All Forum Posts by: Billy Rogers

Jj W,

First off I want to say that Mark is definitely a salesman and has a product to sell that in my opinion is a little over hyped - ok maybe a lot I don't know.   

He charges money to be a part of his facebook group and it seems like mostly other beginners answering the questions posted.  I didn't see Mark answering any of the questions and quit the group before the free trial period was over.  

• 1.For my first campaign I spent $20 for a list from AgentPro247 and got one deal after sending out 70 letters.I think postage was about $50 and I bought a property assessed for $5k for $425.Sure it cost some money but It was a lot less than it cost me to buy rental property and no where near the level of fear I have when buying rentals because the amounts are smaller.
• 2.Amortization – well this is flipping, you could make the same argument with flipping houses (something that I don’t have the courage to do). You can sell with owner financing and increase your profits that way.
• 3.True, it’s not completely passive, you do have to send out mail and do some research and communicate with buyers and sellers.Probably not as much work as flipping houses though.
• 4.Competition – yes, but much less than in SFR.I get tons of postcards from people trying to buy my rentals.So far no one has told me they have other offers on their land
• 5.Risk- yes, but you can start with small properties until you are more comfortable and experienced.On my first mailing I limited the mail to properties under 13k in value.
• 6.High Volume – you can or you could do fewer high dollar deals its up to you
• 7.No Tax benefits – you are right this is flipping not investing.The same can be said for flipping houses or wholesaling.
• 8.I don't have any idea if this is the best model……Actually for me the best income model would be to have enough money to put it all in a index or REIT fund and just live off the dividends.

There's nothing magical about it.  It involves work, time ( a lot at first) and some risk just like anything.  No it's not nearly as easy as Jack Bosch and Mark make it out to be and it's not for everyone, but it's also not a scam.  It is possible to make money doing this, just like it's possible to make money flipping houses, wholesaling or anything else.  It's just one possible way of making some extra money.

  I have to admit I was pretty pessimistic on my first mailing and in the back of my mind did have a lot of doubts, but I took action anyway.

I am curious, have you sent out any mailings and just tried it a couple of times? 

I spoke with a seller today who has stopped paying taxes on 5 acres of rural land.  she lives out of state.   She told me that she bought the land from a lady and her sister owned the title company where they closed the deal.   Later she found out that the deed that the seller singed had the parcel number off by 1 digit.   When she tried to get the lady to sign a corrected deed she demanded $5,000.    Finally the buy agreed to pay her the 5k and when they showed up at the title office the seller demanded 10k.   the buy said no and walked away.  She said she's talked to the county and they say she owns the land, but she can't sell it or get a mortgage to build on it because of the title issue.

She said she talked to another title company and they said they have to correct a lot of deeds from this particular title company.   She said she thinks its a scam.   She called the sheriff and they won't get involved.  

It's probably just something I should pass on, but I wanted to hear what others thought.

I spoke with a seller today who has stopped paying taxes on 5 acres of rural land.  She lives out of state.   She told me that she bought the land from a lady and the lady's sister owned the title company where they closed the deal (red flag- remember to never do this - also shows how title ins isn't as great as people think).   Later she found out that the deed that the seller singed had the parcel number off by 1 digit.   When she tried to get the lady to sign a corrected deed she demanded $5,000.    Finally the buy agreed to pay her the 5k and when they showed up at the title office the seller demanded 10k.   The buyer said no and walked away.  She said she's talked to the county and they say she owns the land, but she can't sell it or get a mortgage to build on it because of the title issue.

She said she talked to another title company and they said they have to correct a lot of deeds from this particular title company.   She said she thinks its a scam.   She called the sheriff and they won't get involved.  

It's probably just something I should pass on, but I wanted to hear what others thought.

Thanks Josh and Karl.   As it turns out she can't get all the sibling to agree to sell.   

What is involved in purchasing property from an estate?  I just got a voicemail about a piece of land that is owned by an Estate.  I've never purchased from one before.

Anthony,

I use Microsoft Excel and Access.  Access makes it really easy to query the data and is faster than Excel.  My last list had the taxes on four lines for four different taxing entities and repeated for each year.  It was easy to total them up with an Access query.

 As far as screen scraping I don't know.   I did just buy a list from a county with very specific instructions to include the property address and lot size and they left it off.  Also, It was delivered in a terrible format and I received no response from them when I pointed out the missing data - all that for $100.   It didn't stop me form sending out a mailing though.  

I may have to look into a screen scraping tool in the future when stuff like this happens again.  

My handy dandy girlfriend found it in two minutes on her phone

YAY!!!

http://www.zipcodestogo.com/Texas/

I had an idea.  What I need is a Zip code to County table.  That way the county could easily be matched up to the zip code and then I could filter out the surrounding counties.    

Just did a quick search on Zip Code to County table and it looks like there's a company that actually sells this data, but I think I'll keep looking to see if I can find it for free somewhere.

A lot of people recommend marketing to out of state owners which is something I'm doing.  However I live in Texas and you can drive over 800 miles and still be in the state.   This makes me think that there may be some potential in marketing to owners that are a good distance from the property but still in state.  

I have Microsoft Access and Excel and am proficient in both.  I don't know of a way to build a query or filter the list based on distance.  Does anyone know of a way to do this.  Say all owners more than 150 miles from the county the property is in?  I'm currently only targeting properties one county.

@Chris S.    You posted a quote and somehow mangled the responses to make it look like the quote is from me.     This isn't anything that I said.   I'm sure it was accidental, but this quote is NOT from me. 

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Originally posted by @Ken Badziak:

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