Mastering Distressed Property Deals with Logan Fullmer

Logan Fulmer was laid off from the oil field in his early 30s, sitting on a few hundred thousand dollars he’d made by luck—buying vacant lots in downtown San Antonio for $5,000 to $10,000 and selling one for $189,000. He didn’t know it yet, but that lucky break had set him on a path toward a real estate niche most investors avoid: distressed property acquisition. Fulmer buys the deals everyone else cancels—properties with missing owners, judgments, feuding heirs, breaks in the title chain, or delinquent taxes so large the property looks underwater. His core insight is that most title problems can be solved, and the people who say they can’t are usually just unwilling to dig into the property code, estates code, tax code, and probate code to find the workaround.

The Mechanics of Distressed Acquisition

Fulmer defines distressed acquisition as buying property that cannot go through standard title insurance because of unresolved issues: missing owners, unaffirmed heirships, judgments and liens, feuding co-owners, breaks in the title chain, or incomplete bankruptcies. These are the deals wholesalers and flippers cancel. Fulmer’s business model is to rummage through their trash can.