All Forum Posts by: Chris Armstrong

Just a follow up to this thread. I sent out 31 letters that were all hand written without any fancy titles or anything like that. Well.. it reached a gentlemen who owned 13 properties in a town near me and he 100% owns them outright. Now I am in the process of buying several of them via seller finance (one duplex, two single families) and I am going to wholesale the rest of the list. There is no one size fits all perfect letter that guarantees anything. The only thing that I can guarantee is if you do not make an effort you will not see a result @Brandon Turner @David Greene  Constantly vary your approach and you will get results from one of your iterations of letter campaigns or whatever you use to fill your funnel. 

@Matthew Chalfant

Welcome! Reach out if you have any questions at all or need help with anything in the charleston area! Lots of stuff going on in the Charleston Area and there is a great network of folks here who are involved with real estate in some form or another. 

my suggestion is get a pen and hand write the mailing addresses for sender and recipient. The letter needs to genuine, dont sound like a pawn shop salesmen, try to bring value in as few words as possible because people dont want to read a whole page of words. sign the letter if you type it, and write a little sentence on the bottom of the letter about their property (like hey I love this or that or something like that) to show you're not a pice of crap like the others who write letters using services. My open rate is absurdly high..... like 75% or greater. @Rebecca Cramer

I would also disagree with a lot of the stuff that others are saying (make up fancy titles like CEO, or developer...). Just be yourself and dont try to advertise anything that is not accurate. Its a people business, who do you think people want to talk to? A CEO or a person like them? 

@Troy Gandee I know of a great property that you could 1031 exchange into. Multifamily unit. 

@Nick Gray If you are not making over $200k per year as a mechanical engineer (especially with those degrees) you're looking the the wrong areas for work. Go work on ships like the merchant mariners and make $15-20K per month. I hate to say it but REI will not touch that salary unless you had millions to start with. If you cant deal with it anymore then you need to quit being a snowflake and buck up and make that money for a few years, then go invest the earnings once you bank a mil or two. I have friend who actively do this or have done it so do not tell me I am wrong or this isnt possible. Best of luck bud!

I am pretty sick and tired of hearing their radio ads also. We can get everything you're promising for free at a meet up in town. The only difference between doing it Than's way and meeting an investor for lunch is you get to keep the difference between $50000 and the cost of lunch for the investor mentor. knowledge bomb 

@Jay Hinrichs

Honestly when you compare Charleston the the rest of the country, in 2008-12 it seemed like we came out of the event unscathed for the most part. Yes, those who were over-leveraged lost their butts though it was not like other places. I agree we are insulated for the most part from things happening. Right now the market is still climbing and making it hard for us to buy a home to live in haha. As you said the companies moving here and the job creation with the tourism make for good insulation. 

I have lived here 31 years now and we built new near shem creek in mt pleasant. After hugo we bough an old cinder-block house with a 0.6 acre lot for 25K, now that same lot with the home on it is near 800K. Crazy crazy crazy

Buy property, pay it off quickly and collect rents. You can't go broke if you don't owe anyone money. You also don't need a job if your cash flowing property pays you enough, so I say if you have a big enough portfolio of assets you own outright or that cash flow significantly let the crash or correction happen.....I need to buy some more good deals anyways. People freak out and sell at high discounts and i have open arms for them..and cash. 

@Giovanni Luna I usually use humor instead of giving negative or discouraging answers but since the humor was lost I guess I could respond with something like 

Well due to the overwhelming increase of new investors and real estate investing in general deals made with no money or debt are increasingly difficult to find but not impossible. You have to get creative and find solutions to potential seller's problems in lieu of cash of debt. 

VA loan is very strong thing to have access to, however, there are rules and stipulations around using it that prevent you from buying a property for investment only, it has to be owner occupied. That being said, multi family units (less than 5 units) are fantastic options if you can find them. The zero PMI & zero % down part of the VA loan is what makes it so attractive, however, there are funding fees with VA loans and potentially closing costs so its not 100% free but very close.

I am not sure how squatting laws have changed or what their current status is in your state, but if you can sneak into a property and hide for 10 or more years, I think you have a legal claim on the property and that's 100% debt free dude. If you do that several times you will have a completely free rental portfolio. @Giovanni Luna