Help Me Save My Career

[Kareem Lyons]

Hi 

I know I post a lot on these forums but I really want to gain as much knowledge as possible. I have been in real estate for about 6 months now and have yet to make any real money. I have trouble figuring out what I should be doing on a daily bases as I found myself just sitting at a computer all day. Now I know must people will say '' Lead Generate '' and I understand that. 

Most of my leads come from passive sources like a bus ad , zillow , etc . I want to know what I should Actively be doing on a daily bases. My broker actually gives me probs because I get the most leads out of all new agents in the office , But these Leads arn't making $ as they are low quality.

I wake up in the morning and just wait for a random low quality lead to call me. My day is usually structured like listed below. 

1. wake up look at emails 

2. do stuff on social media 

3. service leads/cleints I have now 

4. lead generate which I don't know how to efficiently do so I just end up watching training videos.

5. repeat steps.

Now I have no issues with getting my hands dirty. Over the past month or so I have passed out hand written letters in the amount of 200-300. Passing out these letters have resulted in one contact that I lost track off , being chased by dogs , yelled out for stepping on someones property , etc. 

I am currently with weichert realtors and I feel like this is a good place for me. I have and good online training program with very insightful content. I have a sales manager and a broker that sell in the $10 million+ range that I can call at anytime and they are very helpful with tips. I know no one can really hold my hand in this business but at the age of 21 I refuse to give up. I am content on being a six figure salary real estate agent no matter the odds. 

[Dean Letfus]

@Kareem Lyons just to give you a few ideas. 

I landed in Memphis from another  country and started investing/flipping full time. Full disclosure I did have a relationship with a company that was extremely helpful in teaching me about the US market and local knowledge however I only made a dollar if I found deals and found buyers.

So what I did daily was:

Drove at least 20 streets in a zip I liked. Anything vacant I would get out and ask neighbours etc. and do whatever I could to find the owners.  Then I would search local craigslist listings looking for private sellers.

I developed relationships with some local attorneys and accountants and would visit them weekly asking for any clients looking to sell homes or deceased estates.  I built friendships with property managers and asked them to send me anybody needing to exit houses.

Then I would look on the MLS for any homes that had been listed for way longer than normal sales timeframes and contact the agents to see why they hadn't sold and whether anything could be done to get them bought. Often if the sellers were "price proud" I would explain seller financing to the agents and some of my best deals were completed with agents bringing me debt free sellers.

May be a Memphis thing but then I built relationships with every wholesaler I could. i rung every craigslist advert every day and within a month I had met pretty much every wholesaler in the city. They became my primary source of leads for the next 3 years.  Many of them are here on BP.

Lastly I told everybody I met what I was doing and that I was paying $500 for any lead that I could turn into a purchase. Bought a lo of houses this way as well.

Then on teh other side I started telling people who were renting that I could probably help them into their own home. I did several lease purchases and straight birddogging for people wanting to buy and charged them a fee. This was the easiest money to make as there is no risk. The hard part is to educate a home buyer that they should spend 90K on a home, (80K purchase and 10K my fee), and spend the next year doing a minor rehab which would cost them maybe 10K rather than spend 130K on the next door house already fluffed up.

I was usually in my car by 7AM and rarely finished before 10PM 6 days a week.  But I left 12 months later with an entire business now running well with great local staff I had met on the streets and with a million dollars capital I had made in that year.

This is going to sound insulting which is not my intention but my overall impression of most US people trying to make a go of this business is that they were fundamentally lazy. I knew if I worked 16 hours a day, no one else would be so I was likely to be first in line for more and more deals. I was right!!  I have been called at 11PM with a deal and driven and met them at the house at midnight. FIlled a contract in on teh hood of the car and closed the next afternoon.

Get a map of a small zip and drive it, door knock everything trashed, vacant, uncared for, FSBO. Do that for 10 hours a day for a week I think it's impossible not to find a deal that you could make 5,10,20 even 50K off.

Last thought. Some of my best deals were those with damaged title. Find a really good attorney title specialist and often they can be fixed. I remember buying a house on auction.com for 26K. title was bad. Attorney fixed it over 2 weeks. I sold it for 55K contemporaneously.  That was a good day!!!!!!