Turning Dead Leads into Gold: Trever Ahing’s Blueprint for Creative Real Estate Success

In this dynamic and tactical episode, Derek Dombeck sits down with Trever Ahing, an eight-year Marine veteran turned full-time creative real estate investor. Trever shares how he built a nationwide business through novations—a unique strategy where he partners with homeowners to renovate and sell their homes at a profit. From military discipline to housing hustle, Trever’s journey is rich with actionable insight, including funding strategies, legal structuring, working with agents, and his passion project helping veterans become homeowners. If you’re ready to level up your deal structuring and creative finance game, this one’s for you.

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And now without any further ado the eight-year marine veteran thank you so much for your service trevor ahing ahing ahing i see whatever rolls off the tongue brother i should just went with trevor a like i said i was uh man trevor thanks so much for being on the show we were bullshitting a little bit before we started recording and uh we gotta i think we got a lot of stuff in common But before we get into any of that, please just tell the Generations of Wealth listening audience who you are, where you come from, and yeah, let the world know. Boom. Well, hey, I appreciate you having me on here. My name’s Trevor A. I’m an eight-year Marine vet, like he said. I got out in 2021 because real estate was able to start giving me the life that I wanted to give for me and the family. I am a creative real estate investor and more so I focus on innovations. That’s more so my bread and butter. That’s just a fancy way of saying instead of really buying the property, you know, as a distressed asset from the seller, I actually partner with the homeowner. I renovate the home on behalf of them for them. You know, we put it on the market. Any appreciation we create for the renovation, I split with my seller. So I give them a lot more and I make a great cash on cash return myself. I do that nationwide. Last year, we did over 150 of them. And now I started getting into some more luxury flips in Arizona. And now we just did a raise to get 60 doors for midterm rentals over in Texas. So, I mean, I’ve kind of sprayed my way through the real estate curve. And it’s been a lot of fun to be able to start meeting the right kind of people so we can start growing together, man. So that’s my spiel, brother.

Well, and that’s the show. Great having you on. I think we’re going to dive into a little bit more of the background. So when you said you were able to get out of the Marines, were you investing in real estate for a period of years alongside of being in the Marines? Or what was that track record like? Because you didn’t just, I’m assuming you didn’t just come out of the Marines and then dive in. And a couple of years later, you’re doing 150 transactions in a year. Yeah, no. I mean, you’re completely correct. Financial literacy is not taught amongst the military, you know, and it should be. I myself, I come from a renter mindset. My mom still, to this day, her retirement plan is me. you know what I mean? So I didn’t come from that side whatsoever, but I did have a good mentor. I had a great chief warrant officer that was in the service. As I came back, I was newly married and you know, my wife at the time, she actually wanted to get into real estate and I was going to do 30 years. I never wanted to leave the gun club. I loved it. Right. And my wife wanted to become a real estate agent. And I was like, you’re a hot little Filipino thing. Like go do it. You know what I mean? And then she chickened out because she’s an introvert and I paid for a class to go to. And it was a bigger pockets like seminar. And I’m like, I’m not wasting 60 bucks. And so I went and I met people like us, dude, you know, I mean, board shorts, you know, flip flops, you know, drinking beer, just talking about their portfolios. And I was like, what? Because you think real estate is so suit and tie when you’re not in the world. And as I got more and more involved, I realized it’s attainable, it’s approachable. And, you know, I asked what I should start doing. And it was baby steps. They said, well, why don’t you start with your VA loan, which is a damn good, you know, it’s a damn good qualifier to get into real estate. And so got a home, started house hacking, rented out the rooms to my buddies, started cash flowing, thinking that I was, I took it way too far, Derek. I mean, I started putting bunk beds in my living rooms and stuff, bro. Like I went full trap house because of the cash flow. And after a couple properties, I was able to graduate into other aspects and just start meeting the right people. And I mean, it really is, my favorite saying for my team is imperfect action is better than perfect non-action. So Ryan Serhan does say, nobody knows what they’re doing and some do it anyway. And that’s the best way to start. So that’s exactly what I did. Didn’t think I’d make it full time because I wanted to stay in. But unfortunately, my father-in-law, he suddenly passed right before my last deployment. And it kind of gives you between a rock and a hard place. I asked to stay back for the deployment. My command said no. I don’t fault them for it. I was slated to go. But you spend all this time being in the service to provide for your family. And I loved it. But the one time my wife needed me when she was in shambles, man, I just had to leave. And I go, God, real estate would be a vehicle where I don’t have to give my time away anymore. So I went into it full time about four and a half years ago, and it’s been great ever since.

Well, the backstory explains a lot and I appreciate that because for me and my listeners know this, I’m very creative. I love creative deal structuring. And anytime I, I mean, I could talk for hours and hours with anybody about that type of stuff. And there’s so many different ways. And the main thing is you’re solving the seller’s problem. Like for me, that’s the main thing. And so many people come in from the robotic, non-emotional side where it’s just, here’s my maximum offer, take it or leave it. And that drives me crazy. So with novatians, I guess for the people that don’t have a clue what a novation actually is, maybe just give us your definition of novation, but then pick it apart. Absolutely. So to dive more in depth, I mean, think about a traditional fix and flip or think about a wholesale deal, right? I mean, that’s really what it ends up boiling down to of wholesalers that end up coming in there. It’s basically the assignment of a contract. You’re going directly to a homeowner that has a distressed asset. You’re telling them you can buy it for this price. It’s usually a lower cash offer. They say yes. You go to an end investor and you assign the rights to the contract to the end buyer for a fee. Novatians, I basically just take all of those dead wholesale deals where the seller says kick rocks to the cash offer. The wholesaler can give them over to me as the creative finance department. Now, what innovation is, is I’m able to work the seller into more of their equity because it’s treated instead of an off market assignment fee to an end buyer. It’s more of an on market assignment fee to an end buyer where I can partner with them. And I say, OK, well, I don’t want you to go too low. Right. I want to work you in your equity. But the condition of the home isn’t good. It’s probably not going to get loaned on because FHA or VA qualification. So I just bring in private capital. Seller stays in title. And I just say, let’s put this home in a condition to sell. I pay for the renovations. I’ve been put it on market, right? Once we find a buyer through the MLS, I take care of all the realtor fees and closing costs through any appreciation I created through the renovation. And whatever’s left over is a return on my money. So I’ve done anywhere where I’ve put in 5,000 to make 7,500. I’ve put in 300,000 to make 300,000. You know, it’s all dependent on your market, but I’ve always been able to give the seller more, you know, force appreciate the home, get them involved into their equity and just kind of take over three things for the seller. I always say it’s the marketing, maintenance, and management of a property. If you can solve the seller’s headache and be that Tylenol, they’re willing to give you the patience for your profit. And that’s kind of been my whole shtick for the last four and a half years.

So I’m going to compare what you do to what some of my listeners have heard me talk about, which is I control property using options. And very, very, very similar, different paperwork. We’ll compare the two. I mean, it’ll be fun for us, for you and I, for sure. But there’s pluses and minuses to everything. So I’d like to just see, you know, from your perspective, what the positives are and what the negatives are. But to start with, how do you find these deals? You mentioned taking over stuff from wholesalers, dead leads from wholesalers. What’s your main source of leads?

So it was initially that, right? I started realizing, you know, when I got more involved after a couple of house hacks, you know, you start seeing the ads. And, you know, I was younger and I go wholesale. That’s the way to go. Right. I’m going to start getting involved with it. But I like if you want to bridge the gap between a distressed seller and a quick solution, they need a cash offer. That’s not a good that’s not a good option for me. I’ve done wholesale. I’ve made a lot of money successfully wholesaling. It’s an oversaturated market and it can be a hamster wheel of a, you know, of a machine, you know, when it comes down to your KPIs. But I realized, you know, as I started getting involved with on-market agency and started listing the homes, because if I would try to wholesale it, they didn’t like my cash offer. I would just charm them enough to list it. But then I’m just listing homes that nobody wants to buy, you know? And so I started looking at more so collaborating with my homeowners and going back there. And so as I started marketing myself out to the wholesale community, I just said, look, do you give me your dead wholesale deals where they’ve already built rapport with a homeowner? They need to sell. I call it the four D’s, right? Death, distress, divorce, and debt. They’re in a situation. They just don’t fit your investor’s buy box and they want $30,000, $50,000 more. Treat me as your creative department. Give me over that lead and I can see if I can qualify them for innovation. So most of my deals have come from dead wholesale deals to give the seller more and qualify them for a novation deal. And then over the last, I’d say, five months, because that’s a good question, wholesale turnover is insane. You know, a lot of wholesalers, unfortunately, they try to get in to make the quick buck and they don’t make the money. And so they go back to work in a Best Buy or whatever they’re doing, you know. So agents, their brand and identity is an agent. If you look their Instagram, their LinkedIn, whatever, they are a bona fide real estate expert. And so I started dealing with my 50, which are duds, dud listings. So I would reach out to agents that have stagnant listings, 90 days or more on market. And I say, I got money, right? Let me partner with your homeowner, put the property in a better condition to sell. When you relist it, your commission is going to be higher. I’ll give them more money and I’ll cover all the fees. And so now I kind of reverse engineered the model. And most of my deals come from agents now when they go to listing appointments, they see the condition and they can kind of have a leg up with the seller and say, hey, we could list it in this condition. But I have a model that can put the property in a better condition and sell it and then I’ll just make a return on my money. So most of my deals now come from agents. It comes from both sides still, but I would say I like leaning more on the agency piece.

And you mentioned you’re doing this around different parts of the country, not just in Southern California where you live. How do you navigate that? Carefully, brother. I mean, so I’ve done deals nationwide. I’ve done deals in just about every state. Look, you know, I definitely, I’ve flown too close to the sun before when it came down to, you know, an overcommitment with certain agents. And nobody cares about your money as much as you. So when it comes down to the model, it can make sense on paper. but you don’t know the area, the environment, the market there, the street view, all that stuff. And so if it’s going to be nationwide, I will always do about $5,000 or less in a property. I don’t call it after repair value. I call it current condition retail value. That’s my risk tolerance. I’m okay cleaning up the home, painting a fascia, doing some landscape, and deep cleaning the property, whatever, putting it on market and seeing if I can make some money out of that with some research. If you need a bigger renovation, it’s going to be in Washington, Texas, Florida, California, Arizona. I have teams there, right? I’ve been able to solidify myself, you know, quite well with some good roots outside of that. I’m probably not going to do it, but I can point you in the right direction. I can consult on it. I’m probably not going to put too much money into it.

Yeah, no, I agree a hundred percent. And if you don’t have trusted boots on the ground you’re yeah you’re going to have problems at some point um yeah yeah i can that’s that’s a whole other hour conversation brother of of contractors oh yeah oh we could compare notes for for law i’ve been doing this for 21 years yeah i got lots of stuff yeah man um okay so let now let’s go into let’s compare innovations to options and things like that how do you paper your contracts with the seller? How do you protect yourself and protect them? Yeah. So our initial agreement is a buy-rend or novator. So it is an as-is purchase and sale agreement that we do go into, right? So we open up escrow. I have a sizable amount of earnest that does come in there. I do, if I end up putting more money into the property myself, and that’s going to be able to create the appreciation necessary, I get an appraisal done on the home. We have a prior inspection during the inspection window. I see what needs to get done. That is going to make sure qualifications are going to be passed for lending. And then from there, any money I do end up putting in, when the property does end up appreciating I can put the home on market, I give myself a ticker because any home that I’m going to do this on, I need to make sure that I can purchase them out and still have the equity if I need to put it back on market. So that way I’m always putting the homeowner in the best position. because if I’m going to guarantee a sale in, let’s say, 120 days from renovations to be complete, there’s a couple of things we do, right? I’ll take over their mortgage in a sense where I’ll make the payments through escrow. I’ll even cash flow them, but that’s applicable to the price that they’re going to get. So that way they can kind of, you know, relax, not have any debt, you know, that they’re accruing during the waiting period. But if the home doesn’t sell in four months, we have extensions baked in. But if the seller really needs to be able to move, there’s either a pre-release position that we can give them, or I can buy them out with private lending that we have, put the property back on market and allow ourselves to go from there. The other option is, you know, we’ve done this a couple times where it’s a good area for a rental. So as long as we’re still guaranteeing the seller what they’re going to get, I can even sub to myself on title and then initiate a DSER refinance, position them out and then hold the home myself. And so it’s just going to be a way where if I’m going to go into a deal, some novators, you know, they’ll commit to putting some into it and if it doesn’t sell you know they’re willing to lose it i’m more so i need to make sure that i have enough window to be able to buy them out for the amount that we do have on paper and that way i can come back in there and allow myself to assume the risk if that is the case okay so let’s look at some worst case scenarios i’ll play devil’s advocate back and forth you’ve got a purchase and sale agreement with the seller and i’m assuming you do full title work up before you ever stick a dime into the property so you that i think should go without saying but yet we still have to say it for the listeners um you get the property done and now you are at a point where you have your end buyer in place seller for whatever reason gets butthurt and refuses to sell the property to sign the closing papers how do you protect yourself well there’s a couple ways i mean obviously we have um we have escrow open you know so when it comes down to being able to you know force a sale on that side we need to make sure that we can try to execute that through escrow we do have an attorney in fact position where we can sign docs on behalf of them or depending on what we also put into the property we can end up doing a limited power of attorney depending on what you know what funding we’ve put into the property that is going to be state specific.

A couple of things that we’ve been able to see for that is the over communication piece, right? So those are three ways that we can end up getting involved with our escrow to be able to position them out. I can end up forcing the sale in regards to either of those, right? But at the same time, the sellers, we say no a lot more than we say yes to. We understand they’re in a situation. So we have an attorney backed endorsement. Like I said, the attorney in fact position, we can force to be able to proceed with the sale through a purchase and sale that we already have or execute the POA for them to still get what they want. Outside of that, if we already have, you know, not incompetence, we already have lack of communication from the homeowner, they’re in a situation where you feel as if it’s going to hinder communication or whatever, we’re not going to go in bed with them, right? We’re going to be in this for three to four months. My whole thing with our core values is over communicate. So what we’ve been able to do very well is I treat the seller like they’re in an HGTV show. You know, it’s very much so they get to look at the finishes that we have. They get private viewing open houses. Them and their family get to come in and walk the finished project. They pick out the staging. If I have different colors of backsplashes, it’s going to be eggshell or Swiss coffee. I’m calling Brenda, the homeowner. My design team is going to go over which one she wants. And that way, when it gets to the finish line, they kind of get to see the amount of work that we’ve put into it. And as long as they’re up front, you know, we have that transparency with them. They actually love to see us make a lot more money because they’re getting exactly what they want as well. So the issue and to be able to de-risk that comes from the quality seller that you’re going to get. But that all boils down to how well you communicate with that homeowner. So the I mean, that’s that’s two areas of where we can end up positioning it.

No, I really like that method because the novation people that I’ve known of are what you described before. They come in, maybe they’ll stick a little bit of their money in, or they’re really trying to do it with zero money in most cases. And then they walk away and the home seller gets harmed, essentially, because they lost time. Even if they didn’t lose money, they lost time. that like any industry right that can give novations a bad name just like there’s people out there buying subject to deals and screwing people over because they’re not doing that right like wholesalers every part of this industry can be negative if it’s the wrong operators doing it without the right ethics and morals so i like the way you described it um the way that i do it using options and leases because I control the property through leases and I secure my ability to buy it through an option but this part is has been fun for me going back and forth with attorneys for years because attorneys don’t like the way I secure them and by the way I have a PhD a public high school diploma so anytime i get to school an attorney a lot of damn fun for me oh yeah but i’m using that brother public oh yeah i stole it from somebody else too and i and i told the guy i stole it from that i use it all the time and he’s like well i stole it from somebody else so it’s perfect i’m writing that down that’s hilarious bro but keep going keep going Phd public high school diploma um so most times you get an option and people will record the option on public record I don’t want to record the option for two reasons. I don’t want the entire world seeing what our agreement is, first of all. And the second reason is, if that property were ever to get sold out from under me, and the option was missed during escrow during title search, what’s the odds that I’m going to be able to get that property? What’s the odds I’m gonna be able to reverse that sale? Slim to none. Yeah, I will. I will file suit. I’ll go after the title company for their title insurance. I’ll go after anybody and everybody. By the way, I’m not litigious. I avoid this like the plague. But that’s what your recourse would be. And you’d likely end up with a money judgment, which doesn’t mean you get paid. but you’re not going to get the property. What we do is we secure our option with a mortgage and the mortgage being or a deed of trust, depending on the state you’re in, that is the instrument that says, if that owner of the property refuses to sell the property to me, according to our option agreement, then I have a right to foreclose and take the property away from them. So in the event they did try and sell it out from under me. And for some reason, the mortgage got missed during a title search and it actually closed. Can I still get the property? Absolutely. So I love having that conversation with their attorney because their attorney will come back and say, well, why would I advise my client to pledge a mortgage to secure this option when you could just record the option? And I’ll say, well, because number one, I don’t want to put our deal on public record. And their rebuttal would be, that’s fine. You can record a memorandum of option. And I said, yes, I could. However, I choose not to. And then I turn it back on them and say, well, okay, attorney, if your client is going to follow through with our agreement, why would they not be willing to pledge their property as collateral? Are they going to change their mind? Are they not going to follow through? Are they going to backdoor me? And that’s about the time the attorney starts spitting and sputtering. Yeah. And then they’ll say, well, what happens if the option expires and you don’t exercise? How are we going to get that mortgage satisfied? And, you know, by law, I have to, as a mortgage holder, if it’s satisfied, I got to record a satisfaction. So just tell them, no problem. We’ll put a signed satisfaction in escrow. You can hold it. And in the event of a default of the option or expiration of the option, you just go record. And so I love that. What it’s doing, Trevor, is it’s giving us control. And if we end up in court, we’re not arguing over contract law, which has really got a lot of gray areas and is open to interpretation of what we meant when we did the contracts, which I feel that’s the big challenge with novation.

What was the intention at the time you signed the purchase and sale agreement versus having a mortgage in place? Now you’re arguing foreclosure law. It’s not gray. It’s very black and white. So my suggestion to you, and I’m not telling you how to run your business, You can use a mortgage or a deed of trust to secure anything. And you could also use it to secure the purchase and sale agreement. And by doing that, another way that I sell these properties is by using a power of attorney and listing a property as the POA for the current owner, because I just have an option. And what can be a challenge is if my end buyer is using FHA financing, I can’t exercise my option and then double close because it’ll screw up the FHA, right? But how do I get paid on the HUD when it’s FHA, VA, USDA, anything with an acronym, I’m a mortgage payoff. They don’t even bat an eye at it because to them, they’re just seeing it as, oh, there’s an existing mortgage. It has to get paid off. Of course, that would be on the HUD. So it doesn’t trip up any underwriting when somebody else is For your fee.

I love that. Yeah, because I mean, sometimes we obviously, you know, novatians can be treated as a as an assignment fee and also be treated as a lien release amount. Right. In regards to being able to position out what you’ve already leaned against the home, which is easy to show your scope of work. And then I say, hey, look, I’ve done all this work on this property. You know, here’s my material and labor costs. I’ll release it for the amount I was able to appreciate. But the mortgage release position, that’s that’s also genius. I’ve never heard of that. That’s why I love this stuff, dude. I like to geek out over this stuff as well, man. Absolutely. And it’s no questions asked. Like they don’t need to see any additional background or anything. It’s a mortgage payoff. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Because sometimes VA lender, you know, sometimes certain lenders have to stick up their butt a little bit, you know, when it comes down to it. As they, you know, as some do, some are old dogs, new tricks on that side. And so we do have to pivot sometimes in closing. But it would, this would streamline quite a bit for this. And the way that you explained it is great. I mean, are you mainly just, are you performing this in Wisconsin or nationwide as well? Oh, you can do it anywhere. It’s just going to be a deed of trust and deed of trust states. And I certainly can share with you, you know, the wording. It’s not anything magical. Yeah. You know. Yeah. We’ll talk offline in regards to that. We’re not sharing it with the rest of the audience. This is for me and Trevor only. If you want to go to thegenerationsofwealth.com and get a hold of me, I will absolutely share it with anybody. Or just shoot me an email directly, derrick at globalgow.com. But in general, yeah, there’s these little ways of… And by the way, this is not taking advantage of the homeowner at all. This is securing everybody. And here’s why. Okay. When you do an ovation, you don’t really have other than a purchase and sale agreement, you don’t really have a position or a lien against the chain of title. Do you?

No, I mean, you can end up recording a memorandum, you know, or positioning a notice of interest because you can show, you know, commitment to the property through the renovations. But yeah, I see. Yeah. Okay. So if you secure your novation or you secure your option with a mortgage or deed of trust, you now are recorded in position against that property. So after the date of your contract, if for any reason there is junior lien holders or creditors that want to attach, they are behind you and you can foreclose them out. Wow. You don’t have that ability right now. because you’re not real unless you do record the memorandum then you would but yeah yeah but but then you’re also foreclosing trying to use a memorandum versus a mortgage exactly exactly so we do have a position of interest secured but we would have to go that route if that is the case and so it is a way to protect the investment and make ourselves known on on you know on our chain of command for the title but you know that’s why the over communication piece and really getting the seller involved to the finish line and holding their hand is crucial. Because the last thing that you want is to be able to get them cold feet or things of that nature. Because this really is how I treat novations. I mean, we’re a service. It’s really what we are. I mean, we are providing a service to the seller. And so what do you need when you provide a service? You need community. You need customer service, right? And so, yeah. But I do like this extra layer, especially because some of our novations that we do, We really don’t shy away from bigger deals. You know, I mean, putting some money into a property to really get some good curb appeal is great. But, you know, now we’re getting sellers reach out to us where dated homes were in Arizona. You can add square footage, you know, and really get involved with what you have. I mean, we do a lot of fix and flips for that side. But getting a bigger chunk of the renovation piece, you know, to allow ourselves a minimum for us is a 70% cash on cash, you know. And so you can really create that in areas like California and Arizona, certain avenues of Texas. And, you know, it is giving the seller a lot more. So people always ask, why would a seller, why don’t they renovate it themselves? And it goes, what seller? We’re not talking about you and me.

You know what I mean? We’re talking about, you know, pre-foreclosures, pre-probates, you know, like water shutoffs. I mean, the same list of people that need to sell quickly. When you can take over the, you know, the headache and the nuance of what their monthly commitment is for debt, give them some money in their pocket, they’re willing to take the ride with you. And that’s been good. And the security instrument, again, it’s not if the seller, because you’re communicating with the seller and all of that’s going fine. It’s not if they do something wrong as much as if something unexpected comes and attaches to the property. Yeah, true. Because let’s say they got creditors out there that have been watching them and have not gone after and recorded anything. Now they start seeing improvements to the property which are your improvements. And magically, all of a sudden, there’s some shit that comes out of the woodwork and attaches. Now it’s got to get cleaned up. That’s what I’m more concerned about than the seller themselves doing something wrong. Yeah, our indemnification agreement does rid us of being able to take over those upon sale. But it is all dependent on the equity that you can create, right? I mean, we really want low risk mortgages. I’m not trying to really over, you know, over renovate a home where the mortgage is already pretty much where the value is. You know what I mean? So as long as we can have a certain amount of equity, we pull our preliminary, see what we have on there. The innovation indemnification agreement is to be able to rid ourselves. They’re going to be, you know, any encumbrances, taxes, liens or anything that’s going to be attached to close of sale, they have to take care of. But then again, now we’re now we’re battling contract law. You know, now we’re going into that if that was the case.

And I’ll give you, I’ll tell you why this is very sensitive to me right now. And by the time this show airs, I hope this is sorted out. But I closed, bought and closed on a property in December of 2023. And that project was, we bought it subject to existing debt. The sellers got some cash, then they carried back a small second mortgage that they’re getting payments on. And then I brought in private capital to renovate the house. We did about a $65,000 renovation. As we were in punch list phase on the renovation, I get noticed or notification that from the sellers, it was husband and wife. They were both involved in every phone call, every part of the negotiation. They were both at closing. It was her home from a previous marriage. And so she signs all the closing docs, everything else. turns out she was not of sound mind and body he was her legal guardian nobody ever disclosed anything to us the title company nobody the court is the one that is because they’re there to protect her as somebody in under a guardianship so the court is the one that’s saying we need to make sure this was a fair and valid deal so this has been tied up since um yeah two years june well let’s see all of 2024 let’s call it june of 2024 is when i got notified um and we still don’t have an answer and i’m i’m in i’m into legal fees beyond belief and that was a bona fide closing

yeah now you look at novations or options things where you don’t actually have the deed yet you know um that’s why it’s a little sensitive to me now that’s the only time that happened in 21 years and thousands of transactions yeah but it’s still it’s happening as we speak absolutely man so i just want to i i use my pain to you know give everybody else something to learn from and and things to consider because it’s not always roses. That’s true. It’s huge. And that’s all you do see, right? When people get involved in this and they want to learn, they want to get in front of it because it’s easy money. You only see the wins, but there is absolutely risk assessment that you got to get in front of. And once you start diving deep into the layers of what real estate investing is, I mean, bigger profits, bigger problems on that side. And so, I mean, I’m glad that you share stories like that because I do the same exact thing, you know what I mean? When it comes down to the wins and the losses. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But man, novations are a great tool to have. Obviously you can build a business on it. It is also a way to control property with a small amount of money and doesn’t have to be your money. And that’s what I love. Same thing with how I do options. I love doing options in my retirement account because they don’t have liability and they can have really big returns, stuff like that. So that would be something. I don’t know. Can you do a novation in your solo 401k? Can you do a novation in your IRA?

I mean, you can present funds. I think that’s going to be dependent on your bank. Well, it’s more of the IRS guidelines, not the bank itself. I mean, is it a prohibited transaction is my point to do it? using your IRA or your retirement accounts. When we’ve done funding, right? We put together a couple hundred thousand dollars from people’s SDIRs and we’ve been able to allocate that towards an entity that uses that money for creative finance, real estate investing. So maybe there has to be an extra layer that you have to do. That I know i perfectly legit. I’m just saying, can you, if you, Trevor, had a retirement account and you want to you know use that retirement account because it’s really as you said it’s an active service it’s not you know like your IRA can buy a rental property it just it just can’t literally do any work it can’t you can’t benefit from it but because this is a service um I’m going to dive into that one a little more yeah let’s go digging a little bit wondering that as well because i you and i can talk afterwards too um because i i know there’s i know there’s a way um but i don’t want to publicly say it yet until we vet it so with that said um moving on man what what’s uh what’s one question i should have asked you that i didn’t it can be about novations it can be about anything it doesn’t matter um i think you know you know let’s go into the veteran aspect of what I’ve been able to do with novatians. Cause that’s been a pretty big passion project of mine. The reason why I started delving into it before the show, or maybe I said it on here, but financial literacy, man, I have a lot of buddies who still stayed in, you know, you’re working 16, 17 hours a day. It doesn’t depend on your branch because you are committed to what you’re doing, but building wealth is fricking tough, you know, while you’re in the service, you know, a lot of people don’t end up utilizing the VA loan. Don’t know how to, You know, get bonus entitlements and eligibility and all that stuff. They don’t have time. And I totally get that. But another thing that I saw, man, was I had it with my issue in 2021. We bought our house and I have a VA loan. And the VA loan can be a great loan, but you can’t waive contingencies. You can’t shorten down your escrow. To go $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 above asking if it doesn’t appraise, that service member is out that kind of money. So they’re getting bought out left and right. It takes like eight offers for you to get the property you want, which means what I saw was a lot of service members settling. So I basically just kind of reversed it, and I called it the veteran home advantage where buyers agents would bring me their VA buyers, people that just got to the area or whatever. And they would say, hey, they’re approved for 500,000 four-bed, three-baths. Well, I’m already getting in front of distressed homes, and so I can tell that seller, I go, hey, look, I want to buy this property. I don’t want to lowball you on this. I do have a hero who wants to buy your house. The issue is it can’t get lending in the status that it’s in. They are approved for our Veteran Home Advantage Program where I can come in here. I’m going to renovate the home on behalf of them. This is right down the street from the base. It’s in a great area for them. And then I have the service members pick the finishes that I provide within a certain budget. Seller gets a lot more money. I help put money towards all their closing costs. We in-house the realtor fees, and they get to feel a lot more involved. And what I’ve seen from that is now they, you know, it’s like, you know, they got bit by the bug. You know, now they’re like, what else can we do? I want to get buddies involved with this. And so started to do real estate meetups like that. And it’s just a really cool way to kind of make service members feel exclusive. You know, not having to go out there and buy these damn tract homes that’s not going to be built for seven months that aren’t even being built properly. You know what I mean? So I like that aspect of it, man. And so that’s been pretty cool to do.

I love that story. And that’s so awesome that you’ve got that niche to work with those people and yourself being, you know, you lived it. So that’s great. That’s really great. Well, Trevor, it’s a pleasure to get to hear your story and hear how you’re doing things. And, you know, I look forward to staying in touch as well just between you and I and see what we can do together on the creative side. Yeah, me too, man. Me too. Seriously, this is a damn good connection. So I appreciate the opportunity. I look forward to, you know, even having you on the podcast when I start getting going on myself as well. But yeah, we definitely made a new friend, man. I’m looking forward to staying connected. Perfect. Well, for the rest of you, another kick-ass episode of the Generations of Wealth. And until the next show, please go out there and help us grow this, you know, expand our family, our community. And we’ll see you on the next one. Go live your vision and love your life. See ya.

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About Trever Ahing