Ron Rabenstein from Muncie, Indiana.
Actually, found it on the internet.
My wife was searching through different things and found Joe’s zero down budgeting website.
And thought it would, it was something that, have some more additional information that
we didn’t have at the time and we were looking to do real estate.
We got started in 2001 with Joe’s program.
We had been, you know, wanting to get in to real estate, you know, a few friends or coworkers
have a rental here and there.
And we’d been trying to investigate the tax sales and the sheriff’s sales, foreclosures.
And just didn’t quite have all the steps, puzzle pieces to put together until we came
to Joe’s program.
I believe it was, took about sixty to seventy days, I believe to make the first deal and
we actually made $8,400.
So, it got our attention right off the bat.
I’m going to say that it took eight hours.
It does get faster, yeah, definitely because you’re talking to the buyers and sellers
and you know, putting out signs back then and even then we used a black and white thing
called a newspaper and so, things have gotten, changed a lot in those years.
Well, because we’ve progressed up through the years to doing foreclosures, you know,
we made fifty grand on one deal.
And that’s our record so far.
We, once we got to, I think it was week thirteen of Joe’s twenty-six week series, we found
out about the foreclosure system and this was clear back in ’02 and we started following
it and he gave us some additional pieces of the puzzle that we didn’t quite understand.
And once we’d gotten some other deals and cash flowing, then we had a little bit of
cash and you could just go to the foreclosure sale and buy them and some banks are so big
that they just they don’t care and they give a complete discount and so we just purchase
them and my son and I some other people fix them up and we list them and they sell quickly.
I mean, it’s progressed up, I would say early on, you know, went from two to five
and now it’s twelve to fifteen as I’m doing different parts of Joe’s system.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, we about, at least every other month, and a couple years ago we actually did two
a month.
It just depends on how much we want to work.
Getting a system and putting the system in place and it’s, so it’s just like putting
together a puzzle.
You do steps one, two and three and then that brings the opportunity for buyers and sellers
and you’re just helping meet people’s needs and it’s a really fun time.
People are happy to get the house and you’ve helped them get around the traditional way
that some people can’t purchase a house.
Initially, was to leave my job which I liked but didn’t love and so two and a half years
ago, after thirty-two years I did leave that job, and so that was one of the goals we had.
You know, financial freedom, to be able to travel whenever we wanted was one of our goals
and we’ve hit that and so we’re part of the vacation of the month club and, in fact
my wife is leaving on a cruise this afternoon.
So, those are some of the goals, you know, some people have, you know, set the goals
of having a million dollars.
And, you know, with Joe’s system here, all the houses we’ve accrued over the last seventeen
years, we’ve reached that goal.
And so I guess I really need to set maybe some new goals.
Right now I’m just enjoying my granddaughter.
Well, it’s changed our family tree.
Able to retire when I was fifty-six.
You know, spend time helping my parents, my son’s, you know, worked for me for several
years now.
Not only are we debt free, my son and daughter-in-law are debt free and even my granddaughter invests
in houses with her birthday and Christmas money.
And so it has tremendously affected our family.
I’ve helped, oh, brothers and sisters, and mother-in-law and everybody in our family
to buy a house at a reduced price.
And so, and, you know, helped, my niece just go into real estate and she just sold her
first house.
I personally have not grown in the automation industry since we started so early.
That would certainly be a help.
That’s why I’m here again this weekend to just see if I can catch a little bit more
of that automation and be able to do that.
Well, get some of Joe’s material and understand the many different ways that you can acquire
real estate with zero money down because he shows you ways to help other people who don’t
know how to sell their homes and they’re willing to mutually agree to let you help
them and so you don’t have to use your money to get started.
Having a mentor in life in general is a big help.
Having someone who’s where you want to get to and then the way Joe puts together his
team of people to where there’s other people that you can contact who are in their first
six months, been in it a year and a half, three years, and you can kind of bounce ideas
off of different people and their ideas, because Joe shares it all as a group.
And I think that’s been a great benefit to growing as a person and enjoying the real
estate life.