Newbie in South Jersey

[Daquan Johnson]

Hey BP Community, my name is Daquan, I'm from the south Jersey. I've been studying on investing in real estate for some months now and no matter how many books I read or podcast I listen to I feel like I'll never know what's it's really like until I take action. Based on ALL the information I've gathered I decided to do WHOLESALING. I do work a full time job in which i would be able to provide funds for marketing. I'm currently a route driver for Nestle so i can sort of drive for dollars while working. I come across a good handful of FSBO's and vacant properties. I take down the information of the property but don't know how to determine if any could be a potential deal. I am also interested in using the direct mail strategy to maybe target probates and absentee owners to really get leads coming in. I'm very much motivated and determined to create some success from my thoughts and ideas and also looking to maybe partner up with or find help from anyone from the newbie to seasoned investor. Any advice, tips, or help on getting started would be tremendously appreciated!!

[Ray Lai]

@Daquan Johnson

Welcome to BP! Great job taking action and utilizing your day job to your advantage. Driving for dollars is a fantastic way to compile a list to target and works very well with another targeted approach. If you are great at speaking with people and want to go the extra step of finding their numbers, you could try cold calling. Most people probably want to take the more scalable approach and target that D4D list you compiled with direct mail. Here are a couple of protips to help you out if you go down the DM route:

Pro-tip: Use 1 batch of postcards with first class mail then and then switch to yellow letters. Why? The first class postcards will bounce and save you a lot of money from mailing a bad address from subsequent batches and you can skip-trace the bad addresses for very valuable leads. Also, switching to standard mail afterwards saves money.

Pro-tip #2: Your campaigns will typically yield a response rate of 0.5-2% (typical but depends on the quality of your campaign and your competition).

Pro-tip #3: Make sure your market size is big enough (AT LEAST 200 targets) and that you can sustain a campaign for at least 4+ mailings. First couple often get thrown away and a lot of responses come after 4. Common mistake is that newbies make is mailing to a big list once. You'll get a better response mailing 300 good targets every 4 weeks, rather than 2000 good targets, once.

Pro-tip #4: How do you improve your response rate? Split tests and tracking your results. There are many things to try from code violations to unpaid taxes. In general, people with more equity (typically older home owners) are more likely to yield deals. But you need to test between all these different types and see what works best for you in your market (driving for dollars/absentee, probate, etc.)

There are many more things you can do to increase your success, it's great that you're taking action. Hit up your local REIA and start networking and listen to the BP podcasts too, some are very solid.