All Forum Posts by: Colby Hager

@Giacomo Bugatti if you want good contractors, and still be able to make money flipping houses my first piece of advice would be: don’t find them online.

Steal them from other flippers (happens to me all the time)

Find them at Home Depot at 5am (best electrician I’ve ever had)

Talking to other investors? Idk...I can tell you this, I’ve never given my best guys to anyone else, I keep them for myself. (They still get poached all the time)

Every time I pay contractors ahead of schedule, I get screwed, my timeline goes to hell, and my wife yells at me (true story)

@Mark Caudill since you are doing most of the work yourself, can you get the money you need at the high interest rate but pay it back from your first hard money draw?

Might be tight until the second draw but maybe you could make that work

@Saul Lopez before I had a budget I used to use findtheseller I think it was around $10 per search. Not sure if they still offer services or if that is cheap or expensive compared to what is readily available today.

I think it also depends on what kind of skip traces you are looking for. Are you looking for one off skip traces or batches? I know IDI has a batch program

You would need to find another route.  There are third party companies, you can use your own funds, or use any source of private money you have available. d

Most people in your shoes use the house they are flipping as securitization.  Good credit should help you with a hard money lender but you will still have to pony up some of your own cash.  If you can't put some of your own cash in the deal, you need to find a partner...And seeing as this is your first flip, this needs to be someone who trusts you as a person, not you as a flipper since you have no experience. 

When I first started flipping houses, I would go to people who knew me personally, knew that I was wholesaling deals left and right and knew that if I said we had a winner to flip, it was a winner.  I offered to run the whole job from beginning to end and they just had to sit back and collect a fat check for 50% of the profit.  Needless to say, they were happy to do so.  

Do that once or twice and you will have people begging to partner with you.  Then you can dictate the terms of the money.  

When it comes to DMM there are soo many factors.  What list are you mailing?  What kind of mail piece?  What is your message?  What is your goal? (phone call, website visit, text message etc...) All these things could have your results vary wildly.  To think that you can spend a certain amount and get a certain amount back without factoring in tons super important data seems kind of silly.  

And what Michael Quarles (who is badass) does to get his rate of return is going to be different than what you or I might do.  

I have spent thousands on specialty lists and thousands more on mailing those lists with a zero percent rate of return b/c my mail piece sucked.  No deals, no wholesales, not even a phone call.  

Of course, if we could spend $500 and get a guaranteed $4k back we would do that and repeat and scale.  Unfortunately, that is not the way this business works...no matter what people selling something try to tell you. 

I actually like mailing, I really do.  It's not my primary source of leads. Not even close.  But it has its place in my bag of tricks.  I would only FOCUS on mailing if you can't afford PPC to get leads right away.  If that is the case and you are budget conscious, don't worry about the rate of return.  Unless you are spending thousands per month mailing to your city, you are mailing on a small level so focus on who you are mailing to and make your message stand out.  

No lie, everyone is doing postcards. Everyone! You aren't going to stand out doing that. Focus on handwritten if you are going small-batch mailings. Get the person to OPEN the dang letter. I can't tell you how often I would show up at an appointment when someone called my postcard. They would have 30 others on the table and tell me they called the first ten. Could you be one of those 10? Maybe. Do you really want to run appointments where 10 other investors are offering? Might as well just make offers on MLS properties under that scenario.

Not trying to throw cold water on your question.  Again, I like mailing.  I just like mailing to such small, unique, undiscovered sellers that my competition isn't mailing them and as far as they are concerned, I'm the only one sending a "handwritten letter" to them inquiring about buying their house. 

You're very welcome.  Best of luck!

I totally disagree with most of the advice I see on these replies.  You DO NOT need a buyers list first to get a deal sold.  I mean let's think about this... You have a great deal signed up.  Now, just because you don't have buyers FIRST you won't be able to sell it????  Does this make sense?  No, it doesn't.  

I get calls weekly from "wholesalers" who will have a deal in the future and want to know my buying criteria yadayadayada.  Guess what...I never hear back from them.  They are wasting their time calling people like me instead of finding deals.  

Do you know who I rarely hear from?  People who actually have a REAL deal.  Call a legit investor for the first time with an actual deal and you will sell it.  Plain and simple.  Give an investor a great deal and he/she will be begging you for more.  

If you want to waste your time calling around to investors who have heard that pitch a thousand times, go for it.  Post on Facebook groups that you have a deal that doesn't really exist so you can mine for email addresses (that your email will go to spam anyways).  I just wouldn't advise you to do that.

For me, if I was starting out fresh in a new city...I'd be talking with sellers and hustling up a deal.  If it is truly a deal, selling it will be the Easy part.  

Sure I have a buyers list that I have built.  I keep it well cultivated.   The difference is, mine was built organically based on actual deals that I have had for sale.  Not built based on unfounded promises of "future deals" and phantom internet deals.  If you really want to stand out in your area from all the internet "deal" guys...go get an actual deal.  Trust me, this is the way to start off in this business. 

You should definitely check out Red Wagon Property Management.  The owner there is fantastic and loves working with investors and is an active investor himself.