Christopher Peisher
Active 3 years, 3 months agoForum Replies Created
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We have a virtual assistant we got through replacemyself and have been using her since december. she works 6 days a week 10AM to 7PM EST and answers the phones for us and takes seller and buyer information, does market research and anything else we can give her. With her and other business systems in place we have bought three houses and have 3 more under contract since sending out our first batch of postcards on January 14. best of luck.
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Just off the cuff…
I’d stay home with my wife and kids and invest in their lives all day long. Teach them to read (we have three under 5 years old) and write and go on little day trips to the zoo, aquarium, camping, hiking, road trips to see family.
I’d also love to live for 6 months to a year in various locations around the country and around the world and take cooking and language classes.
I think i would enjoy teaching my kids about all the subjects they have in school and working with them on their homework etc.
Also just spending time with them being daddy and daddy’s little girl, daddy’s son, daddy’s other son etc…
In short I’d just spend time enriching our lives together…
Well, this particular house was purchased sub2 the existing loan, not with OF. Can you wrap a sub2 loan with OF? I’m planning on just doing a land contract with this deal, but jsut in case, i’d like to know.
The last time we did one of these we had a private lender on the underlying loan, and we hired a mortgage broker to handle the paperwork/loan app like you mention, but he charged $595 to do his part. While his role did make the transaction possible, i have a hard time paying a mortgage broker that much money when i’m the one putting the whole deal together.
Has any one else hired a mortgage broker recently, if so how much did you pay them to do this type of service?
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And it’s illegal to put signs on telephone poles. I know other people do it but it is against the law. I know for a fact that some sellers know this and will think… gosh, if that guy will break that law what other laws is he/she willing to break? [/quote]I’ve never thought about it like that and you raise a good ethical point…
[quote]bandit signs are NOT targeted marketing so you’ll waste time talking to a lot of people who want full price and all cash.
targeted markting is much better than signs
[/quote]I agree wholeheartedly. Given your opinion on signs, do you do any kind of bandit signs to attract motivated sellers at all? What whould i do with the 400 or so signs i have in my garage, just throw them out or use the back of them for handwritten signs on wholesale houses?
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If it’s just newbies at the foreclosure auction then it’s a waste of your time.
[/quote]I agree. Hopefully there will be some more players as the weather gets better down here…
[quote]to sell/ rent, use craigslist & signs sign signs & an open house! [/quote]
We are big on the signs and craigslist on my selling side. I have two questinos for you on this topic.
1 – What do your signs look like for selling houses? Mine say No Banks Needed, Owner will Finance XXX-XXX-HOME, mylocalareahomesellers.com.
2 – In the last several months i have had trouble with my lease option and owner finance ads being ghosted. Are you familiar with this term? It is distinctly different from having your ad flagged. If another craigslist user sees your ad, it can be flagged for spam, objectinoable content, over posting, etc. I that happens, you actually get a notification on your craigslist account that says “Flagged” next to the ad in your craigslist account home page.
Ghosting is when you place an ad, craigslist says it is approved, you can go to the link the send you in the “youad is now live” email. HOWEVER, when you navigate to the category in which you ad should be listed, it does not appear in the list. It is an automated process that if your ad copy triggers the right key words, .com, phrases etc, it will simply be ghosted, never to appear in the search results or listings, and you will never know unless you go back to check on it.
Have you ever had a problem with Ghosting that you know of?
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[quote]I can tell you from personal experience that auto responders is a big BIG mistake with sellers and buyers leads from a web site. They need a phone call, not an email. (another thing that some web site people push as a + with their products when in fact it is a big negative). The minute they get that autoresponder is the minute they know you don’t really care and they will look elsewhere for a solution. I used to have autoresponders tied to all my web sites and I turned it off.
Sellers and Buyers will dump you like a hot potato if they get autoresponder messages from you. You will burn that bridge fast. [/quote]
This is very surprising to hear, really. Almost all of the seller leads i get on my website get a call from me. My sellers who calls my local area code advertised phone number (XXX_XXX_SELL) get a quick recorded greeting that tells them they can press 99 at any time during the message to be connected to a live operator, then goes on to explain in general terms how the process of buying the home works. If they dial 99 it goes directly to my cell phone.
For the internet leads, i assumed that a simply thank you email 5 minutes after their submission would be a good way to keep them warm. After i spoke to them on the phone and either round filed the lead or scheduled an appointment i assumed that sending emails would be a good thing. I wouldn’t be doing it in leiu of a phone call, simply as a way to keep my company fresh in their minds. I assumed that them getting an email after 1, 2, 3, 5 days or so just hitting them with little reminders or tidbits about selling their home quickly would be a positive, not negative, thing.
Now with Buyers, and when i say buyers i mean retail or lease option buyers, i can’t see the real harm in sending them emails at all. Our buying system kind of mirror’s what Jack Miller taught in his management seminars years ago. I haven’t been to a Tilney seminar yet, mostly because he hasn’t had one near me, but he may do the same thing…
Basically, the motivated buyer sees a directional arrow street sign, craigslist ad, or anything else with a our branded phone number (XXX-XXX-HOME) a website(myareahomesellers.com), and a directional arrow. From their they can either try to follow the arrow signs to the house, call the number, or go to the website. The phone number is a recorded message that tells how our buying/renting programs work, and gives a list of homes available, and then gives features and directions to each home on separate extensions. They are instructed that if they want further information, they need to go to the house and cal lhte number on the sign on the front door. All this is designed to cut down on having to answer the same questions about the house (BR, BA, SF) 45 different times a day. Once they get to the house, the number on the front door connects them directly to a girl i have who answers the phone, gets some basic information, and give them the lockbox code. She follows up with them, encourages them to pick up an application and generally, to take the next step. For these kinds of buyer leads, why are autoresponders bad?
Now with wholesale houses, i put a sign in the yard and an ad on craigslist with my direct number on it. There is no recorded message other than my cell phone voicemail if i cant get to the phone fast enough. If they are a serious buyer i get their name, phone number and email and add it to my buyer list. I send them to the house and try to get a contract, earnest money, and get them to the closing table asap.
Note that any time you spend on social marketing is a total waste of time. Just because a web site comes with a lot of bells and whistles does not mean it is a GOOD web site. More friends on your facebook does not = more buyers for your properties. It’s not a contest.
I think the social media aspect of it was to get higher in the search rankings, i think that having your company name show up on facebook and twitter, with some frequency, helps in search engine rankings. But i’m not married to what i have so far. Is there another website product/company you would recommend?
UPDATE:
I stopped by the city offices today after work to do two things.First thing i did was request a list of the houses with code violations. I have tried to do this over the phone with zero success. Our city office handles it like this. A call comes in and the Code Enforcement Secretary, CES, takes down the caller information and address of the complaint on a paper form. The CES then looks up the address and writes down the owner information and prints out a map of the property and staples that to the form. Then she hands that to the code enforcement officer, CEO. The code enforcement officer was not there, but the CES was very nice and asked me to call back or just come in when the CEO was in. I think i’d like to keep the face-to-face meeting trend going, so my plan is to just call him tomorrow morning and see when a good time would be to come in and meet with him. I’ll need to come up with a good reason that i need to see him in person…
The second thing i was after was a dead meter list, so i went across the hall to the city water/gas office. I got with the right person, and after she talked to her supervisor, she said they could run the report i was looking for, but because it would include people’s names, i would have to do an open records request for the information. They should be calling me in the next day or so to get that list picked up.
Wednesday February 8
UpdateWHAT I HAVE DONE
Local Foreclosure Auction
I took my lawn chair to the foreclosure auction at the county courthouse yesterday and met a few new people who were there to check out the process and to try and buy one of the houses. With the exception of one guy i knew already who is a rehabber, all the people there are what i would call noobs/newbies/rookies etc. I’ve decided to commit to taking 1 day off per month to go and set up camp at the foreclosure auction. If I meet only 3 new people per month there, that will be, ideally, 36 cash buyers more than i have at the end of the year that i don’t have now. As i’m writing this, i’m sitting here wondering if the numbers of new buyers i will get from this is actually worth my time…Continue Organizing Investor Lunch
Our local REIA group has been very thin in the last couple of years, so to take up the slack i’ve been organizing our local investors who are still in the game to meet every Friday for lunch at the chinese buffet. I’m going to be adding these people i met to my wholesale buyers lists and sending them email notices for the Friday lunch.The rehabber, who bought one property, talked to me after he closed the transaction and asked me if i could wholesale it for him. I said probably, it depends on what kind of condition it is in. We may end up working together on some of the stuff he buys. He really enjoys coming to the auctions and buying junkers, we both know how to manage a rehab, and i love managing the wholesale/lease option selling process. So there is some good opportunity for both of use there.
New Websites
My websites went down last week, and i didn’t know it until Monday. They were a package i bought a license to use and agreed to pay $75 a month for hosting for about $3,500 in 2006 for a buy website and sell website and backoffice suite. So the “guru” I bought them from, Kris Kirschner anyone?, has aparently not been paying the hosting bill for over 2 years. Go figure. So i got a new website installed and working, though i don’t have all the kinks worked out yet.The new websites, which i own and cost significantly less than $1,000, incorporate squeeze pages, email auto responders, facebook, twitter, and I have separate sites for buying, selling, and wholesaling. So, ultimately, i think the website snafu will be a positive thing because it’s forcing me to focus more on social media marketing and i’m very excited about the auto responders.
Worked on Filling Vacancies
I working very hard right now to get my 4 vacant properties occupied. 3 will most likely go section 8, as they have in the past. The 4th is in a better area and i am hoping for a solid lease option buyer with around $5,000 down.I received notices from 3 additional tenants that they will be vacating in the next 60 days. So i’m feeling a great deal of pressure right now to get the current four occupied as soon as possible because 7 vacancies at the same time might really starting burning through my available cash at an alarming rate.
WHAT I’M GOING TO DO IN THE NEXT 7 DAYS
MARKETING
I am currently spending around $30-$40 a month on google ad words advertising, and i am considering increasing that budget to $100-$150. I have gotten at least 2 deals from google adword in the last year i think. I’ll need to check on this.For wholesale/option deals i am going to begin by putting up some signs out side of city limits (to avoid my local code enforcement nazi’s) in more or less permanent locations (HIGH on telephone poles) so they stay up a long time. There are at least two other investors in my area who have put out bandit signs in the last 4-6 weeks. I don’t know what kind of response they are getting but they have put them up more than once. I know bandit signs bring in a lot of junk, but i have 400 of them sitting in my garage collecting dust. They sure aren’t going to bring me any deals sitting on a shelf. I’m looking at buying this thing called the sign sledge to make it super easy to put them up high on telephone poles…
signsledge.com
Next on the wholesale marketing list is going to be processing the data i have from my local tax assessor i am going to narrow down the list to those properties that have not sold in 12+ years, have 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a garage and an after repair value of around $125,000-$150,000, the median home price in my city/county. For these addresses i’m going to send a 4.25×5.5″ bright pink cardstock post card that simply says, “we buy houses”. The buyers who need all cash i will focus on wholesaling to rehabbers. Those who see the benefits of offering owner financing to me
i will work on keeping and possibly splitting the deal with another investor who puts up the cash. These will be my deals for cash flow. I’ll also use the same criteria as above, just with a slightly lower price range, maybe $60,000-$90,000, and possibly only a carport or none at all. These I will focus on wholesaling to rental investors, and again, if the sellers will finance, i’ll try to go in with another investor who puts up the cash so we can split the deal, if it’s in a neighborhood that will likely still be good in 15 years.
THOUGHTS FOR/FROM THE GROUP?
Is it worth my time to go to the local foreclosure auction if there are only going to be 2-4 people there each month?
Do you use email auto responders like aweber or built in auto responders with Sellers, lease option buyers, wholesale buyers, and/or private investors?
What are people using RIGHT NOW that has been very effective in selling/renting their vacant properties?
Is anyone here using bandit signs right now?
Any thoughts or comments on anything i’ve written above.
Thanks Jackie! I’ve been listening to the real estate profit secrets series in the online seminar section so I’ve been trying to build my buyers list and get more wholesale deals. I have about 27 properties i control now in various stages of rent, lease option, and owner finance. But i’m now trying to build up enough cash cushion for my wife and i to go full time. I’m closing on another wholesale that will net about $4k this friday. Thanks for keeping this going. we miss Jack, but he lives on here and with all of you who knew him best.
I thought i would give everyone an update. I sold the duplex on owner financing at $50,000 sale price with $5,000 down, $45k loan at 8% interest ~$427 mo payments plus taxes and insurance and a 15 year amortization. To recap i bought it at $1,500 down, $30k purchase price, 2.5% interest payments of ~327/mo for 8 years. So i net about $3,300 in the down payment, $100/mo for the next 8 years, and 7 years of payments on the back end. Assuming everything works out like i plan, which it will
Thanks for the help Jackie!!!
I’m not sure what HCAD means, some kind of county tax assessed value?
Seems like $14k is a LOT of cash to come out with for $250/mo cash flow. $4k is a pretty good amount to pay the other investor. If nothing else i’d see if the other investor would take $2,00 for the deal, if not, try half now half in 6-12 months, or whenever you think you want to get out of it.
It’s not a bad deal, but for the amount of cash the other investor is asking, seems like your money would be better spent in gas and postcards to find a deal on your won and save about $4,000…
Just my $.02
Sorry, i forgot to include the market rents. The duplex should rent for $500-600 per side, so a total of $1,000 to $1,200 per month income. Each unit is a 2 bedroom and a 2 bath. No permits should be necessary, as we are just repairing various items, no new fixtures.
I like the idea of wrapping the note, seems very Jimmy Napier
I’m assuming that was a typo and you meant that it is better to
CONTROL AND [NOT] OWN THIS ONECorrect?
