All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

I have some tenants that are supposed to be out by August 1st. There are new tenants moving in on August 4th. I recently got a message from the current ones saying "we might not be able to be out until a week later". I sternly told them their lease was up then and there are already new tenants moving in on the 4th.

I don't think they will stay later but what should I do if they just take their time and move out late? There is obviously eviction but the costs don't seem to be worth it since they would already be moving out. Is there any other way I can force them out or something?

It seems like consistent "we buy houses" style radio ads could generate a lot of leads but I'm sure they are too pricey to be worth it, otherwise I would probably be hearing them already. Has anyone tried it?

I work for a couple investors. They brought be on to dig up deals for them. For every deal I bring to the table, I make 20% of the profits. Most of the time they will close on the deal and then sell it to someone else, occasionally they will rehab and sell it.

The trick is, I can't really do advertising or direct mail. I can send a limited number of letters, tops around 500-600 on month.

This means that I either drive for dollars (which is really expensive since I have an SUV) and call the owners of houses I find or pull lists from the tax records, look up each person's phone number individually, and call down the list. They really prefer calling people rather than sending letters.

I've been doing this for 6 months and have brought in 4 deals. They are telling me I should be doing at least a few a month.

At this point I'm getting pretty exhausted from it. The days I make calls I get told to "f*ck off" AT LEAST once. There are only so many days you can wake up and not hate your life as you willingly and continuously call people just to get b*tched at.

Driving for dollars is way more fun but I end up contacting only around 20 people a day tops and spend a ton of money doing it so it doesn't really pay out.

Am I doing the right thing working with these guys? I've learned a ton from them. They have shown me how to talk to sellers, how to analyze deals, etc. Should I just go off on my own now and do things my way and make more than 20% per deal? At this point I have no savings so I would have to get a job while I do this on the side and then leave once I have done enough deals.

*another note: they put me on a commission draw and I owe them around $3000 now. I have a deal closing at the end of the month though. Hopefully that could even it out a little :-/

Is there a way tag them on this to make sure they see it?

I've listened to all the podcasts, some of them multiple times. Its really awesome to hear the business models of the people you interview and how they started...but what about you guys?

Josh and Brandon - It would be awesome to hear a podcast about you guys where you explain everything you are doing yourselves and how your businesses are set up.

I'm sure biggerpockets takes up a lot of your time since it has become so popular. It would be interesting to hear how you balance it all.

Does anyone else agree?

What special agreements do you guys include on you purchase contracts?

I recently bought a duplex to live in one unit and rent out the other. The other unit was already rented when I purchased the property. I bought it in November the tenant's lease is up at the end of July, 2013. I just got a letter in the mail from the city saying I was in violation of lead based paint.

The building was built in 1911 and when I had the inspection for the original purchase nothing came up about lead paint although it was a general inspection, not a specialized lead paint inspection.

After receiving the letter I talked the tenants. She has multiple children and after receiving the results of one of their blood tests, one of the children had a 1.5 lead reading. From what I read 10 is when its high. The youngest child is 5 or 6 so he isn't at extreme risk (under 2 years old). After getting the results she didn't know if it was from their school or from home so she had a company come test the unit.

The letter says I have 14 days to get the unit in compliance with the city code.

From the previous owner I just received their lease and I don't think he had them sign the lead based paint disclosure. I guess I failed a little with my due diligence when buying the property.

Am I at serious risk here? I am obviously going to have a company come out as soon as possible. I am leaving in the morning for Florida and will be out of town for the next 11 days which is most of the deadline so it will be a little difficult to arrange the work to be done.

Any suggestions? And does anyone know the cost the fixing all this?

Haha no worries! We are all here to learn and ask questions.

As of now, when I have been making my own calls, I just look up their phone numbers on whitepages.com. Obviously with 10,000 though that will get extremely tedious.

I've looked up a service that pulls bulk records. From memory I think it would be about $250 for all 10k which could definitely be worth it. The only downfall I've found is that that list is much more filtered. I've found that a lot of people say they are on the 'Do Not Call' list yet their number is still somehow on whitepages.com. If they are on the DNC list their number wouldn't have come up from that service.

I've been toying with the idea of hiring a virtual assistant to look up numbers for me although I haven't made a decision yet.

Here's the voicemail I am considering:

"Hey, sorry I missed you. My name is Brian Porter. I am a real estate investor in St. Louis. I own a few rentals and do the occasional fix and flip. I'm calling about property you own. I wanted to see if you would consider selling. I'm looking for more properties to either take on as rentals or rehab. If you are interested in selling, I would love to speak with you about it. I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Thanks!"

I try to avoid sounding like a company that wants to come in and buy a ton of stuff. I think people are much more responsive if you sound like a casual person just looking for some rentals. It makes them feel like they aren't getting screwed over by a big company.

I have been looking for ways to streamline my marketing. In the past, I've been doing a mix of yellow letters and calling people. Although it sucks to do, calling people has been way more successful. Even if you end up leaving a message, I think prospects like hearing you are a real person, who you are, and what you are looking for. Its much better than an ornry looking letter. A lot of people are so skeptical (and almost afraid) when they call back from it.

I knew about the 'slydial' app where it allows you to skip the ring of someone's phone and just go straight to the voicemail. I started wondering if there was a way I could pre-record a message and then have a program put it on thousands of voicemails. After googling for a little bit I found a couple of services that can do this. I called them to find out more information. I told the guy I wanted to do around 3,000-5,000 voicemails a month. He said I could do their smallest package which would be 10,000 calls and just space it out over 2 or 3 months.

He said I would be able to upload the list and the voicemail then set up a 'job' within the account to have it send out around 1,000 a week and space them out. Its totally automated and I after setting it up I wouldn't even have to touch it. Since I'm used to saying what property I'm talking about in the voicemail so I would have to work pretty hard on wording it correctly but I'm sure after some serious thought I could figure something out.

It would cost $0.09/voicemail ($900 for all 10,000). Since from my experience voicemails are way better than yellow letters and yellow letters are much more work and cost about 6x more money I'm starting to think this sounds like a dream come true. Is there anything I should be on the look out for? I figured if this was really that amazing all of us would already be talking about it.

Here's the company - http://www.infolinkca.com/services/voice-casting.html

I looked at a few others but they would have really fake sounding voice automation.