All Forum Posts by: Chris Turner

@Ryan Warth Your title company should be listed on your contract with your seller and buyer.  Like @Dan Maciejewski said you should have a title company already in place. Don't get hung up on this though.  I have had title companies change many times because the buyer wanted to use their own.  I have never had a problem with the seller having an issue with it.

I have been using direct mail and I have heard (read) that people have suggested to insert a photo of yourself or maybe one with you and your family in hopes of making a more personal connection to increase your response rate.  I would like to try this however most of my direct mail pieces go to probate executors and I am not sure if it is a good idea. 

Has anyone had an increased response rate by including a picture of themselves sending direct mail to probate leads?  Or any other leads for that matter?

Was thinking about including a photo with myself and my kids and saying something about it in the post script.

Thoughts?

Looking for some advice. I am speaking with a woman about purchasing her rental property (sfr). Problem is the tenant has not payed rent in over a year. Owners husband is terminally ill and she can not leave his side. She has attempted to evict him before but she was unable to make it to the court date due to her husbands health issues. She said that the tenant paid regularly for years but suddenly stopped paying once he knew she could not get to the court house to evict him. She told me he has used the phrase "squatters rights" more than once.

Even if the owner and I can not agree upon a purchase price I would like to help her out. She seems sincere on the phone. Is there anything I can do to help her get out this tenant? Legally, of course.

She has been in contact with the tenant and we are scheduled to walk through the property next week. I thought this was kind of odd since the guy refuses to leave.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

@Oscar Wright you too Oscar! You got this!

@Oscar Wright Sorry, D4$ = Driving for Dollars.

@Oscar Wright of course!  Skip tracing is simply the act of looking up someones contact information, usually an address or a phone number. This is usually used when a simple search of the counties website is ineffective.

The easiest way to find out who owns a property you find while D4$ is to look at your counties auditors website.  Just Google, "________ County auditor."  Where the _______ is the county in which you are D4$. This is public information, isn't that awesome!  Just find the "search by address" feature and look up the properties that you jotted down while driving.  Now where I live there are two types of addresses available. One being the Mailing Address and the other being the Owner Address. 

The mailing address is where the tax bills go to from the county.  This may or may not be the actual homeowners address.  If they have a lien (mortgage) usually whoever is financing it is listed with their address as the Mailing Address.

The Owner Address is where you would look in this situation.  You might see John Smith, 123 Main St, blah-blah, blah. You look at your notes and you are looking for the person at this address!  So you send Mr. Smith a letter, or a post card, or use an app, etc to contact him to see if he is a motivated seller.

The above example is a broad overview of what you might find. Many different variable might come into place where it is not exactly as I have described it above (might be owned by a business or an LLC, etc). However this should help you get started!

Oscar welcome to the BP community!  Unfortunately I do not completely understand your first question:

How does one contact possible sales without access to the MLS?

If you are referring to property owners you will use something commonly referred to as skip tracing.  There are many free and paid services to help you with this type of information.  A simple search in the forums will show you want a lot of BP members are using.

Direct mail is a common and popular method to reaching out to those properties that you suspect might have motivated sellers while D4$.  I would caution you however about putting anything into someones mailbox that does not have postage attached.  This is against the law.  If you wanted to leave something on the door consider some type of door-hanger where something hangs off the door and does not require you to go inside someone else's mailbox.

Best of luck!

@Fili Aguirre Where are other investors buying? Where do your buyers want to buy? This information will help you target neighborhoods. There are a lot of YouTube videos that can help you.

I did not nor have I heard from anyone that did. I can only assume that it’s a waste of money.