Getting to My 1st Deal: Update 5, Wk7. C3: 2nd Contact

[Gabriel Trieu]

Update 5; 3.12.14

Good evening everyone, this is my 5th update and my report for weeks 1 and 2 (Feb.24-Mar.3) in my 3rd yellow letter campaign with me attempting to wholesale SFR's in San Diego, California.

Activity, Results, and Findings. This 3rd yellow letter campaign in the past two weeks has comprised mostly of my 2nd contact/touch to the remaining homeowners from my 2nd campaign last month along with a few new homeowners added to the list of pre foreclosed homes on the MLS in various zips in San Diego and its neighboring cities. Like before, I've sent 15 hand written yellow letters daily 5 days a week and have received a 6 phone calls total from sending 150 letters total, resulting in a 4% response rate (6/150) and a 0.0067% (1/150) potential deal rate from 1 close call.

Regarding my yellow letters, this is my 1st contact letter: "Dear ___, Hi! My name is Gabriel Trieu and I would like to $BUY$ your house at ___. Please call me at #xxx-xxx-xxxx. Sincerely, Gabe." This is my 2nd contact letter: "Dear ___, Hello again, My name is Gabriel Trieu and I wrote you last month about buying your house at ___. I know it's in pre- foreclosure but I'd like to help you save your credit and solve your problem by buying your house. Please call me at #xxx-xxx-xxxx and we'll work something out! Sincerely, Gabe."

From my 6 phone calls, I received 2 calls from curious homeowners, 1 active, 1 caller who got out of pre foreclosure, and 2 who were actually interested in selling. Surprisingly, no angry callers; only 1 really rude one here.

Caller Details. The curious callers always ask what I mean when I write, "I want to $BUY$ your house" and in response I say that I mean exactly that, following up with "so I can assume you're calling because you're interested in selling your house to me, right?" And if they say no, I respond, "So why're you calling me? If you're not interested in me buying you house, how can I help you?" If they reply yes, I respond, "Great, now before I go out there to look at the property, I have some questions I'd like to ask first. I have them on my form here and these are the same questions I ask everyone, and I read them right off my clipboard so I don't miss anything; particularly anything that may cost you more money or an opportunity. Is that okay?" And then proceed from there. However, with curious callers, they simply wanna know what's up so I tend to keep the call short to not waste time.

The active caller was pretty nice overall. They just wanted to have an offer sent to their real estate agent's email but unfortunately for me, the house was fully remodeled and being listed at retail price, thus I couldn't make a deal from it.

Finally, I had 2 callers interested in selling, 1 that I almost purchased via subject-to and 1 other homeowner who wanted to sell but very rudely wouldn't answer any of my questions (I didn't wanna work with her since she was literally being a jerk on the phone).

My 1st Attempted Subject-To Purchase. The first interested caller was trying to sell a 2,100 sqft., tenant occupied, 5-3 SFR in Spring Valley that was built in 2008. However, she was $420,000 in debt and had $30,000 included in back payments from her notice of default. Her goal was to sell the house to clear her debt and make $10,000 out of it. The thing though was that the comps and properties in her area were only selling for about 310-330; around $100,000 less than what she owed, putting her in underwater mortgage.

After talking and gathering more information, I also found her mortgage payment was $1670 impounded (PITI) and she was collecting a $2,500 monthly rent. So after taking this into consideration, I talked with my mentor and called her back proposing to purchase her property subject-to. This would mean that I would pay off her immediate $30,000 and then make her mortgage payments in exchange for title and possession of the property, seeing as the difference between the collected rent and monthly payment was +$850, thus saving her credit from being ruined and destroyed.

But here's the kicker: even after explaining this and how I could take care of her debt, pay off her mortgage, save her credit, and solve her problem fast, she then asks me, 'Will I still get $10,000' 'No, but I'm offering you debt relief now and a solution to your problem' 'Unless I get $10,000, I'm not interested.' *sigh, now it just gets me how this woman is hugely underwater, owes $420,000, I'm willing to take on a debt worth much more than her house, and I've given her the opportunity to solve her +$400,000 problem almost instantly, but she still refused my help because she wants money she can't have. So after we hung up, I sent her a thank you letter with a reminder of my subject-to purchase proposal and what it could do to help her and that was it.

Thoughts and Expectations. From the past 2 weeks, I predict that weeks 3 and 4 of this 3rd campaign will give me similar results in regard to response rate and potential successful deal rate. Touching, I also believe my response rate dropped in comparing campaign 2 to 3 simply because I've been getting more mail returns in addition to my change in letter format in my 2nd contact. Not to mention, my pre foreclosure lists from the MLS have been shrinking due to the declining number of notice of defaults in San Diego, California.

So in response, I'll be looking into researching other types of leads outside of pre foreclosures, focusing primarily on the '4 D's' (death, disease, divorce, and disaster) in the next 2 weeks in preparation for my 4th upcoming campaign in 3 weeks. In the meantime, I'll still be working with my pre foreclosures and hopefully I can land a deal very soon!

Just an interesting piece of insight, recently I started reading Gary Keller's "The Shift" and in the first section, I see a chart depicting general real estate market trends and wow, according to the graph, I started doing real estate during the worst time of the year right when the market slows and activity declines! But on the upside, the chart also depicts that the market picks up this month and gets hot til August! So for the last few months, I got a lot of practice in this Fall and Winter so I think I should be ready for the Summer!

This is all I have for now. Thank you always for reading my posts! Please leave me some comments, thoughts, constructive criticisms, and tips so that I can improve! Hopefully, I can hit my first deal soon so wish me luck and as always, I'll keep you all posted! Take care everyone and I wish you guys the best of luck in all of your business endeavors! Let's go get those deals and make that money!

Best Regards Always,
-Gabe