In this episode of the Mailbox Money Show, Bronson and Nate sit down with legendary real estate investor Dwan Bent-Twyford to explore one of the most unconventional — and profitable — strategies in real estate: buying and revitalizing an entire small-town downtown.
Dwan shares the remarkable story of how she and her family began acquiring properties in Clinton, Iowa, eventually owning dozens of parcels and playing a key role in transforming the town’s downtown district. The conversation dives into opportunity zones, owner financing, grant money, small-town incentives, and why shrinking Midwest towns can still produce exceptional cash flow and long-term appreciation.
Dwan also reflects on her 35+ year real estate journey — from starting as a broke single mom to completing over 2,000 deals — and explains why focusing on people in distress (foreclosures, probate, divorces, burned-out landlords) has always been her core strategy, regardless of market conditions.
Dwan Bent-Twyford is a veteran real estate investor, author, educator, and podcast host with over three decades of experience and more than 2,000 completed deals. Known as the “Queen of Short Sales,” Dwan has built wealth through wholesaling, rehabbing, rentals, and creative financing, while mentoring thousands of investors nationwide. Today, she’s helping revive small-town America—one building at a time.
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Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: All right, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I am your host, Bronson Hill. I’m super excited to be here today.
I love talking about all things investing, and that’s really why you tune in. Is to learn about what is happening now in real estate, investing, and finance, and how you can become financially free quicker than you thought possible. So that’s really what we’re doing. I have my co-host with me today, I have Nate Hambrick, Nate in the house.
What’s one thing you’re working on in your investing as we get started here, brother? Tell us what you’re up to.
Nate Hambrick: I’m working on a million things, but I’ve recently started looking into bigger and hopefully much better deals, and that’s actually what I’m really excited to learn from Dawn today, because I know she does bigger deals than I’ve ever been a part of.
So it’s always great to hear people from different facets or different niches within investing in real estate, because you always learn something, not just for the different deals, but also you learn tips that apply in those deals that you can immediately implement in your own.
So this is going to be a great chat.
Bronson Hill: If you want to upscale like in any area of your life, you just get around people that are doing it and are a step or two ahead, and it’s like, it just moved to your next level. And so that’s like, it really is the rocket fuel, right, the networking and education I just talked about. I was on the Dawn’s podcast just recently, and we talked about that, right?
How do you actually kind of go to the next level? So we have Dawn Bent Twyford. She is the host of The Most Wonderful Podcast Ever, which is awesome, and it’s a great time.
I tell why she’s done amazing. Well, she’s the author of multiple books. She’s done wholesaling, rehabbing, investing, holding a hands-on mom.
She mentors others, does workshops, and she really is helping others to become financially free through investing in real estate. So Dawn, welcome. It was really a delight to be on your show.
Really excited to have you on the show today.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, thank you for having me, and good to see you again. And Nate, I told him on my show that he is so cute. You are just as adorable.
So cute. There’s all these good-looking men.
We’re all young, and I was like back in my 30s as a new investor. Everybody just had like, you know, no teeth and baseball caps on backwards. I was like, where are all the cute guys back then?
Bronson Hill: Yeah, well, thank you. That means a lot. And so, my mom told me I had a good face for radio and for podcasting.
So that’s why you’re watching the video. I’m kidding. No, I thank you for the confidence a lot.
Well, I know you are you’re doing something very interesting that I don’t know if I met anybody who has said this and you said I’m rehabbing a town in the Midwest and you’re at the town of Clinton, Iowa, and you’re rehabbing many properties, redeveloping. Tell us about like what that is and how you’re doing it. And why and just give us the rundown.
Give us the 30,000 foot view of that.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: It is honestly, it’s the most insane story. So my husband is from Clinton, Iowa and his high school there every year. They have a like a massive five year reunion hundreds like so many people go.
So since then we’ve been married almost 25 years. So even we’re dating, we started going back to these reunions. And so Clinton is one of those little towns.
It’s like on the river. So it’s like three blocks wide and three blocks deep, this little like river town, and it’s one of those little towns that you could tell back in the day. Like it had the Sears and the JCPenney and families would go shopping.
And then, the towns grow. So like out here, they put the casino and the Walmart and the restaurants and people sort of abandoned the downtown. So every year that we would go, I was like, why is nobody doing anything to like rejuvenate and rebutify this downtown?
It’s right on the river. Got these really old buildings on the 1800s. It’s a neat town.
Like half boarded up. So I don’t know after I think the second time, which would have been five years. The second time, maybe five, ten years then we called the building department and said, hey, are you guys doing anything now?
In fact, we have this downtown rebutification project and we’re looking for investors, looking for this, looking for that. And so we were like, OK, so how do we buy a building and kind of help? And because we were I live in Florida and Delray Beach.
I watched, I don’t know if you know Delray Beach on the East Coast in Florida. But when I moved into Delray, the whole strip from the ocean up, it was 100 percent the hood. It was raw.
It was boarded up. And I literally watched block by block as they redid this entire downtown. And now it’s like the bushes place and in all of Florida.
So I thought, why we should do that here. This is a cute town. I watch Almark.
They have all the movies, the Winterfest, the Sunfest, the Valentine’s Fest, the Octoberfest.
Bronson Hill: Yeah.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: And so we decided that we would buy a building, a building and put a little money in. And we found one on the main. So again, it’s like three bucks wide and three bucks deep.
That’s the entire downtown. So everyone in there is an opportunity zone. And all the taxes that we pay go into a fund to do events and things for the downtown to bring people back downtown.
And then they have grants like grants for roofs, facades, like everything in the world. So we decided we were going to buy a building and it happens to be on like the main actual corner. And it’s twenty thousand square foot building.
We bought it for like thirty five thousand dollars. Used to be an old J.C. Penning. It’s a big building.
And so really good. We have a building. Well, then we got a phone call and said, hey, so and so told me you bought her building.
I have three buildings. My husband’s been deceased for a decade. Would you take my three buildings?
Bronson Hill: So you just kind of took over and over and over. I was like, I want to interrupt you for one sec. I want to interrupt you for one sec because it sounds like that’ll happen.
You know, you’ll buy one building, one more come over. And I was looking a lot of these Midwest towns, like it looks like since 1970, the population’s decreased a bit. So from thirty four thousand down to twenty four thousand.
But what it does is it offers, you know, some of these towns will offer incentives to help you come in beautiful opportunity zones or other things like this that are huge benefits. So you mentioned, I think, opportunity zone. Talk a little bit about the benefits of what it’s been to do this.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: So the opportunity and thank you for directing me back to that. So opportunity zone basically means if you own the building for 10 years and no matter what amount of money you sell it for, there’s no capital gains. And what other people don’t realize is like in Clinton, in the areas where the neighborhoods, where the houses are, the city will drive around and maybe this one block looks run down.
So they’ll just make that block an opportunity zone. My kids all buy rentals there and they just it’s like two blocks are fine. This blocks an opportunity zone.
These blocks are fine. That block’s not. And the city just goes where they see a neighborhood maybe going in the wrong direction and offered out as opportunity zones.
And so that’s what might get my kids between all of them. They probably have like thirty five or forty little single family homes. That’s what they like to do.
Bronson Hill: All in Clinton, all in the town of Clinton.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: All in Clinton. Yeah, because you can buy these houses.
Bronson Hill: And these just the houses aren’t that expensive. You rent them out. And because now you guys let it.
Now, there are some cases of people owning whole towns. I’ve actually heard of people like selling and owning a whole town. Certain places.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: I don’t know where I can buy a whole town.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, but this is how you guys are starting to cut your head that way.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: We’re sorry. We’re sorry. We’re sorry.
Well, like the houses, they’re like, you know, I grew up in Ohio. So there’s just like two story houses, three bed, one bath. But you can buy them on a cigar for like thirty five thousand dollars and just put a little bit of money in a carpet painting up to the kitchen.
And they run for eleven hundred. Like it’s insane.
Bronson Hill: Well, that’s amazing.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: So I have all my kids like you by their mom and dad are buying.
Bronson Hill: You know, I got to tell I want to say, Nate, you may be aware of this, but there are there’s this group called Make Your Move or Plan Your Move. There’s a group on Instagram that actually does this where they will actually give incentives if you’re a young or, you know, whatever age you are, professional family, whatever, you can move to any of these towns. Primarily, it’s like Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky.
And they’ll pay you like ten to fifteen thousand dollars to move and live there for a year. And so it’s and through some of its cash that they’ll give you five K or 10 K for a house for down payment. They’ll give you a gym membership, a we work thing.
They’ll give you a sporting club stop and all kinds of giveaways. You heard about this, Nate? And have you are you familiar with this?
Nate Hambrick: I have actually I had a friend that did that. I couldn’t tell you what town it was, but it does remind me of, you know, Mark Cuban, he sold the Dallas Mavericks and then bought Mustang, Texas.
Bronson Hill: That’s it. Mustang, he owns the whole town.
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, he owns the entire town. I won’t pretend to understand the legalities of that. Like, it sounds like illegal buying a whole, but he apparently owns Mustang, Texas.
And I don’t know if he had to do a ten thirty one on the Mavericks or what the deal was, why you would buy a town. But I’m excited to see what he does with that. Yeah.
So that’s very interesting.
Bronson Hill: Well, tell us a little bit what kind of what you learned along the way, because obviously some of it, the opportunity zones have been interesting. You keep buying there. Your family keeps buying there.
I guess some people are concerned about buying in a small town with a with a population that is shrinking. But you’ve made it work. And like you said, the rents are awesome.
Is this because nobody else is doing it? Like, why does this exist to you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, so one of the things with the with like a downtown, there’s a little town like the one right next to it’s called LeClaire. And I don’t know if you guys have ever seen that show, a TV show, Pickers, American Pickers. OK, so their building is in the town next door.
Well, LeClaire was all boarded up, too. And then the pickers started fixing a few buildings. Now every single building in the downtown is a restaurant, an antique store, a brewery.
And like you can go and spend like an afternoon. Yeah, the people like to go to and in the Midwest. Also, antiquing is a really huge thing.
So people like to go to these little towns and park the car like antique and go get some homemade candy and get some ice cream and go sit down by the water and they’ve redone the whole area by the water. So so part of the thought of rejuvenate in these little downtowns is to make them like little day trip stops. Not like where you’re going to run and get groceries like a place where you could spend the day.
Bronson Hill: So we the building on a map, it’s like it’s like an hour from Davenport, Iowa. You’ve got rock.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: It’s right on the river. There’s a bridge right there across the bridge. And that’s Illinois.
Bronson Hill: Do you think that there’s going to be a change? I mean, we love we love looking at trends when it comes to real estate. If you get behind trends, it can really open up things for you.
But do you think there will become a point where some of these small towns with remote work and AI and some of the things that are available, it’s like somebody can live, you know, move from Dallas or from L.A. and go live there for like nothing and just start to develop. I mean, it would make sense to go live there and just go get homes and rent them out and just kind of have a little business to do in that. Right.
Like go live in the. I mean, the balance says you got to live in Clinton. You got to live in Clinton, you’re kind of like.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: It’s called on the weather. So we one of the buildings that we bought was an office downstairs and I had two apartments about it. We’re like, we’ll just take the apartment. So we actually write a little downtown.
We walk outside and we’re in a little downtown. So so what has happened? So like we bought the one building and then this woman calls the hair.
I heard you bought so-and-so’s building. I’ve got three husbands and dad for like a decade. They’re just kind of sitting there.
And we said, no, we don’t have the money. You’d have to own or finance them. And she said, OK, so she refined.
So she owned a finance with no money down three buildings. And then like another one called and said, hey, I heard you bought carols building. And next thing you know, the bank’s like, hey, I heard you bought that.
We’ve got a couple of things and we’ll just we’ll lend you the money. You don’t give us any money down. We’ll just lend you the money.
And so now we have 20, 28. We have 28 parcels right now. But here’s the interesting thing.
And the last like five years, the value of the downtown has gone up 49%. And and the buildings that we buy were really careful who we rent the space to because, like, for example, mattress company wanted to rent a space. I said, yeah, but if you only got three blocks and there’s this giant brewery, they just built a five million dollar brewery.
So you have to rent to places where people will like come and like shop and buy gifts and not have buildings that are just doctors and mattress companies and, you know, things that will draw people there to make it like a little day thing. So most of the buildings now have been purchased. We also told some other investors that we know that bought a few buildings and everybody’s fixing them up.
And the city gives you money for windows and facades and roofs. It’s all grant money to just give you all this money. And I don’t know.
I mean, I would I’m hoping and counting on the downtown, you know, becoming like more of a little hub, which I can visually see that it is. And because we own so many parcels, we get to vote on the things that happen downtown. So, for example, we said, hey, let’s have some music down to draw people down in the summer.
Excuse me. So we started this thing called Music on the Avenue. So June and July for eight Thursdays in a row, they block off the downtown.
They have live music, food carts and everything. And now we’re up to like two thousand people every Thursday come downtown for live music.
Bronson Hill: I love it. So you’re a part of redeveloping. I was just jumping on on Zillow here looking there’s homes for sale, fixers for like 15 to 40 thousand dollars in Clinton, Iowa.
And again, this is just one example. So we’re not trying to bombard Clinton, I know. But you know, there are little towns like this where you can find deals.
And like I was looking at rents. They are rents are eight hundred and twelve hundred a month.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Yeah, it’s crazy.
Bronson Hill: It’s pretty amazing. Why do you think more people don’t do don’t do the strategies? Because it’s like they don’t like there. It’s a little far from everything.
So it’s kind of like, I mean, to get there, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to get there and fly into where we’re going to fly into. And it’s maybe connections and things like that. Is that why people don’t typically do?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve been investing for 35 years. And it never one time in all of that time, crossed my mind like, hey, we should help rejuvenate an entire downtown.
I get just never crossed my mind. But when I got there, I could see the potential. I could see what it was.
I could see people opening like the brewery. They spent five million dollars and built this freaking beautiful, beautiful brewing. I can see people.
And so we just drove to every little town with them like 50 miles each direction and all of them. Clinton was like the last one that people are jumping into. And all the other ones are full and busy and thousands of people all weekend and all the time and and I don’t know.
So we just, you know, that’d be fun.
Bronson Hill: I want to hear his thoughts, too. But I think that it’s interesting when I know, Nate, you moved to Dallas not too long ago for what I remember. And you anyway, so what you see is some of these towns, they will.
It’s almost like states, right? They will compete to make it easier for people to come in and renovate and to do business there. So, for example, we’re seeing people move from California to Texas because they make it way easier to have a business.
They do incentives. Hey, we’ll give you all these tax benefits. What kind of land do you want?
Well, we’ll figure out a way to make it work. So the same way towns like they want people to come and shop and do their their factory where do things like that. So towns behind the game on that, it’s understandable that housing prices and other real estate prices will be lower.
But eventually people start to say, hey, all these other towns are doing this and they’re getting all these people coming in. Why don’t we do this? Right.
And so then somebody comes in and people start coming to city council and hey, let’s let’s actually start to work on this.
Nate Hambrick: Brings up some opportunities. So in Oklahoma, so, you know, Clinton reminds me of Sentinel, Oklahoma. So my father grew up in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma.
Sister and I actually bought 16 single family houses in Sentinel and Mainland, Oklahoma. The government has so many of these small towns where people have just abandoned the homes. Right.
The kids moved on. It’s the grandkids that are inheriting all these homes. They’re just falling apart that the squatters rights are amazing.
So hopefully I nailed the squatters rights in Oklahoma well. But for these small towns, if you’ll pay the taxes, which are usually less than two grand a house, they’ll let you have a temporary deed on the home. And you can keep that and nobody nobody contests it for two years.
Then you own the house in a temporary deed and then you have to hold it for, I think it’s either seven years or 15 years and then you can flip it. So I actually have a friend that is currently squatting in, I think 59 homes and the government wants them to squat. This is not like squatting in a big city where people are trying to kick you out.
This is like the government asked you to squat in these homes, fix them out, rent them out. And out of the 59 homes, they’re expecting to own at least 12 of them outright having paid nothing. Right.
And so it’s not just that there’s an opportunity. The government wants you to do that because otherwise they have hundreds, the thousands, tens of thousands of homes just falling apart. And so it is very interesting that there are a lot of opportunities in these small towns.
I’ve made a lot of money in small towns in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma.
Bronson Hill: There’s so much you can make. It’s funny. There’s actually this is happening all over Europe to in Italy.
They’ll actually, you know, either pay you pay one euro up to 10 euros or two to ten thousand euros. And you can get in some of these like a Sicily town with an ocean view or kind of the middle of Sicily. And you’ve got to live there or you actually didn’t have to live there.
You just got to hire local people to help you renovate. And there are some of them you pay taxes. Some of them will actually pay you to move there.
If you’re willing to move, they’re actually paying you to move there. And so just like I was saying, this make me move or make my move or something. It’s these Midwest towns that are they’re literally dying.
And so if you’re willing to do that, I hadn’t really heard of that. I don’t know where else that exists. But that’s a really interesting strategy, Nate.
Does he have to live in the town to make that happen? Or does he doesn’t necessarily have to live there to kind of squat all those homes?
Nate Hambrick: Nope. So all they do is they plant a tree. So they buy these really cheap.
You have to make a capital improvement. So they plant a tree on each one of these 59 homes and mow the lawn and take pictures. And then they have a long crew that goes through and will mow these yards every couple of months.
And so, yeah, they’re about I think a year and a half into it. So they’ll have the temporary deeds on all of these homes. Well, they already have the temporary deeds, but they’ll own the temporary deeds in about six months, give or take.
And then it’s theirs. And as long as they keep doing this for it’s either seven or 15 years, I forget, they will be able to flip these. So they own the homes technically.
They just can’t sell them.
Bronson Hill: And they can rent them, though. What is like for those homes, what are they worth, what do they rent?
Nate Hambrick: Well, that’s the one trick is that they don’t want to pour a ton of money into these homes because the deed, the deeds are still held probate, whatever you want to call it. And so because the homes are falling apart, they’re renting them out for like four hundred bucks a month. And then they’ll fix them up here in about six months and raise the rents and then just hold on to them and then flip them.
So it’s a cash cow, right? It’s an awkward cash cow, but they’re making it work.
Bronson Hill: If you’re willing to do what other people are not willing to do, it’s a great way to get paid. So, Dawn, really, I appreciate you bringing that strategy up and kind of what you’re doing over there, just even the ideas of Midwest towns. What’s when you look back at your career and even a lot of things in real estate, what are some strategies or maybe a strategy that most people don’t know about that you feel like it’s really been a bread and butter for you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, when I started off, I started as like a broke single mom and my husband and I went through a really unexpected divorce when I had an eight month old daughter. And so I actually had my car repossessed, lost my house, like all the things. And I was like, oh, my God, I broke single mom.
How am I going to do? Of course, my parents like move back to Ohio. I’m like, oh, I already live in Florida.
I really like Florida. Do I want to like move back to Ohio or swim out in the ocean and maybe pray a shark would eat me like and actually the shark sounds like a better option. That is like I’m just going to I’m going to make this happen.
So honestly, the way I started, I would never recommend for anyone. But I wonder, I already knew some 30. We talked about, people like kind of stuck. Like, OK, I don’t have a job and I have a husband and I don’t have a car or anything.
I can either a get a job or my boys wanted to work for myself. So right now is the time I can start something and do and work for myself. And if I fail, I can get a job.
Because at 30, you still think 50 is really old. I was like, I’m 30. I’ll be 50 years old when she graduated.
Bronson Hill: 30, 32, right? You’re 32 years old. Is that right?
Nate Hambrick: 33. But close enough.
Dwan Bent-Twyford:, You know at 33, someone is 55 like that still feels like they’re old. I was like, oh, I’ll be an old woman. And so I thought now I’m missing work for myself.
So I met some guys and they were like, oh, yeah, we buy houses and we fix them up when we sell them. And we had lunch and met a few times. I was like, I buy, fix up and sell it decorate.
So I really honestly thought I was going to be decorating because I’m like, I have good taste. I can decorate. How hard did it be?
And they suddenly got to remember 35 years ago, we had no Internet. So we had to drive to the courthouse up in West Palm Beach, Florida. I had to hand write all the foreclosures and I got in my big map book and I went door knocking with a baby hanging on my hip.
Talking to people that were in foreclosure and basically saying, excuse me, I’ll frog my throat. Basically saying like, hey, you’re in foreclosure. You know, if you’ll move out, I’ll move in.
I’ll fix this house up and we’ll split the profit. And which is an equity partnering deal that I did my first deal on like a hug and a handshake. There was no paperwork.
I didn’t think there was no documents, I didn’t know.
My friends had taken a real estate contract and put some little exes like here’s where you’re supposed to get people to sign. So I didn’t know. There was no one to teach back then.
It was like nothing. So thank God, my first girl, like she was honest and she moved out. I lived, I fixed it, we split it.
And then I just kept moving it into houses for five years. So I just started kindergarten. I’d move into it and I’d rehab it inside, sell it and move.
And I did that for five years. And then a real group, a real estate investing group opened up in Boca Raton, Florida, and I saw that, you know, because again, no internet’s in the classified section of the newspaper, like, hey, I’m meeting with other investors. I’m going to go to that.
And I show up and there’s about 80 people there and they’re all men, except for me and another girl. So my first thought was, do women not do this? And my end of business that women don’t do, like, why are there no women here?
So I started talking to the one girls that was there. We decided to partner up. And over the next 10 years, we wholesale like a thousand properties.
We bought a bunch of rentals. We bought some houses where they take an old area and zone it like commercials. So it can be a house or an office.
We bought a bunch of those and just kept going from there. So I’ve done 2000 deals personally. And now we own like half of the downtown and, you know, then God bless is able to write some books.
People can say, hey, would you write a book? And I’m like, yeah, I’ll write a book. And I actually introduced short sales to investors.
I wrote the first short sale little homesteady training and then I trademarked the term short sales as it applies to real estate investing. So I have the registered trademark on short sales.
Nate Hambrick: You charge royalties for that or what is the trademark?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: No, not really. I mean, no, but I was the first one to write a book. I trademarked it trademarked the queen of short sales because, you know, back when, when they’re super hot.
And I was like, you know, my contribution, I mean, I suppose I could really actually made people like not use it on their book titles, but it’s like, I don’t care. The more people know it, the more they find out about me.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Well, that’s it’s amazing to see all the things that you’ve done. So what opportunities, we just have a couple more minutes here.
I wanted to kind of get to this as far as what’s happening in the market today. So for someone listening, what are some opportunities that you’re seeing right now, because obviously real estate is, is a very dynamic market and we’ve seen a lot of pain in large multifamily because of increasing very quickly. What are you seeing as opportunities right now for just, investors that are like, I want to get in and I want to grow my wealth in real estate.
What are some opportunities you’re seeing?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: Well, one of the things that I’ve always done since day one, uh, because I went through the divorce, the bankruptcy, you know, all the, all of the things. As I always tell people like, listen, everyone worries about the markets market opposite down is the good, the bad people worry about the market. And I say, I focus on the people that are at the public record, the people that are actively in foreclosure, they’re actively in a divorce. They’re actively in a bankruptcy.
They’re actively going through a probate. They actively haven’t paid real estate taxes. And their landlords have just evicted tenants.
So those things are public record. I say, I wish not be able to just focus on because even in the best market in the world, people are still getting divorced. People are still dying.
People are still losing jobs in the worst market in the world. They are still getting divorced and still probate. You know, like the thing, those, those things are part of life every day, regardless of what the market.
So I can be worried about what to do. Just go to the people that need help and see what you can do. I mean, I’m at one landlord and he had just evicted tenants and he called me and he goes, I’m so f-ing sick of being a landlord.
He goes, I’ll let you have this one. If you’ll take everything I have. He had 125 properties and they were, most of them were duplexes and they were gorgeous.
And I’m like, I’ll take a ball.
Bronson Hill: He gave them to you or he sold them to you.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: He sold them, but he, but for very minimum, he let me put all 100 properties, 125. He let me put them under contract for $3,000 down as an earnest money. And he goes, I hate it.
I hate it. I’m just done. And it was funny because, uh, I had mailed a postcard to landlords.
I had just done predictions.
Bronson Hill: No, no, it was like $25 per property then.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: And this is what he said, Dean, he said, you are a lucky woman. I was like, when he called him, okay. Cause you know, where’s this conversation going?
He goes, I hate being a landlord. Today’s my 60th birthday. And I made a promise years ago that whoever came across my path on my 60th birthday, I was going to give them all of my rentals.
And I got you a postcard this morning and I was like, thank you. So he wanted like a set him out for everything. Just, I mean, not a lot.
So then after I agreed, I thought, Oh my God. What am I going to do on 25 houses? So I just put them in like a group of 20, a group of 10, a group of five.
Just grouped them up, called everyone. I knew we had to add some papers once every rear group and got rid of all of them in six months and kept six duplexes that were beautiful.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, I, I, a couple of things I get from that. You know, there’s, there’s a lot there is just being, you know, obviously having, when you’re wholesale or you’re having these conversations with people being willing to get out there and have the conversations.
And a lot of people are just, you get a situation where it’s like, I don’t want her, I just don’t want to have this and I want to get out of it. And real estate can take a little while to get up. So somebody’s like, Hey, I’m willing to do it and I’ll take it off you today.
And let’s get it done. It’s like people sometimes are very willing to do that. If they inherit something or they don’t want it, I’m gonna think that that’s super valuable.
Well, Dwan, I really appreciate your time today. Um, we’re kind of getting to the end of our time here, but I want people to be able to, uh, first of all, I just want to honor you, uh, and all the value you’ve brought in as the stories are incredible. You’re obviously the town of Clinton.
You probably have your, you and your husband have your picture up in city hall there of how you’re developing the town there, but, um, I’m sure they love what you’re doing.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: I’ll tell you something really quick about that. So Bill’s from Clinton. Everyone knows Bill Twyford because his dad name was Bill Twyford and they had Twyford painting and they used to buy all the seniors like letter Jack cause it said Twyford painting.
So everyone in Clinton knows him and everywhere I go, they go, Hey, Bill’s wife, literally everyone in town calls me Bill’s wife. They don’t even know my name. It’s like, that’s funny.
I’m like, you guys, I have a podcast. I got written books. Like, Oh my God, it’s Bill’s wife. What’s up, Bill?
Bronson Hill: Well, when you’re in Clinton, you are Bill’s wife. So you might be famous everywhere else, but in Clinton, Iowa, you’re Bill’s wife. But, I really appreciate you.
Appreciate all the value you’re adding to the world, to our lives, to individuals, and I encourage people to reach out to you. How can people connect with you if they want to reach out and connect with you?
Dwan Bent-Twyford: So easy. Just do wonderful D W A N D E R F U L. Do wonderful.
Do wonderful on.com. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all the places.
Bronson Hill: Awesome. Well, we really appreciate having you. This is a lot of fun.
We’ll have to have you back in the future. This was great. Just stick around for a minute.
We’re going to, now we’re going to kind of wrap on this. So nice to meet you. Yeah.
So stick around for just a minute here, Nate. What was your big takeaway from the conversation here?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah. Not to piggyback off of what you said, Bronson, but it reminds me that there are so many opportunities where you don’t think there are opportunities. And so there are ways that you can scale the unscalable, right?
One of the reasons we got out of the, the, the rural Oklahoma deals is just because we were having trouble scaling them. And so this conversation helped me realize maybe now that I’ve grown like a hundred layers, maybe I should revisit those old deals and figure out how can I scale the unscalable in these small towns? Where’s the opportunity that 25 year old Nate Hambrick missed?
Like, let me revisit some of those, those lucrative small opportunities and figure out how to turn them into something bigger. And so anyway, really, really great conversation and I’m excited to implement some of these takeaways in my life. Yeah, me too.
Dwan Bent-Twyford: If y’all ever get to Clinton, Iowa, stop in and say hi to me. We’ll have lunch at my coffee shop.
Bronson Hill: So, you know, Bill’s wife and you guys can takeaway really was, I think it’s amazing when you just ask, right? There’s things that like you, you say that story about the 325 properties for 3000 dollars, that’s impossible. You can never do that.
It’s like, well, no, it happened because she was out there talking to people. It happened because she was just simply sending out mailers. She was, she was in action.
And so if you’re in action, you’re going to have like, what is it? You know, I get the harder I work, the luckier I get. The more conversations you have, the more willing you are to kind of meet people, the more doors can open for you.
So if you’re a passive investor, you know, the more deals you look at, the more you’ll find ones that’ll be, Hey, this really makes sense for me. If you’re active, you’re looking for deals or buying businesses or in your own business, uh, continue to keep your head up and look for what you want, because if you can continue to figure out what you want over time that you talk to more people, you will find a way to create it, partner with others, buy businesses for little or no money down. And you’ll find all kinds of opportunities.
So, Mailbox Money Show really appreciate you being here. Check out the link below. If you haven’t joined our investor club, you can check it out on the link below, look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show.
Thanks everybody.
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