All Forum Posts by: Bradley Smotherman

I am a seasoned single family investor that has an interest in parks, and put my first one under contract. Would you do this deal? 

Facts: 

24 space park, 6 park owned homes liveable, 7 more are not. 100% vacant. Population within 30 minutes is about 30k people. Rural Alabama.

Dirt roads, 10.8 acres. Separate metered utilities. 

I bought this for 60k, 10k down, $500/month at 0%.

Would you do this deal?

You can do this.

1. Have the ability to last, meaning pay your bills and more importantly your marketing.

2. Market like a madman. Starting in December we are cranking up to 40k mailers per month. 

3. Protect your dreams.

4. Find a mentor.

It was multiple cities, high equity list, both absentee and owner occupants.

The second round was the same list, I just had a much better grasp on the values in the area. Best of luck on your postcards! 

@Steve Bracero it wasn't fun for a looong time man. But now it's fun. And easy.

If you are really planning growth to scale then mail in house. The reason to do so is not necessarily to reduce cost but to be efficient. If some bad news hits a city (crime, company shutting down) we can have mail to them the next day, with the mail piece being relevant to that news story. 

It's quite an investment. We're buying a $93k printer to get more mail out the door, and this is nothing compared to the printers the big mail houses use. 

I rehab, and wholetail. Full time.

Hey guys.

First I apologize that I have not kept this thread up. I had intended to go through the numbers at length. 

Here is the grand total number of deals from this campaign. Zero. Yea I couldn't believe it either. I was too embarrassed to come back here and admit my failure. Who can't get one freaking deal out of probably 25k pieces of mail?

So what did I do? I got mad and sent out another 15k in mail. Doubled down. Either I was going to do this business or I was going to be on my death bed asking the doctor if he/she had a house they were hoping to sell. And the second round hit.

I can't remember how many deals I got but I remember that 15k in mail the second time returned over 175k in gross profit.

I think the main reason for my lack of success the first round is that I was mailing a city I knew very little about. Looking back I missed 300k in deals, easy, by not knowing neighborhoods and areas that were hot. I didn't know values. At all. Sometimes within 100k. I vividly remember someone asking me to buy their house at 85k and I passed. Two months later a similar house on the same street sold for 225. That hurts.

But I figured it out and I'm creating deals now. Actually my biggest problem is not deals but having enough money to handle all the deals I want. In June I bought 6. 

Keep mailing and the deals will come.

I noticed similar pricing when I was searching for absentee lists last night.

I am sure that investor appreciated it. As you are spending your work hours taking a small minority of his signs down, he is fielding calls and buying houses. Seems like a win/win to me.