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S6E18: Title Ransom Scams Exposed: The Shady "Greenmail" Tactic Hitting Home Sellers Hard · The Investor Shed Podcast

• Nick & Jeremy: Well, good morning everybody. Welcome back to the Investor Shed podcast. I am your host, Nick Beveridge here with the beautiful co-host, the man of the hour, the only one that will ever come in the shed again, Jeremy Kitchen. Really? I don't know. wow. Forget it. If you're a guest, don't even bother. OK, you're right. Yeah, obviously there's King here and you respect the territory. Respect. Respect the territory. How are you, Dick? Doing pretty good. I'm enjoying your t-shirt today. I'm enjoying it. We're matchy matchy. Yeah, we are. Even with our blue jeans. Oh, yeah, we got blue jeans, too. You guys can't see this. That's true. I mean, like different shades of blue. It's like 50 shades of gray. But, you know, their jeans. What do you want? We had a lot to catch up on. You know, it's on. I don't know if most people know this, because if they listen to the podcast regularly, not on Facebook or X, we haven't missed a day. We haven't missed a week. No, we're always there. But we actually have missed the last month or so. Yeah, we've missed about four to six appointments between being sick and you doing other things. And yeah, shit happens. Life gets busy, man. We're doing the best we can. So I've got to say before we get into today's show, which today we're going to be talking about a new scam, a new scam hitting the industry hard and it is super concerning and you guys should be aware of it. So we'll get into that. But first, I want to talk about my new t-shirt. Is this a new t-shirt? Yes. I touch it? Feel that. That's pretty nice. I'm going to get you one of these t-shirts. OK. They come for two for 45 bucks. Okay. Super good deal. You're not not selling me, but I've gotten better deals on shirts before. It is 100 % merino wool. It is the most comfortable shirt I've ever worn. So that like from sheep's sheep wool? Yes. Merino? Merino wool. Like Dan Marino? Like Dan Marino. Okay. Spelled a little bit different. Yep. But that's how you pronounce it. Some people say it like merino or whatever. It's merino. What company gives them? ⁓ some ⁓ There's plenty of different companies that sell this stuff, but you're on Amazon. I did. Okay. ⁓ for sure. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts on stock investing called dumb money and they, they stopped talking about stocks for like 20 minutes and just started talking about their marina wool. And then you bought they were like this one guy by $70 underwear. Wow. And he's known as the cheap guy. Okay. He's like, Hey, you're wearing underwear. 23 hours a day at least. I might as well have luxury. And so I got that too. I'm wearing Marina Wool Boxers, Boxer Briefs. Most comfortable underwear of my life. It's worth talking about. And then so I couldn't stop there. I'm like, what else could I be comfortable in? And I got the t-shirts. got the t-shirts. So I'm going to give you one before you leave my house. Just so you know, I want to hear your feedback. Okay next time we record a show. Yeah, I mean I'll put it all in um my smorgasbord of black t-shirts We've got like 20 now and i'll i'll I won't know when i'm wearing it because these ones are pretty comfy, too These are just the 32 cools. You know what I mean yours do look comfy, but you gotta try it's just different Okay, if I sweat too much water, okay. Oh, yeah, it's repel You can't sweat in them. There's no way you can't not sweat in the thing. That's true The the water the it doesn't it doesn't soak up it's moisture wicking Yeah, it doesn't mean you don't sweat in the thing like these are moisture wicking sweat just goes away There's no such a god back in your body I'm lying. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'm excited to try it out. It looks good. Looks like it feels good They're not a sponsor of ours, but clearly you are a sucker for ⁓ yeah sponsored items on podcast Let's speak of sponsors the last few days. I've been scrubbing my naked body. Have you finally use it? I'm finally using this soap good. So I'm using the ⁓ penny bees handcrafted soap made from ⁓ honey and all ⁓ almonds and olive oil and that kind of stuff. It's pretty good stuff. They have different. It's all natural. They have different ingredients per flavor. Which one are you using? That the black one, the nutmeg. OK, the one with like the cinnamon nutmeg in it. think that that's the one I'm using, Yeah, really. I can just wash my whole body with my hair and everything. I don't feel like sticky. Yeah, sticky icky. It's very good. ⁓ It's beautiful presentation to it's all handcrafted soap by our investor friends Blake and Jessica Thompson They made the company for their daughter penny to have an alternative to soaps, you know to make it for sensitive skin ⁓ Really good stuff. Obviously, we actually have a discount code shed if you go on their website penny bees calm and the promo code shed Somebody please just buy one bar. So from Blake I'll go buy it like I get some good deal like we just want to we just want him to see that it actually worked and somebody listens to this show and buy our own soap too if we want yeah I know it would just be cool to be if he's like ⁓ my god someone use the actual code shed yeah discount code shed like investor shed get 10 % off indefinitely with it which I think is incredible thank you for actually trying it out by the way I was worried you were never gonna try that soap no well I did try it when he first started his company the little tiny samples ⁓ yeah yeah and those those were really cool but I usually just put soap on my feet This time since I had a huge barb just like I'll just do my whole body see what it feels like and I was just like damn Welcome to the 21st century actually washing your whole body Well, I usually just use shampoo and then I let the suds just roll down my body and I'm like good enough That's how they do it your car wash too, by the way, like they just put soap on the top of your car Like that's probably fine. That's probably good. Yeah, sometimes I don't shower if I do a nice clean cold plunge. Yeah What are you gonna do? I'm not gonna do anything. Well, you're not in charge of you. Yeah Your wife will tell you if you stink. Yes, she would and she hasn't yet. So I know I'm doing okay. Doing something right. I love it. ⁓ All right, so this new scam. Has anybody ever heard of this? Why don't you describe it? You want me to describe it I don't really know what it is that you're describing yet? you're like... You know, I'm almost afraid to talk about it because I don't want to give people out there an idea of how they can easily make money legally. Potentially. Okay. Legal is but it's it's so incredibly incredibly unethical. was gonna say legal is like like a gray area for sure and unethical is 100 % in the in black. It's 100 % unethical. Yeah, and people are doing it in our local market now. Got it. I haven't really seen any local people doing it but people from out of state are are actually becoming predators to home sellers. ⁓ In a way that is just disgusting ⁓ And it like kept me up the other night just thinking of how do how? Do more people can people be aware of this? Yeah, or can there be any laws against it made? Text I've been doing much research this morning I guess Texas is doing what they can to kind of combat this because they had a lot of it down there. Got you Okay, but here's what's going on so ⁓ Imagine that you are distress seller and you maybe have a foreclosure coming up or you know, it's a hoarder house and you were responding to these instead of going to a realtor, you know that there's a bunch of these online, you know, I'll buy your house quick with cash and the people that kind of get into that, they'll usually talk to several people either online over the phone, they get mail to their house. Right. ⁓ But this is the alternative to. ⁓ listing your home with a realtor, sometimes you can just find cash buyers out there and the majority of them are legitimate people that will buy your house at a discount. And it seems like half of them will buy it and close on it and the other half will buy it and then assign the contract to somebody else and make a fee for purchasing the property. That's wholesaling. ⁓ Nothing illegal with that. But there's this new tactic out there. that these larger people, and even we looked at today, a big influencer is doing somebody based out of Phoenix. Their tactic is to get somebody to want to make an offer on their house. So they will offer them a really good price. Something that's close. A price for the seller. A good price for the seller. Like in this most recent scenario. ARV after a pair value on this house that needs work was about $420,000 and this person offered $410 cash. the property obviously needed to be fixed up and everything. up and all that. So that seller jumped on it. And then quickly after under contract, the buyer said, ⁓ I did a little research and I can't buy it for this. I'm going to need to Purchase I'm gonna need a hundred thousand dollar price drop to three hundred thousand. Mm-hmm Seller is taken back like what? Yeah, no, and then they say, ⁓ all right. Well they and then they just ghost. Mm-hmm, but here's what that happens ⁓ If they don't get that huge price drop, they will hire somebody locally on like TaskRabbit or something like that. Mm-hmm to Take their purchase and sale agreement ⁓ And even if you know, doesn't really matter what's on there they'll just go record it with the county. Got it. And then they'll sit back and wait for it to be an issue. And then they will demand a humongous cancellation fee to deal with it later because a title company, if some new buyer steps in, for instance, in this scenario, this home buyer came in, he knew he can purchase that property for about 330,000, put about 20,000 into it, resell it for like low 400s. seller agreed to those terms. ⁓ Didn't realize that she was still under contract with somebody even though that contract expired. didn't matter. But when the title company did their research, they, ⁓ we got an issue here. There's a cloud on title. There's this recorded contract we gotta deal with first. It hasn't been resolved. There's no cancellation agreement. We gotta do something about this. And then you come to find out, ⁓ yep, this guy. ⁓ Yeah, he wants 35 grand to walk away. Now this property is getting foreclosed on a month, getting foreclosed on in one month. Got it. ⁓ The only way to legally deal with this in that short amount of time is to pay him off. Crazy. Okay. Come to some sort of resolution because yeah, you can take this to a judge, you can take it to court and show that this is ridiculous and they'll throw it out eventually. That process takes months and lots of money. The courts want to get paid, attorneys want to get paid, and it is not cheap or easy to remove something that's been recorded on title. these people know that. They know that they're in their favor, that they're just going to sit back and get a fee. They have no intentions of buying this house. Crazy. They're in it for cancellation fees as a huge source of their income. The first time I heard about this was about a year ago. ⁓ And somebody was, I was ⁓ helping somebody buy house, ⁓ not me personally, I was being an agent and it was an off market deal and a similar thing happened. They were under contract and they were trying to close, but this, the previous seller, same thing. ⁓ They couldn't work out a deal, but they went and recorded their contract with the county anyway. um, and they were from out of state and they demanded like $15,000 something like that to Cancel the contract. Wow They wouldn't close on the property. They were being ridiculous and I couldn't believe what was happening. I called This acquisition manager and he said yeah, this is just way we run our business You can talk to the owner if you want and then I called and talked to the owner and he bragged to me about how much money they make in cancellation fees, because his mentor taught him to do this the year before. Got it. Because the year before he was struggling and his mentor told him that, I made $300,000 last year just in cancellation fees alone. Wild. And he taught him how to do this tactic and they were on their way to making about $500,000 in cancellation fees that year. And he was bragging about it. He was proud of it. So that's I couldn't believe it. I'm like, holy shit, I got a sociopath on the phone. Yeah, that's totally comfortable with this. And guess what happened? What happened? The seller had to pay him off. So you had to that 15 grand or whatever? Wow. I don't remember how much it was. It was about that. Sure. Whatever the number was. Because it was a little over a year ago, but it was was it was north of five figures. OK. You know. ⁓ It was at least ten grand. It was more than that. So just to kind of recap here, obviously Seller goes to sell their house property, whatever it is Yep buyer comes in one of these people comes in to buys it for a bigger price than what it's worth and Then demands a huge decrease in prop huge decrease in price. Yep Now like a huge price reduction, right? Right. Okay And are they only doing that to properties that like like that sounds like what they'd be offering would be like what a flip would cost them anyway, right? ⁓ Yeah, so they're still trying to get the property under contract at it after but they already got it under contract, Right. Okay. They already know they made their money, right somehow ⁓ You but they're still gonna try to buy it Legitly without any legal issues, but you know, hey now now we need it for this ridiculously low price, right? ⁓ you're not gonna play fine Then they go to record and then they step back and wait It's a while that like they can go under contract for a high price And then just like demand money. I don't understand it yet. Like I know you're it's a ransom exactly. But like isn't isn't that contract binding because they both signed it? Yeah, the contract is binding because buyer and seller agreed to it. Right. So they both agreed that they would pay X for the property. OK. And then they go record it. And that's why it's clouding the title. Hey, you have a you have an active purchase and sell agreement. OK. ⁓ Even though The buyer isn't necessarily, you know, it could have expired. ⁓ They could just be not performing. They could say, yeah, I can perform, but they're still not making an effort. You still have to prove in court that they're not making an effort. And what the title company needs is a resolution. They need to see that there's a termination agreement signed by both parties. Got it. And here's another screwed up thing. This one from a little over a year ago. It wasn't even a valid contract, but the title companies still would not move forward without it being resolved because it was expired and it was only signed by one of the parties. It was only signed by one of the home sellers. The other home seller didn't agree to it. Got it. But they still recorded it anyway. They still got their money. Then they still caused an issue where title wouldn't close until that was resolved. They didn't have the money to go hire an attorney. Right. You're dealing with distress. Sellers that are have limited options and they definitely don't have The money to go hire an attorney and they don't have the time always to to deal with this. Yeah ⁓ in a legit manner where you take it to a judge because that process I've been through it where I had illegitimate liens thrown against my properties and it was such a nightmare to get them tossed off Yeah, it cost me 50 grand in attorney fees over the course of a year or so and then much more money than that to put up bonds for these properties to get them removed and then fight them in court. It was ridiculous. And I was right. I was in the right. The judge said I was correct. I got everything taken care of. It still cost me legal fees and the court did not award me any. didn't get a magical check. The court didn't award me any damages. I was defending myself. ⁓ I didn't get any attorney fees paid for. So this is the reality of the system. And if you start manipulating it in your favor this way, something's got to be done. feel like it's just, if this catches on, and I almost feel bad just talking about it, but then like you said, like, the people that listen to this show, they're probably not Most of our people that we listen to, that listen to us, I would assume have good intentions and good integrity on how to build a profitable and ethical investing business. But I think the biggest thing that we can try to get the message out there is like, be careful about ⁓ signing a contract ⁓ with people that you're not familiar with when it seems too good to be true. Yeah. As a home seller. Sure. If it just, if the offer seems too good to be true and you're dealing with people from out of state, ⁓ could, there's, gosh, there's scams, there's scammers everywhere. Right. But so walk me back a little bit on this this particular contract if you don't mind So like was it did she did that person put the price the house up for sale for three hundred and something thousand? The the home seller on this the most recent scenario one a year ago the one where you were just talking we're like, you know Not the one in Priest River or whatever. ⁓ yeah, but the more more recently. Yeah. Yeah. So she was just responding to people that were ⁓ Trying to reach out to her or I think she put in ⁓ she put in her information on the on the internet They should wanted to sell their house for cash got it. Okay got it Yeah, so she didn't actually have her house up for sale or anything like that. no, she's so yeah, you can go to different websites and like for instance this this person they bought that lead because ⁓ Sometimes these home sellers they'll just go on a couple different websites and request a cash offer Yeah, and then that information is sold to a bunch of people, right? ⁓ So then they contact these home sellers to try to buy the house. Yeah. Got it. Okay. So she didn't actually have her house up for sale at the time, but then they just gave her an offer. Too good to be true. It's still not up for sale. I mean, it's just like with a brokerage or anything like that. Right. But now she's under contract with two people. Got it. And she's 75 and getting foreclosed on next month, trying to do the right thing by just selling it at whatever she can. Yeah. But now she's got somebody that is green mailing is the term. And so this is like the term that they're using in Texas. It's slightly different here because it's got a little bit of a twist. So we almost have to call it something different like title ransom or something. But greenmailing, like greenmail recording. So they're recording for blackmail, basically, trying to blackmail sellers out of cash by using the recording as a method to cloud title. Wild. could also be called ⁓ cloud and squeeze. Cloud and squeeze? Yeah, that's another potential term we can use. Got some AI. The cloud and drown? The cloud and, well, yeah, cloud and drown. Yeah, you gotta make it sound less like one's gonna play out the other. Yeah. Yeah. What this, this is so bonkers, Nick, to be honest with you, I don't, it feels very unethical, first off, like we talked about. Well, you know what might make us feel better? As if we do some of the smelly salts Before we get there. I want to I wanted to hit my point. So is there a way of like obviously they're still trying to work on How they can actually combat this but they get their provision or anything like this where if you write in the contract the contracts set to Be completed on X date if it's not completed by X date and funds have not been transferred does the contract fizzle like yeah Automatically like like you need like yeah three day Window there, you know what I mean of like we have not received your payment two days done So so they don't have time to actually put like a lien on a house or anything like that, know So I think the problem with the title companies because they are so ultra conservative. Yeah, and they take zero risk, right? They should But this when you have when you when you have a contract that's been recorded and you don't have evidence that it's been resolved ⁓ Even if it's expired they get they're just supposed to with the low risk tolerance that they have, they're supposed to naturally assume that there could be addendums out there extending the contract that they don't know about. And they don't want to take on the liability of potentially having to pay out somebody else one day because somebody else had a claim against the property and recorded it. So unless they can show evidence that, this has been resolved with a termination agreement or cancellation agreement, one of the two, and if they don't have that, that's what they need to clear up title and warranty the deed. Got it. So here's how this situation could potentially be handled, but it's still going to be costly with attorney fees and stuff. ⁓ The guy's demanding 35 grand, right? Right, right. The seller is getting foreclosed on next month. ⁓ Now the new buyer, if he has the ability, which I would imagine he does, ⁓ he can take the property over subject two and close without a title company. Sure. Close with a quit claim. And then wire the money to ⁓ the lender to reinstate the loan. Got it. So he could take over the title and become the new owner with the loan remaining in place of the seller. But it's at least been reinstated so it's not getting foreclosed on anymore. Sure. And then they can work together on suing this person. Right. Interesting. That's one tactic that I can think of to deal with this. Yeah. Otherwise you pay him off or you expose him. Yeah. Yeah, but I don't think like, mean, like when people hide behind corporations, it's hard to expose. know what I mean? Yeah. Like what's the funny thing like we were another LLC. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The funny thing is like you I mentioned who this person was and brought him up and you recognized him and he reached out to you at one point. You did talk to him. Yeah. He reached out to me. mean, and we're talking about the scam artist here. Yeah. Yeah. And he reached out to me. I had a very brief conversation with him. He reached out to me on Facebook Messenger asking for a photographer actually in Priest River. ⁓ maybe he was this was last year, by the way. So maybe he was associated with that deal. ⁓ Man, I don't think it was the same person, but maybe. OK, well, you said you had your other one that was in pretty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's quite possible, but I don't know. ⁓ Anyway, he asked about real estate photography in Priest River. I said, yep, I absolutely go up there. Here's my prices. Let me know when you want to get up there. I've got some time later this week. Kind of just left it at that. And that was the last I heard from him. I wonder if it's the same person. So I was trying to go back and see who I was dealing with a year ago. Yeah. And I couldn't find it in my records. But if I dig deep enough, I'll find it. Yeah. I don't know if that was last year or the year before or like what would have been like a year and a half ago or so when I was dealing with this. Possibly. Well, yeah, that's in May 2025. I think is when he messaged me. Yeah, not quite a year and a half ago. Yeah, this was I think summer 24. Either way, like it's it's he seemed like a person who I deal with business with on a normal occasion, just asking for a photo session, asking for prices and then stopping talking to me. But I was just so busy at the time I wasn't even worried about following up or going to Priest River. Right. I'm just like, I can do other things. I'm fine. I'm not really worried about this. Yeah, sometimes I just let those lures sink. Totally. Yep. All right, we got to get some energy here. Ugh. We're doing the Spelied Salts. We do what we can to step up the energy for this. We'll do anything for this podcast, just so you guys know. We'll do absolutely anything. You tell us what we need to do, we're gonna do it. We need to keep the show going. Oh yeah, one of mine too. That felt good. Jeremy's gonna feel. Really, really good here in about seven to 17 seconds. Just give him some time. ⁓ So, I started my new flip. Did you? Yes. I got my Kellogg flip that we've been talking about since last summer. Finally got access to it just a few days ago, a couple days ago, and got to use my new dump trailer. How was it? The dump trailer? Yeah. Amazing. So it's not one of the scissor lift ones. Jeremy's still having a heart attack. It's got a new hydraulic, I forgot what it's called, but it lifts up the dump trailer from the front. And it's got this big extended, oh yeah, Jeremy needs to blow his nose now. Anyway, different type of dump trailer. It's almost the same as what I've been using forever, using my brother's, but I got my own now. really enjoying it. I'm already on my new fix and flip about 20 grand over budget. Congratulations! Thank you. Yeah my budget was initially what like 12,000 to 15,000 something like I gave you 13 grand as a loan and then that got transferred into another project. I spent 12 grand, 12,500 on the roof. Okay. And then we just started the interior. Congratulations. And we're gonna do little bit more than what I anticipated, not too much more. ⁓ The bulk of it is going to be labor, but ⁓ I'm going to guess 15 to 20 grand worth of labor. ⁓ And then there's only a few thousand bucks worth of materials, like five to eight thousand, which is great. ⁓ So at least we're able to reuse almost everything in the house. ⁓ This is first time I'm like totally keeping a full kitchen and appliances and stuff. It's just deep cleaning. some door repairs and then interior all the interior touches as far as like new carpet and flooring paint door knobs door hinges mm-hmm the exterior the wall plates and stuff for the electrical But keeping all the the fundamentals the same not really moving ⁓ The toilets or bathrooms or around or anything like that Okay, that one felt like it like inside of my face like I was feeling good yet that one burned more than the other one It's just burned. Yeah, like that felt like chemical burn like I smoked too close or something Well, you're running a nose drip too. So you like your nostrils or extra extra open? Yeah, no that one it just like went like straight into my brain. My brains like don't do that You moron do you want another dosage real quick? No, I'm fine. Thank you though So your 20 grand over budget wind your estimated completion date on this guy Probably about 40 days Cool, I would say. That's not bad. Yeah, depends on the weather. We need to paint the exterior and do some landscaping. we've had a miraculous... It's a good show. ⁓ okay. Haven't seen that one. But we've had a really, really great winter ⁓ with lots of sunshine and no snow. if this just continues, now we're in mid February now. ⁓ This show doesn't come out till April. ⁓ But yeah, it'd be ideal. If it just didn't snow, it didn't rain too much and we can actually paint the exterior of the house in the next few weeks, that'd be great. It'd be awesome. Yeah. So you're over budget. Do need more money? Oh, sure. Yeah, I got a QuickBooks loan. Oh, you did. OK. But I can always use more money. It's up to you. I've got a couple of coming back. I did dump some of that into the stock market. like, got a QuickBooks loan for $65,000 to use in my next couple of flips. and immediately spent like 15 grand on the stock market. ⁓ Just because it was was down a lot. It was I bought a lot when it was down. And I was just like so I put in like 12, five and then with margin, it's like you want another 12, five to spend. Yeah. Because I got margin called. And I'm like, yeah, I'll max it out again. Sure. And I'm glad I did because the market's like kind of going up now. Yeah. But anyway, opportunities, man. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, okay. Well, I've got some money coming back from a couple loans. So I wasn't sure you needed some but Is the wolf lodge did that sell? It's uh, it should be selling either today. It should be closing today. Wow. Yeah, that's great Yeah, how'd you do with returns on that investment? Um, I did good. So I have two loans out right now through my wolf lodge I have one through my HELOC and one through my IRA The IRA loan was just a little itty-bitty guy at 22.5. Okay, I'm making I think 16 % annualized on that a super small It's not super small. It's like it's a $300 paycheck every single month to my IRA, which is incredible. That's exactly what I want that money to do. With the HELOC loan, we were actually 1 % owners of Wolf Lodge as well. Yeah, so we're getting paid off some of the we're getting paid off some of the net profits. Yeah, no, no profits. Yeah, 1 % baby. Nice. Yeah. So what does that equate to? I think he said he didn't do the math, but he said it should be about $3,000. That's great. Yeah. Just like 300 grand on that project. Yeah. Well, good for them. Yeah, that's awesome. Good job. Yeah, plus plus all the monthly insurance plus plus you got all the monthly income Yeah, yeah interest. Yeah, so like I'm like that felt good like nice. Yeah, but that's coming back should be back here soon Right on. Yeah Other than that just been kind of Head down my business trying to get better and yeah, not be so damn sick Yeah, stop being sick. I'm working on it. I legitimately am working on it. Yeah We've got our development in chugging along good yeah we have a date with pnz finally of next month march 10th so once we get past that our contractor could essentially start and we are under contract now with a contractor and we have now three offers from home builders nice all great offers that we would take probably any of them but ⁓ pnz is something in zoning planning and zoning commission i think profit and zoning so all they have to do is they just have to review our final like subdivision plans and make comments and just make sure that it fits that it meets the city ⁓ code. Sure. You know, building codes. So they're just reviewing it to make sure and they're working with a large ⁓ we're working with a large engineer that does this stuff all the time. So it should be expedited. Things are trucking along. Are you going to pick up any extra projects this year? I'd like to. Yeah. Yeah. So I have another one that I'm starting that other one that I talked about that I bought in Post Falls. That's right. Yeah. ⁓ And we're gonna be in Mexico next week and then I should have access to that while I'm in Mexico sure they should be moving out Okay, so that one yeah another one where I thought I had to wait a full 30 days But they're they just needed a couple weeks to move out Yeah, I I told you about another deal in post falls that was coming up, but it didn't seem like it was that good of a deal Yeah, which one was this had a shed in post falls. I can talk to you after the show I just it's on the market, but it was marketed like as is uh-huh. wasn't as bad as I thought I if I saw it. We talked about it briefly. do. OK. I just I forgot to send you photos. I think I was supposed to send you. Oh, OK. Oh, that's right. I remember that. Yeah. My semi photos. Yeah. No problem. And it became a problem. It became a problem. It became a problem. So like I said, I wasn't even sure how good of a deal that one was. And it didn't sound like when I got there that it was like actually like a 70 percent deal or anything like that. It was more like 85 or 90 percent. Yeah. So not not great. But there was always a possibility of was that like on a larger lot? Yeah, a large lot had a decent shot as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If I remember, I could be misremembering, but I thought that had the option to potentially like build another house there, split the lot or something. Possibly. Yeah. You know, I have to check it out later. Obviously, that scam, like what other scams? I know we're kind of kind of looking like a short episode today, but what other scams should you kind of look at? or look out for in the real estate industry. As a home seller or as an investor? both. me give me other stuff. Yeah. What do you got? All right. So, you know, AI is a double edged sword, right? Yep. I have noticed being an investor agent, my spam calls go through the freaking roof and text and emails. ⁓ I am being attacked by robots. Yeah, me too. Digitally. And unfortunately, I just barely answer my phone anymore. unless someone leaves me a voicemail or sends me a text, it's almost always spam. Yep. It's ⁓ and it's the majority of my calls these days. I can show you my phone too. It's all like potential spam, potential spam. Just an unlimited amount of potential seller leads out there. Apparently not true. think part of the problem is because you have your phone number and your information public. I do. Like obviously we're businesses and I'm also on the do not call this, but it doesn't seem to matter. ⁓ But that's one of the double-edged sword of AI. Very helpful ⁓ to use in your business, but it's also very helpful for other people to use in their business and to contact just a massive amount of people. ⁓ my phone's just, it's almost unusable, ⁓ which is sad to say. And who knows what it's gonna be like in five years? Just how much we're probably gonna just, I have a feeling people are just gonna stop using social media. Stop using their telephones and just resort to like texting their friends or something like that or or maybe telepathically Communicating with chips. This is like you have to be a part of my chip to contact me. Yeah Yeah, maybe that's 20 years from now, but Jack into your chips to like like yeah. Oh these two Well, these chips are cheaper, but they have ads Did you see I just got an email from chat GBT this morning. Mm-hmm. They're gonna start putting ads in their free version now good. and their lower plans, the $8 a month plans. So now you're going to, when you're searching, it's intentionally just going to persuade you to buy shit. Right. And it's going to be capturing the information you're giving it to try to force feed you and sell to other people. I'm sure they already know that. And now it's got years of data on people and knows exactly what to sell them. Welcome to a new world. Well, this was different But welcome to a new world of being attacked by AI. Yeah There one day we will have robots stabbing us in the chest with knives saying that oh, I'm not stabbing you and it So I don't think AI is like attacking right? think this is like corporations who are buying the AIs who are funding these things who are basically putting their ideas in the back end It's not the AI itself. It's it's corporations trying to make money through the system, of course. Yeah. There's always doing this behind doing it, executing the prompts that's given. There's people behind it, but it is a it is going to be an annoying. Like I said, double edged sword. Extremely useful, extremely annoying. Yeah. And it's probably just here to stay. And we all have to figure out how to get how to live with it somehow. Yeah. Are you sick of it? Good luck, America. No, no. OK. I'm just you know, I would I like to use things. that are useful and not be used by things. Yeah. And I think everyone feels that same way. They want the best of both worlds. Yeah. But yeah, it's time to it's time to buckle up and just look out for all the surprise ad attacks that are going to come our way. Right. It's not like we're already not surprised by them. I mean, like you can go on Facebook and get hit with ads. You can go on Instagram. You can go on Amazon. Do you remember when Facebook had no ads? Mm hmm. Yeah. It was a wonderful platform to use. A lot of people used it. Now you go on Facebook. I don't know about you, but me, it's like every third swipe is an ad. You see like two things and then add, two things, add, two things, add. And of the other two things that you see, one of those is content marketing. ⁓ So it's the majority of what you're actually seeing is ads. One says it's sponsored. The other one, Showing it to you because there's content marketing in it, right? And so you're just you know, I just got to stop using Facebook. I actually I know ⁓ tell me so from my understanding obviously the ads like people are bidding in real time Yeah in real time as you're swiping. Yeah to be the next thing that pops up on your screen And they're they're making these little micro tiny bits. Obviously, it's all done by computer. It's not by human but like they say like All right, we want to target this person right now or this person right now. It's three p.m. We want to hit this here and like it's all computer manipulated data. companies are putting bids on to be the next ad that you swipe on, because I mean, like, think about the ad on the Super Bowl. That's going to cost you millions of dollars. Right. Yeah. I had on Facebook could cost you ten dollars and you just happen to find and swipe the right person when it tells you to. But it's just. It's all very weird. ⁓ Yeah, like that's not all premeditated stuff on your feet. It's all just like. happening in real time. Yeah, it and it's have you noticed I maybe I've just noticed seems like the ads are more compelling these days too. Yeah, at least for me like I'll actually before I'll just swipe right by the ads. I go that's an ad but sometimes if I'm not like looking for an ad like I'll just be like ⁓ this is interesting and then half the time it's an ad I'm looking at. Yeah, and I think it's interesting just the way they craft their video or whatever. Yeah. And it's all videos now, too. ⁓ yes part. ⁓ I find myself watching things like they're compelling and they're like, here's the reason why. And like they don't give you the reason, but they keep seeing like, but wait, we're going to give you the reason in just a second. My brain's like, give me the reason. Wait, we're just we're just pushing buttons on your brain. That's all we're doing. Yeah, yeah. Pushing it push the button here so that we can sell you more ads. And we noticed that you stayed here for 30 seconds. That's the whole point of the platform. Yeah, it's the that's what people don't understand. It's the whole point of the platform. Yeah, maybe some people understand this. Facebook blocked my phone right now. It's just to get you addicted to looking at it because they are selling things in real time. And it's just a huge money making machine. Opal just says you can't even use Facebook anymore. It's so nice. Not like I love it. I'm just showing it just for a reason that I I love not having to worry about it during my workday. And you know, Facebook is so powerful as a tool for a real estate entrepreneur as well to be able to post stuff and become more known in the community. But I got to admit, like I'm at a point where I feel like it's just I can continue to grow my business this way or I can take the app off my phone and just go quiet and just start focusing on Bigger better deals and just get away from people altogether or get away from the platforms. Yeah, and I'm almost there Yeah, I'm so close to not they was deleting my page, but just deleting the app, right? Because it is helpful to get people to come to the meetups. Sure. Even now. I just don't care Sorry There's nothing wrong you built a you built a big system people know who you are and when your meetings are ⁓ Social media obviously serves a very good purpose in some of them. Sorry I don't care about like people come to the me. I don't care about promoting it anymore as much is what I meant to say. Yeah That's that's all I get peer pressure network to hey, we let's make a Let's make a video. And I think the last one I did, I looked so unenthusiastic. was just like, well, sometimes that's just like your awkward charm coming through. I'm like, is he serious or is he playing? And sometimes it's hard to tell. I just want to go to Mexico. Yeah. Which I'm going to go. So thanks for joining us today. I hope you learned something new. Be aware. If you're an investor out there, let the other let the sellers know if they're talking to multiple. Home buyers that these predators out there exist and this is what they do and if you have an offer that seems too Good to be true be very cautious of research the company. Yeah, I agree But I think like your research will only go so far, of course Yeah, but still try to do whatever due diligence you can and just make sure you are trying very hard to protect yourself And if you're a real estate agent your real estate clients protect them. Yep. Totally. Yep. All right. Have a great day guys We'll see you next time We will.