All Forum Posts by: Braden C.

@Noah P Bonds I'd be looking for off-market deals if listed properties are that hot, @Joseph Gozlan gave you some great ways to find them. 

I will give you the fastest and easiest way to find buyers, in fact they're going to find you, FIND GOOD DEALS!!! It doesn't matter if you find a good deal on a house, condo, trailer, land, etc., all that matters is that it's a good deal and an investor can make money. If you advertise a REAL wholesale deal, not one that's tight on the numbers with an overinflated ARV but a REAL wholesale deal, you'll have no problem finding buyers and building a list.

@Adonis Hernandez It's a very gray area but I can almost assure you that the argument of FREC would be you're connecting a buyer and a seller and collecting a fee for doing so, AKA brokering real estate, even if you aren't "advertising" the property. A good attorney might be able to argue in your favor but that's going to cost WAYYYYY more money than a RE license. 

Again, I've never seen or heard of it being enforced in Florida and I'd say there's a very very good chance it will never be an issue for you not to have the license. I personally look at the risk vs. reward and having the license is a no-brainer for me, but not for everyone else. 

@Adonis Hernandez This is something discussed pretty often on BP so be prepared for a lot of different opinions. The short answer is yes, it's considered brokering without a license, I have this in writing from FREC. If you don't own the property you legally can't advertise to sell it, even with what some consider "equitable interest" by having a contract to purchase the property. That being said, it's not something that I have personally ever seen enforced. It will likely be enforced one day, and they will make an example out of that person. 

To avoid any issues, just get your license and disclose to potential sellers that you're a licensed real estate agent but not acting on their behalf. You'll not only be doing things legally, but you'll probably earn quite a bit of extra money each year just by helping friends/family when they purchase or sell real estate.  

Would any experienced wholesalers who are doing at least 30+ deals a year be interested in a weekly or bi-weekly mastermind group? At the end of 2018 Biggerpockets created mastermind groups if you purchased a daily intention journal. My group fizzled out pretty quickly because we all specialized in different areas and half the group was full-time and half was part-time, but I loved the idea of it. I'd like to get a group of 3-5 like-minded individuals from different parts of the country to share ideas, strategies, successes/failures, hold each other accountable, etc. 

Let me know if you're interested. 

The money is likely being held by the CC company while they investigate the chargeback. PM needs to provide proof that the charges are legitimate.

Has the tenant given any indication that they aren't happy or they want something repaired? Just seems odd that a tenant who was professionally screened would just randomly try to steal $4k. 

After eight years as a member, I still find a lot of value in the forums and way more value in the overall site. That being said, the forums have evolved and aren't what they once were and probably never will be again. 

On the business podcast with J and Carol Scott, Josh Dorkin (BP founder) was the guest on their first show. One of the many things he said that stood out to me was why he created BP. He said he wanted to create a community where there are no stupid questions and nobody would be selling their product/service in the threads. Those two core values have either been forgotten or the business has just simply grown so much that they're no longer important to the site owners, management, and moderators.. 

The once small community is now a very large community and with that comes change. If you're looking for the original forums, you won't find them here, but that doesn't mean you can't find something else equally as good or better. 

How long did it take for you to call her back? It could be that she called another investor in between and they got the deal. Most of us can't answer 100% of the calls that come in, but it's important to try. 

I agree with @Ellis San Jose, if she's local you should stop by her house and knock on the door. 

Originally posted by @Jerryll Noorden:

Originally posted by @Braden C.:

@Jen Senecal It really depends on your market. In my market, a professional letter has always outperformed postcards and yellow letters. I know other investors around the country who say the exact opposite. We spend five figures a month on mail and we're always testing to see what's working best. Your market might be different than mine so it's best to test different types of mail and see which one works best for you. Postcards are tempting because they're less expensive but you might end up having to send a lot more out in order to get a deal. 

it does NOT depend on your market. It does NOT depend on the color of your card, nor on the letter being hand written.

Sooooo many get this wrong. Often they even back this up with claims of research and data... The problem is that people see in data what they WANT to see. 

Look, some people trust a hand written letter... some find that amateur and shady. (you claim you can buy my house in cash but you can't even afford a damn printer and some clean white printer paper? Are you not even TRYING to come across as a professional if you want to have me believe you are capable of buying my house?)... right? 

Hit or miss!

So if you claim it depends on your market...

I find it laughable that somehow the majority of folks that psychologically prefer hand written letters ended up living in the same area and the other people that like post cards better, ended up living in an other area... doesn't make much sense right?

So here is a basic refresher on effective marketing...

ANY marketing's success is based on just 3 things.

1. How well does your message resonates with your ideal audience
2. How credible are you to your ideal audience
3. And how efficiently can you have your message be seen by as many of your perfect prospects as possible.

This makes sense so far right?

OK so... you can already see that whether the mailer is handwritten or a post card, doesn't fit in any of these 3 points. So it has nothing to do with that.

Now, lets look at 1).

How well your message resonates... doesn't have much to do with your market or whether you use post cards or a letter right? Sure, if you are in a state where pre-foreclosures are in abundance,  you need to tweak your message to fit their pain point. But this is not really market dependent, this is message resonance dependent! It is not about the location  it is about making sure you hit your traffics pain point!

Now point 2)

How credible do your ideal audience see you as? Well it is pretty much unheard of to the normal public for people to have 300 houses. It is not normal for the general public for people to buy a house in all cash. You sending them some postcard or hand written letter, inherently is not very credible. PERIOD. So now you will say.. "yeah but monkey butt, I have made countless of deals with DMM so you are full of poop". .. to which I will say.. yeah but hold on seabuscuit.. not so fast. You can't just look at how many deals you have made... you need to look at the amount of letters/postcards you sent VS. the amount of deals you made. If you have sent 100d's of thousands of mailers and you just made 300 deals... those are HORRIBLE numbers by any standard (except  for the DMM standards, which again proves my point). Why is it absolutely not OK for anything else to have these low numbers but for some reason it is acceptable for Real Estate Investing?! It makes ZERO sense.

Now look at point 3):

How can you have,... not just your ideal prospect... but ALSO as many of them as possible see your message? Definitely not through lists, or mailers.

Why not?

Well 1) 

Lists are NOT your ideal prospects. These are just people filtered by the illusion of wrongfully assuming that the filtering of a general list separates motivation from non motivation. And that is ABSOLUTELY not the case. Think about it. Not because someone has 2 houses means they are more likely to sell one... AND for below market value right? How about them having 3 houses? What about 300 houses? Don't you agree that if someone has 15 houses .. they have ENOUGH money to buy 15 houses? Don't you agree that if someone has 15 houses they actually WANTED 15 houses? Why would you assume they would sell one and for below market value?

"Ohh but I am filtering the list by more than just 1 filter". Well it doesn't matter how many filters you use, you are playing with calculated luck. Yes it is still luck!

and 2)

With a DMM open rate at 0.5% to 3% (this 0.5% to 3%, INCLUDES all the people that yell at you to friggin "REMOVE ME FROM YOUR GAADAMN LIST"), you are obviously not reaching as many of your ideal traffic as possible. 0.5%?! Really?? 

No no, the best thing you can do is SEO, PPC and facebook ads. These 3 methods satisfy all the 3 criteria mentioned above.

Now comes time for proof:

Look Jen, before you decide on anything...

Have you done your Cost/Deal Calculations? if no? STOP! 

You don't make a decision based on "other people's " experience. That is the unwisest thing you can ever do. You need to look at actual data.

Want to do DMM? FINE do it,  want to do Yellow letters? DO IT Fine.

BUT before you actually do it find out what the actual numbers look like. Ask your local investors that just do yellow letters how much they spend on marketing before they land a deal.

Ask those that do postcards how much THEY spend before they land a deal. 

Cost/lead is the dumbest thing ever invented. Forget cost/lead. It tells you absolutely nothing! Cost/ deal is the ONLY thing that matters.

Now when you do a bit of actual research you will come to find that you are way better off, changing your entire marketing choices.

Good luck!

I am a big believer that when my competition zigs we need to zag. If I have four other competitors in my market who send DM and they all use yellow letters, I am going to be different. So yes, it does depend on your market or more specifically the competition in your market. 

I know you absolutely detest DM, you make it very clear daily with your posts and infamous screen shots. I also know that for every $1 I spend on DM I make $7 from the deals we get, that works just fine for me. 

"You can't just look at how many deals you have made... you need to look at the amount of letters/postcards you sent VS. the amount of deals you made. If you have sent 100d's of thousands of mailers and you just made 300 deals... those are HORRIBLE numbers by any standard (except for the DMM standards, which again proves my point). Why is it absolutely not OK for anything else to have these low numbers but for some reason it is acceptable for Real Estate Investing?! It makes ZERO sense." 

To this point you made, you say sending out hundreds of thousands of letters to acquire 300 deals are HORRIBLE numbers, let's look at the HORRIBLE numbers. I'll even make it worse for you, let's say you send out a million pieces of mail to acquire 300 deals. A million letters would cost around $680,000, meaning you would need to profit a whopping $2,266.67 per deal just to break even. Let's go with a very conservative $10,000 of profit on average per deal though, $3,000,000 in revenue, $680,000 in expenses, $2,320,000 in profit. Yep, you're right, HORRIBLE. 

Nobody should ONLY do DM, or ONLY do online marketing, that would be silly. If you can do both and have a positive ROI on both, that would be a lot less silly.

You're a great marketer for your product Jerryll and I don't disagree with you at all about the importance of SEO. You have one of the best websites I have seen for an investor, actually it's the best. We can just agree to disagree about DM and maybe become best friends? 

@Eric Kordenbrock If you're getting a lot of calls from investors who have already, or are currently, adding value to the property, consider adding a filter for length of ownership and select 2+ years. Most flippers would be done and sold which is going to leave you with landlords but given the current pandemic situation, that won't be a bad thing at all. As @Jake Fugman rightfully pointed out, plan on spending at least $2k a month for 3-6 months to gain real traction.