Direct Mail - Leave My Address and Works for Buy and Hold?

[Steven Pitchford]

Hi Everyone,

I have a list of multifamily properties I feel meet my criteria and was hoping someone could help clarify a couple direct mailing questions for me.

1. What return address do you leave? Is it acceptable to leave your current home address? I've read some investors get a P.O. box specifically for this but I'd rather avoid that if leaving the home address is an acceptable option.

2. Most direct mail campaigns I've read are for flippers or wholesalers. Does anyone do it for a multifamily buy and hold strategy? Is the conversion rate much lower?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

[Davey Wilde]

These are the observations we've seen up in greater Seattle and the surrounding counties:

1. I normally use a PO box but I don't see a problem with using your home address. If you plan to continue mailing (highly recommended) then it's worth the cost to get a PO box to keep all of your business mail going to the same spot. I personally haven't seen any statistics to back up using one or the other or not having a return address at all.

2. This has been our experience with direct mail overall and not just residential MF but for all of our mail. We've sent quite a bit direct mail over the years and continue to get a 1-2.5% response rate. The more motivated the list, the better the response rate. Our driving for dollars, evictions, inherited, probate tend to get close to 2% because there is some form of motivation for the person to sell. High equity, absentee owners, farm area (zip code), tend to get lower response rates because they don't always have a reason to sell. The more you mail, the better the call back rate. We just got 2 phone calls last week from a mailing we did 14 months ago. The calls tend to come in over time. You won't get a 2% response rate the first week you send out mailers. Pick a group you can mail to for 8-12 months and just keep hitting them every week/month. Numbers tend to average themselves out over time, just give it enough time.

Here are the two options Id recommend:

1. Use 3-4 factors and expand your search radius to find 500-750 addresses for MF. Maybe high equity, owner occupied, last purchase date 5 years or older, and assessed value under X amount for that area. You won't get a killer response rate but you can keep mailing every month for 12 months. Let's say 1% call back rate off 6000 mailers sent over 12 months and you'd have 60 leads of possible sellers in the next year. :) you don't need many leads for multifamily to make it worth your time.

And/Or

2. This ones a lot of work but I could see getting a good call back rate for it. Combine driving for dollars, evictions, probate, inherited, code enforcement, etc and only hand pick the multi family ones. This list will take time to build but you will be left with a motivated list after you're done. Plus nobody will have your exact list.

I didn't mean for this email to be so long but I hope it helps. Send me a PM if you want to talk more shop.