Get ready to be F.I.R.E.D U.P! Today, we have Dwan Bent-Twyford, Dwan will talk about how difficult it was to become a realtor back then and how it's easy to become a realtor today. I will assure you learn a lot today so sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!
Krista Mashore:
Hey everyone. Are you ready to be fired up because I sure am, and today I've got Dwan. She's wonderful. You're going to absolutely love her. She is a real estate investor. She's personally done over 2,000 of her own personal real estate investments. She now coaches people from across the country teaching them how to do it. She's written several eBooks and has a podcast of her own, and she is a rock star.
Krista Mashore:
Welcome, Dwan. Great to have you.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Thanks for having me on, Krista. I've been so excited about this interview.
Krista Mashore:
Me too. So if you guys are excited and you want to be fired up, stick around.
Krista Mashore:
Okay. So you're here, Dwan. Yay! First of all, you, I have to say, are… Your energy and your attitude and your funness, you are just like the real deal.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Ah, thank you.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about your story.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I had to dye my hair pink. I turned 60 a couple years ago, and I thought, “You know what, if I'm ever going to wear crazy hair, now I can just say I'm just a crazy old lady.” When you're older, you're eccentric. When you do it when you're young, you're like, “What's up with her?” But when you're older, you're just like, “I'm just eccentric and this is what I have now.” So I just live my crazy.
Krista Mashore:
I love it. Plus, you got little flamingos in the background. Tell us a little about what's going gon there.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
For people that didn't live in the '80s, I turned 21 in 1980. I was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I was that girl that was all in. The drinking, the drugs, the cocaine, the champagne. It was a decade of very decadent… I'm surprised I lived through it to be honest with you.
Krista Mashore:
You're crazy.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Oh my god, the amount of drugs and drinking, it's insane. But it was the '80s, and we were in Florida. It just seemed like the thing to do. So as I got later into my 20s, I got married, had a baby. So kind of a little bit along the lines of your story. When my husband was eight months old, we unexpectedly split up, and actually he got put in jail for selling drugs. So I get this phone call at three in the morning and it's collect. I'm like, “Collect from jail. Who would be calling me collect from jail?” Anyway, it's my example. It was currently my husband. So I was just like, “You've got to be kidding me. How are you in jail right now?” So I said, “You better be happy you stayed back there because when you get out, I'm going to kill you. So you're safer behind the bars.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
But anyway, the long short of it is he was in a band. It was kind of still the '80s. The big hair bands, and he played out at this night club. And the guys were selling drugs backstage, and I really, truly did not know because we had gotten clean, sober, straight. We're going to have kids, we're going to raise a family, and no nothing ever again. That was like we drew the line.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So it was just really hard because I'm trying to deal with attorneys. I'm dealing with this man, and at the time, I still love him. I didn't stop loving him because I had a phone call. I was mad, super map, but I just realized pretty quick on that he was going to be in for a while. Just all the people, all the things he was hanging out with, I just didn't want any of that in my life or in my daughter's life. So I just said, “You know what, I'm just going to get divorced. I'm going to raise this kid. I'm going to figure it out. I'm just going to put on my big girl pants and make shit happen.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So she was eight months old when I got that phone call, and really it was like I had no money. I wasn't working. I had no car. I ended up losing my car, my house, everything, foreclosure and repossession. It was really like, “Holy cow. What is happening to me right now?”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
But I had waited until I was 30 to have her because I did want to be the Girl Scout mom and the homeroom mom and the field trip mom. I wanted to do those things, so I thought, “Well, I either have to get a job, and I'm smart enough to know I'm 30 years old. If I get a job, I'll probably have it until I'm 50 because I'll work while I'm raising her.” I thought, “Or I can start my own business, and if that doesn't work, I can still get a job.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I literally just took this math. When I look back at it now, it's like, “Oh my god, I can't believe I started off rehabbing. What was I thinking?”
Krista Mashore:
It's an amazing business. You've done over 2,000… Explain that.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I started off rehabbing. So I buy them, fix them up, and sell them. Then I discovered wholesale. You get under contract, you sell it to a rehab or a landlord, and that's really where I started making… That's where the millions started to roll in because I would wholesale 50, 75, 100 houses every year. Just bam, bam, bam. Just wholesaling houses like a crazy person.
Krista Mashore:
I think that's what wholesaling is. So you go under contract on a-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
You find a homeowner that's in distress. I deal with homeowners that are in distress. So they're going through foreclosure, divorce, bankruptcy. So hard. I'm like, listen, 30 years ago we did not have the internet. We did not even have pagers yet. Not even pagers. I had to physically drive to the courthouse. I had the hand write all of the addresses of all the foreclosures, look at them in this map book and drive myself in and out of these neighborhoods. I did it with my daughter. Every day in the car, listening to Disney sing-a-long tapes every day, and we were Fort Lauderdale. So we'd go to the beach for lunch and pack a little lunch. That child has literally knocked on thousands of doors.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I just started doing deals and wholesaling. And then that's when the real estate group started. When I first started, there weren't even these REA, real estate meet-up groups. There weren't groups like that. I remember the very first one. Reading in the paper like, “Hey, there's going to be a real estate meeting for real estate investors. I'm going to see what that's about.” There was only me and one other girl. There was like 80 men.
Krista Mashore:
Oh wow. Yeah.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So then I was like, “Wow. Okay. Look at all these people. They say that they're investors. They all live down here in South Florida. So this is amazing. I'm going to have all kinds of people to work with.” But then it's like the boys' club, and here I am I'm young and I still got my permed hair, blonde. They're like, “Oh yeah, sure.” No one took me serious. But then I started cranking out deals, cranking out deals, cranking out deals. Pretty soon people were like, “Hey, I want to work with you. You are doing something.”
Krista Mashore:
Yes. So you would then go find people that were in distress and knock on their door and say, “Hey, you want to sell?”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Yup, just like that. Knock on their door and basically I would say, “I see you're going through this or this or this, and I specialize in helping people like you solve their problems. I just want to know what I can do to help you out.” Honestly, I think having a baby on my hip, a lot of people were like, “Aw, look at her. She's out there. She's door knocking. She's got a baby with her. She's just out there.” I think a lot of people worked with me because I had my daughter.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Also, when I did go door knocking, more often it was a woman than a man, and many of the women were going through a divorce, as was I. So there was that sort of man hating connection that we all had there for a bit. So I was like, “Oh, I know. Dogs, men. They're all dogs.” So just all that stuff combined. People worked with me just left and right. Next thing you know, I was teaching and training, and then I was offered to write a couple books, two bestsellers. I don't know. Just crazy thing happened.
Krista Mashore:
Well, it's not crazy. You actually worked. I mean, most people are not willing to do the work. So it's really not rocket science. It's actually doing the work, and I think that people really need to hear that. People say the same, “Oh, have you done all these things?” It's like I put in the work. I'm usually the first at the office and many times I was the last one to leave. I would work [crosstalk 00:08:07]-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Yeah.
Krista Mashore:
I did things that were hard. Sometimes I didn't have to always be so hard.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Exactly. In the very, very beginning, the reason I… And people always like, “Well, why did you start off rehabbing?” Well, I was going to all these business… Back in the day, 1990, if you wanted to find a job, you had to look in the classified section of the newspaper. So these places say, “Job interview at noon,” and hundreds of people show up. A lot of it was multilevel marketing. But I started seeing some of the same faces. So I chat with everybody. I'm talkative. So I meet these people. They, “Oh, we buy houses. We fix them up and we sell them.” I thought, “Well, okay. That can't be that hard. I can do that.” I had no idea. I had no idea what I was doing.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I couldn't afford to live here and fix the house up over here. So I actually moved into my… Until she started kindergarten, I would move into these just storied houses, and I would start rehabbing them mostly by myself with my daughter with me. Then we'd sell it and we've move. We'd sell it and we'd move. Then when she started kindergarten, I was living in a rehab that was in Boca Raton, Florida, and I thought, “Okay. Boca's a nice place. It's a good place to raise my daughter. I have a little money now. I'm doing okay.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I literally walked the walk and lived it. I would live in these houses, fix them, and she'd be with me. I'd let her paint on the walls, and I'd let her write and draw. She was always in a drawing all over the house until the day I was like, “Okay, honey. Mommy has to paint over everything. Do not write on the walls after today. Last day.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I lived and moved around in these houses for five years.
Krista Mashore:
Wow. That's [crosstalk 00:09:50]-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I did the work. When that child was asleep, I was working, painting, rehabbing, putting in toilets, putting in sinks. I was working all the time.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah, you have the drive. You're very, very driven. Yeah. You had to. You had no other choice. You had to take care of your daughter and homeless and wow. That is incredible.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
That was it. My family, they're from Ohio. God bless them. They were like, “Oh listen, your ex is in jail. Why don't you move back to Ohio?” And they said, “You can have your old bedroom, and you could put up a crib in there. You can live in your old bedroom back in the country in Ohio. Then see how things go.” I remember thinking like, “Moving back home with my tail tucked and my daughter or maybe I could just swim out in the ocean and pray a shark would eat me.” I felt like that those were equally choices at that point.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I thought, “You know what, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to go back.” I left Ohio because I didn't like the weather and the cold and all the things. I thought, “No, this is my time. I'm going to step up and I'm going to make it. I can get a job.”
Krista Mashore:
Your story's been so amazing. I want to make sure I get a couple of these in. I know you have a podcast. If people want to reach out to you and you teach people how to invest. You teach people how to-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I do.
Krista Mashore:
Where can they get in touch with you at?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So they can listen to my podcast. So I did a play on my name because my name's Dwan. So it's called The most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever. Then my website is dwanderful.com.
Krista Mashore:
So D-W-A-N-D-E-R-F-U-L.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Yup. Dwanderful.com. And people can go over there, and I've got eBooks and I do webinars and training and teaching. Luckily I've been very blessed, I've made tons of millionaires. So I'm super excited about that aspect of it too.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah. That's awesome. So tell me what's different from when you started back in the day, when you were doing all the hard stuff to what's different now when somebody wants to do what you teach?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Well, the main thing is all the technology that we have at our fingertips. Like you and I were talking about, you can just video someone on your phone and there you are. My biggest thing I was the most excited about was when GPS came out because I don't know if you've ever seen those. They're those really giant map books. You're on page 24. You have to go to page 80 and find the rest of the neighborhood. I spent so many years-
Krista Mashore:
So as a realtor, imagine showing 23 houses in a day from Thomas Guide. It took me three hours just to map out the 23 houses, write everything down, hand for hand. It was a nightmare.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Yes.
Krista Mashore:
As soon as Google Maps came or MapQuest, I was like, “Thank you, God.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Oh no. I went back. That Jarvin, that very first thing that came out. I was like, “Oh, thank you, Jesus.” Got that thing in my car, and at the time, it was like $300 or $400. I was like, “This is the best day of my life.”
Krista Mashore:
Yes, so true. I was there. I was exactly there too.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I meet so many people now. They're younger, and they're just like, “Oh, I don't know. It's so hard.” And I'm like, “Listen, I had nothing that you have today. You cannot tell me that it's hard. You can find all the homeowners.” Everyone that's in trouble is online at the courthouse. The foreclosures, the divorces, the probates, evictions. It's all at your fingertips. You can just download and print it out, and you can look at these houses on Google maps. You can look at every single house.
Krista Mashore:
I don't think they have that where we are for the courthouse where you can just go and download a list. You can pay for some Real Property Radar or Real Property Reports or Cole Realtor Resource. Those are places you can buy data from, but it's not free. But maybe I'm wrong.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
The thing is when any kind of a lawsuit, so a foreclosure's called a lis pendens. So it's a law. It's a notice of action. So all the lawsuits have to actually be publicly posted somewhere for six weeks. It's like part of the process. So the probates, the divorces, just lawsuit, adoptions, anything has to be publicly posted. Now some areas, the courthouse does not allow you to go online, but you can go in person and get it for free. But there are other areas, like some of the services you just mentioned, there are some services that go and gather the information, then sell it to you.
Krista Mashore:
Yes.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So when that first became available to me, there was a company in South Florida, and they went and got the information. I was like, “Oh my Lord, I can just pay for it.” Back then, it was like $150 a month, which isn't really a lot of money. But 25 years ago, that was still quite a bit of money. I was like, “Hey, I don't have to go to the courthouse. I don't have to drag Ava with me. I don't have to write all that stuff down.” So that was one of the first things that when it became available, I paid for it immediately.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
But at the courthouse are the foreclosures, the divorces, and most couples qualify for a house together. Then one income leaves, one income can't afford the house. So many, many, many divorces happen right before the foreclosure. The foreclosure is caused by the divorce. Then probate, when people pass away, that's at the courthouse. Landlords who have done evictions, that's at the courthouse.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
At the federal courthouse is where all the bankruptcies. 75% of the people that file a bankruptcy filed a bankruptcy to stop the foreclosure sale of their home.
Krista Mashore:
Yes.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So they're not ready to sell. So they file bankruptcy, they buy themselves a little bit of time, and people don't know that. I'm like that's all free. It's right there. So it's not even like you have to look for people. They're just right there listed for you.
Krista Mashore:
What's the best source that… I'm sure you know this. What's the biggest bang for your buck, the cheapest but gives you the most information, the most amount of information of these softwares that you can… Like Property Radar or which one would you say is the best?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Oh, gosh. I don't know. Everything in Colorado and Iowa, everything is at the courthouse. Every single solitary thing is at the courthouse. So I have not used an actual service like that for many, many years because we personally buy in the two states. But I'll tell you a really good source is landlords who have just completed evictions. Because someone that has just evicted a tenant, they're all mad at their house. They're always like, “That house has been nothing but problems. That's the third person I've evicted.” And they're all mad at their house, and it never even dons on them that they just might not be a good landlord.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I had a guy one day. So I mailed a postcard to a bunch of landlords who had just completed evictions. This guy John calls me. He goes, “Today is your lucky day.” I was like, “Okay.” Because you don't know what anyone's going to say on the phone. He's like, “Well, I just did an eviction, and today's my 60th birthday. I told myself the day I turn 60 I was going to sell all my renters. I'm going to move to Colorado. I'm going to ski every single day for the rest of my life. And today's my birthday. I also just evicted some tenants, and I got your big giant yellow postcard. So I'm calling you. So you can have everything.” I as thinking, “Is this guy joking? Who is this guy?”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Anyway, the long short of it, he had 125 rentals. He'd been buying them his whole life, and he goes, “I told myself whoever reached out to me on my 60th birthday, I was going to give them everything.” So this man only made me give him a $3,000 deposit, and all 125 houses were tied up. I could sell them singles, doubles, triples, however I wanted to sell them. He didn't really care how much time it was. He had a secretary left there to finish up his affairs, and he literally moved to Colorado and started skiing.
Krista Mashore:
That's awesome. Good for you.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
From a postcard. So my first thing was like, “Oh my gosh, yay!” Then my second thought was, “That's 125 houses. What am I going to do with that?” So fear set in just for a second. So I thought, “No, I know what I'll do. I'll put it in groups of five and groups of 10, and I'll sell them to all the investors in the tri-county area. I'll just get rid of them as quickly as I can.”
Krista Mashore:
Good for you. You're definitely an out of the box thinker. I love the strategy about the landlords who just evicted their tenant. That's fabulous. What a great person to go after. So what do you say to these people? If you were coaching someone now that wanted to go after this type of deal, first give us some pointers on what you would tell them to do.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Well, so the first thing that I actually, because I have a few scripts that my students use. We just straight up say what we are. “Hey, my name's Dwan. I'm actually a full time real estate investor. I specialize in helping landlords just like you having been evicting tenants, and maybe you're just tired of being a landlord. I'm open to buying any of the rentals you want to get rid of, but if you're looking for more, I can help you find more.” Some people just evicted tenant, and they're like, “Eh,” but they don't care. Off they go. They're going to keep buying more.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I'm like, “Hey, listen. Just because they evicted a tenant doesn't mean they hate being a landlord. They might just be like, ‘Eh, that one tenant was a POS. I'm going to get a better tenant next time, but I want to buy 10 more rentals.'” So just because they evicted doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to be a great buyer to buy your deals, wholesale your deals to because if you get a buyers list with 10 landlords and they want 10 rentals a year, think how many deals that is for you to sell just to these people and that little buyers list of yours.
Krista Mashore:
So then as far as inventory, as you know, inventory is definitely a struggle for most people. People want listings. What would your advice be, and how tangible is it? How much work do you think somebody needs to do to realistically start? So first of all, who would you tell them to go after?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Well, you know what, one of the best things that has worked… This is something I've done for, I don't even know, for 20 years is you know those bandit signs that you see out of the yellow? The signs that say, “We buy houses cash.”
Krista Mashore:
Yes.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Okay. So way back in the day, we would put them in people on telephone polls, on the street corners, and then the city calls you up. We can't put the signs there. So seven or eight years ago, my husband and I were out. We were driving in this area because we were driving neighborhoods to see where we wanted to buy some rentals, and I said, “There's a lot of properties that are vacant. Why don't we put these signs in the yards of the vacant houses because it's private property. So no one's going to make you take it down unless the bank would actually send someone to the neighborhood to the house to make sure there's not a sign in the yard.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So we started putting these bandit signs in the yards of vacant houses. So here's what happens. You're going through some area, and maybe there's 10 vacant houses in the neighborhood. So all of a sudden one day 10 I buy houses cash signs pop in to the neighborhood, and immediately everyone says, “Wow. Those people must have just come in and they bought up the neighborhood. They're clearly the experts.” So it was like you were talking about, being the expert because they see signs everywhere. So they assume… You know how you say reality is, whatever.
Krista Mashore:
Perception is reality.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Perception is reality. I tell my students the same thing. What if I put up 10 signs, what do I say? I say, listen, doesn't matter what you're going to say. The fact that people are going to call you, the perception is reality. You put out 10 signs in any given neighborhood, people around think that this giant company swooped in and bought these houses up. And anyone that's in trouble themselves, they're going to think like, “Hey, I see these signs. These people must be the experts. They have signs everywhere. They must have money. They bought everything. I'm going to call them.”
Krista Mashore:
So when you do these wholesale loans, you're basically finding the person who's in distress and then selling it to an investor.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
An investor, a rehabber, or a landlord.
Krista Mashore:
Okay. So you're going into contract, and then you're putting their name on after you.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I'm going in to contract with the homeowner, and then based on the state and what's happening, I'm either using an assignment of contract to sell it to a landlord or a rehabber, or I'm doing a second contract from me to say a rehabber, for example. So I get it from the homeowner to me. I have a contract. I do a second contract from me to the rehabber because I have an interest in this client. I send three real estate agents to do this because I sign the contract with myself and my company, which gives me a legal interest in the property, and then I have the right to sell my interest. So when I sell it to a landlord or a rehabber, and then they are the ones that bring the money. They buy the house. They do whatever, fix it up, rent it out, whatever they're going to do.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Now we do all of those things. We landlord. We do rehab. We do all of that, but I always tell people if you're a new, new, new investor, the cheapest, easiest thing you can do is wholesale because you get the house under contract with the homeowner. Maybe they're in foreclosure. You give them a $10 deposit. Then you go over here and you say, “Okay. I got a rehabber that wants to buy this house.” So you add on a fee, whatever your fee's going to… $10-, $15-, $20,000. Add on your fee, and then the rehabber actually brings the money, and then the title company will disperse the funds properly. So the bank gets paid, everybody gets paid. You get paid, everybody gets paid. You don't have to bring your own money. Wholesaling.
Krista Mashore:
That's a good idea. You would think that right now people wouldn't want to… You would think because the market is so hot and things are just flying off the shelf, that people would be like, “I'm not going to sell my house. I'm going to try to get the most I can for it.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I get that question a lot, especially when I do a live workshop, that's probably the number one point that people make to me. I say well you got to remember the person that wants to sell their house because they want to sell their house doesn't have the same mindset of the person that's losing their house in foreclosure. They're going through a divorce. Somebody died. They don't want to be at the house anymore. Their mindset is so different. They don't really think that way. They're more like, “I wish God would just send me somebody to help me.” So their mindset is so different.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So all my students, we're flipping houses like crazy people right now, and none of the people that we're dealing with thought to list their house at top value because their mind is someplace else. They're in distress, and they just want to get out as quickly as they possibly came without having a bunch of people tracing through their house. They just want to get out. So it's just a different mindset.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. Right now my brain, Dwan, is thinking, “How do I teach my students to secure more listings with what's going on in the area?”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I'm going to tell you something. Anytime I meet a homeowner, and this is part of my whole philosophy is we always do what's right for the homeowner, even if we don't make any money. Sometimes we do a free deal because that's what's right. So if I came across a homeowner and they have a $300,000 house and they only owed 175, I would say, “Listen-“
Krista Mashore:
Sell it.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
“You need to list your house.”
Krista Mashore:
Yes.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
“Your house needs a bunch of repairs. So you need to not list it for 300, you need to list it for 250, and you need to sell it really quickly. You need to keep all the money. You don't need me. You really don't need me right now.” But then I say, “But don't let a real estate agent talk you into top, top, top dollar because your house needs all this work. You need to sell it super quickly, so I think you should sell your house this much under market. It'll be gone in like two days.” And a lot of people do that. So I don't make any money when I do that, but that's the right thing to do.
Krista Mashore:
Absolutely. Always lead by doing the right thing. I couldn't agree with you more.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Then other people say, “Yeah, but how do you find a homeowner that owes 50% of their value?” It's just all, like you were talking about earlier, it's about mindset. Understanding the homeowner's mindset is so different than a regular end user or an end buyer. Some people had not made a mortgage payment for 15… Not with COVID. Pre-COVID. Some people have not made a mortgage payment for 15 or 18 months. They call the bank, they work out a payment plan. They make a few payments. They don't make the payment. The bank puts them in foreclosure again. So some people literally haven't made a mortgage payment for a year and a half. So subconsciously they honest to God think the bank won't actually take their house.
Krista Mashore:
Because it's been so long. Yeah.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
It's been so long. Now COVID's different because now you've been 15, 16, 18 months, and people aren't making mortgage payments, but they're going to have to start. A lot of people are not going to be able to qualify for a loan modification or qualify for a forbearance agreement. They're not going to be able to qualify for the things that the government's going to offer. So a lot of people are going to end up in foreclosure really from no fault of their own.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
But in the normal day of life, whether you're in a pandemic or not, there are still people getting divorced, still people going to bankruptcy, people still dying, all the things. People still losing jobs, all those regular things still happen. So it is not uncommon to find a homeowner with a whopping amount of equity, and they're just like, “No, Dwan. I don't think the bank will… They won't really take my house.” Then they get a notification like, “Hey, your house is going to sell in seven days.” They call and say, “Oh my god, they're really selling my house in seven days. What do I do?” It's like, “Well, good thing you have me because I can close it in three. So let's get that deal and let's get it wrapped up.”
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
That's another thing for investors is you got to have a good title company, escrow company that can close in two to three days because so many people wait until the last minute because they really don't believe it's going to happen.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
It's too late to list it. It's too late to offer them any other advice. It's like, “Well, your only option right now is sell it to me or pack.”
Krista Mashore:
What you're saying is so true because when the market crashed, I worked for 13 different asset management companies and banks. I worked for HED, Wells Fargo, Green River Capital, [inaudible 00:27:59], World Savings. I worked for all of them. Freddy Mac, and we sold their foreclosures. And it was horrible. My investor in the industry did 169 foreclosures. You would think that people would learn, and they wouldn't let their house foreclose or they would do a short sell beforehand. But so many of them just didn't because of lack of education and lack of knowledge and lack of… They didn't think it was going to happen. I was supposed to get this notice, and…
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I'm going to share a fun fact I know you don't know. So way back in the '90s, I was wholesaling. I rehabbed houses until I discovered wholesaling. So I'm wholesaling like a crazy woman. I start finding deals that were tighter and tighter and tighter. So I started to call the bank and say, “Hey, can you knock a little bit of money off this deal?” Just without even [crosstalk 00:28:43]-
Krista Mashore:
No short sell.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
… they take off a couple thousand here, couple thousand there. But they were calling short sells, discounting it, shorting it. They were calling it all these different names. It didn't have an actual name yet. So I actually trademarked the term short sell as it applies to real-
Krista Mashore:
Really?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Yes, I did. As it applies to real estate investing, and then I trademarked the Queen of Short Sells. And the very first home study program that was made for investors, I wrote it. So I wrote it, copy wrote it, the whole thing. So I was at the very beginning of the short sell industry.
Krista Mashore:
So you know who CDPE, right?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Krista Mashore:
Yeah. So the founder of that, of CDPE, he actually is in my inner circle with me. He was all over the news and everywhere else.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
The news, FOX, MSNBC. The book I wrote, the company called me and said, “Hey, we hear you're the Short Sell Queen.” So I wrote a book called Short Sell Queen: Foreclosure Investing I think in 2008 or '09, right when all that was happening. Oh my gosh, we did a ca-gillion short sells. I think that's going to come back right now because so many people are not making mortgage payments, and the bank is not just going to take all the payments and throw them on the back. People are going to have to show that they have a job and they have to qualify. When they don't, I feel like it's going to be so many houses at one time that the bank's going to have to go back and start doing short sells again.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I just sold a ton of my own personal investments because I feel like the market's going to end up 10-20% decrease over the next 16, 12, 18 months, something like that is kind of [crosstalk 00:30:18]-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I think so too. I think it's like on us. We're on it right now. This is happening right now.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah. Not like 2005-06. Not that bad. Not 2008 bad, but I think 10-20% we're going to probably see a decline because something's got to give with all of these… It's crazy people don't want to work because all of the money, the stimulus checks. It's like people don't even want to work now, right?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
They don't.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah, they don't want to work. It's insane to me. Man, this has been great. If somebody wants to wholesale, and when we end, don't hang up because I still want to talk to you.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Okay.
Krista Mashore:
But how do people go about getting in touch with you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Well, they can go to dwanderful.com, and all my programs are there. I have wholesale program, a short sell program, a rental program, subject two. I love subject twos. We do a lot of wraparound mortgages. So subject twos. I don't know. Over the last 25 years, I've just written a ton of programs.
Krista Mashore:
That's awesome. Teaching people how to do all this on-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Yeah, because I love to teach. I love to help homeowners. I love to help students, and people are like, “Hey, I made million bucks last year. Here's a copy.” And I'm just like, “Yay! Good for you.”
Krista Mashore:
Oh, good. Good. Well, you have been so much fun. I've really enjoyed myself talking to you.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
I have too, Krista. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. You're so awesome.
Krista Mashore:
So are you. Tell them about your podcast. What's your podcast called?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So my podcast is called The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever.
Krista Mashore:
The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast-
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Podcast Ever. So when I was trying to think of names, I was talking to the guy who works on my website. He goes, “You should just do Dwanderful. Make that the name of your podcast.” Seriously? I thought, “You know what, why not? I have crisp pink hair, do something different.” Everyone's show is Number One Real Estate. I like yours, Fired Up. It's a different name.
Krista Mashore:
Yeah.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So I thought, “I'm just going to play on my name and that's going to be my spiel.” So it was called The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever, and we do 10 episodes a month.
Krista Mashore:
And you are definitely Dwanderful, I have to tell you that.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Oh, thanks.
Krista Mashore:
[inaudible 00:32:24] to every podcast the same. If you had one piece of advice, either professional or business or whatever it might be, what would that be?
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Everyone always ask me that, and I usually give some kind of real estate investing tip. But the tip I've been giving recently, which is something you and I talked about, is that I feel like if anyone could just have one solid thing, that would be to get the right voice in your head. The voice of someone like me if you want to be an investor. Someone like you if you want to be a real estate agent. Not the voice of the friends and family that say you can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. Because when you hear all these people say you can't do it, then you actually don't.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
So you have to get rid of your naysayers. You have to block them out, and you have to find someone that you feel like you like and you trust and you honestly think they want the best for you, and you have that get that person's head in your voice. Whether it's podcasting or listening to CDs or on your phone, whatever, Spotify. Just have that person's voice rolling in your head all the time because that person, someone like you and like me, we will tell them they can do it, and not only can they, we'll show them how.
Krista Mashore:
Yes. I love it. Dwan, thank you so much for… I really enjoyed this.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Thank you.
Krista Mashore:
Two peas in a pod. I know you've got my cellphone. So make sure you actually call me, and I just appreciate you so much.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:
Well, I appreciate you too. Thank you guys, everyone for listening. Follow this lady. She is so super smart too.
Krista Mashore:
I love you. Okay, everyone. Have a great evening. Remember, implementation is the key. Learning is not the power. It's actually in the implementation. And as always, thank you so much for spending a little part of your day with me. I appreciate you all.
