Come open

#Israeli Entrepreneur of the Week # Post2

In 2014 I made my first steps in US real estate.
I did a lot of flips in Be'er Sheva and heard about the more amazing flips that are made in the US and I always dreamed of being an international businessman so come on I'm inside too. (When I was a teenager I shared a friend with this fantasy so he answered me with contempt - yes really… Cracking Tzachi America)
My friend Oren Levin and we started groping, we checked a bit on the Internet (pre-world of groups on Facebook), a bit with friends, a meeting with an experienced lawyer and a one-day workshop with Rafi Mizrahi and Haida to Phoenix, Arizona
From my acquaintance with the world of flips in the country I knew that if there was anything that could ruin for sure buying a property it was that the seller knew I was a professional and that I was going to make money from his property. Or as they say in the country: I am going to earn "on it".
This also applies to the sale - if the buyer feels that I made a profit on it or that I made a checkout on it, then all the desire will go down to him.
In Israel, I always tried to work with realtors and not directly in front of sellers or buyers and I used to avoid introductory conversations of "So what do you do in life?" (What can I say? "Buying houses cheaply from people who do not understand the full potential of their home, improves and sells at maximum price to buyers who are willing to pay nicely for a renovated house"?)
Thus, with this Israeli approach, we began to see properties in the United States.
At one of the properties we saw in Phoenix, the seller himself met us along with the broker, who was also our local partner, and he introduced us to the seller enthusiastically, more or less with these words:
These two guys came from Israel to make money in real estate, they will buy your house for $ 110,000, renovate for another $ 60,000 and sell for $ 240,000 !!
I became white! I looked at Oren with a look of "WTF, what exactly did this jerk do now ??" After all, there is no chance that now this seller will sell us his house if he knows that it is possible to earn a few tens of thousands of dollars from his house… Now the "secret" business has been published, and he will invest some money and sell the house himself renovated and earn what we planned - what is Sucker ??
And as I think it to myself and myself transmitting it in the light of the pine, the second part has arrived. The seller's answer, which was even more surprising than the idiot who introduced us.
The seller looked at us and said, “What a beauty! It's so much fun to see young guys (probably back then I was still considered young, even though I already had 4 children. Oren, by the way still young) taking themselves in hand and making money… ”
I felt like my generation. I'm not in Kansas anymore, I'm in Arizona. They not only speak another language - they also think differently.
I got some very important lessons here:
1. In the US unlike in the country, everyone wants you to earn, applaud and respect you for being successful.
2. Everyone is busy with their work and not looking for adventure just because it can be made money. This is a very significant insight for an Israeli who works in the US (not just in real estate) and asks himself "so why don't they do it themselves?" The answer is "like this".
3. Trust my intuition - even if in this case the broker / partner of justice and this show of ours actually contributed to the execution of the deal, he still turned out to be a jerk - as I felt at first.
4. The most important lesson is that no matter how much experience and knowledge I have in real estate in the country, in a new market nothing is irrelevant and should come open to learning right from the ground up.
The important things I can use and that I got from my experience in the country are the "eggs" to close a deal, the understanding that there are things that must be learned while moving and sometimes progress is more important than finding the perfect property, , But only the selling costs and possibly a small impairment.
And it turns out, in retrospect, that idiots also recognize…
PS: Also enjoy the road