All Forum Posts by: Corey Petersen

Much appreciated Chaz, thanks for the time and feedback.  It's good advice and certainly gives me some confidence to keep moving forward.  Take care.

Hi all successful direct mailers, 

I'm finally ready to go through with my first direct mail campaign, and I'm hoping for some second opinions from people who have the experience.  I have been going around and around about the type of list to send out.  For this first campaign, I would like to keep it small because I'm probably going to screw up along the way, but I don't want to go so small that I'm not giving myself a chance to eventually get a deal out of it and build some positive momentum.  (Not to mention it would go a long way in giving my wife a little confidence in pushing on in this direction.)

Below is what I've chosen as criteria on List Serve, resulting in 310 properties on the list.  My plan is to send handwritten letters in letter style envelopes (probably colored) to the 310 individuals, every other month for three rounds.

My questions are:

1) Is 310 a high enough number to campaign to?

2) Does the criteria I'm using to create the list seem reasonable?

3) After the 3rd campaign, or 6th month, does the list get stale?  Or should I keep using it for additional mailings since I'm targeting owners with equity, which I would assume is a subset that changes slower than others (like foreclosure or probate)?

4) Any other words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

Larry thanks for sharing your experience.  It's good to hear that it's not too difficult as long as long as you put in the effort.

Hey Randy, thanks for the feedback about Pro Schools and the tip about the brokerage firm.  It sounds like I should look into that part of things as well before signing up for anything.  I've heard Summa mentioned a lot lately in conversations with investors.  Is this something that Summa caters to a little more than other real estate firms ("hanging a shingle" for investor-type brokers)?

Great insight Gavin.  Those are some things I hadn't even thought of.  I think I would go crazy with a progress meter on something that slow.  Talk about watching the clock!  We'll have to add that, the style of teaching I guess you would call it, into the criteria as we're figuring this out. Much appreciated!

Thanks a lot Rob.  I'll take a look at these, the other one we've been looking at is Pro Schools.  I've heard that one is pretty good.  It's local and has online classes from what I understand.  Let me know if you find out anything else, and I'll do the same.  Thanks again for taking the time to share the info!

I'm hoping to get some advice on which are the best real estate broker programs.  My wife will be the one taking the courses to help advance our real estate investing business.  We live on the west side of Portland, but really we're thinking more of an online situation would work best, maybe a class setting if the schedule is right.  Can anyone share their opinions or recommendations of some good places to look in to?

Thanks!

Corey

Thank you both for taking the time to share your insight. It really helped me form the decision. I am planning on attending REIA meetings and I have several books that I'd like to get through, and I'd like to spend more time on BP as well. I think I'm going to keep the option open for the future, but hold off for now. Thanks again guys.

I'm a "newbie" on the fence about taking a class on real estate investment online at my local college, Portland Community College (Portland, Oregon).  Does anyone have specific experience in that class in particular? That may be too narrow to have any luck with, so does anyone have similar experience with community college courses?  It's only a few hundred bucks, but the bigger concern is that I have limited time with two small kids and a job I work about 60 hours a week at. I'll make it happen if it's worth the time, but could also spend that time elsewhere in my pursuit of real estate education.  Also, while the online aspect of it gives me flexibility, I worry that not having the face to face interaction will be less effective.  Any thoughts? Thank you!

Thank you both for the education and advice, I really appreciate it.  Very Helpful.