are risk-averse. They give you that money. Payday two is now the monthly cash flow. That’s what the majority of people stick with in real estate. They want cash flow. This is the most passive way for cash flow because outside of notes, because I’m not being their landlord, they’re a buyer. They just need time to qualify for a bank loan. They take over any and all responsibilities. They’re just paying me the money every month, and I’m making sure that there’s any debt on the promise being paid.

That’s your payday two. Your payday three is eventually this buyer is going to go qualify for that bank loan. If we’re doing everything correctly and our buyer is also doing everything correctly, we’ve now set up a mortgage readiness plan. When they’re mortgage ready, they go get a traditional bank loan, and they go ahead and cash us out. Usually, there’s a good chunk of change at the end when it closes out. That’s known as your payday three. You get paid today, monthly, and then when it cashes out.

It’s not only just the difference in what you bought it for, what they’re buying it for. It’s also the principal write down as well.

You can automatically create equity deals because you can even buy something today that has no equity and manufacture equity because you’re selling it to them on a three-year option, which means I’m going to elevate the purchase price today. Now I can pull some profits off the table because they’re to give me a non-refundable deposit. Now I’m pulling out some of the elevated purchase price or the equity and now placing them on the property, and now they work towards becoming a homeowner.

I’m sure you’re seeing an increase in subject two deals as well too.

My personal portfolio is probably 90% now or subject to with a seller financing second. We have that combination deal. Those are massive. It’s because of what’s happening, because people bought properties for the interest rate. They didn’t buy them for the purchase price. They weren’t doing that. Quite frankly, a lot of them were done with FHA loans.

We all know the smaller amount you get into a property, the less likely you’re in default in the FHA rates. Again, I’m not like the bank guy. You’re more on that side. I believe they’ll do up to like 40% or even 50% sometimes on your debt-to-income ratio on that monthly payment. It sets people up to fail in a way, or it is a very risky scenario. What’s happening is now all of a sudden, if somebody misses a payment or you’re falling behind or one of the spouses loses a job or now all of a sudden they cannot make their mortgage payments, but there’s good debt there.

Now savvy investors, especially once we train now, go to them, we say, “Let’s see how we can structure something. We will start making those payments on your behalf. We’ll keep that good debt in place.” That allows us to sell the property and still make a profit, which gives us the incentive to go sell on rent to own. We can help the seller get out of a bad situation because they’re no longer able to keep up with that mortgage.

The Benefits Of Taking Over An FHA Loan

That’s the great thing. About 14% of all FHA mortgages are in default. It’s insane. They just released it. The previous administration was paying millions of mortgages on the FHA. Bars are behind to avoid this tsunami of distress stuff happening. When it comes to a person’s credit score, the one most powerful thing is 24 months of on-time mortgage payments. It’s also one of the worst things if you are late. It’ll kill your credit score. If you let it probably go to foreclosure, it’s going to kill your credit score for seven years.

If your mortgage is late, 24 months. That’s the great thing about taking over somebody who’s been behind a few months on their FHA, their credit scores shot, they couldn’t go by in there. You taking it over and helping them build their credit back up by taking over that debt and keeping it from going to foreclosure and allowing them to get out from underneath this albatross that they probably weren’t ready for to begin with, because they got in with 2 1/2% or 3% down and things changed on them. It’s really creating win-win scenarios for both parties.

For sure. I’m glad you brought that up, because obviously, you’ve been in real estate for double the length I have been in it. Most people ask, “Why would a seller sell you a property subject to?” That’s one of the examples because we’re professional investors. We’re to make our payments on time, which is advantageous for the seller because it’s still tied to their credit. Now, we improve their scenario by making payments on their behalf.

Now they’re going to be bankable way sooner than if they defaulted or they go to foreclosure or they do a short sale. Short sales kill me because I’m like, “If I just knew your scenario three months ago, you would have been out of it because we would have been more than happy to catch up your payments and allow you to walk away and not have to pay anything. Yet now you have seven years to like to get back into a property.” Instead of their credit going significantly down, it’s going up. Now they’re more bankable. The good news is we can show that somebody else is servicing that loan.

It will help your debt-to-income ratio, which means you can probably go buy a house at some time in the future. It’s just like these things go on and on. This is why I’m glad that we keep digging further, because these are the scenarios that the traditional market cannot solve because a wholesaler or a retail buyer, fix and flip or anybody else. They’re not going to go buy those properties because they don’t have a lot of equity in them. There’s no way for them to make that money unless they’re keeping the debt in place because they’re now replacing it with higher interest rates. Now that property doesn’t have cash flow.

Cash Flow And Deal Structuring

When you talk about cash flow, what are you guys looking for is your minimum level between what’s being paid and what you can make either on rent to own or an owner finance deal. I know it varies whether you’re in California versus Akron, Ohio. If you look at some, what’s the minimum percentage amount that you guys are looking forward to put in there in place for you?

I always tell people you got to look at these holistically because there are deals in which I make no money or we are making less money. We’re paying, we’re subsidizing. Yet there’s lots of equity in there, or we received a huge non-refundable deposit. This still ends up being a $7,500 deal. That’s why the three paydays are important. It was funny. One of our coaches is up in New Hampshire, and he was arguing back and forth with Nick, who’s my brother-in-law and our seller specialist. Nick’s like, “Look, Rick, the only way we’re going to get this thing sold is if you pay $25 a month towards the mortgage.”

Rick is going back and forth. He’s heated. He’s like, “Nick, I’m not doing that. These probably see the cashflow.” He goes to Rick and says, “Rick, can you please like deal structure this out for me and see how much money you’re making on your paydays?” Rick’s outline is like $84,000. He goes, “You think you can subsidize like $400 a year in order to make $80,000 over the next three years?” It’s holistic. If I looked at an average, I would say we, on average, make like $300 to $500 a dollar.

That totally makes sense because it’s going to vary on the financing to set up and rights for rent or rent-to-own stuff like that. When you look at selling on terms, what down payment deposits are you looking for as a percentage? I know the answer, the correct answer as much as you can get, but let’s talk about 5%, 10% down. What’s the average that you see across the board out there?

I’ll dig into that. I know when people hear like as much as you can get. They think because that’s the first thing I do. I was like, “Obviously invest, you want the most amount of money.” It’s one of the number one determinations on if they’re going to be successful in the rent to own or not. We want to make sure they not only put down money up front but they also have more option deposits over the course of their lease for two reasons.

One is we want to keep their feet to the fire. You’d be surprised if someone will pay you $20,000 a day and forget about it three years from now. That doesn’t keep their feet to the fire. That’s why we keep doing it. Two is the more down payment because it is credited towards their purchase price, the less bank loan they have to get and the more the bank sees that they put into the property, which means that they’re not only just going to get good loans, they should get the best loans.

They’ve lived in it. They put down somewhere between 10% and 20%, and the market might have appreciated. Now, they’re getting good loans on these properties. Sometimes, banks will even treat it as like a refinance because they’ve lived in the property for quite some time. To wrap up that answer, we typically want to see at least 3% to 7% down but up to 10% to 20% over time. What I mean by that is, like if we sell a property for $300,000, let’s say we collect $10,000 at the closing.

There is a formal lease time before they move into the house. Every six months, we might structure and say $5,000. Now over the course of, say, two years or $30,000. All of a sudden, they have a good-sized deposit. We’re creating cat like we’re gathering lump sum so it’s good for us but it’s also great for the buyer to show to the bank. Again, that’s what’s going to help them qualify for better rates, which means they’re more likely to go get a bank loan.

It is. They’re willing to answer for that 95, 90, or 85, depending on the appreciation of the property. That’s a much more secure loan as an ex-banker that banks will look at. They’ll be out rate term refinancing a lot of cases or something like that. They’re excited about that because there’s that skin the game and the payment history showing that this is a good solid borrower, wherein a lot of people forget about that.

That’s the great thing. People get so caught up in, “I don’t have $50,000, but I got $10,000 down, and I can put $5,000 every six months or something like that to make things happen.” Just getting creative and keeping an out-of-the-box mindset is important. I also want to reiterate that though, how many times do you feel like you’re banging your head against the wall with realtors that have a very closed inside-the-box mindset?

The fact is that’s going to happen in some markets. It’s going to happen with some agents. It’s not that I’m going to sit there and say every agent is going to want to do real estate deals. I think it’s the ones that are creative and the ones that also see the writing on the wall. In my opinion, if you’re not able to niche down and work with investors, a lot of these deals don’t make it to market.

Eventually I would think with everything that’s happening that eventually agents may be non-existent or at least the only the good ones are going to survive, like the ones that bring a ton of value to the relationship like the connectors and the ones that are extremely good at marketing and the ones that are maybe high-end luxury. There’s going to be some very niche down ones that are always going to be around, in my opinion, but it’s like the every day. I do four deals a year or so where it just doesn’t bring that much value.

If agents niche down and say like, “Look, I want to understand how all these transactions can work so that way I can bring multiple solutions to my sellers and buyers.” They’re going to bring so much more value to the table. It makes the transaction smoother because now they attract somebody maybe like myself or one of my community members. Now, they’re able to generate multiple deals from us as well.

 

The truth is if I buy a property and I get a referral from an agent, if anything happens with this buyer and I default, or they default, if I’m back to market, I’m going back to the person that gave me the deal. I’m saying, “Go find me a tenant, go to find me a buyer that cannot qualify for a bank loan. Let’s cut you in on that side of the deal, too.” It’s plenty of profits to go around. I would agree with you. There are a lot of closed-minded people for sure. It seems as if, at least from a gut feel, trending that a lot of people are now at least interested in how to create these other transactions, because if not, they get moved out of a lot of deals.

They’ve had to get creative. They have to go outside the box because the old bread and butter way of working, doing the things that just bought, you listing the property and letting it sell traditionally is non-existent in higher interest rates. The issues of all what NAR has created for realtors out there is making it difficult for things out there. Now you’ve got a very good team there, a really great team, amazing community, stuff like that. Can you talk a little about some of the training that you guys do or when your next workshop is for folks out there that want to learn or dive into this?

Training And Community For Real Estate Investors

I’ll make sure that you guys get access to our Amazon bestseller book as well. We’ll ship it out to you. We’ve really created this community around the premise of we want to do more real estate deals. That’s why our mission is to be known as a community that transforms dedicated people into Wickets Smart Real Estate investors. For everyone, this is for people that want to go out there and build a business and either create great supplemental income or build a business to retire on.

 

It’s creating something that’s going to be worthwhile for you and your family, not just the person that wants to go ahead and just learn, which is fine for some and for others like this about getting in the trenches. We built it around the premise that we have anything from courses to what we call the apprentice, which is a 90-day group coaching program where we literally walk you through the first 90 days and help you set up all your systems. Get you good at the initial skill sets. We’ve built this community around what we call the associates.

The associates are people that we work with anywhere from 18 to 36 months. It’s all application only because we’re literally in the trenches with them from initial phone calls to our coaches jumping on phone calls and doing three-way calls, the structure deals to negotiating, the paperwork to selling the property, you name it. It’s almost like a quasi-partnership. That’s really where people are going to see the most amount of results and success because we’re along the ride with them to help them go through their first anywhere from 1 1/2to 3 years, which quite frankly, is what it takes to get a true business off the ground and create consistency.

It does take a while, but you guys do are so very hands-on and helping people take it to the next step. Those first 90 days are always the most intimidating time of somebody’s learning something new because that’s where the most amount of Q and A comes in. I love the fact that you guys do weekly office hours or Q and A’s. You’ve got a great, what is it Slack, that you guys also use as a message board for people to ask questions about deals and phone calls and stuff like that, too?

For sure. It depends on where you’re working with us and the experience you’re going through, but everything from we’re doing Zoom calls, do we do in-person events. We do basically every six weeks at our office and will allow 15 to 20 people to come. We literally work in your business for two and a half days in person, making phone calls, structuring deals, and putting together our KPIs. All the way to really building a business long-term as well. We’re always connected by Slack, so that way, in between every single aspect of what’s happening in your life, you can always hit us. That way, we can always be right in the trenches with you.

We’ll make sure to put the link into SmartRealEstateCoach.com. There is the description for you guys to click on and check out.

If you want to grab the Amazon best-selling book, Real Estate On Your Terms, you just go to WickedSmartBooks.com/Scott.

We’ll put that in the description and the link for it to go directly there. Zach, what’s your goal for the rest of 2025? I know it’s hard to figure out in a lot of cases, but I know that you’re near goal-oriented and got some things rocking and rolling for you. What’s your big focus for the remaining? Hard to say. Eight months, as we come to the end of March here relatively soon.

I know it’s wild. That mission will drive us all the way until the end of 2026. We’re building out our community and helping transform people’s lives. Day in and day out inside Smart Real Estate Coach, we’re just constantly fine-tuning to increase the amount of deals per associate and increasing the profits per deal. Even more importantly, decreasing what we call time to first deal, which is from initial phone call with your coach to getting your first property under agreement. Those are our main things that we’re always getting after because I would love one day that we have a hundred percent success rate with every one of our students and they get a deal within the first 30 days. We’re not quite there yet, so we’re going to keep focused until eventually we get there.

That’s great stuff there, Zachary. I appreciate you hopping on here and sharing your wisdom. Guys and readers out there, I don’t bring people on unless we absolutely love what they do and the lines of what you’re doing. They are good quality individuals. We can let Zach slide on 2 out of the 3. Now, guys, check it out. Well worth your time. SmartRealEstateCoach.com, and we’ll put the links there for you. If you’re interested in distressed real estate, if you’re interested in creating lemonade out of lemons, then definitely that’s the place to go besides here at the show. Zach, thank you so much for coming on here. Have a great day. We’ll see you at the top, buddy.

Thanks, Scott.

 

Important Links

• Zachary Beach on Instagram
• Zachary Beacn on LinkedIn
• Zachary Beach on Facebook
• Smart Real Estate Coach
• Real Estate On Your Terms
• Wicked Smart Books/scott

 

About Zachary Beach

Zachary is the CEO/ Partner of SmartRealEstateCoach.com, which is a 3x Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company that focuses on transforming W2 employees into creative financing real estate investors. With a passion for business building, he is also a partner in Original Real Estate, Watch Street Properties, and Propsperity.io. Zachary is also a 3x Amazon Best-Selling Author of Real Estate on Your Terms, New Rules of Real Estate Investing, and Sell with Authority for Real Estate Investors.

At the age of 24, Zachary decided to leave the world of bartending and personal training and jump into the family business. It was one of the first big risks that he took in his life, as nothing was guaranteed. Plus, he knew absolutely nothing about real estate. Through hard work, in-house training, and implementation, Zach, along with the Wicked Smart Community, operates all over North America and has successfully completed hundreds of transactions, assisting students in doing the same at any given time with little to no money in the deal and no banks involved.

He has an amazing wife, Kayla, and two small children: his son, Remi, and his daughter, Bellamy.

 

Want to talk to Scott? Book a call with him HERE

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