How to Buy Distressed Properties With Title Problems for Pennies on the Dollar | Logan Fullmer

Logan Fullmer (00:00)

I have two really meaningful statements that come to mind. One of them is: Your network is your net worth. Probably half of my net worth is from my network. I always wanted to talk to people, always wanted to learn from them. I would always share as much as I could, even when I wasn’t selling information. And my Rolodex today—it’s shocking to people I can call. We got a 1500-unit distressed apartment for $150 million, which is way above my pay grade, in a big MSA.

Issa Hanna (01:57)

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today

I have a treat. I have Logan Fullmer with us to share his knowledge. Logan, welcome to the show.

Logan Fullmer (02:07)

Yeah, you got it. I appreciate it. So thanks for having me.

Issa Hanna (02:09)

Man, I am super excited to talk to you. You have a huge following on social media and you bring straight knowledge to the game for exactly our audience—the investors. But with that, you have so much going on right now. What do your day-to-days kind of look like?

Logan Fullmer (02:25)

So I built real estate businesses that buy—we do curative title work, buy property for pennies on the dollar because they have title issues, we buy without title insurance, solve those issues, then go sell for what they’re really worth. That took me six or seven years to build. So I’d find partners that were young guys and I’d train them and they were young and hungry. They didn’t have the capital experience. So I built businesses with each of them. Once they were up and running good, I would

say, “Let’s start a company. So let me start an LLC, I’ll help capitalize it, you run this thing, hire some people.” So I have six businesses in this office building that I bought out of bankruptcy. There’s six businesses running here that do those kind of deals. And as those deals stabilized, I got to the point where like I became necessary for like high-level legal strategy and finance stuff. Outside of that, no one needed me to look at KPIs, no one had a question about a special warranty anymore.

So my days are a lot more flexible. I do some coaching. We’ve had a big demand because no one really understands this type of distressed property work. So I’d say about half my day is spent doing that now, and spend some time with social media. I do have a commercial portfolio, so most of the money we make here—this is a very asset-agnostic investing approach. So once we make the money here, I don’t want to—I want to sell all this stuff. I don’t really want to keep a crummy mobile home or a

vacant lot in the middle of nowhere. We sell it, turn out a bunch of cash, and then I go buy the real estate that I want, where I want, how I want, and most of that’s like office, industrial. I’m looking at some retail now, so most of it’s commercial.

Issa Hanna (03:52)

Yeah, the natural progression, right? And I—and I was watching some of your Insta reels. Some of the things you preach I find super informative, so I want to touch on them a little bit.

Finding opportunity in distressed properties, right? I own homes that are a hundred years old. I’ve had to rehab them basically from the ground up, so I know how to have that eye and look at it and see the potential in the house. A lot of investors don’t, but can you kind of give them

why these distressed properties are such money makers?

Logan Fullmer (04:21)

When people look at investing in real estate, the first thing they think of is house flipping, because they see it on TV. It’s understandable, it’s generally simple in concept. And then they get into the business a little bit and they start learning about rent houses, and they learn about wholesaling, and all these things kind of turn into like the strategies that are easily available, I guess you could say. Some of them start getting into new construction. But earning money in real estate

a lot of times is a value-add. And early on I learned if I could buy something for less than it was worth, I made my money from the beginning. And I could remodel and make more money, or I could sell it to somebody else and just recognize the discount that I bought as profit today. And for me, getting tenants and managing that was less exciting. The returns were lower. And I just—my goal became buying property for far less than it’s worth, not because of the physical distress. So when you see a house that needs to be flipped,

I’ll take that one, but I buy really nice houses sometimes. It’s more about the legal and technical distress: tax and title problems,

owners that are fighting, judgments and liens that outvalue the property, breaks in the title chain, missing probates, old title defects from 20 years ago that family were deeding deeds around and they were messed up because they didn’t get a lawyer, so they have all these bad deeds in the title chain. All those things, if you can find those,

you’ll usually find property that can’t sell easily and hasn’t sold in a long time. And sometimes it’s nice, sometimes it’s not. But for me, that’s my justification to offer them nearly nothing, because it’s a problem: “You can’t sell this, and I’ll buy it, but I’m only giving you five grand and I can’t even get title insurance.” So it’s extreme risk. Like, “But I’ll come to your house this afternoon with five G’s and a deed.” And the people that say no to that aren’t ready for me. The people that say yes are just done. They’re walking away, they could care less, and it’s a perfect match.

But that allows me to bring value with getting a lawyer or coming up with a creative solution to get a property insured. And usually that doesn’t cost me the discount that I got. So for example, I don’t like to touch property worth less than 150 or 200 grand. But let’s say there’s maybe 20 grand owed in an old mortgage or taxes or something, and I might spend 10 or 20,000 to the seller

and then maybe 10,000 in legal fees. I’m all in this thing for 50 grand. And if it’s worth 200 as it sits—not an ARV, but like as it sits—then I’ll list it on the market for 180 and it’ll vanish. And I’ll still make a hundred grand. So for me, the—just the value-add is in the discount upfront, solving those issues that cause the transaction to be stubborn.

Issa Hanna (07:34)

No, that’s—yeah, definitely. And what? That’s an angle that even somebody like me who has a portfolio, who’s done hundreds of buyer deals as an agent, I’m not ready to take something… I don’t have the knowledge for it. But somebody like you—amazing, man, because you can—you can get over those title defects, you can find that stuff. And are you offering these services to the public or is it just your thing right now?

Logan Fullmer (07:57)

Attorneys will do that. The problem is they don’t think of—they think about it like a lawyer, which gets in their way a lot. And the—and frankly, I might spend ten hours on a deal that makes a hundred grand. That’s ten grand an hour, more or less. And if—and if a customer comes to me and says, “Hey, can you help me solve this?” I’m, “Yeah, it’s ten grand an hour.” Like, that’s unreasonable.

Issa Hanna (08:14)

Yeah. Not worth the time, man. Not worth the time.

Logan Fullmer (08:17)

To tell

you to learn all of this, it could take a decade. And I’m still learning new stuff. But what I have learned—and this is something we try to tell—get into people’s heads because it’s a very limiting belief. If you learn every single problem and try to solve them all, it could take a long time. Probably a third to half of the deals we do actually aren’t that complicated. They might only have two owners, they might only have one judgment—like small stuff. But that’s actually a lot easier to fix. So if you exclude

the complicated ones… When a lead comes in your system that has 20 owners and they’re all fighting, forget it. But when you have a brother and sister who aren’t getting along, and the house is worth a couple hundred grand and one of them wants to walk away for almost nothing, that’s a low hurdle. I would tell people, you’ll fix that easier than you think. And here’s what I would tell them to do: Offer that one seller five hundred bucks for their share. I know it sounds appalling, but it happens every day and it gets accepted. And your risk is only 500 bucks. If you can’t fix it, you lose 500, who gives a shit?

When you have a shot at making 50 or 100 grand, and then try to solve for the other owner. But if you can’t, just call them and say, “Look, let me go list it on the listing service and sell it together. You get your half, I get mine. I don’t even want your share.” You still make a lot of money. So the hurdle to get your first deal isn’t as high as people really think. Now, when you get an inbound call, there are 40 owners and they’re fighting, let’s hold that for some more experience, okay?

Issa Hanna (09:30)

One hundred—I could see that one being a nightmare, but you’re right. Two owners, some of these problems or these title defects might not be that big of a problem.

Logan Fullmer (09:38)

A lot of wholesalers and house flippers that go direct-to-seller have done deals like this. You got to get an affidavit of heirship, you got to help the seller get a birth certificate or death certificate. But what they—they’ve literally done the curative work, but what they didn’t do is the trade down. That’s the big—that’s a big… Probably half the people listening to this podcast right now have already done a deal like this. But the difference is they still got their twenty-thousand-dollar assignment fee and I made a hundred grand because I went back to the seller and framed it out well and said, “Look,

what you’re trying to do is sell this property and do no work. You got to deal with some stuff. If you solve all that, I’ll pay you what our agreement was. But since the title company revealed all these problems, if I got to go do all that work, I need a better price. I can’t go do all that work for free. That’s your work, not mine.” And if you can get that message across in a way where you can increase your spread, shrink the sales price because you’re gonna do the work… I tell people in a real simple way, “Look, someone’s gonna mow my yard.

If you’re gonna mow it, you’ll want some money. If I’m gonna mow it, well I can’t really charge anybody, that’s my responsibility. You see that here? See how that could work?” And then they’re like—and then I say, “Look, if I ain’t getting paid to mow your yard, I ain’t mowing your yard.” And they’re like, “I get the concept.”

Issa Hanna (10:45)

Hundred percent. Man, golden advice you’re dropping for our guys on this aspect, this avenue, how to acquire these type of properties. I’m learning a lot myself. You got me excited to solve some title defects right now and get a good discount, man. So I love that. I wanna rewind and kind of—kind of go back, though. Young Logan, we all have that cool story of like, “Hey, I got into real estate, I might have did this one deal,

realized I can make some money, got hit—got bit by the bug, and here I am twenty years later.” What’s your story? How’d you get into it?

Logan Fullmer (11:16)

I was a crazy kid. Went to college, got expelled a couple times. Went and got a job in Houston at this big company. I was heavily into drugs and alcohol. Ended up getting fired from my job for an overdose at work. It was a mess. Went to rehab, went to work in the oil field after that because I needed a job. And I started earning money, stayed sober, and I started buying vacant land downtown in San Antonio, Texas, because I was working in the Texas oil fields. And I could buy lots for five grand a piece. And

it made sense to me because it was cheap. The taxes were cheap and I was dumping all this money. And I thought, my downside risk is low because I’m only in the lot for five grand. And what’s it going to be worth at worst? Is it going to be zero? No. Maybe it could be worth four grand or three grand if I messed up, so I only have a thousand dollars at risk, not the five grand. But they were vacant lots in a downtown big MSA. And I thought, if the value explodes like it has in many of the—all the other big Texas MSAs,

I could have a big, outsized return. I put all my chips on red, and those couple dozen lots I bought for a few hundred thousand went up to fifty to a hundred grand a piece and I got rich. Well, when that happened, I got laid off from my oil field job and I started selling off some of the lots for capital to start real estate investing. And one of them had a title problem. And I bought it without insurance. I was kind of lazy, and the seller was like, “Just come bring me a deed and I’ll pay you—pay me cash.” And I thought, “Okay, whatever.”

Well, when I went to go sell the thing—I bought it for five grand, I was going to sell it for a hundred, so I was about to come up big time—and the title company said, “No, you can’t close. You have to get the eight other owners to sign with you.” I’m like… Well, when I learned to solve that problem, I went knocking on doors, offering money to these people. I had to strip some judgments or liens. It took me all summer. But I still got it done for another 10 grand, and I still made a ton of money. I thought, “Holy cow, this is it! Let me do this some more.”

A decade later, that’s what I do, man, every day, all day.

Issa Hanna (13:00)

I love that, man. The light—the light bulb goes off and you’re like, “Hold on,” especially when you find your specialty, your niche in the game. Man, I’m gonna make tons of money. And I’m—and you become an expert. And here you are, like you said, ten years later, educating the masses. Guys, if you haven’t heard of Logan or seen his videos, go take a look at his socials. Millions of views. He’s helped a lot of people

with this type of strategy, with this type of education that he’s given us here on the Investor Fuel show for free right now, just ’cause he’s a good buddy of ours. So I want to kind of talk future now. How about future? Five years down the line. I don’t want to say ten, but five years. Are you still wheeling and dealing? Are you sipping mai tais on a beach? Where are you at?

Logan Fullmer (13:42)

I’ve learned the thrill of the chase is greater than the kill. I’ve hit every goal I ever expected. I’m so far behind—beyond all of those. So things look different as you climb up the mountain. Your vantage point changes, you can see more, you’ve learned more. You never—you didn’t know what you didn’t know, you couldn’t see it till you got there. No, I don’t think I’ll ever quit. I’ll be a deal guy forever. This is like the lifeblood of me.

Today I do work like Monday through Thursday. I get to spend the weekend or Friday working from home, hanging out with kids, wife. I work seven-thirty to five. This is a good pace. Man, I have four kids, I have a great wife, we have a good life. I’m forty-four, turn forty-five next month. I think projects will change. I’m probably doing a little bit larger commercial deals.

I don’t know. This is good. If I did—if my life looked like every day today for the rest of my life, I’d be happier than a pig in shit, dude. That doesn’t sound very aspirational, but it’s good.

Issa Hanna (14:32)

No, man, that’s an amazing answer, because you—you’ve found happiness. Another thing you teach your viewers: creating freedom. You’ve created your own freedom to do what you want. So man, I love that answer.

Logan Fullmer (14:46)

Big part of that is living far below my means. In the early days when I was making 200, 300, 400 grand, and the business was really taking off, I was still living on fifty thousand dollars for a year. I would pay more in taxes than I would distribute to myself. Well, I did that for years, and it wasn’t—and I never wanted to be that poor investor, how that happens a lot. But I was plowing money back into the business, because that was my golden goose. And I wanted to have every dollar of capital and every opportunity to grow, and I—

we never really took anybody’s outside money. We used credit lines sometimes. But living so far below our means is what got us to that—me and the other guys in the office—that got us there. There’s so much adapter. Don’t go buy the Lambo, don’t go buy the watch, don’t go vacation in Dubai. Be disciplined. Do this for four, five, six, seven years. Just give it all you got. When that happens, dude, it snowballs so fast.

Interrupt you, but that matters.

Issa Hanna (15:34)

That—another piece of golden advice, way worth the interruption, because you’re right. Cost of living is a lot, guys. You got to think about these things. 200,000, decent money, it’s good money. But if you can leverage that and save 50, 60, 100K a year off of that 200K income, like Logan said, it’s just gonna snowball in five, six, seven, ten years,

then you’ll be able to buy the yacht or whatever the heck you want to do if you wanted to. And if you continue living below your means, you’re just building that much more legacy wealth. So man, like I said, dude, golden opportunity. This is probably one of our better pods, so I’m super glad to have you on, man. Now I want to pick your brain about some advice for our young guys, right? Our business depends on networking, on business relationships, right?

So for that guy that’s just starting out, maybe the new realtor, the new investor, and doesn’t have any contacts, what would be your first piece of advice for them?

Logan Fullmer (16:29)

I have two really meaningful statements that come to mind. One of them is: Your network is your net worth. Probably half of my net worth is from my network. I always wanted to talk to people, always wanted to learn from them. I would always share as much as I could, even when I wasn’t selling information. And my Rolodex today—it’s shocking to people I can call. We got a 1500-unit distressed apartment for $150 million, which is way above my pay grade, in a big MSA. And I know

a

guy who remodeled those

four big funds, and we called and got a piece of—a little piece of the deal by connecting it with a buyer and a contractor through the contractor, through a friend. We’ll probably pocket two to three million bucks with a—for a couple points on that deal for that. Network—if I lost everything in life except for my family, the one thing I wouldn’t want to lose is my network. It’s this—it’s this thing right here, dude. So there’s that.

The other one that I think people really need to think about is the—outside of the networking part is: No one knows what they’re doing; some of us do it anyway. One of my absolute favorite statements. The road isn’t so clear for us always, but you have to go out there and make decisions and take risks. And taking risks isn’t a license to be stupid, but it’s be careful, be thoughtful, but make some bets. Step out of line a little bit, like push your chips across the line when you really feel like you’ve looked at every—

the deal every single way. Like, ’cause you’ve got to make bigger bets to get ahead big time. If you’re careful your whole life, you’ll never get far ahead. You’ll be safe. But I’ve had to make some big bets sometimes, and I’ve been lucky that none of them went the wrong direction. So no one knows what they’re doing, so I’m going to do it anyway. Go do it.

Issa Hanna (18:02)

Hundred percent. Just go do it. Real estate’s one of the only types of investments that you can work the numbers, and if what you’re doing—you’re gonna be in an—in a nice ballpark range of how much you’re gonna make, what it’s gonna cost you, all that stuff. So if those numbers—if it makes dollars, guys, guess what? It makes sense. Logan, you’re dropping

golden knowledge. I’m all out of time today, but I want to give you the floor right now. If people wanted to get ahold of you, follow your socials and get that golden knowledge, because you do produce it every day and you’ve got some great content, where could they—where could they find you at?

Logan Fullmer (19:17)

You—if you’ll go to Instagram, type in Logan Fullmer. Frankly, Google. There’s a lot going on out there, too. I’d also tell people, go pick this up. For the costs of shipping and handling, which it’s like the same price as a cheeseburger, this is basically a background on how I got in the business, what the deals look like. I explain how I underwrite them and I go over case studies in there. It’s got a little background, personal history of me, but called Distressed Property Secrets. Google it, it’s on the internet.

Got nothing to do on Saturday? Don’t buy the hamburger and buy that. There you go.

Issa Hanna (19:45)

And yeah, you guys want to learn how to acquire these distressed properties? Buy the guide or listen to the guy who literally wrote a book on it. Go follow those socials, because this is one of the experts. This is one of the top guys in the country at acquiring these type of properties, resolving these type of defects. A lot you can learn from him. And you’re watching this show for a reason: You all either want to be investors or are investors. So why not acquire properties or learn how to do it

for way less so we can make more money? Logan, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. It was a true honor to have you on.

Logan Fullmer (20:18)

You got it.

Issa Hanna (20:19)

And I wanna extend this invitation to you live on air. You’re more than welcome to come on the show anytime, and I will be in contact very soon to get you back on.

Logan Fullmer (20:28)

Tell you what, sometime when you have a gap and someone doesn’t show up, I got a lot of time these days, call me and we’ll do a 25-minute workshop on title defects. So like how to solve zombie mortgage, strip judgments or liens, affidavit of heirship versus probate. So we’ll do a 25-minute workshop on that. Folks will love it.

Issa Hanna (20:44)

Yeah, I would definitely love it, and we are definitely gonna do that, Logan. Man, thank you so much for coming on. And to the viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation with Logan and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the Real Estate Pros are out.