All Forum Posts by: Allen Ayres

I will definitely get my title company to do one. Just wanted to do a preliminary one myself before I paid for one just in case I decide to cancel a contract due to something like a major lien or even an error on my part (such as repair estimate) that might make the deal undesirable to an investor.

I just got my first property under contract. My intention is to do a preliminary title search on my own just in case there is something that would obviously be a deal killer. I went to the courthouse and under the mortgage records for this property I found nothing. It was not mortgaged by the current owner because he paid all cash. The fact that I did not find anything under the mortgage records means there are no liens on the property correct? Would liens be found anywhere else?

I also looked under the conveyance records. I found the current owners deed that showed the Secretary of Veteran Affairs as the seller. It mentioned something under the person that signed for the secretary of veteran affairs about VA REO. This led me to believe that this was a property that had some kind of federal loan on it that got foreclosed on. Is this a reasonable assumption? I was trying to find the owner that had it before the Sec of VA, but I had no clue what name to look up. I tried to look up Sec. of VA and the representative that signed for the Sec of VA but had no luck. What else can I try to look up and would you consider this property clear enough to start marketing it to buyers?

I understand that I should use renovated comps but there are just not a ton of those to go by in some of the areas I am targeting. Most of these are low income rentals and they don't do full blown rehabs on them. That's part of the reason I'm having a hard time narrowing in on a arv. Mostly they fix whats broke and do a little cosmetic work. Also I understand that 5-10k figured was for repairs is low but that is strictly a number used to make an appointment and once I know more on repairs I can start coming down on that initial offer I made on the phone. So with little to no comparable fully renovated properties, how do I come up with an offer? To answer the question about my leads, I use listsource and pull a list of out of state Absentee owners.

I have sent out a bunch of yellow letters with a great response. So far I am getting a little over 13% response rate. The trouble I am having is with comps and making an initial offer over the phone. What I have been doing is checking out zillow and looking at solds in the area. From there I will take 70% of that and subtract my fee and a little in repairs ranging from 5-10k. This is just to give them an initial number for me to see if we are in the ball park and from there I can go look at the property and get a more locked in number. Am I handling this in the right way?

Also, when I look at comps a lot of the time I see a lot of really low numbers. This leads me to believe that this was investors buying these properties. I have actually checked this some by looking up the owners of some of the properties on the tax assessors website and some of these low comparable sales were to LLC's which would mean that it was in fact investors buying at these prices. If this is in fact investor prices, would I just take the comparable sold pricing and subtract my fee? or do I still need to take 70% minus fee and repairs?

I wanted to pass my mailing campaign by the forums and see what you think.

I got a list of out of state absentee owners that I will be sending yellow letters to.

I will send 75 a week for a total of 300 a month. I plan on sending this list 3 mailings spaced 4 weeks apart.

My wife will answer the initial call while I am at work and get the basic information. This will include all the information to pull comps as well as what they owe and how much they are asking. If those two numbers are too close, she will tell them that it appears they dont qualify to eliminate me having to call a dead lead without any equity. I will make a followup call on all possible deals after I pull comps.

This is my plan and I just want to see what you think. Also, does this sound like too few letters and when should I add a new list to the mix? Should I wait until I finish one campaign or do two simultaneously?