The three questions that start every exchange

Watch a room full of exchangors work and you'll notice they ask the same three questions of everything that goes on the board. They're simple enough to sound like small talk. They aren't.

1. What do you have?

Not "what are you selling." What do you have.

The difference matters, because the second question narrows you to one asset at one price, and the first one opens the whole shelf. People arrive planning to talk about a duplex and leave having traded a note they'd forgotten they were holding.

Answer it completely. The property and the debt on it. The cash sitting in an account with nowhere good to go. The paper you carried back on a sale three years ago. The lot your father left you. Your time, your license, your crew, your ability to get something rezoned. All of it is inventory.

A position you don't mention is a position the room can't use.

2. What do you want?

This is where most people stop short, because they answer with a number. "I want $400,000." That's not a want, that's a price — and a price only helps someone who was going to pay cash anyway.

What you want is the condition you're trying to get to:

• Income you don't have to manage
• A tax problem deferred instead of triggered
• Out from under a loan you personally guaranteed
• Something your kids can actually split
• Less ground to cover — three properties in one county instead of nine across three
• A debt-free asset, even if it's smaller

Say the condition and the room can find six ways to get you there. Say the number and there's only one.

3. What will you take?

The hardest one, and the one that makes the other two worth asking.

It's not "what's your bottom dollar." It's: what set of things, in what combination, would you accept in place of what you're holding? Would you take half cash and half paper? Would you take a smaller property free and clear over a bigger one with debt? Would you carry financing yourself at a rate you'd be happy to collect? Would you take something in a county you've never bought in if the numbers were right?

Almost nobody has answered this before they walk in. They've decided what they want to get out of an asset, but not what they'd be willing to receive — and those are different questions with different answers.

Answer it, and you stop being a seller waiting for a buyer. You become a party to a trade, which is a much better thing to be in a room like this.

Why this builds longer deals

Once three people have answered all three questions honestly, the chains build themselves.

Person A has land, wants income, will take paper. Person B has a rental, wants out of management, will take land. Person C has cash, wants a discounted note, will take a first lien. Nobody in that group can trade one-for-one. All three can close together, and each one ends up in the condition they described.

That's the whole mechanic. The questions aren't an icebreaker — they're the format that makes a multi-party deal findable at all.

Bring your answers

Before the next session, write your three answers down. Not polished, not a pitch. A sentence each. There's a one-page guide with room to write them.

If you'd rather work them out on paper first, put your position on the board from your dashboard and the software will ask you these same questions in plain English. Then come and hear what the room does with them.