GETTING STARTED
THE FIRST DEAL IS
A SEQUENCE.
Almost everyone who stalls in this business can explain the strategy fluently and has never put a number in front of a seller. The gap is not knowledge. It is sequence.
Here is ninety days, written to be used rather than read.
Days 1 to 30: become dangerous on value
One job this month. Learn to tell what a house is worth in one small area.
- Pick one strategy and stop reading about the other two. The one that fits the capital and time you actually have.
- Pick one market — roughly fifty square miles. Part of Lexington, or the north side of Columbia, or the Irmo and Chapin corridor. Not the Midlands. A piece of it.
- Study sold comparables daily. Pick a house, guess the sale price before you look, then look. Do it until you are consistently close. This single habit separates people who last from people who do not.
- Walk properties. Open houses, listed distressed properties, anything you can get into. Build the connection between condition and cost.
- Find your closing attorney. South Carolina closings are attorney-supervised. Have the conversation now, before a contract is in hand.
You are not looking for deals this month. You are building the instrument you will use to evaluate them.
Days 31 to 60: talk to people
This is the month most people skip, and skipping it is why their first offer is a year away.
Talk to ten sellers. Not to contract anything. To hear what people actually say when a property has become a problem. You will discover that the conversation is rarely about price. It is about a timeline, a family situation, a repair they cannot face, or a decision they have been postponing for two years.
Talk to three buyers. If you are wholesaling, find people who actually close in your area and ask precisely what they buy: which zip codes, what property types, what condition, what price band, and what they need to see before they say yes. Write it down. That document is worth more than any lead list.
Start one lead source and run it consistently. One. Driving for dollars is the cheapest to start. Whatever you pick, the rule is that it runs every week, not when you feel like it.
Write your buy box. Down to a page. Then read /building-a-buy-box/ and make it strict enough that someone else could apply it.
If this was useful, more of Ben Lovro's writing on real estate, business and systems goes deeper.
Days 61 to 90: make offers
Three offers. That is the target and it is not negotiable with yourself.
They will probably be wrong, and that is the point. A wrong offer that gets a response teaches you more than another month of study, because the seller's objection is the actual curriculum. You learn where your ARV was off. You learn which repair items you underestimated. You learn what your delivery sounds like when you are nervous.
Run every offer through the full sequence in /how-to-analyze-a-deal/ before it leaves your hands. ARV first, repairs second, costs third, profit as a policy, offer last. Then deliver it as a number with a reason attached — not an apology.
If you get a yes, call your attorney the same day and slow down. If you get three no's, you have three specific pieces of information and you are ahead of where you were.
What the first seller conversations are actually like
Nothing like the scripts.
Most calls are short and go nowhere. A large share of people are not selling, are annoyed you contacted them, or want a retail price with no work. Some are rude. That is the job, and it is the reason the field thins out in month three.
The ones that matter go differently. Someone tells you about a parent who died, a tenant who destroyed a unit, a job transfer, a loan they cannot carry. The correct response is to listen longer than feels efficient and to ask what they want to have happen. Most people have not said it out loud yet.
Then be honest about the trade. Your offer is below retail because you are buying condition, speed and certainty. Say that plainly. If listing the house is genuinely better for them, tell them so — you will lose that deal and gain a reputation, and in a market the size of the Midlands the reputation compounds faster than the deal would have.
What not to do in the first ninety days
- Do not form an LLC first. It feels like progress and it is paperwork. Talk to a CPA when there is income to structure.
- Do not build a brand. No logo, no website, no business cards. Sellers do not care and buyers do not care.
- Do not buy a program in week one. Use free material until it clearly runs out, which is a specific identifiable moment and not a feeling.
- Do not work four counties. Coverage is not progress. Repetition in one place is.
- Do not quit your job. Income buys patience, and patience is what lets you decline a bad deal.
You do not have to see the entire path to move forward. You have to see the next step and be willing to take it.
Frequently asked
Questions people actually ask
What is the actual first step?
Pick one strategy and one market of about fifty square miles, then study sold comparables daily until you can estimate a sale price before you look it up. Everything else in this business is downstream of being able to tell what something is worth.
How many offers before one gets accepted?
The ratio depends on your market, your lead quality and your delivery, and any number someone quotes you is from a different business. Track your own. What is consistent is that people who make offers weekly get answers and people who study do not.
What do I say on the first call?
Ask why they are thinking about selling and what they want to have happen, then listen longer than feels efficient. Most sellers have not said the real answer out loud yet, and the real answer is what tells you whether a deal exists.
What if I get a contract and cannot perform?
That is what your inspection or due diligence period is for, and it is also why you should not sign anything you do not understand. Call your closing attorney the day you get a signature, and never rely on a contingency you have not read.
Do I need a mentor?
Not in the first ninety days. Use free material, make offers, and find out where you actually stall. Paid instruction earns its place when you have specific repeated obstacles you cannot resolve, not when you are still deciding whether you are interested.
What if ninety days pass with nothing?
Then look at the inputs rather than the outcome. How many sold comps did you study, how many sellers did you speak with, how many offers did you actually deliver. Almost every empty ninety days has a zero in one of those three columns.
Make your next move
A year from now, what will you be glad you started today?
You don't need another promise that everything will be easy. You need something useful to learn — and a next step you're willing to take.