All Forum Posts by: Brandon Foken

So, after my 2nd mailing, I have a stack of about 20ish returned envelopes that were un-deliverable. What do you do with those leads? I want to find a way to research the name and find out their current address. I figure that if my mail got returned, then so did all of my competitor's mail. Is there a service that allows you to track these people down? Would love some suggestions!

I took this weekend to recharge my batteries. After about 3 straight weeks of 12+ hour days of work, investing and school I decided to take some time to rest. Had a great date with my girlfriend on Friday night, spent Saturday afternoon hiking around the East Bay and went out and ate some Oysters today in Tomales Bay - a very successful weekend. Now I'm back doing a few small tasks tonight and getting prepared for the busy week ahead.

I'll post a more detailed look later this week, but I received 12 phone calls from my 2nd mailer this week. I was still putting mail out during the week so this is an extremely encouraging result. After my first mailer, I received a total of 14 calls. In one week I've almost matched that mark! I'll be looking to break that record again this week. Not too much motivation yet, but I know that first one is out there somewhere!

I got a call about 2 hours ago from a lady who didn't want to sell her house that I had mentioned in the mailer, but had a 3-unit and a 5-unit property that she was looking to sell versus fixing up and re-renting. I'll be calling her back later today to schedule a time to go visit tomorrow. I can't thank @Michael Galloway enough for spending an hour on the phone with me today walking me through everything and answering about 1,000 questions!

And, thanks Dawn A., for the kind words and encouragement to keep posting my results.

The post office is a little far from where I live so I just take about 100-200 at a time down to the big, blue mailboxes and stuff 'em all in there. Never had a problem so far.

My favorite of all time comes from Wayne Gretzky. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." I find it applies to all walks of life.

It's been a while since I updated this thread so I thought I'd give a quick update. My first mailer didn't generate a lot of calls so I switched some things up in order to coax my response rate higher. I had three main changes:

1) Switched to 6x9 Manila envelopes
2) Hand writing all "To:" addresses
3) Shorter letter with a stronger call to action

I dropped roughly 125 letters in the mail early Saturday morning before I headed up to Tahoe for some skiing. If anyone was watching at 4:30 in the morning, it probably would've been real weird to see someone in ski gear dropping off 100+ envelopes. So far, I've received two phone calls from my early morning mail-drop - I'll be making a verbal offer tonight at 7pm on one of them. I have been putting about a 100 letters in the mail every day since Saturday and that will continue until all 960+ letters are in the mail.

I have mailed about 75 probate leads and have yet to get a response from one of those. I'm not sure if I'm mailing them too early or if my messaging isn't working but I'll continue to tweak and modify my efforts there.

In addition, I hired a lady off of oDesk to do my SEO work for my webpage. I tried understanding the basics of SEO and implementing changes but I quickly saw that it was a beast that I didn't want to handle/spend many hours researching, learning, implementing and troubleshooting. So now I pay someone $4.44/hr. to do this work for me instead. Couldn't be happier with that decision.

One thing that has helped me early in the game is my website/blog. I've had a few BPers reach out to me because of my posts, received some leads and had other investors reach out to me to network. I started this blog at my girlfriend's incessant advice, but it has turned out to be a fruitful endeavor and something I actually like doing. I'll be meeting up with another investor tomorrow morning that found me via my blog.

Finally, my next "project" will be to work on a newsletter and an offer to entice people to signup. I plan on using aweber for this after reading the reviews between them and MailChimp. Hopefully this momentum can continue and I can get my first property under contract from this 2nd mailing!

Great idea, Brian P! I was just re-listening to Brian Burke's podcast and he was in law enforcement before he went full-time into REI. Said he got about 25 people together (colleagues) when he was leaving and put together a $.5M fund. If any cops come knocking my way, I'll be asking them about real estate.

Karen Margrave, I haven't got a chance to really dig into it yet, but I've skimmed a few chapters. My initial review is that it's a lot like the Unofficial Guide - chock full of great information but at a high level. I wish the guide was out about 6 months earlier! I had to piece together all that information from a variety of sources so a "Master Guidebook" so to speak would have been an amazing resource for me. If anyone wants to understand the basics of REI, I'll be pointing them to BP's guide.

There are three things I really like about the guide BP put out:

1 - It's easy to read and well structured. I read SEOmoz's intro to SEO and it is structured the same way. I think it's a great way to present info. on the web.

2 - It's updated. I don't think there is a resource available that is comprised of information that is this timely.

3 - The links to more in-depth resources - blog posts and the forums. I really believe this is the best part of the entire guide - being able to dig into a specific subject that interests you or you need to learn more about, all within the BP universe. Hopefully someone will take a periodic look at the guide and update/add/remove links so it's always up-to-date. I'll be going through the guide and bookmarking all the articles and posts that I need/want to get more information on.

Overall, it's great job and I think Josh and team did exactly what they set out to do - create a definitive guide to all beginning real estate investors.

Brandon Turner did a great review of the book a few months back: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2012/12/23/book-review-unofficial-guide-to-real-estate-investing/.

I bought the book upon the recommendation of multiple people. I think it is a good read, but very high-level information. You won't get a lot of details but you will get a lot of good ideas and I think as a first read you can't get much better. Sets the right expectations/mindset needed going forward - basically, there is nothing easy, no shortcuts and a strategic plan is essential to your success.

I read the book after reading a lot of blogs, BP and a couple of other books (Millionaire Real Estate Investor) so I didn't find it particularly useful. If you are going to read it, read that book first. Then pick up more specialized/in-depth books on the particular topics you want to dive into more. Hope that helps.

Interesting question, Gary. I just started mailing to probates (1 letter sent) and just stuffed my 2nd mailer earlier this week. For my first letter, I included my business card and in the letter I invited them to email or check out our website if they didn't want to call. My second letter also includes my email/website. I didn't get any responses from my first letter (54 sent).

I would be interested to hear if there is any appreciable difference between including your website & email vs. only a phone number. Maybe someone like Sharon Vornholt or Rick Harmon will chime in.