Dave Dinkel: I’m Dave Dinkel and welcome. Today we’re going to be interviewing one of our exceptional mentor students Tiffany Bonfiglio. Her husband is well-known in the real estate industry as a broker but Tiffany is not an agent. And I wanted to talk to her.  She has been very, very successful in a certain small niches and what’s unique about what she does is her profit margins are above average. We average about $15,000 to $18,000 on our wholesale deals. She averages probably a little over $30,000 on her deals. But let’s start off from the beginning. What happened that got you into real estate investing?

Tiffany: What happened was basically we lost almost everything. I lost my construction business. We pretty much lost everything in the real estate business, all our properties, so we needed to start from scratch.

Dave Dinkel: And this is because of a downturn in the…

Tiffany: Downturn partly…

Dave Dinkel: …mortgage meltdown and so on.

Tiffany: The mortgage industry, the real estate industry, the construction industry. So we basically had to start from the bottom. My husband decided he was going to take a few classes. At that time I was not interested. I had no interest in real estate. I didn’t know anything. So he decided to take these classes, spent a lot of money on these and pretty much we got nowhere except for some DVDs and that was basically about it.

Dave Dinkel: And so now you’re talking about real estate investing even though he has been a Realtor®, a broker. He decided I want to get down in the wholesale business so I don’t have…

Tiffany: Correct.

Dave Dinkel: So I don’t have to have money and I can turn them quickly and things like that.

Tiffany: Correct.

Dave Dinkel: So you guys– and you had a partner for a short time did you not?

Tiffany: We had a partner for a short time and they would attempt to do it from our home office and I started to dabble in it. I wasn’t understanding it. And I was getting frustrated. So, my husband decided, he wanted to– he asked me to go to one of the meetings. And I basically said, “Fine, I’ll go.” I was totally against it. So I sat down.  I listened to what had to be said and the next day, he asked me and he goes, you know, “Let’s just go sit down with Dave and Nancy and see what they have to say.”

Again, I was totally against it.  I did not want to do it. I didn’t want to spend any more money on anything. I was done. But I agreed to it. And we sat down. I was sold on it. I started I guess pretty much that day.  I had a jumpstart and started on what needed to be done and ever since then, I can’t say enough. I have just have been doing exactly what was told to me and what was taught to me and it has been working.

Dave Dinkel: And it took about two or three months for you to get your first deal. Nancy is her accountability partner, Nancy happens to be on the other side of the camera. So I’m just saying, was it 90 days or 60 days before she got her first deal? Do you remember?

Nancy: I thought the first one came in, in 30 days and then it was…

 Dave Dinkel: It took a while to close.

Nancy: Yeah.

Tiffany: The first one if I’m not mistaken came in while I was sitting in class is when I got my first approval.

[Laughter]

Dave Dinkel: In the mentoring class.

Tiffany: In the mentoring class.

Dave Dinkel: OK.

Tiffany: It’s when I actually sat down, I said I looked at my phone and I said, “Oh my!” I was super excited! I’m not sure if that one closed but that was my first deal.

Dave Dinkel: Yeah, I think there’s a big misconception about “you’ve got a deal”. You don’t got a deal unless the thing closes and you actually make a profit on it. The rest of the time you have signed contracts…

Tiffany: Right.

Dave Dinkel: …but you never know if they’re going to go through. We’ve had some great deals together. You’ve had a double closing so to speak. Two different properties where you came in and your check, the gross check was 85,000 I think profit-wise, 84,000, 85,000. But typically you’re going over 30,000 a deal. And one of the reasons I interview some of the very successful students is because I like students to achieve that goal of $100,000 a month income. And you certainly have been there because you’ve had closings all in one month. And all you have to do is be more consistent.  You still have two small children, you still help your husband full time in his office. So it’s really sort of part time for you.

Tiffany: It’s definitely part time. I sometimes will get that little itch to start throwing in contracts again like I am right now. [Laughter] I know for myself that within those contracts that I am putting in that I’ll get one signed back. If I put in 10, I know I’m going to get one back that’s signed and executed. If I close it that’s a whole another story.  I either pay– offered too much or it’s just not a deal at that time. There’s other times when I just don’t have the time but you have to make the time.

Dave Dinkel: Yeah. You have been exceptionally good at renegotiating before the closing and getting discounts. Even when it’s set in the contract itself, “You cannot renegotiate.  We will cancel it.” You have done that anyway and it’s worked for you very well.

Tiffany: Yes. That’s definitely one of my stronger suits is the renegotiating. I always know going in that most likely I can get a reduction. I know most people want to get rid of the properties.  So they want to get– they’ll pretty much get– do something for you. I mean not crazy you know $30,000 or $40,000 reduction but they’ll give me 5, 10, 15 depending on the situation.

Dave Dinkel: And that’s pure profit. I want to talk about two of your deals. One of which, predominantly what you’ve done is you’ve wholesaled. So you’ve had no money in the deals and I’ve actually I think funded one or two of the transactional fundings or something for you. But let’s talk about the where you actually became a landlord for a while.

Tiffany: That’s not fun. [Laughter] Becoming a landlord especially to where other people who want to take advantage of you.  They see a girl walking in. Number one, they try to do everything they can to pull one over on you. Basically it was a multi family. When I purchased it, I purchased it for a good amount and we were trying to wholesale it. We had a buyer at that time and at the last minute the buyer backed out but we knew it was a good deal so we end up closing on it.

Dave Dinkel: And holding it and then it had a deed restriction, did it not?

Tiffany: And holding… It had a…

Dave Dinkel: A short deed restriction.

Tiffany: Yeah, I think with as 30-day rate restriction if I’m not mistaken.

Dave Dinkel: Which is normally not a problem but in this case, the tenants weren’t paying.  So to be able to resell it and get the most money out of it, we had to have paying tenants which is not always the case. So you went in there with tenants who were essentially squatters.

Tiffany: Right.

Dave Dinkel: And you took over. You took control.

Tiffany: I did. I went in there, basically the first day after we closed, I went in there and we introduced our, you know, myself to everybody. Basically told them that you know I’m going to be the one collecting rent. If you need anything done, you’re going to call me. And of course, right then and there, “Oh I need this, I need that.” And I told everybody, “That’s it, I’m not doing anything until I have rent.” So, by the 15^th rolled around and I gave everybody till the 15th, went there knocking on doors. I got one rent. That’s it. Out of six units I got one rent. [Laughter]

Everybody is else was like, “Well I, you know I paid the previous owner. I need this fixed. I’m not paying.” And it just went on and on with different stories. So basically what I told them is if you want something fixed, you need to pay me rent. We’ll work something out. So after a couple of weeks of doing this, they finally understood and I got the place fixed up. I have rent. There was only one person that wasn’t paying rent, they were being evicted. Everything else was in tiptop shape and we sold if for a very nice profit.

Dave Dinkel: Did you remember what the profit was? It’s 40 something was it?

Tiffany: It was. We bought it for 164, 165 and we sold it for 215.

Dave Dinkel: OK. All right. Now, you also became a rehabber.

Tiffany: I did.

[Laughter]

Dave Dinkel: And how did that go for you?

Tiffany: And you see the smile on my face. I do enjoy rehabbing. [Laughter] 

Dave Dinkel: You like the end product when it comes out…

Tiffany: I do. I bought my first property. It was in need of some major repair. There– it had a pool and…

Dave Dinkel: Was there any water in pool when you got them?

Tiffany: There was no water in the pool. [Laughter] The pool was not in a functioning matter. There as dirt. It was just. It was bad. And the end result, we fixed it and sold it for a very nice profit again.

Dave Dinkel: Super. What would you suggest to people? Everyday I talk to people and they probably get tired hearing it from me. But as a person who has come from “I didn’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. Well, let me try it. And wow, it has been amazingly successful.” What would you tell new people coming in? What is the key to your success?

Tiffany: Don’t give up. If you give up, it’s not going to work. If you are determined and you have that itch that you want to make money…

 Dave Dinkel: Persistence?

Tiffany: … and you– persistence and you want to be successful and you want to work for yourself and make your own hours. This works. It 100% works as long as you want it to work.

Dave Dinkel: OK. Any other comment?

Tiffany: Don’t give up. [Laughter]

Dave Dinkel: Thanks very much.

Tiffany: Be fearless.

[Laughter]

Tiffany: I’m trying to figure out how to say I got started though.

Dave Dinkel: Well, you made a decision to do it full time pretty much.

Tiffany: I didn’t make a decision until I met with you.

Dave Dinkel: Oh really?

Tiffany: I didn’t want to do it. [Laughter] I wasn’t interested.

Dave Dinkel: Oh that’s pretty interesting.

Tiffany: Yeah, I didn’t want to do it until I sat down with you guys. That was final my decision.

 Dave Dinkel: You ought to say that. Is it rolling?

Female Speaker: Yeah.

Tiffany: I mean it’s– I’m actually going to say I wasn’t interested.

Dave Dinkel: Yeah, yeah.

Tiffany: OK.

 Dave Dinkel: So were going to start over. OK.

Tiffany: OK, go. You want me to go or you want to go?

Dave Dinkel: I’ll go. [Laughter]

Tiffany: OK, Go. [Laughter] Want to start real estate wholesaling and investing?  Learn more about my real estate investing coaching program and mentoring, click here https://davedinkel.com/mentoring-program/ or click below.