Damon Tyler - New Member from Mendon Massachusetts - Take Two

[Damon Tyler]

How embarrassing - my posts keep getting rejected due to having URL's in them.  

My name is Damon Tyler and I love real estate. I am part of a team with Shane Sullivan and Andrew Riel.

First off, here is how me or my team might be able to help you. I mention these to let you know what I am doing and how I can help. I am not looking for business. I would share links but apparently that's illegal.

• I have a real estate sale team with people licensed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. I am a real estate investor.
• I am a small business owner. I own a marketing company and we can do everything, digital, print, photography or video. 
• I have a day job as a Technical Development Manager and I really enjoy it. I have a technical background, but have always led teams and have less often been an individual contributor. I am a Agile and lean guru. Please get LinkedIn with me. 

We believe and have an abundance mentality - helping and sharing, so if there is a way we can help please let us know.

A bit of history.

If I can do it anyone can. My parents are poor and neither graduated high school. I was fortunate enough to get a job in manufacturing at Texas Instruments and TI helped pay for my college. It took longer than most but I finally graduated from Bryant University with a technical business degree and zero school debt. To make up for that I got married and started paying off my wife's school debt off ;)

By this point in my life I should have more real estate investments. I know it works, in fact, even when I have done it wrong it has worked out for me.

My first home purchase was a house hack and informal syndication. I looked around and found that I could buy a multifamily and end up in a better area and spending less on housing cost than I would renting. We ended up buying a two family in Attleboro, Ma. My friend Steve, my sister, and my wife all agreed to live there - split the costs and sell in 5 years. We converted the attic and Steve lived up there and shared the living space on our side of the house. My sister and her room-mate lived on the other side. This meant we had additional rent coming in! We lucked out - when we went to sell the house after five years it had more than doubled in value. We lived better for less and made a bit of money in the end.

My housemate Steve married a Cambodian lady, and he shared with me that many Cambodians were moving from our area to upstate New York. Roadtrip! We found that the rust belt had some opportunities for us. We were amazed that we could buy properties so inexpensively. I love opportunities where you can purchase an item below what it would cost to build it. There was still housing demand and the properties cash flowed. We bought a few multi-families. If I had only bought one I may and it was the alligator I may have stopped there. We learned to stay out of areas that were too depressed.

Philosophy

I am a conservative investor that is not afraid to take risks. As I mentioned before, I don’t “come from money” so everything has been a struggle and hard fought. I like to buy things when they are at a substantial discount.

By this point in my life I should have more real estate investments. I know it works, in fact, even when I have done it wrong it has worked out for me. I got distracted making a good income while also building a company.

Currently I have 10 doors. None in the state I live in. 

So now, in 2018, at the age of 44 I am refocusing on real estate. Yes - in one of the strongest sellers markets where deals are extremely scarce.

Our business plan

We started in 2018 and have yet to find a deal! We have done analysis on at least 60 houses and have made about thirty offers on properties where the numbers worked.

We are open to criticism, thoughts, and most especially - help.

The following is our tactical business plan (high level). It is not our ‘big why’.

First goal

What - We intend to find distressed property and fix and flip in our area. Anything within an hour of Mendon, Massachusetts. We don’t have a ton of cash so we will need to use some hard money to start. We are extremely conservative so we are targeting bread and butter three bed two bath 1,400- 2,000 sq ft houses or multi family that can be flipped to a house hacker or first time home owner.

How 

We are using several methods to unearth deals.

• Scouring the MLS - searching based on criteria and then sale price compared to
• Websites and digital advertising (Facebook and AdWords)
• Direct mail - Acquired lists from List Source (not happy with them) and have been sending postcards to older owners that own SF that meet our criteria. Have sent two mailings so far and received zero leads.
• Driving for dollars - Driving and dropping off material in target markets. Using hanging bags and postcards + business card.

Intend to start writing content for longer term free SEO

Intend to solicit local Realtors

Intent to start our own meetup

Why 

We will use initial profits to pay for additional marketing (currently coming out of pocket) and to replace cash on hand for next flips making us less reliant on hard money and more able to more quickly acquire (no need for appraisal). Then we will apply cash to purchase out of state buy and holds. These will likely be 2%’ers with good cash flow but less chance of appreciation. Once we build up that conservative portfolio we will begin to look for buy and hold opportunities in appreciation markets. We will continue to scale up into larger commercial opportunities.