All Forum Posts by: Brandon Foken

Thanks for the kind words Mike Tooley. If you are going to print them out, make sure your printer can handle the "thinness" of the yellow paper. Most paper is 20lb. but yellow letters usually are 15-16lbs. and not every printer can handle that.

Also, I've received all my fonts from www.dafont.com. Good luck to you!

Yo, Benjamin Shapero. I've seen some threads on this in the past and I think you need to disclose you are a licensee (with DRE #)at some point in the letter. If you hung your license somewhere, I could see some benefit of being able to either give them a cash offer or have the ability to list their property as well. However, I'm not sure how all this plays out since you aren't currently using your license. Maybe call a smaller brokerage or two to get an idea? I'm not positive either way.

I'm currently enrolled at a Community College (CCSF) taking classes to prepare for my real estate licensee test so I wanted to chime in on the discussion. I really think the value of live classes is the teacher. The two classes I'm pysically taking (vs. online) are Legal Aspects of Real Estate and Basics of Real Estate Appraisals.

The law class was taught by a gentleman who is both a broker and RE lawyer with 40 years of experience. It was a great class as we'd read the book to get the concepts down and the class was filled with real life case examples both from his own work and important cases across the state.

My appraisals class is also taught by a gentleman who has been a residential appraiser for 40 years and commercial for the last 25 years or so. Same thing, lots of real world examples are shown in class.

So, while yes, I am really only gaining theory from these classes there are a lot of real world experiences shown that bridge the gap between theory and practice. I really think that - and this is no big secret - that your instructor makes all the difference in these community college classes. Another aspect of physically going to class is that you meet other people in similar situations that can be a good network for you. I'd say check one out, they are usually not very expensive (CCSF is $44/credit).

I did write a blog post about creating yellow letters, Anthony P. It can be found here: http://www.adventuresinbayarearealestate.com/2013/02/04/how-to-guide-yellow-letters/

Mods - feel free to delete if this breaks ToS.

Thanks Ken P. and everyone else who replied. After doing some more digging, I think the ARV could get up to about $350k, but there are still a lot of unknowns regarding the illegal addition and height of the ceilings in the basement. 7 feet is the minimum here in CA and those ceilings were right at 7 feet with bare concrete. Finally, this would be a project that I would not handle alone for my first flip. The plan was to partner with someone more experienced or wholesale it.

Regardless, looks like this is a dead deal unless the seller can be more realistic about the work required here.

Anthony P, sorry I missed your question. I didn't develop any software to work with yellow letters. Just a lot of trial and error to get everything lined up properly. Let me know if I misunderstood your question.

Hmmmmm....maybe I'm not doing something right because so far I've sent 2,504 (since mid-January) mailers out and have yet to get a deal under contract. I think that while, yes, it is possible to find $5k in the 30 days from mailers - it sure isn't probable.

As I've heard many people that specialize in direct mail (Sharon Vornholt & Jerry Puckett) say, it's the repeated, systematic mailings that get the highest responses, not the one-and-done mailer approach. So while I don't have a deal yet, mailing #4 is next and I'm hoping that is where things finally start to pop for me. At least I hope so because the marketing funds are starting to get a little tight.

Brandon Turner, sorry it took me a few days to respond. My response rate has been all over the place, but I attribute that to testing out different mailers, envelopes, styles, etc. for each of my 3 mail drops. I've gone on a few appointments to look at houses, but haven't been able to come to an agreement mainly due to there not being enough motivation to sell. I'm trying a second Listsource list that should hopefully go out next week that should have a better response rate. This time I'll be targeting absentee owners that live out-of-state rather than in-state as I'm hoping the headache of managing an investment property gets larger the further you are away.

I didn't have Kyle's experience where I needed to use PayPal in order to pay online, I was able to use my Master Card. I don't think I have a premium account. Anyways, the leads were $.18 each for the standard output. Hope that helps. Best of luck on your mailings!

Not sure why my link didn't work. It shows up correctly in the preview pane. Anyways, here is the link:

https://plus.google.com/photos/103594440291904645406/albums/5868319475355940929

I went and saw a house in Oakland, CA today. I had found this lead via my direct mail campaign (absentee owners). The gentleman I was dealing with had inherited this house from his aunt about 3 1/2 to 4 years ago. It has been vacant the entire time and suffered damage from a fire that was started on the driveway by a disgruntled family member. In addition, he was doing a little cleanup work around the house to try and keep away the riff-raff that knows the house is vacant. In addition, I've also uploaded the pictures I took and they can be found here.

My exit strategy is to either a) wholesale or b) partner on a flip. A lot of rentals are in this area so more than likely I would end up wholesaling to a long-term investor. I’m not at the point in my investing career where I’m looking to acquire long-term holds.

Okay, now let’s take a look at my numbers:

ARV - $300k – 310k
Repairs - $80,000 (roughly – I need a lot more experience in this regard)
Fixed Costs - $40,000 (trying to be ultra-conservative)
Profit - $25,000 ($5,000 for me; $20,000 for flipper)
Offer - $157,500

He said he wanted to think over that offer as it was less than he was hoping for ($175k). It also didn't help that two people stopped by while we were outside asking if he was looking to sell. He told me he’d give me a call in a day or so to let me know what he is going to do. Finally, I asked about the possibility of seller financing since the house is free and clear but that was quickly shot down due to the man’s wife being a banker at Wells Fargo – she just doesn’t want to be a lender.

What does the BP community think? Was my offer solid? Would you have gone lower? Or higher even? Any feedback/advice is greatly appreciated.