Welcome back to Unstoppable RE Wealth and today we are talking with Max Vollmer. Max is just 24 years old. A business owner and Real Estate Investor. He has already built a million dollar real estate business while still being in school and competing professionally in track and field for Germany. He started with $76 in the bank and had no idea what he was doing. Within 2 years he has built and owns 3 businesses with 30 employees. His main market is Tampa, FL where he does fix and flips, short term rentals, new development and apartment syndications. He also has a wholesale business that virtually wholesales in 8 different states. He owns a small construction company and a brokerage in Tampa and also does mentoring/coaching. His real estate businesses truly help make him a one stop shop for getting things done for his properties. Through this episode you will learn about a few things that Max has been doing to build his businesses. Lead management department or is it your acquisition department Plan B’s, plan C and how to sustain through the recession Average commission on your wholesale deals How he got into real estate in the first place And so much more... So tune in this week and hear everything that Max Vollmer is offering. Connect with Max https://www.instagram.com/vollmer_realestate/ And after that head on over to... https://easysell411.com https://billyalvaro.com https://billyssecrets.com Who knows maybe you will be our next partner? To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
Welcome back to Unstoppable RE Wealth and today we are talking with Max Vollmer.
Max is just 24 years old. A business owner and Real Estate Investor. He has already built a million dollar real estate business while still being in school and competing professionally in track and field for Germany. He started with $76 in the bank and had no idea what he was doing. Within 2 years he has built and owns 3 businesses with 30 employees. His main market is Tampa, FL where he does fix and flips, short term rentals, new development and apartment syndications. He also has a wholesale business that virtually wholesales in 8 different states. He owns a small construction company and a brokerage in Tampa and also does mentoring/coaching. His real estate businesses truly help make him a one stop shop for getting things done for his properties.
Through this episode you will learn about a few things that Max has been doing to build his businesses.
And so much more...
So tune in this week and hear everything that Max Vollmer is offering.
Connect with Max
https://www.instagram.com/vollmer_realestate/
And after that head on over to...
Who knows maybe you will be our next partner?
To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
deals, acquisition, people, business, educate, wholesale, side, realtors, market, equity, texting, commission, appointments, economy, equity partners, department, sustain, pretty, construction, multifamily
SPEAKERS
Billy, Max
Billy 00:00
Welcome to unstoppable real estate investing will My name is Billy Alvaro, aka the unstoppable BA, former billion dollar mortgage Baker gone bankrupt, turn professional real estate investor, where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems and secrets myself and other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs used to start, grow and scale their businesses creating massive profits and how you can too, and we'll teach you how to put those profits to work. So you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth. Now let's get started. What's going on? What's up everybody? Welcome back to Episode unstoppable Rei wealth. I'm your host, Billy Aloevera, the unstoppable BA, I'm here to bring you the heat. You know, if you've watched the show for any length of time, I've written guys that are starting growing and scaling their real estate investing business. I don't have too many guys that are on this show that are in the scale phase at such a young age. Like my next guests, Max Vollmer Is Max is what are you 24 years old?
Max 01:34
Yeah, I just turned 24
Billy 01:35
He is twenty four years old, he's in the Tampa area that guy's investing in wholesale fix and flip. He's got a construction company title company at 24 years old Max, everybody's gonna want to know, and you have 35 employees? How the hell do you do it in such a young age?
Max 01:52
It's a real question, right? A lot of work, I can tell you that definitely endless hours and days, you know, you know, the game and intrapreneurial space. But I think it's one important thing is you know, the commitment, consistency, and surrounding yourself with people like minded people. And I always say you only as good as the people, you know, right? Where we started to where we are today is all because of the right people provide network provide connections. In you know, you can only get to go so far these days without having mentorships having people around you, that gets you to the next level. So all the scalability, we know when we initially started doing good and doing real estate, ourself, it was just me and my wife, but at some point going from there to actually building a business, right? You don't learn those things in schools, you had to educate yourself, surround yourself with people that have done it, see how they've done it. And you know, we you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to basically understanding how can I get to him? What is the action items I have to take from A to B to C and so on?
Billy 02:52
No doubt. So this is going to be a good interview. Because you're young, you're 24, you have 35 employees. Give me an idea of what the structure is of your business right now.
Max 03:03
Yeah, so we have pretty much two acquisition departments, we initially started the wildfire, the whole virtual acquisition we drifted away from it's all the acquisition people actually like Tampa Bay's people in decimal quality and conversations, if you have people that are local, and especially if they go to appointments, most of the negotiation happens in the appointment setting. So if the acquisition team, you have a transaction coordinator, that's now moving into the title company, at this position team, we have an in house construction team, property management, asset management, you just hide it not in house attorney in our marketing team. And then we also have going on in Europe, basically right now, we have an entire team over there, because we have funding a lot of deals for capital from overseas. So we have attorneys, bookkeepers, marketing team over there that is, you know, creating websites and building relationships with clients to raise capital from overseas. So there's also a good portion of people that is that is employed in Italy right now, because a lot of the funds are coming from there. So I would say you know, 20 30% of them are overseas and everything else is in house here currently in Tampa.
Billy 04:10
What give us an idea of the volume that you're doing, how many units are you doing a month, a quarter a year? What does that look like?
Max 04:17
Yeah, so because we do pretty much everything right? We do a wholesale innovation fix and flip turnkeys we probably do like 2030 deals a month. Now obviously the market is turning and we are getting more conservative and some of the fix and flips are kind of stepping away right now just to see what a price is going to balance before we started racking us with 20 deals and tomorrow the market is going to you know turn mentioned rack up on the on the turnkey side. A lot of investors are now in the same boat you know, just stepping out they say hey, I want to wait two months he was happening. So the deal volume has dropped. About average we do 15 to 20 deals a month. So this is you know basically the team is structured to do 15 deals right our construction team is capped at 1520 deals a month that it can consistently turn around and Um, so the entire business is made, you know, the acquisition side, how many points of context Have you hit to have actual 15 signed deals on a monthly basis that work. Now on the wholesale side, it always varies Friday for months we do moments we do less there isn't really a focus, you know, like a wholesale focus company, we just wholesale business deals that don't necessarily fit our Buy Box but they might fit somebody else. We are more focused on you know, buying rentals doing fix and flip and a turnkey side. But you know, you always wholesale something so there isn't really like much structure to it, because we don't spend a lot of marketing into right now. It just comes across our desk and we wholesale certain things to
Billy 05:37
so when you say you're not spending a lot of money on marketing, how you driving in your business, your leads, what does that look like? And what do you spend money to drive the business in?
Max 05:45
Question I think has changed a lot. A couple months back, we were really heavy in texting, cold calling our VMs all these things right then, in August TCPA regulations came in have changed the game a little bit. We know going back to like relationship management, building relationships with other investors, realtors and other real estate professionals in this area, getting us deals, you know, educating them on all BuyBox. Right? I always tell our guys in a downtrending economy that people who educate the people who dominate, right? So we study to educate real estate agents, educate all the wholesalers, like this is what we need to sell buy books, this is how we look at deals. If you want to stay in business, bring us those deals, right. So we do like the whole reverse coaching to our competitors to actually be an extension of our acquisition team. Finally, you can also pick up a bunch of deals on the MLS, right? This short sales pre foreclosures coming in, you're still doing SEO Marketing, you're still doing calling texting, we actually started having all guys door knock now because I think going back to the one on one conversation, you know, we put in a pre foreclosure list and versus you know, texting them, you just don't have them and, and talk to them on the spot and see what happens. So you're going back from the mass marketing to modern relationship based quality over quantity. So we are kind of like adjusting with the market. Right?
Billy 07:03
What is you have a lead management department that's managing the leads as they come in, or is your acquisition department, cause I lead management and acquisition at the same time? Yeah, we
Max 07:13
had a lead management department, which we still have any virtual sides, we have some bas that I prequalify some of those leads, and we do like mass campaigns and the texting side. But I just want to be like a qualifying criteria. So they prequalify them and then push them through DCM to the acquisition team. But all the stuff that the acquisition managers are doing, I have them basically handle some of the lead management and the acquisition at the same time, because I think, you know, we had it separated for a while a better lead manager and Acquisition Manager. But I think we moved a lot of your lead managers now into the acquisition position so they can get for commission payments. So they're basically handling their own deals. If you always open it up if you have like, really great performers. And we see that they're booked with a bunch of appointments and they're not backing up and they're in the degeneration, then we start adding like lead managers for them specifically because they overperforming the average by about four as a starting position everyone is just like on the acquisition side as VAs helping them out. But I want them to like be upfront underwriter do negotiate the upfront handling your objectives, I think that's the most learning for them to be, you know, quality salespeople moving forward.
Billy 08:19
How many? How many acquisitions, people do have any team right now?
Max 08:23
Currently, we have eight is your
Billy 08:27
eight guys and how do you go about paying them? Is it is it a salary? Is it drovers commission? What does that look like?
Max 08:32
Yeah, so acquisition is usually it just commission only to give them 15% of net profits. We moved up from 5% A while ago to 50. Now, just to make it more competitive on the move to Acquisition Manager that are managing like a team of four, those ones are a salary and they're getting a commission on the net profits of the department. But every acquisition person itself this commission only because the acquisition position for some reason is the most turnover provided always that people come by new people coming in. We also never stop hiring for this the job posting is always relative because you never know when a great salesperson you know loses a job and you want to go back to a different company. So we always keep that open. And that's always turned around by people get bored or find other opportunities to alternate and contract this in a way. Once we see somebody's really engaged and committed we try to incentivize them to stay in open opportunities for him to stay to figure out what happens based on their circumstances. Most of the time, they're all just commissioned based and you know it's a sales position if you want to make 10 $20,000 a month right it's just so reverse math how many people do you need to contact and convert into appointments to get to that position right? It's it's not really rocket science. If you're good salesperson you can make a lot of money. And this is what we try to incentivize people like if you're really as good as you are, because the interview everyone is a great salesperson and close 60 deals last year, right? Like Well, if you close 60 deals, why are you so worried about a salary right if you close 60 right at 20 $1,000 You'll make a lot of money, you'll be good. So this really tried to incentivize and, you know, get the economy moving right now, more people more jobs open, I guess, like more people losing their jobs. So there's more people like, going back to finding those kinds of positions at affordable rates. And I think we have to take advantage of that.
Billy 10:19
Are you your sales guys do you have to get licensed as a realtor or not licensed?
Max 10:24
We don't require it. It is good. If they are, I mean, I would say 80% of our guys have a license. And there's a couple of newer ones that just had the drive the ambition and the motivation to start. So we just got them involved in how to license but they're still working underneath the brokerage that we own in a way that the main broker, the acquisition managers, managing them, making sure that everything was smooth. Because bottom line is, all they need to do is they have to find deals, negotiate deals, the whole transaction coordination, all these things, filling out contracts is done with the needed transaction department. So we don't have to really worry about me doing something wrong with the contract it just have to find deals, and set appointments.
Billy 11:04
Got it. So give me an idea. I know you said it's more relationship building. Now you were doing a lot of our VMs and a lot of texting and cold calling. What are you having your guys do on the acquisition side now? Are they going out? door knocking? I know you said you're going out and door knocking sellers? Are they? are they hitting up Realtors constantly? Like what's the value and the realtors that you guys would bring in? Because there's a million there's a million guys like us to do what we do? Why would you? Why would the realtors want to give you the business for somebody else? That's a good question
Max 11:31
why we still do pretty much all marketing channels just to see like what's happening. Every week, something changes every month something changes. So we still do the whole texting with a fixed fee of added I guess is like the door knocking we have not done this for a while. And I'll be going back to it just to build a close up relationship. Have you also have the whole like real job last year to reach out? I think where you add value to realtors right now is that the same boat, right? They're getting a bunch of leads, but they're not converting them into close deals because they're putting on the MLS and nothing really happens to it right. So now they're not used to this anymore, because the last couple of years, they just had all the levers they could sell and market for whatever they wanted. And it didn't want to work with investors. Now this is not opening anymore for them. So we've seen as a lot of realtors are coming back to us that you've reached out a while back and asking us if you're still buying, right? Because now they're looking for the series investors to series people with actually cash right. So we need to know going back again, educating them, Hey, I know it's tough for you right now, you're not necessarily selling a lot of your deals. But if you find something that fits this criteria, we're going to be a buyer for you. And we're going to make sure you get double sided commission, right. So we incentivizing and finding our deals, making sure they get to 3% on both sides. Because you have a buying a discount. And so we've got to make sure that they also get the commission always factors in in the initial underwriting. So there's never an issue giving them 6%. But you never incentivizing them, like here, here, we're still buying this is all buying criteria. If you're gonna work for us, this is how it works. And this is where we see adding value to them. And it seems also like a lot of realtors aren't really educated on you know how to use the MLS provide way on how to actually find off market deals, how to build out a business plan for themselves to be successful. So you kind of were teaching them to make sure that they know what they're doing. So it's an acquisition extension to us.
Billy 13:17
I love it. I love it. It sounds like a game plan. What is your average, average commission average profit on your wholesale deals
Max 13:28
at wholesale has been trying to stay at 20,000. That's usually like where we you know, when we do the pre offer underwriting, we factor in a $20,000 profit for the investor still to buy. And that's just what our market is able to capture a tempo is it's not necessarily super cheap market, but it's also at the high end market value in the 450 like a medium house range. So there's at least $20,000 Now the fix and flip the usually trying to push them off for 30 or 40. Because there is always something going on in construction if $10,000 or more that you spend, too obviously a lot more conservative there. But in the wholesale specialization 20,000 is usually our bottom line
Billy 14:08
20,000 You know, we're good, man. Good. And when you guys you have a construction company to in house. Yeah. Is that a full construction company? Are you a paper contract? Like you have actual guys working in the construction company? Or do you have a PM, managing subs on the outside? What does that look like?
Max 14:25
So nobody's actually in house on salary. It's been a bunch of subcontractors and then a property manager and an asset manager. So the asset manager pretty much handles the property manager and the property manager handles all the subcontractors that is mainly for just like the fix and flips right when we do 20 deals we have all guys go in there and pretty much do everything all at one volume. Sometimes you know there's certain stuff like electrician or plumbing we have to outsource or like under roof siding if you have to replace a roof or like the basic basic work can be done in house right if you have like I said like a roof here. Of course, we hire a roofing company. If you do new construction, we have a partnership with a new construction development company that can help us that are usually common as a joint venture. So we've been unnecessarily able to detect new construction in house on the whole, like flip side making it retail, accessible. This is what we can do it in house.
Billy 15:19
I love it, and I love it. And your How are you going about like if your acquisition managers are out in the field, and I have a property that it taken down to fix and flip of who determines if it's a fix and flip? Or wholesale? What are you What are you doing inside your company to do that?
Max 15:34
That's the Acquisition Manager usually submits it up to the US already acquisition specialists and the Acquisition Manager, they review it. And then you know, if they have questions that goes up to me as to SEO and underwriting it or making sure like, hey, what we should do, obviously, I educate them, I give them like certain criteria as to what we look for on a fix and flip side on the rental side. But it's almost like a cross communication from them to diminish it to us, five of us really pushing them right now and educating our acquisition people more on the seller financing side, being able to pitch terms, right, because if you're studying the market on this, like 29, thrilled to $29 trillion in equity. Right now, this is a totally different market in 2008. And 95% of that equity is secured at less than 4% interest rates on their mortgage, but your mortgage REITs. If you think about that, you're going to enter a recession environment where panic sell is going to happen. It's just natural. Most humans do. You see it on the stock market all the time. So a lot of properties and are entering the market, but there aren't going to be the buyers taking those properties away. So you as an investor, you have the leverage coming in, and basically telling them, hey, I can take your property and your asking price. But any terms like why would I pay off the bank, if you have $300,000 in the mortgage for next 23 years, I just take over the payments, pay all the equity, or even finance on the equity allows us to be so much more in leverage and having those negotiation conversation but it goes back again to who educate is going to dominate because nobody really understands subject to seller financing. They're all like, I tried to like scan me and like no, you have to educate them on that stuff. But yeah, more real estate is going to change, you have to really be able to educate and you have to be able to adapt, it's going to be a whole different environment. The whole wholesale stuff, you know, sending out 50,000 messages and getting all these deals, and flooding it all in a market is not going to work anymore. You have to be smart, and you have to actually understand the real estate moving forward to be really sustainable at value in a downtrending economy.
Billy 17:34
You are 24 years old, it's impressive. And you have your shit together at 24 which is your 25 What is it? You say? 25 or 24?
Max 17:43
I will turn 25 Next year more so still 24.
Billy 17:46
So 24 and a revenue buyer you were a you went to school you were a track runner for Nike.
Max 17:52
Yeah, that was a professional track and field athlete. I competed at the University of Oregon, which is you know, Nike Headquarters Czech Town USA. So for the last five years, that was pretty much my main focus. And I was running the business while doing track and field I still going to school, you know, doing all these things.
Billy 18:09
That's the no doubt,
Max 18:12
a lot of work. And obviously, like I would have not been able to accomplish any of that at all. No Wi Fi we both working full time. It was just like to one brain and two bodies pretty much working together all day everyday late nights sacrifice, right. Looking back at my college time, I definitely did not go out and partying. I had this like typical college lifestyle that was fast. We went train twice a day, went to school while I was in school. Just work. Try it. And then I came home and he just grinded Monday through Sunday
Billy 18:43
grinding. Let me go because you are young and you haven't seen a downturn in the economy? Are you concerned at all that you growing too fast? And this isn't a trick question. And it's not? I'm not questioning your ability to think just overall. You have 35 people your quick and two years. Yeah, it's just by speaking to you briefly. You have your shit together, for sure. But are you concerned at all that your your growth may hurt you because of the way in which you've been scaling so quick and an economy that's going down?
Max 19:14
You know, it's it's a great question, right? It's one of the question that has something in my mind every single day, right? Because yes, I have not been 30 Doesn't eight. I've studied the statistics. I've talked to people that went through it to to easily path through the upcoming recession and try to be prepared as possible. But that's a really good question, right? You always have your plan B plan C but you might have to like let people go you might have to like look at your numbers again and see who's really, really really important right can you like temporarily outsource certain things right construction team, you can always outsource contractors to cut up the salary. So there are some Plan B's and C's in place on the other side versus trying to march through the market and being able to sustain right so by adopting right learning how to use seller financing those kinds of things will How about acquisition people to sustain through this environment, using, you know, buying strategic rentals on, you know, building our rental portfolio is not necessarily cash flowing. But in the long run, it's going to help us. Another thing we're trying to do is also, you know, offering services because we have everything in house, we can now offer it outside, I can people go and use our title company, and people use our company management by mentoring people through this entire circumstances. But also, on the acquisition side, we're focusing more and this might sound silly, right, you're focusing more on bigger deals that portfolios multifamily, because there's so much equity to be made. Right, like on the single family side, you're always chasing those deals, you always have to go high volume. Like right now as an example. It's basically working on an entire subdivision, if you're trying to buy down in South Tampa, which is a great deal, the developer passed away, it moved along to his son who is not in real estate at all. And he has no idea what to do. It's like 18 homes that are already like pretty much done, you just have to finish him, and 23 vacant lots. And so the value of this entire project, when it's done is $52 million, and you're coming in at $60 million dollars purchase price of the entire thing. So but once you complete the 18 homes, you're going to sell them in three, four months, and even like a 20% market correction, you're still going to get $23 million back. So pretty much more than all the money back. And then we just have 23 Lots for free yesterday, construction costs, or whatever happens, even if they were two years, it's free lights we just developed and later on. And then there's like, you know, $10 million in equity, or at actually $20 million in net equity. So you know, those deals are able to help us sustain. Now, because we're getting a million dollars upfront as an acquisition fee. And because our brokerage gets 3%, that helps the acquisition department. Yeah, you stay alive on the other side, we are raising money as equity partners so that we don't even pay interest on those deals, because everyone that comes in at the O is going to sit there, and they're gonna get the interest later on, as you know, as a payback when it's done ending it in commission not commission. So to get equity on the actual net profits, right. So we start raising money this way to system to reduce the risk on bigger projects, because the way that you get screwed over is if you have 30 $50,000 interest payments every single week, bringing Equity Partners wasn't as easy, but it seems like there's a demand for this as well. So with equity partners doing higher deals and more equity, you know, sustaining that economy, I think as there's a lot of value to add on on the multifamily side. I'm a huge fan of it. And I think it's going to be a game changer, right. But they didn't talk the economy turning if they think the rental market is going to be more sustainable. And hedge funds are always looking for yield. So if you start raising money on those bigger multifamily is as long as you can operate and syndicate them, I think you'll be able to just turn around deals and I think it will still stay consistent because of the rental demand, right? You're going to enter the rental market. So shifting your mindset, a little bit of like, hey, it's just like trying to wholesale is like what, what else is out there real estate is so big. I mean, there's always opportunities. And so this is what I'm trying to do is like, you know, going through this market, see what happens you have to adapt.
Billy 23:12
But Max, let me ask you this, do you have I know what you and your wife? Do you have a CEO, a CEO or CFO inside your business?
Max 23:20
Yeah, so we it's me my wife, then as a business partner of ours, I'm the CEO and her business partner is the CEO. So there's two different brains making decisions. We had a CFO, we're trying to let go of him, because he's not really putting the work and the effort in usually bounces back to myself and my business partner doing his work. So there's no real reason for it. But it's between both of us. I'm more on the operational side, the integrator and he's more visionary on this why he's the CEO right? So we've emerged our businesses that together and sustaining foodists and target economy
Billy 23:57
so with the older because you have a lot of shit going on, you have a lot of different units, you have a lot of different businesses all related to real estate. When you're looking at your overall p&l Is you looking at them on an individual case by case business basis, not an overall holistic, like this is what all the company is doing? This is what my lines are businesses are doing so you can quickly identify the profitability of each department.
Max 24:19
Yeah, yeah, it's always department days every single month because we also charging the departments right so like if we do like a title well, we don't necessarily pay for Title work, but we still charge the departments right so like the acquisition has to make the money to pay the title company or the property management. So we still charge between departments just like if you do it outside to make sure every department is profitable. We always track it on each side and then obviously go on the big picture see what this company producing. But yeah, definitely
Billy 24:47
smart, bro. Smart, bro. I mean, you have your shit dialed in. You're grown pretty quick. Just you know. I love the growth. I love the vision. I love the fact you guys do it. Just be smart and Be careful. keep our eyes open. You don't want to grow too fast because your top line if you're growing the shitty your business, your top line is revving up. Your bottom line is like, not there, you're not
Max 25:09
totally agree it's a stain that you always say you need to sustain. So I'm not necessarily focused on growing much more, it's more like, how do we sustain stay efficient, make us more efficient at what we have. And you know, see what the market is bringing the next three, four months.
Billy 25:27
Max, what how can people find you online if they wanted to reach out and talk to you?
Max 25:32
Yeah, great question. So we have our social media, they're actually in the process right now of starting pretty much media brand, mentoring, all these things. So pretty much it's just Katie dash Max that's vulnerable. So my wife's name, and my name, and then our last name for Instagram and Tiktok on YouTube. So we start putting out a lot of free content out there on a day to day What are we working on? What projects are you working on? So we're giving a lot of free content out there to hopefully give guidance to people going through this and you're sharing the daily struggles so they can find us on those social media tools and obviously, they can always reach out direct message us on those tools as well and we'll open for meetings are helping people out because I know when we started, utilize a lot of help and I'm happy to give back help for people that are struggling right now that might not have the same network and you and I to be there and you know, help advice and recommend certain things.
Billy 26:28
This was great brother you're a young entrepreneurial stud and where's the accent from? What are you German?
Max 26:33
Yep was born in Germany
Billy 26:38
you sound like who's the guy from Rocky Balboa you too young rocky for Rocky for me though. He was Soviet Union. He wasn't Germany. You got the same accent? Bro. I wish you nothing but the best you're crushing it just be careful. Keep your eyes open. Make sure you're not just looking at your top line. Look at that bottom line and be prepared to not be late 2008 But it is going to be a definitely change and those that are not ready for it. are gonna get hit with the tidal wave. You're gonna get fucked. Brother good chat and good interview. Good seeing you
Max 27:14
Thank you