I turned £760 into £78,000 by the time I was 21 – I was living in a storage unit
TWO years after dropping out of high school, Douglas Aguilar still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.
At the time he had a passion for making furniture and construction, so he started selling custom furniture to friends and family.
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Shortly after, he found work in construction and his boss introduced him to real estate investing. Douglas developed a passion for real estate investing.
He tried it himself through cold calling and door-to-door visits, but had no success because he was new to the industry and ‘didn’t know’ what he was really doing.
After manually dialing random numbers, he got his first deal in October 2019.
Douglas is now 21 years old and has turned £760 into £78,000. He plans to continue his successful career.
Talking in the podcast Wholesale Inc with Brent Daniels, Douglas explained how he made his first deal by calling people and trying to convince them to invest their money in real estate.
He says he made £$1,000 (£760) from the first deal.
He continues: “I was still working in construction, but I was mainly working in rental.
“I was probably making about $6,000 (£4,570) a year in that job. But I was living for free.
“I worked for free. I did nothing but construction work.”
Since he didn’t have time to call random numbers, he told his “girlfriend to call a few times and it would work.”
After Douglas closed the £760 property deal, he was able to use that deal to buy a car.
But after getting excited about his first client, Douglas realized he could make a career out of it if he focused more on real estate investing, so he quit his job in construction.
Douglas was living in his car and a storage unit at the time, as he did not want to move back home and wanted to feel ‘comfortable’ with his parents.
He says, “I wanted to make a deal.”
‘No comfort’
Douglas, who is from Houston, Texas, says moving back home may have made him lazy and less likely to invest in real estate again.
He continues: “It was winter then, so it was pretty cool. That’s how I was able to survive, because I didn’t want to be comfortable.
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“I’ve made phone calls and I have to say I’ve been pretty lucky with that too.”
After randomly dialling several numbers, Douglas came across another person who seemed “really motivated” to make a real estate deal and managed to pocket $16,000 (£12,113).
There was a family member who paid the property taxes. So they were all paid
Douglas Aguilar
By ‘picking up the phone and being proactive’ Douglas was able to keep his business going and soon discovered he could find a house for free.
Speaking to Brent Daniels, he says, “I got a piece of land for free and it had working utilities.”
He did this by using the ‘driving for dollars’ technique in the Deal Machine app.
According to the Deal Machine websiteDollar driving is a real estate investment technique where investors drive through neighborhoods looking for properties that appear vacant, in poor condition, or in need of renovation.
‘Ring random numbers’
By focusing on this kind of property, This allows investors to find potentially good deals and maximize their investment returns.
Douglas continues: “And that started to explode. That was one of the deals I could get.
“It was just an empty building. It was so empty because he just forgot about it.”
Douglas managed to contact the owner of the property through skip tracing.
Skip tracing is the process of finding and tracking people who are difficult to find, such as those who are missing, unresponsive, or evading normal emergency services.
This can be done through social media, online directories, credit reports, online searches, and telephone and email databases.
They were super happy and then they both agreed that they would give me the property
Douglas Aguilar
About finding the owner of the abandoned building, he says: “I called [him up] and he said he no longer owned the property, and I said yes you do, you’re still on the county registers.
“He was 80 years old, he got expropriation letters that they were going to expropriate the house [and asked me] “Is that why I still get these letters?”
“He thought he had sold it to a friend ten years ago.
“He got the money from his friend, but his friend never signed the deed.
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“He kept saying he wouldn’t give it to me unless he talked to that friend.
“So I had to ‘skip trace’ the friend, [and] I put them in touch. They were super happy and then they both agreed to give me the property.
“There was a family member who paid the taxes on the property. So they were all paid.
“I only had to pay $600 (£457) to raise the taxes.”
Douglas now owns the land and is receiving offers of around £46,000.
The plan is to demolish it and put up two or three mobile homes.
Douglas now has a whole portfolio of properties he found using the same technique and has raised $102,000 (£78,000) in property investment fees.
Check out Wholesaling Inc with Brent Daniels podcast on YouTube or Spotify to hear Douglas’s full story.
