Chris Dewilde - Being An Investor Focused Agent in Chicago
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Chris Dewilde is a real estate agent in the Chicago area that serves real estate investors. With a 10 year contracting background, Chris has a ton of knowledge to help investors pick great properties, know and understand renovation costs, and see opportunities in properties where others may pass. We discuss how Chris adds value to those he works with, and helps them grow their real estate portfolio depending on their preferences and goals. Chris is also a brand new dad, welcoming his first child into the world 2 months ago.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Gain real estate industry insights to stay ahead of the market trends.
- Learn how building trust with clients to establish yourself as a reliable realtor, and one that investor clients will want to stick with.
- Discover the importance of nurturing long-term client relationships for a solid client base.
- Understand the importance of property managers in maximizing property value.
- Hear how Chris used his background as a contractor to help him add value to his clients for heavier rehab opportunities.
- Create a supportive community for a thriving real estate network.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Building a Strong Agent-Investor Relationship
00:05:32 - Adding Value to Investors
00:08:11 - Guiding Investors Based on Goals
00:12:38 - Building Trust and Transparency
00:13:42 - Using Social Media for Client Engagement
00:15:00 - Adapting Investment Strategies
00:18:12 - Negotiating Property Offers
00:22:54 - Future Real Estate Goals
00:25:45 - Value of Experience in Real Estate
00:26:09 - Building Client Loyalty
00:26:57 - Connecting with Chris Dewilde
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Chris Dewilde
You will be shopped until you build the relationship as an agent. You're going to get shopped. They're going to talk to a million people, and just being direct with them catches them off guard because every agent is just like, oh, my God. Yes. I'm not your yes man. I tell them that from the beginning. Hey, listen, I would really hope that we can build a working relationship, but I am not your yes man. I'm going to tell you when something's a bad idea and we may not agree, and that's okay. Just understand that I'm only advising you based on what I think would be best for you.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL Freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of REL Freedom, real estate leverage Freedom, talking about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I am your host, Mike Swenson. And if you want to begin your journey or figure out next steps to scaling and growing income streams within real estate, go to our website, freedomthroalealestate.com. That's freedom through realestate.com. There's a lot of great information on there articles to help you out and get you started. But today I'm super excited because we've got a guest here that has a really cool story coming out of the Chicago area. And so maybe just on the tail end of football season here, we can maybe commiserate about we didn't make the playoffs and the other two teams did. So we've got Chris dewild here. Chris had a background as a contractor for ten years, now an agent and works exclusively with investors. So we'll talk about his journey and talk about kind of how he helps clients with investment properties. And I should also add new dad. So we won't hold anything against him that he says today because he might be operating on new dad brain from shortages of sleep. So I know how that goes. So, Chris, we're so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.
Chris Dewilde
Thanks, man. I appreciate it. And, yeah, it's definitely dad brain. Sleep is a myth.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Why don't you just start, tell us a little bit about your background, tell us a little bit about your journey, and we'll go from there.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah, absolutely. So I did large loss like hail and wind damage and fire damage for about ten years. I traveled a lot around the country, which we had talked about in your market as well. And after time, the industry started to really change on the contracting side. When dealing with insurance companies, there were a lot of bad apples spoiling the bunch. It just kind of got to a point where I was over it and I was looking for a new avenue and I knew that real estate had always interested me, right? So I kind of made that segue and it translated so well as I got into it, I actually had the gcs that I knew here locally hitting me up for their properties, right? Like, hey, how do we do this? How do we invest in this? What would be a good arV? Things like that. And what I've learned just being dealing with investors is they burn out agents. I mean, I'm sure you've dealt with it. With investors, they'll churn agents because they don't care in particular about the agent, because they don't build enough value to them, right? They know their numbers. They know what the big boys, if you will, know what they're doing. They know what their numbers are. They know what they want to pay and what they want to sell. And it's usually not through anyone's fault of their own, because the agent themselves doesn't know how to talk or present to them. Too many agents are worried about saving the deal and not worried about what the investor needs, right? I mean, when my investors and I go out hunting, especially in the Lakeview Lincoln park, like the downtown areas that people want to be, we'll write 1520 offers. I call it pissing people off. And I love doing it because these properties are destroyed. Downright despicable. But they want more. And it's been on the market for a long time, and we're hitting them with offers that are actually understandable at three, 4500,000 less than what they want, just because the numbers make sense. And my investors love me for that because I don't care about my commission so much as I do, is getting them the deal that they deserve and advising them properly on cost. That's really the part that hems a lot of investors up, especially out of state investors. Cost per market changes so much.
Mike Swenson
I just quickly want to touch on what you were talking about with investors churning through agents. It's something that I have a difficult time with because the investors I work with know a lot of them are out of state. And it's kind of like I feel like I'm competing with every other market in the United States because it's like, well, if you don't invest here, you're going to go invest somewhere else. Right. You're looking for the best investment for you. So it's trying to differentiate yourself and like you said, add value in a way that, yeah, I understand they're not going to be exclusively investing in my market. They want to be able to diversify their funds, but at the same time, I want them to still continue to want properties in our market. And so I take it. It's important to me that I find them good deals, find them deals that are going to make money and then provide them great service so that they do want to come back. So you talk just a little bit about how you add value to them, and you've already given some examples, but just talk about retaining clients so that they want to continue to work with you and invest in the Chicago area.
Chris Dewilde
Right. So, first and foremost, when you're dealing with investors, especially your out of staters, know all of your local and county and state building regulation, know it all, download the handbook. So that way, even if you don't have it memorized, boom, you just flip to a page, like, hang on, let me see what it says in here. Because they don't know what they don't know. Right? Like in Chicago, when you buy an investment property, you can do an express permit online. That's something most people don't know, right? To avoid waiting six weeks for an inspector. But if you don't know that, that can hem up a remodel for six months because you schedule the inspection, and then by the time they get out, three, four weeks has gone by, and then, God forbid, you have to fix something. Now you got another two weeks before they come out, and before you know it, you're racking holding cost, you're racking up permitting fees because you got to pay for them to come back out and reinspect. Right? Know all of your building code. Hey, this will be zonable because it's seven foot ceiling height. And as far as the HVAC is concerned, it's all got to be this far from the bedrooms, et cetera. Because if not, these are the things that you can provide value to keep them coming back to you. Like, yeah, I could go to this market where the value seems to be more, but I go here and I don't make any mistakes, and I'm guaranteed to make my money. The last three I did or the last one I did with Chris, he didn't steer me wrong. I'm still making money. I had an investor disappear on me for three years. He was investing in Ohio, and he comes back to me he goes, listen, I bought twelve properties out there and I'm essentially eating my ass on this. And I'm like, right? I mean, he's like, because of building code, permits. I didn't know about things like cost of labor. And you got to know your market, right? They know their cost, they know what they want to pay, what the ARV should be, but they don't know the untouchables, the variables that are not tangible that can affect it. Because you know that area, hey, you want to buy that property, but just so you know, this property sits on a corner lot that faces a railroad track that nobody's going to want to live in because it's super loud, right? Yeah, it's close to the college and you may get some college students who don't care, but you're not going to get the rent value that you would a block in. That's how you provide value. Know your market, know your building codes, know what your contractors are charging for certain projects, know what the permits cost. You'd save your investor a ton of headache. And thus they come back.
Mike Swenson
Well, and let's talk a little bit before we get too deep here in helping an investor. So say you work with people who are new all the way through seasoned agents or seasoned investors that are buying large properties. I talk about being a matchmaker, right. I'm trying to match what you're looking to accomplish with opportunities that scratch that itch. So kind of maybe walk through helping guide them if they don't necessarily know what they're looking to do or where they're looking to go.
Chris Dewilde
Right. So it's really about discovery, right? We talk about it as agents all the time. We have to do discovery. Well, what interests you more? Are you looking to make capital within the next 90 days or are you willing to wait two to three years? Right. Are you trying to buy a three to four unit building, rehab, pull equity out and then buy another? There's 1000 ways to skin that cat. So you really just have to narrow down what they're willing to do. Because if you have an investor that's like, well, I want to flip and then I want to do multifamily and then I want to do this and you have to stop them and be like, listen, this is great, but you're going to get really disorganized because standard operating procedures, your sops, or your systems and operations, that's what's going to define whether or not you make it as an investor. The best ones I know have a process before we ever even write an offer? They've already got an architectural drawing up of what they would do for the building, what their costs are going to be before they even write it. And that's a lot of work. But there's less mistakes because they're focused. When you have an investor that's all over the place, you just really have to reel them in and ask them what are they best suited for? What is your reserves look like? Can you hold a property for eight months cash flow wise, on a hard money loan, which are at 10%, or can you just hold a property for three months? Because if you're only looking at three months, you need to be doing flips. But you also have to be realistic on what your profit margin looks like on those. Right. So it's like a fingerprint. It's different for everybody.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And I think, too, talking about out of state investors, it also matters. How involved do they want to be in the process? Is it, hey, we've got our boots on the ground, general contractor that's running everything, or is that person going to roll up their sleeves and put in their own time, too? So, understanding that time is really important because they may have the right funds, but if they don't have a lot of time because they're working another w two job or entrepreneur and they've got their own businesses, they just need to know that the person, the boots on the ground's got it taken care of. So understanding how much time they have available and committed to be able to help with those projects, too, right?
Chris Dewilde
Absolutely. And you can charge a project management fee aside from that and manage after the closing. You're outside of the brokerage, you're not doing rent rolls and leases and stuff like that for them, but you can manage the contractors and so on and so forth. Right. If you want to really provide value. Hey, you're hands off. I'm only going to call you when something's a problem. Okay, cool. And that builds so much for them, especially, like you said, I think people forget there's a lot of w two jobs and people who work for corporations that make a lot of money. Right. But they also have bosses to answer to still, so they don't have the freedom that we have.
Mike Swenson
Well, and it also comes back to going back to goals. It could be cash flow, it could be equity. They're looking to help offset some of their taxes. As people have more and more wealth, they're less concerned about cash flow. If they can have a spot where they know it's going to help reduce their taxes. So I think that's also to understanding what their goals are because you can show two properties that are completely different to two different people, and one like one, one will like the other because it's what they're looking to get out of it. So back to discovery. It's important to understand what their objectives are.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah, absolutely. Just understand you will be shopped until you build the relationship. As an agent, you're going to get shopped. They're going to talk to a million people and just being direct with them catches them off guard because every agent is just like, oh, my God. Yes. I'm not your yes man. I tell them that from the beginning. Hey, listen, I would really hope that we can build a working relationship, but I'm not your yes man. I'm going to tell you when something's a bad idea and we may not agree, and that's okay. Just understand that I'm only advising you based on what I think would be best for you. Right. And the honesty in that and the transparency. Bcc them on your offers, bccing them on every response the agents get so that they know that you're being honest. Right? Like, I have an investor that'll call me and he'll be like, hey, I want an offer on this property. Write what you think it's worth and then just send it to me to docusign. Okay? That's the trust that you can build. But it takes time and patience.
Mike Swenson
How long have you been working with some of those clients?
Chris Dewilde
So, honestly, I met a lot of them. Year one in the business. It took me three years before they started calling me consistently. And now it's almost all the time. And that's where just any sales job on the planet, people focus on the 5% of people that are willing to do something right now in real estate. What about the five year guy? Because that's what really took me off, is I'm getting calls from people because of my TikTok and like this, because fun fact, TikTok. Save everybody's name and your phone number in your phone under a contact TikTok. And Facebook will suggest your reels to them, it'll suggest your videos to them. I'm having investors call me that I haven't talked to in years. But that relationship is built over a long period of time. It doesn't happen overnight. You will get those people where you just jive, and that's fine. But understand that relationships are built on remembering birthdays, remembering their dog's birthday, their kid's birthday, sending them a know, not like a cheesy card. Like, I'll send people a gift card, like, for Starbucks, like, hey, happy anniversary. Like, go get some coffee on. And they're like, how do you remember that? And then one guy, I hit him up, and he's like, dude, I forgot it was my anniversary in a couple of days. He was like, I got to go. I was like, all right, man.
Mike Swenson
Can be your tagline. Remembering your anniversary for you since.
Chris Dewilde
That's right, yeah.
Mike Swenson
Helping you out with your spouses. Well, I remember having spent so much time when I started working with investors. Obviously, it's on the buy side. I remember having my first listing as an investor, with an investor client, and it was like, oh, that's right. Yeah. People do still sell them because I was so focused on helping them buy, but then at some point, they are looking to sell. And so you do get kind of that business that just naturally will happen over time as you grow.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of investors say, oh, I'm going to hold this for life. But when the maintenance deteriorates to a certain point and it's not worth rehabbing and pulling the arb out again, they're like, all right, let's get rid of it. I got enough equity in it, essentially, as an investor. You double dipped. You rehabbed the property. You pulled out 75%. Because on a commercial refi, right, you're not pulling out a full 80, 85. You pull out 70, 75. So then another six, seven years goes by and eight years, and now you're just like, maybe I'll just pull out and buy something else and do it again. Or even tap into the heloc. I got a client right now. He's tapping into his own house. He's got a million other house. He's tapping into another seven hundred k in HeLOC money, and he's buying three. But you got to play that smart. And that's where people lose it, is they think that it's all easy. You got to file your taxes. Right? That's something I run into a lot.
Mike Swenson
I was just going to say for people that rehab a lot of properties, too. If you leave a little bit of meat on the bone for the next person, you might attract a different pool of buyers, too. Or if you completely finish, like, we've got a 25 unit apartment, and we could rehab every single one of those units, or we could choose to leave a little bit of value add for the next person, well, there might be a different pool of buyers. When you do it that way. Also thinking about, people always ask me when somebody's looking to sell, well, why are they looking to sell? Right. They're trying to find that red flag. And I often tell people, we may be able to figure that out, but everybody's in such a different spot in life and their financial situation and their tax situation that we may not be able to put our finger on that because somebody might just be looking for a tax deduction, somebody might have a life change, and they have to repurpose their portfolio. And so while we may think, oh, they're trying to pass something over on us, we probably won't know the reason why they're looking to sell their property, because everybody makes decisions for different reasons, and it might not be the reason you would decide to sell.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah. And it's a fun question because residential buyers for regular homes to live in and investors, well, why do you think they're selling? Do you think we can offer less? I'll write whatever you want. I'm your agent. I'll advise you what I think will get it done. But you never know. I'm not afraid. Right. That's why I always tell people, write what you think it's worth, and let's see what happens if they don't give you a counter at all. Listen to me. Maybe we'll come up. Right? But if they give you a counter, hey, they might be in a different spot. That's a fun question. It always is.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Well, because I give an example of, let's just say for clean numbers, a property is listed at 500. Maybe it's been on the market a while. You want to come in at 450? I said, well, we can certainly write that offer at 450. We don't really know where the seller is at until we see what their counteroffer is. If it's 500, we write at 450 and they come back at 475. Okay, great. They're willing to negotiate a little bit. If it's 500, we offer 450, and they come back at 498. Well, then they're not willing to negotiate too much. Right. And so you don't really know kind of where they're at unless you see how they respond to that counteroffer to know how much wiggle room there is to negotiate.
Chris Dewilde
Right. And then always do what I like to call an educated offer. Go to the tax report. What was the last mortgage recorded at? What's their interest rate? How long ago did they refi? Because we have access to all of that, right. At least my MLS, it shows us on, like, when we click the tax report. Okay, so they refied this in 2020 and pulled out x amount of money. So do some math. This is their equity position, which means that they have to sell at x number in order to even break even after fees. We can go low if they're in a position where they want to pay to get out of this thing. Right. And look at the situations. What's the listing time? How long has it been on? How many times did it go on and off market? Make the offer with a little bit of thought behind it. Don't worry about the seller situation. Look at the facts and what's on paper. And we have that information, we have the technology. That's it.
Mike Swenson
Talk a little bit about some of how you've seen investors progress or change over time. Because I think one of the things that I like to tell, especially newer investors, is it's important to just get in the game. Right? The path you pick now is not going to be the path that you're on. Like, if you decide to start with a flip, that doesn't mean you're going to be a flipper for life. Right? And so I'd love to maybe just hear how some people, how their path has changed as they've evolved. We have investors where it's like, yeah, we start with single families and duplexes. Well, then they see the hassle of that and now they want to move to fourplexes or ten plexus, whatever it might be. They might naturally scale up or they decide to get into a different asset class. So we'd love to just kind of hear your thoughts with maybe some of the investors you've worked with on how their journey has changed.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah, a lot of investors go, they start in the section eight rental place because that's what they can afford when they start. And then they try to start moving up to what the lenders are considered, b class and a class, like neighborhoods where the arvs are there. Right. But then I had another investor, did the opposite. He was in the city, he was in Gold coast, like really nice areas. And he was like, wait, so he had a building similar to yours, 25 units. So what it was was he went to the city with a deal. He said, listen, he had twelve units. That just wouldn't make sense for him to rehab out because like you said, leave meat on the bone for whenever, if ever, you decide to sell it. So someone has equity to add, right? And he goes, well, I can't rent those at fair market. But HUD, because it was an opportunity area gave him an extra 10% on top of market to rent those out. So he went to the city and he actually got an additional deduction for making his building in an opportunity area with 10% or more of the units available for section eight. So not only did he get a huge tax deduction for it, he raised his rent rolls, and from that he decided, why am I doing this? He goes, those were the best tenants I ever had. They'd ever want to break anything. They don't want to destroy anything. Nine times out of ten, they're good people, right in a bad spot. And the fact is they ruin the unit, they screw you on rent, they do whatever, they lose that voucher across the country. So then he moved all of his business into the southern side of Chicago, like the south side and more. Section eight properties is what he was doing, and he was getting way better arvs. And he was doing these what you would consider like to the nines, buying complete ten and eleven units, guts. And then all the way up, cash out, refi. And then hudding them out like section 80 them out. I've never really seen an investor go the other way on that. Usually it starts that way and goes that way, but that was interesting to me.
Mike Swenson
Well, that kind of goes back to our conversation of what are their goals and what are they looking to get out of it? Because I have a conversation with an investor and we talk about section eight, and some of them will be like, oh, I don't want that at all. And some will be like, hey, guaranteed payment every month. We know that the government's going to pay. I don't have to shake them down for my rent every month. And so it comes back to, it depends on your preference, right? And so people are investing in all different pockets and it's, what do you want to get out of it? What's your risk tolerance and what types of properties do you want? But yeah, like you said, some people might look at that and say, hey, that's not a market that I want to touch. And some people will say, that's going to be my bread and butter. That's what I want to focus on. And that's the cool thing about working with investors. Everybody's got different goals and objectives, right?
Chris Dewilde
And it keeps it interesting, for sure.
Mike Swenson
Talk about the future a little bit. Where are you thinking you want to continue to grow in your job? I know you had some investments in the past and have sold them. Curious to hear future goals for you. Future direction.
Chris Dewilde
Future direction. When I start ramping back up again. It's going to be five units plus is what I want to start with. I'm probably going to be in the section eight realm. I like that as an investor. Probably will be outskirts of Chicago, maybe a little further south. But wherever I pick, I'm going to localize. A lot of investors want to buy one here because it was a good deal, and one in another state because it was a good deal. Localize your investments so that you have five, six, seven of these in one area. So it makes sense to have a property management company. But if you have one property in Minnesota and you have one property in Chicago, and you want to know how you're paying 10% on each of these, and it's scattered. So that's what I would want to go into. Just because you buy the buildings at a reasonable price, just because you rehab it and put some money into it, doesn't mean you have to pull out the full 75% on a refi. You can choose to pull out. Hey, man, I only want 50% of my money back. I only want my rehab money back. I don't need the purchase money back. Right. And that's where a lot of people get wrong, is they're like, oh, I want to pull out the max. Why leave a little juice for you to squeeze when you need it, right? And that's kind of what my goal is in the future as far as being an agent. I'm working on building a team. I'm working on providing more leads for them, but training as well, because leads don't mean anything if you're not going to call.
Mike Swenson
You made a great point in terms of strategy, wanting to focus in an area, because I've seen some people that do that. That's one of those things that it's hard to quantify that on a spreadsheet. Right. Like, we start with a deal calculator. We're running numbers, and you'll see some efficiencies there that maybe you wouldn't notice if you do try to pick one here, one there, one somewhere else. The other thing, too, that I always encourage people to talk about is because we don't do property management, referring people to good property managers. And so I'll work in tandem with a good property manager, depending on the area they're investing in, and say, hey, get their input on this area. Because what you might find is there's a lot of tenant turnover in that area, or there's not a lot of tenant turnover in that area, and that might be an area you want to focus on. And so having a good property manager that can speak to what it's like managing a property like that or tenants in that area can really help you make good decisions, too. And that's something that me as an agent, I wouldn't know that to the same level. I have basic knowledge, but not to the level that a good property manager who's in the thick of it in those areas would have as well.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah, correct. I mean, it's experience in action they're telling you, because they deal with it every day. Right. Whereas, like, somebody who's looking from the bird's eye telling you how to do something that's never done it, it's like, how much of that's. Right.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And then you're adding another place of value, if you can have. You're helping them find and identify good properties and somebody who can help manage it really well, they're going to want to stick with you. Right. And then you keep that client sticky to you in your area.
Chris Dewilde
Yes, absolutely.
Mike Swenson
Have you ever heard the phrase you're the average of the top five people that you hang around? Well, Chris, for people that want know, reach out to you, maybe invest in the Chicago area or just learn more. Know, being an investor agent, working with other investors, how can they do so?
Chris Dewilde
Yeah, you can find me at the wild agent, DA Wild agent or look me up on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. It's at dewildrealtor on all platforms, so I'm real easy to find.
Mike Swenson
Awesome.
Chris Dewilde
Yeah.
Mike Swenson
And I was going to say wrote down. So as of this time, you're at 7000 followers on Instagram and 10,000 on TikTok. So you've made a great inroads there of building an audience and entertaining an audience and keeping people to you. So congratulations on all your success and best of luck as you continue to grow in the future.
Chris Dewilde
I appreciate that. And you as well. It's a pleasure being on. I appreciate it's.
