All Forum Posts by: Mary Sue Glaspie

LOL that was so cute. I feel your pain. After having written 100 long letters over a week's period I wanted to die. Tonight I put on Sean Terry and wrote out 100 short version in less than 2 hours. I have a bunch of stamps to blow so what the heck right?! Next week I'll order from yellowletters.com and we'll see what works LOL I think I already know the answer but whatever I wasn't doing anything anyways.

What does your bird dog do for you? If its just snapping a pic then no they don't need to be at closing.

Checks aren't handed out at closing here anyways so there's no point to anyone being at closing except the parties signing. The settlement statement shows how money is dispersed so if the BD is getting paid from escrow then show them the statement. My title company can add the email of all parties involved so everyone can stay on top of their role in the process.

You could always write up a contract with them that's separate from the transaction if they're really that paranoid.

I started with reading EVERYTHING I could here on BP. I had so much trouble finding a real walk thru of how to do the deal. How to write the contract. Then I found out about Sean Terry Holy Moly I became a Sean Terry junkie. I couldn't go a day without listening to him.
I refused to shell out any money for a real yellow letter campaign like he suggests. (I'm cheap and I believe in starting from the bottom no $$$) I wrote and wrote letters till my hand cramped. I called FSBO's on craigslist and went on appointments and made offers that were refused. I TOLD everyone I knew I buy houses.
I went to meetings and had a handful of real CASH buying investors but still no deal.
My hubby had no idea what I do. In fact no one but my investors seem to know exactly what a wholesaler is. That's OK because guess what less than 2 months after making my first offer following Sean's directions with HIS contract I finally have my first closing Monday!
Yes there was some luck involved but even though my hubby had no idea what I planned on doing he still handed me a little yellow post it with an address on it and said here call this guy. (yes he didn't even put the # on it! but he will next time)
So yes you can pay for Sean Terry's system but you don't need too. He gives so much of it away for free! So Sean Terry Thank You very much! I only planned on making $2,000 on my first deal just to get my mailing campaign going and now I have nearly $7,000 to spend on yellow letters, (Well that and a new Louis Vuitton Wallet:))

Thank you BP too:)

A couple of my investors would prefer I use their contract for the deal and I be paid as an independant contractor. Which is fine if I only plan to sell it to them. However I wouldn't want to make my client sign 3 or more different contracts just so I can sell it to the one that wants it the most and pay me more. Assignments double closing etc aren't common in our area. So I was wondering if anyone has the seller sign contracts with the buyers name to be filled in at a later date. The sellers probably don't care if they're motivated enough but I wouldn't want that to be deemed illegal.

Mark Pedroza I recently cremated my dog in Pleasant Grove. I had no idea it Existed! I thought he meant the street in roseville. Turns out its 15 mins from me, so the same distance:) and the cheapest place for what I needed. Thanks for the tip I'll add Sutter county to my notes. Do you go to the court house at all or just rely on lists?

K. Marie Poe They really do make it difficult to get correct info. Although most public officials can still be found with enough digging so they're just making it more difficult for the stalkers. They really should just make you register and give all your info so cops can find you if you're a bad guy.
I was looking at a few properties in Washington and EVERYTHING was right there on the tax assessor site easy peazzy. I got the info I wanted in half the time and on one site. My title guy is setting me up an investor account so I'm hoping its going to be much easier from now on. He's willing to sit down with me and show me how it works so its definetly something I recommend newbies do too. Go to a meeting, find an investor, find a title rep and make nice. I was going to sign up for a property shark acct but I'm going to try this first. I figure if title reps and investors are using it its probably good enough if not better. Property shark seems to have better info for sac county but the placer info is really confusing.

Thanks Mark Pedroza I put you in my phone. I just read some of Rick's posts and I thought it was much more complicated. The gurus must be doing their job correctly. LOL I think I'll extend into probate faster than I thought since it's the same as any other deal just some extra paperwork that I don't have to do, they just have to have.

Sharon Vornholt have you posted an example of your "white letter" I haven't seen any examples of what to send. You said in the podcast that it was more professional. Did you mean "sorry for your loss" or "I'm looking to acquire a property in the X area" Doesn't have to be exact. I know you said typed instead of handwritten.

The things that work still blow my mind. Somebody sent a yellow letter when we stopped paying our mortgage to renegotiate our ARM. Too bad I don't remember anything about it except wow what a cool font that looks like it's handwritten but obviously isn't.
We get postcards from the local RE agent and I never understood why she mailed out postcards saying how much our neighbors house sold for till now. I get it but seems like a total waste of money even in a numbers game. It's like you said, that it shows what she did, not what she can do for me. It doesn't say why a house selling for X is important to me.

I see what you mean. When I made my personal email 12 years ago I wasn't sure how safe it was to put all that kind of info out there. So "fake" info seemed safer; redlady@hotmail meant- first name: red- last name: lady. Safer than mary sue glaspie, even now I have a professional persona. Email, Facebook etc are all different for business versus personal dealings. My current professional email is my married name so those feelings aren't the same any more but I thought maybe older people thought the same way.

Thanks Mark Pedroza:) Do you go to any REIA meetings? Is Probate your niche and how many do you tend to close in a month? What holds up a close the most? Is it the family or the paperwork/rules/legal side?

One of the reasons I was trying to be more detailed other than cash for your house is I'm trying to stay away from sounding like a scam. Whenever I've seen bandit signs or cash for your house it always sounds like there's a scheme involved. No one I know buys houses like that and after the bubble burst there were so many con artists so I've always assumed thats what that kind of thing was. Now that I know it's not the case entirely I want to stand out to more than just "sell your house". I want to be a solution. I don't know if that makes sense.

When one of my friends went through a divorce last year they believed their only option was to sell the house the traditional way so she lost out on two short sale opportunities because it was taking so long to get her house sold. If I had known my investor at the time it could have been done in a week and they wouldn't have had to do any work to the house and the end result would have been the same.

One of the first things my husband said when I was talking to our CPA was "is that even legal". So I'm wanting to take away the stigma I guess.

Well I'm still new so I managed to delete my whole post but recover it in word However it wouldn't keep the @name stuff. Mark Pedroza Bill Gulley Rick Harmon Gary Parker K. Marie Poe Sharon Vornholt

Oh and K. Marie I was going for: this is how I can help you rather then what you need to worry or do about it. So I'll try editing that out. Sounds like it'd be best to have a small door hanger that says You can sell your house for cash, fast No costs blah blah.
Thanks again!

Thanks @Mark Pedroza that will be really helpful for when I start mailing my letters. It's better than what I was writing up now. I'm hoping to keep it nice and easy at the moment. Hopefully nothing probate will come up for a little while. I'm sure they're motivated but I want straight forward for my first deal or so. Thanks!

Gary Parker I'm not targeting anyone in particular at the moment. Maybe that's a problem? For door knocking who do you think I should target? I was just trying to keep it general so that when they picked up the flyer maybe one of the things would jump out to them.

Sharon Vornholt what did you mean by "fake" information? I'm keeping everything in excel for now. A squeeze page is next on my list. I've heard of some software that wholesalers use so it's on my list for the future. I'm different than most business owners in the sense that even if I have the money to throw at the problem I prefer to start my biz from zero and go one step at a time. I value it more when I know and understand all aspects of my business. I would prefer to start with door knocking/cold calling and move up to DM as that is easiest to out source. I can easily pay my daughter to write letters while I'm knocking on doors.

Bill Gulley do you find driving for dollars as being a better idea? I don't mind spending $80 for 1000 leads with equity built in that can sell rather than finding a messy no equity subject to that my investors aren't interested in and I'm not ready to handle at the moment. My plan which I don't think I must have explained. I'm building a list of leads from list source. I was at 3000 and now I'm down to 1000 so it's not down to the min 600 but I'm fine with it being that amount. Now I'm wanting to get my flyer set up so I have something to leave if they're not home. Then I can follow up with a letter and a phone call.

My title co and my investors have both said they can close in as little as 3 days so I was going with that. Should I just stick to "fast closing on your timeline"?

Rick Harmon thank you, you understood me completely. When I started the thread my list was equity based at over 3000 names and before my rep changed the pricing point so it was $400 or so. I narrowed it down so I could figure how much equity my investors and I need to turn a great profit. Fortunately I don't have a pitch LOL that was the flyer. I was mostly thinking it was a way for people that hadn't thought about selling to create a convo.

So skip nearly everything and say I want to buy your house. You can sell it in any condition. No costs to you, quickly and on your time line.