All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Pat S.    - Great to hear you are making the move soon. I would love to meet up with you both of guys sometime!

@Barbara Long 

The purchase price was $41,000

Estimated Rehab: $15,000

Estimated ARV: $80-85,000

Thanks everyone. I will definitely keep you posted on my results.

@Jay Hinrichs - the market is small county just west of Asheville NC. It is in the mountains of Western NC, and a popular tourist destination. Many of the absentee owned homes are vacation homes, so I am not sure what the response rate will be. I will find out soon enough I guess!

Here is another small update. We are close to getting it done and listed. Hopefully within a week or so after a few paint touch ups and final touches. The weather has made finishing the outside more difficult than it should be, but such is life...

I am in the same boat. I am trying to come up with as many ideas for direct write offs as possible. A lot of things I need would are depreciation items that wouldn't give me the bang for the buck I need. 

One thing I plan on doing is pre-buying a lot of direct mail to get me through a good chunk of 2015. 

I have also been spending some money on revamping my web site and plan to spend a little on SEO as well.

Any other ideas?

So I have gone several months now in my home market without finding a decent deal to fix and flip, and I finally decided enough is enough. I have read so many stories here of folks who have successfully implemented direct mail to build their business, and I have decided it is time to join their ranks. Today I put my order in for 550 yellow letters using Michael Quarrles' yellowletters.com.

The list I generated had about 1100 names, so I decide to break it in half and target the first 550 for the next 5-6 months with a monthly mailing. The list included absentee owner, in  and out of state, 10+ years of ownership with values under $200,000.

I am nervous and excited about what comes next. I'm not one to love talking on the phone or negotiating, but it is time to overcome that and take the bull by the horns.

The point of this thread is to keep me accountable and to hopefully document some success stories along the way. I am also hoping to get input from people who have been down this path who can share their wisdom.

So, here we go...

Or I wonder if it may be that the call volume is so high they just can't keep up? Who knows, but it really is pointless to go through the trouble and expense of a direct mail campaign and then not diligently follow up.

Congratulations Ryan! You took action and were rewarded. Keep up the good work!

@J Scott 

I totally agree that seasoned, savvy flippers can weather market cycles. What I was saying in my earlier post was I don't particularly like rentals, but I feel they are the best place to put the returns I earn on flips so I can weather the market cycles. You are right in that you have to make the money when things are good, but it is important to use that money to put systems in place that allow you to survive the bad times. 

I am definitely not bad mouthing flipping. It is my favorite part of real estate investing, and I truly have a passion for it.

I say that because they can easily crash and burn if they are caught holding inventory when the market turns down. I am living in a house that was supposed to be a flip because it was bought in 04 and by the time I was ready to sell in 07 (wanted to live in it for 3 years to avoid the capital gains tax) the value had dropped over $100k. I would have lost some serious money had it not been my primary residence. As such, I just continue to live there until the value up enough to sell.

Jumping in AFTER the market has crashed makes things much easier. At that point, you are buying stuff dirt cheap and adding value.

Don't get me wrong, I love flipping! I am just very cautious because I saw a lot of things go really bad for a lot of people during the crash.