Unlock Hidden Goldmines: The Untold Secrets to Snagging Off-Market Properties in 2026 Before Anyone Else Even Sees Them

Ashley Kehr:
MLS deals barely pencil in 2026 and every rookie keeps hearing go off market without anyone showing them the actual playbook. Today we’ll pull back the curtain on the off-market deals that built our portfolios. The list, the scripts, the introductions and the exact moments, each one almost didn’t happen. This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kare.

Tony Robinson:
And I’m at Tony J. Robinson. And like Ashley said today, we’re going to travel back into time and Ash and I are going to talk about the first off-market deals that we did in our portfolios. And then we’ll also look forward to some of the off-market strategies that maybe we want to try as we continue to build our portfolio. So Ash, I’m going to interview you first. You’ll be in the hot seat and let’s talk about your first off-market deal. So take us back to the first off-market deal you ever closed. What was the strategy and how did the lead actually land in your lap?

Ashley Kehr:
So I started off buying off the MLS. I didn’t really know that off-market deals were a thing. So it was probably not until my sixth or seventh property that I bought that was actually an off-market deal. And this off-market deal came about because I was driving and driving for dollars and I saw a for sale sign on a commercial building. I called the agent that was listed on there and he ended up being the father of the person that was selling it. And he said, “My dad actually has a whole bunch of properties in this area.” I think there was like maybe 10 in total and said, “Would you be interested in looking at more properties?” And I said, “Yes.” So even though he was a commercial broker, none of these other duplexes that he was selling were actually listed on the MLS. So it was kind of through that connection that I got this off market deal by calling and asking about a commercial property.
And I did think it was weird because the broker kept asking me more questions about myself almost like he was vetting me and I’m like, “Does this guy want to sell a property or not? ” And then that’s when he kind of said, “Well, actually my dad is the owner of this property and he has a bunch more and I’d like you to look

Tony Robinson:
At them.” Dang. So okay. Well, first for Ricky’s that don’t know, what is driving for dollars? And were you actually driving $4 or were you just driving and you stumbled across this property?

Ashley Kehr:
I was just driving and always like anytime I drove back then, now I have my kids pretty trained that they do this so I can keep my eyes on the road, but I was always looking at properties as to dilapidated as what was piquing my interest, the electric meters and gas meters. Did it have two or three? Then it was probably a duplex or a triplex. So I wasn’t specifically out looking for properties, but this was in a town that I drove through often. My kids went to school in this town too.

Tony Robinson:
So Ricky’s like driving for dollars is exactly what Ashley said, where you’re just in your car and you’re looking for physical signals on a property that show maybe signs of distress. And to Ashley’s point, it could be just the overall physical, the house is in disrepair, just the physical shape of the property. It could be things like maybe it’s in decent condition, but the windows were boarded up. Maybe there’s a lot of overgrown grass and trees and there’s like the notices from the city or the county on the front door, a bunch of mail piled up outside, but just some signs that maybe this house isn’t really being taken care of to the best of its ability and that might be something you can reach out to that owner.

Ashley Kehr:
Or even just like a first sale sign in the yard, especially the more rural you get, that actually happens quite often where there’s literally just a first sale sign. Another one too is a for rent sign. Somebody’s renting out the property that maybe while it’s vacant, maybe they’re sick of turnover, maybe they had a bad experience with eviction. I’ve bought several properties where the landlord had just went through a bad eviction and that is why they are selling the property because they don’t want to deal with it anymore.

Tony Robinson:
So Ash, after you dial this broker who becomes the son of the investor, what property did you actually get? What did you pay for, if you remember? And what do you think that property would’ve been worth had you bought it on the MLS?

Ashley Kehr:
So they had, I think it was like 10 properties and I didn’t buy all of them. First of all, I didn’t know how I was going to buy these properties, but I ended up buying, let’s see, it was one, two, three, three duplexes from them and one six unit building. So the six unit building, it was like all on one parcel, but it was actually three duplexes on one parcel together in the same address. So technically a six unit, but they were separated as duplexes. So altogether it was six duplexes that I ended up purchasing. And this is where I found bigger pockets because I was Googling figuring out how to pay for this and how to make it work. And the first thing I did was on one of my rental properties, I went and got a commercial line of credit and I could use that to purchase the three extra duplexes that weren’t part of the six unit.
Then I asked for seller financing and the seller owned all of these properties free and clear. So we ended up doing seller financing for 12 months. I think it was interest only at like 3%. This was in 2018 we ended up closing on it. And so it was just seller financing interest only for 12 months and that would give me time to do some updates to the property and then go and refinance with a bank. And then the other ones, I used my commercial line of credit and I paid cash for those and one was $20,000, one was $22,000 and the other one was $52,000. And then the six unit was 152,000.

Tony Robinson:
So a lot of numbers here. What do you think the entire portfolio was worth compared to what you actually picked it up for? Just like ballpark, if you remember.

Ashley Kehr:
I don’t remember then. Part of the reasoning some of the duplexes were 20 and one was 52 is because of his ownership interest where I said, “This is what I’m willing to pay as a total.” And he’s the one that actually went and broke it down per property. And part of this was because the one duplex he put his 52,000 he owned himself and the other ones that were like 20,000 he owned with a family member. So he wanted more being allocated to himself of what he owned. But there wasn’t a ton that I had to do for the six unit property and I ended up going and getting it when I refinanced it appraised for more than enough to pay him off and we actually got our money back for our rehab too.
Had zero money into the six unit after a year. And then also the duplex that he had put as 52,000, I ended up going and refinancing that and getting a loan on it to take my cash back out and I can’t remember offhand, but it appraised for more than what I had paid for it at the time. But the duplex actually right now I’m selling that up property and then the two smaller ones I had unloaded in like 2021 when the market was going crazy and one of them I sold for like 60,000 and the other one I think I sold for, I think it was like 55,000, but they both had doubled in value even more plus I did some stuff to them, but nothing crazy. Probably no more than 10 grand was put into each of these duplexes. So I got really lucky.
I bought at the right time and I sold them at the right

Tony Robinson:
Time. Yeah. Well, Ashley, let me ask because there was a little bit of happenstance and maybe just like good timing in the way that you found this deal to where this broker just happened to be the son of this other investor who was ready to unload several properties. But if there was something that a Ricky, if they had to copy maybe one thing from your story, what’s like the lowest skill, highest leverage move they can make?

Ashley Kehr:
Getting in front of the seller and figuring out their motivation for selling. So I got to meet the seller. I walked to the properties with him. I learned how he had to own these properties for like some of the properties his parents had even owned. They had been in his life a long time and a lot of them were also pretty dilapidated where he didn’t seem to have any interest in keeping up on them anymore. So I think a real low hanging fruit and low lift and no experience is something you can do is like find out the seller’s motivations, their intention, things like that. Then the second thing was I made multiple offers. So my offer wasn’t just seller financing. It was, I can go to the bank, I’ve been pre-approved for the bank, here’s my offer, which is going to be lower getting bank financing or here’s my seller financing option.
If you do seller financing, I can pay more and this is what it would look like. So then that’s what actually what I did. I went and I met them at a restaurant and I handed them my two offers and I said, “Here they are, please look them over. Let me know if you have any questions.” And we were probably there for like 10 minutes, but I would say those are two things that any rookie could do is talk with the seller, get as much information as you can and submit multiple offers with different creative financing.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. Well, Ash, I mean, it’s got to be one of the better off market deals I’ve seen when you look at the overall ROI of this one chance meeting with this one broker, right? I mean, you got an appreciating asset, you got properties that doubled in dollar, you got cashflow. There was a lot of good things working from this one deal and it’s all because you went off market.

Ashley Kehr:
Two years later, they had two more properties left they needed to sell and I actually ended up buying the four unit they had for $20,000, which then I think we dumped, I don’t remember all in it was around like 100,000 after we did all the rehab and renovations to it and it appraised for $220,000.

Tony Robinson:
Oh my goodness. I love that. So

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah, it was

Tony Robinson:
A good- It blows my mind when you talk about that. Those don’t

Ashley Kehr:
Happen to me anymore.

Tony Robinson:
I was just going to say, I know it was a few years ago, but it blows my mind when you talk about buying a four unit for $20,000.

Ashley Kehr:
But also too, I think that I also was way more motivated. A rookie investor has way more energy, more time because you have less properties, you’re not spread out managing your current portfolio. But I had several properties then, but not anything near where I had now. But I do look back and I think I used to accomplish so much. I really do think that. And I think that part of it is like I’ve gotten lazy and I’ve gotten to start to enjoy. I mean, I would stay up till 3:00 AM working, analyzing deals, doing lease renewals, all this stuff. I hustled and hustled, but I think that was also why I found those deals is because I was always in acquisition mode, which can be a detriment because I let the operations kind of fall apart and had to pick up pieces- You have to rebuild those.
… systems and processes in place. But I definitely think that it wasn’t just the market, it wasn’t the timing. I was really motivated. I really wanted to become debt free. I really wanted financial security and I think that’s a big part of it is I really had the drive then. So it wasn’t just luck of the market or like that’s what prices were. You can still find good deals. I was just always looking and always analyzing. All

Tony Robinson:
Right. Well, Ash walk us through her first deal and coming up after the break, I’m going to answer those same five questions that I just asked Ash so you can get a sense of what my first off market deal looks like. So we’ll cover that right after a quick word from today’s sales sponsors.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay. Welcome back. It is now Tony’s turn to answer the same five questions. So Tony, take us back to that first off market deal that you closed.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. So my first off market deal was actually a wholesale deal, meaning I actually wholesaled this deal to someone else. So this was like early 2021 and this was shortly after I went full-time into real estate. And as we were trying to build our acquisition engine, I said, “Well, hey, why don’t we try and go off market?” I’d never done it before, but it’s worth a shot. So we had the market that we were focused on and we actually bought, I want to say it was maybe postcards or letters through PropStream. We did the lowest effort way to get started. We pulled the list through PropStream. It was like absentee owners. I think we might’ve added an equity filter. I don’t quite remember the list. It was definitely absentee owners. And then we just chose one of the cheaper postcard options from PropStream and we sent them off.
And I’ve joked about this before on the podcast, but literally the very first call that we got from those postcards was the deal that we ended up closing on, which is totally not realistic for anyone. Usually you need to mail for months and months and months before you get an actual deal. But for us, it was the literal first person that called from the postcards was the deal we ended up closing on. But it was a very, very kind of worn down and beat up property. At the time it was probably the worst property I’d ever seen personally in my life, but we get there and it was like an older guy. The property had been in the family for a while, but it was just kind of like their getaway house for the weekend, but it was in very, very poor condition.
There was no running water anywhere on the property. There wasn’t even a septic tank. There was lines that came out from the property, but they just went out into the dirt. There was no septic tank, just like a very, very rough property, but he just wanted to get rid of it. And he would actually go out there and he would just park his camper van on the lot and he would just go inside the house for whatever reason, but he was mostly sleeping inside of his camper, but just using the lot that was there. But he was ready to give it up. He wanted some cash. So we go out there, we walked the property and man, I was trying to look it up to see if I could find the numbers, but because it was so early in my investing career, my organization wasn’t all that great, but we ended up talking this guy down and I want to say that we had it under contract for maybe 120, somewhere in that ballpark, but because it was such a heavy renovation, we didn’t want to do it ourselves so we knew we had to wholesale.
So once we got the property under contract, that’s when we kind of pivoted to say, “Okay, what can we actually do to disposition this property?”

Ashley Kehr:
So with this property, did you disclose that you were going to wholesale it? Let’s break down, I guess, the steps if somebody else finds a property like this where they don’t want to take on the rehab but they want to wholesale it. How do you work that out with the seller and how did you work it in this situation?

Tony Robinson:
Yeah, we told them, we were honest like, “Hey, we’re investors. We might rehab this ourself or we might bring it to a different partner of ours who will end up doing the rehab for us.” So we kind of framed it that way just to give us some flexibility because we really weren’t sure what we were going to do because it was my first time doing this. I’m like learn it as we’re going. But when the person called and he was like, maybe it might’ve been like in the 60s, but when he called the first things we tried to figure out was what you alluded to earlier, Ash, just like, “Hey, what are their motivations?” And I specifically remember when we started trying to go off market, when I watched Brent Daniels and he’s like talk to people, TP on YouTube. So if you look up TTP and he had these four motivations, he’s like, “If you ask these questions, that’s a really good starting point for any off market transaction.” But it was the condition of the property, gosh, I can’t even remember what all four of them are now, the four pillars.
It was like condition, motivation, price and timing, I think were the four things. He was like, “Try and get all four of those things when you have that conversation.” That’s what I did. I just tried to get all that information from him and that’s how we understood what his motivation was, but that’s how we structured that conversation. We tried to get all four of those things and then we told him, “Hey, it might be us, it might be one of our partners, but we’ll need a little bit of access between now and closing to make sure we can get inspections and things like that done.” So that was the approach that we took.

Ashley Kehr:
Now, how did you end up finding a buyer for this deal? Did you have a list of investors lined up or how did you go and solicit someone?

Tony Robinson:
Absolutely not. We did not have a big network at that time. I mean, gosh, I think this was maybe four months into me even being the host of this podcast. My network isn’t what it is. You weren’t popular. I wasn’t really known at that point. Luckily, I actually did have a few friends who were just local who were in real estate and I just kind of reached out to some of them. I said, “Hey, look, I found this deal any chance you would be interested.” I reached out to other investors who I saw had flipped other properties in that market. There was a property I’d actually walked a few months before that was renovated beautifully and I just found out who that owner was and I reached out to him and he sent some folks out. So just trying to hustle to find anyone that I could.
Knowing what I know now, instead of trying to go find my own in buyer, I probably would’ve first went to other wholesalers in those markets because they’ve got an infinitely larger reach than me trying to reach out to individual investors. And even if I’m potentially giving up a good percentage of that deal, the fact that I would have a much wider net, maybe the overall assignment fee would’ve been larger. But anyway, that’s what I did. And I had a friend who was also in real estate and she was actually flipping.That was her full-time thing. Er and her husband were flipping properties. I presented the sal to them and they had the resources, the experience, had done a lot of these heavy renovations already and for them they walked, they’re like, “Yeah, this is exactly what we want. ” Whereas me, I was like, “Oh my God, this is way too much.” So we ended up assigning that deal to them.

Ashley Kehr:
And when you say assign that deal for them, what does that mean?

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. So in the world of real estate wholesaling, the way that wholesaling works, guys, is that basically you as the wholesaler are doing all of the work to find motivated sellers who have properties that are below market value.That is the entire purpose of a wholesaler is to do those two things. Once you find someone who’s willing to sell, you are basically getting the contract rights to their property and then you have the ability to either close in that property yourself using that contract you have in place, or you can assign that contract to someone else. And the way that wholesalers make money is that they charge an assignment fee to the end buyer for giving them the rights to purchase that property. So that’s what we say when we mean assignment is you’re just taking the contract that you signed with the seller and you’re reassigning it to someone else and they’re paying you for the ability to buy that contract from you.

Ashley Kehr:
Now what ended up with this deal? What did you end up making off of it and did you ever keep in touch with the deal and kind of follow it along? Did they sell it or what did they end up doing with it?

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. So I found one of my settlement statements and it looks like it was my … Because I think I ended up doing a double closing. When you close on a wholesale transaction, sometimes you can just do one transaction, but because I was so early, I didn’t really understand that. And the escrow company and title company I was working with, they didn’t really understand wholesaling. So I actually did two separate transactions where I closed on the property and then immediately afterwards I had to do a second closing.

Ashley Kehr:
So you closed to buy it and then you immediately closed to sell it afterwards.

Tony Robinson:
Exactly. Yeah. So it was like, I don’t know, five minutes within each other, those two transactions happened. But actually, I think it was 48 hours because they had to actually let it close or something. But regardless, I actually found the settlement statement when we sold. So we actually bought it for, because I remember the assignment fee was 30 grand. So I believe we bought it for 30,000 and then we assigned it for 120. So we had a 30K spread on that deal. And I actually saw the finished product because again, they were friends of mine. So they posted about this property and they did. I was blown away. I was like, “This is the property that I gave you, you did all that with this. ” So it was a beautiful property. I actually don’t know if they still have it. I believe they were turned into a short term run, so I don’t know if they kept it or if they sold it, but I saw the finished product and I was like blown.
My mind was blown that it was the same deal.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Tony, thank you for sharing your off market deal. We have to take a quick break, but we’re going to put each other on the spot. One off market strategy neither of us have run yet, but we want to test it out in 2026, so stick around. Okay, welcome back. We just spent the last half hour breaking down what’s already worked for us to get off market deals, but now I want to know what we are going to bet on next. So Tony, let’s start with you. For 2026, what is one way you are going to find an off market deal?

Tony Robinson:
There are a couple of things that I think I really want to experiment with and Ashley and I were talking before this episode about the flip that I have that’s just been kind of like kicking my butt. As we think about maybe doing more, one of the things that I, because I did buy that on market. So for me, it’s like, man, I got to go back to off market and what does that look like? I’ve actually built up a lot of experience over the last, I don’t know, maybe three or four years running paid advertising. So if you guys follow me, you’ve probably seen ads of mine for the free things that I give away and there’s a certain skillset behind that. And while I’ve applied it in our brand building business, I haven’t necessarily applied it a lot in our real estate business.
So for me, just running local Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram and targeting folks who might be willing and able or in a position where they want to get rid of some of their properties and leveraging everything I’ve learned there to see like, “Hey, how well does this supply for maybe people that want to sell their homes?” I think the tricky part though with paid ads is that it’s very, very easy to spend a lot of money and get very little result back. So just having a very, I think, solid process for testing that is going to be important because I mean, gosh, I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I’d assume that to get a good solid lead that’s probably interested in selling their home, like a truly qualified potential seller, it’s probably got to be a couple hundred bucks at least.
So if you think about that, just to get a good quality lead in front of you, you got to spend a couple hundred bucks and then how many of those really qualified leads do you need before you can actually get enough conversations to close on a deal? I mean, I don’t know, I’d assume it’s a few thousand bucks to actually get a closed transaction. So that is one of the strategies I’m really excited about that I want to test, but it’s just making sure I have the right funnel, the systems, the people in place to actually absorb all of these leads as are coming in.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. So I guess mine’s not as far as marketing or outreach, I guess, idea I have. But one way that I would like to make a list of people that I want to actually go after, and I guess I haven’t thought of how yet, but I think direct to mail, I’d stick to that. But I would like to go after people who have an assumable loan. So looking at people who have FHA, VA, there’s a property I was looking at now and the people bought it in 2021, I think. So they probably have a pretty good interest rate on it and it’s actually listed for sale on the MLS, but I went into PropStream and it gives you kind of like an estimate of what they can pull off county records and stuff as far as what their mortgage balance was when they bought it.
So how much they financed for, what the term was, how many payments. So usually 360 payments spread out over 30 years and then what the interest rate is. And then it gives you an estimate as in if they paid the payments exactly what they’re supposed to be and every payment they needed to, this is estimated what the loan balance would be. So going through and kind of like looking at would it be an option? So I have to do more research to find out other types of loans that may be assumable. I know USDA loan is assumable, but it has to be a primary residence, but we’re coming up, we got one more year left on my live and flip. So if I’m going to sell it, I could turn it into a rental now. I’ve hit the one year mark, but if I want to sell it for the tax-free gains, I need to hit the two-year mark.
So I think going after assumable loans, pulling a list, there’s also a couple websites too that actually have that data for you. And I know we talked about it one, it’s with rome.com. Yeah, withrome.com is one of them and it doesn’t have listings in all states, but you can go on there and it’ll actually tell you which properties have an assumable loan that would qualify. So I guess I should break down real quick what an assumable loan is. It’s basically someone has a loan on their property and in the mortgage agreement it states that someone else can take over that loan with the same terms, but they have to be approved. So if Tony wants to buy my property and he wants to take over my existing loan, so all the terms would stay the same, the payment, the interest, the number of payments left, the balance, that would stay the same.
He has to be vetted by the bank and approved by the bank, which I have heard from some people that have done this, that it does take some time and there’s a longer process to get done, but you have to be approved and then any extra, so say I’m buying the property for 200,000, they currently have a loan balance of 125,000, that means I have to come up with 75,000 to pay that difference for them to pay that to buy the house. So obviously that depends on how much is equity, what you’re buying it for. I’ve seen on this website houses that basically they’re trying to sell for what they owe on it and you’d probably have to pay like $2,000 on it. So it could be a good way to have a low down payment on a property, but you also don’t want to get into a property where you’re going to be underwater and over it leveraged on.
So that’s an assumable loan. I was talking to someone about this the other day and they seem to be confused about this and subject to thinking that it was the same thing, but it’s completely different. Subject two, you’re taking over the deed of the property. So in both circumstances, you are becoming owner of the property. In subject two, you are just taking over the loan payments where the loan still stays in the seller’s name where an assumable the seller’s name is being taken off of the current mortgage and you are being put on. So those are the two big differences. So to break it down shortly in layman’s terms, sumable, you have the bank’s permission subject to you do not.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. And it feels like assumable is almost easier. But even Ashley, we interviewed Alex Reeves and she assumed a VA loan, which was like mind blowing to me. I didn’t even know that not being a VA that you could do that, but she found, because you talked about the gap between what you’re buying it for and what the current loan balance is and if there’s a gap there where you’ve got to figure out how to bridge that gap and she actually found another lender who was willing to give her a second lien position to cover that gap for her. So she basically had no significant cash out of pocket to take this deal down. So what a creative solution You’re assuming a really low interest mortgage from a seller, you’re bringing in a second. So your blended rate obviously becomes a litle bit higher, but the majority of your mortgage is on this lower 3% interest rate.
And then maybe you’ve got 100 grand or so that’s at whatever today’s rates are at 6%. So your blended rate is still relatively low compared to what folks are getting today. So man, I actually do love the assumable loan approach as well.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. So I guess my advice or idea isn’t exactly how to target or solicit off market deals, but more of what kind of off market deals I would go after. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to Real Estate. Rookie, I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.