All Forum Posts by: Melanie Hartmann

This post is 3 years old but for those reading it in the future, there are ways to do this. However, please consult with a knowledgeable legal professional to make sure you and all parties involved are properly protected in the transaction. 

Typically, we sign joint venture agreements when we partner with others on real estate transactions. 

That being said, in a situation such as the one described in the original post, it may be best to stay away. Given that both wholesalers sound inexperienced and did not have a prior relationship outside of connecting on this deal via Craigslist. Unless they both have solid mentors coaching them through the deal there are just too many things that could go wrong due to inexperience.

@Account Closed, what ended up happening on this deal? And what types of real estate investing are you getting into these days?

@Account Closed

Excellent question! I had been actively looking to purchase a rental property for almost a year before I decided to leave my career. However, I never found one that fit my criteria (yes, I was being very picky). Eventually, I discovered the idea of acquiring off-market properties and how to market to sellers who may be interested in selling below market value in exchange for speed and convenience. After that discovery, I decided to jump in full-time. In this most recent fiscal year, I made comparable to the amount I made in the last year of my career (worked way harder though). However, since we've invested most of our profits back into the business we have a lot more growing planned for 2020!

Happy New Year! 

Originally posted by @Greg Dickerson:

Originally posted by @Jerryll Noorden:

Originally posted by @Greg Dickerson:

Originally posted by @Jerryll Noorden:

Originally posted by @Greg Dickerson:

Originally posted by @Jerryll Noorden:

@Dustin Morgan

 Nope,

@Dustin Morgan : Despite what Greg says, there IS a best way to get leads. And again this is not opinion, this is fact. I have concrete evidence that proves this.

Honestly it is irrelevant how many clients you have doing 3 billion deals.

If one deal cost them 3K / lead, it is horrible. OK .. great your clients are doing 300 deals and have money to pay 3K/ deal. But the every day folks here trying to make it, can't afford 3K to spend on a deal. (The point I am am maling here is that telling anyone the # of deals they are making says NOTHING about how efficient the strategy is). You can be making 4 deals a week but if you are spending 40K to get these 4 deals... I wouldn't call that efficient)

The point I am trying to make here is you cant measure the efficiency of a strategy by how many people are do it.

We are not debating which methods are possible to make a deal from. We are discussing the best way, the most efficient way, the cheapest way to reliably generate leads, and again this is not a matter of opinion, or debate.

SEO IS the best way PERIOD.

If you or you or he or she is too lazy, too incapable to learn SEO, or have no time.. fine.. that is on them. That has NOTHING to do with the efficient of the strategy called SEO.

No, SEO does NOT cost money! Wrong again!

I pay $99 / month for my carrot site, and $0 for SEO!

Your mistake Greg is you are projecting YOUR limitations on a strategy and then  for some reason some how you make YOUR limitations the limitations of the strategy

If YOU can't learn SEO, that's on YOU! If YOU need to pay someone for SEO, that is on YOU.

No one is MAKING you!

I pay NO ONE for SEO, and you should NEVER pay anyone for SEO. You will only get my results when you do it yourself. Lead gen is the ESSENCE of REI. If you have no time to learn this, why are you even investing? That is on you. Lead Gen IS REI. We are marketers first and foremost!

So please lets for once and for all stop with the BS.

OK Jerryll - lets stop the BS as you say.

Carrot sites are great sites and there is nothing wrong with affiliate marketing and offering SEO services but be honest, you are copying and pasting most of the info you provide in this forum directly from their site and from their articles and marketing materials just like the one in the link below. Now they do give you affiliate materials to copy and paste for marketing but they do not expect you to try and sell it like the info is yours.

https://cdn.carrot.com/uploads...

This is just one article that is verbatim a lot of what you write in your posts. So yes anybody can and should use a website and learn SEO and Carrot makes it fool proof. They also recommend using direct mail and other mediums as well and they teach you how to do it on their site because they know there is no one best method for every market and every seller other than consistency. You can find articles on other marketing sources and techniques they recommend here https://carrot.com/resources/

Also leads are not deals. Anyone can generate thousands of leads for free and paid and never get a deal so the leads you are showing really mean nothing and are very misleading. Show your closed deals, real costs and profits if you want to show proof of the effectiveness of the system. 

Show proof of closings?

First: Closing a deal is not on me or SEO. That has to do with you! Don't bish at SEO because YOU can't close deals. SEO by default, means MOTIVATED sellers. That is the meaning of SEO. So wrong again.

And I will humor you! You want proof of the quality of leads?

MMkay!

 (Mods: there is no advertising material in the vid, its clean).

 Thank you for the video. I am not dismissing  SEO. I have stated multiple times it is very effective. Inbound Internet leads are often very good leads but they are not the end all be all. Even carrot tells you that.

It’s sounds like your clients are very happy with the results you are getting for them so I have not doubt your techniques are effective so when you are on here trying to build your business and generate clients instead of insulting and attacking people who are providing helpful advice just do what you just did. Provide real valuable information and proof. You do not need to insult people to get business you need to provide value.

No lead source is the end all be all except a #1 ranking site that is highly targeted and credible. I mean, it really doesn't get much better than that. Yes, we have had success with other marketing methods but targeted inbound leads, overall, are far superior than ones from outbound marketing. 

And what's great is really no one is doing SEO well or telling everyone to do it so us "little guys" can make BIG waves in HIGHLY COMPETITIVE markets because hardly anyone is focusing on their websites. At least in my areas. 

I mean, just SOME of the strategies Jerryll has suggested has already gotten us ranking on page 1 for 2 keywords. We only really got heavy into this about 6 weeks ago too. Granted I'm awesome and working my tail off but, it is what it is. 

2020 here we come! You ready for all of this??

haha, true story. 3 closings next month or the month after - just got word one of the title companies is terribly slow... won't be using them again if they ruin this one or make it more difficult. So many people use/prefer them too... such a shame and I don't understand why. Anyway...

I received another signed contract in my inbox today and a few more sellers we are actively in negotiations with, with many more in the pipeline. I think it may be time to invest in a wall board for our deals now!

2 of the deals we are closing - our first contact with those owners was over 10 months ago. So FOLLOW-UP - you may just be closing on their property a year after first contact! And who are they going to trust when they are finally ready to sell? Random Joe Shmo they've only spoken to once, or the lovely person who has met with them and checks-in periodically to see how things are going? You already know the answer to that one

I can't wait to rank #1 on Google next year and dominate our market!

Thank you Hasan! I did have a general idea but not a solid plan. However, I would NOT recommend to anyone else that they leave a steady job to do this until they've closed a few deals first and have more in the pipeline. 

There are a lot of gurus out there showing off big checks. They often provide just enough information for it to "make sense" but not enough to actually help. It is not fun getting started when your main focus is, "How will the bills get paid after our savings runs out?" 

I too would be and am a Naysayer of what I did. That being said, I do NOT regret that decision as its led me to where I am today and where I'll be heading tomorrow.

@Jerryll Noorden - I'll be SEOing straight to the top! Am I right, or am I right?!?

Thank you Linda!

The next leg of my real estate journey will be to purchase buy-and-holds. I've wanted rentals for years now and I think next year I'll be in a place to start buying them. There are so many more directions to go with rentals! 

Acquiring and maintaining rentals actually feels more overwhelming now than it did before I started actively investing in real estate. Maybe from all the horror stories I've heard and seen the after-math of, ha!

My initial plan was to buy a small multi-family but would it be better to put money towards a syndication to start with? Not sure where to start - guess I'll have to get learning!

Thank you Zane! It was scary for sure as I've usually done the "safe" thing. It just got to a point where the risk of failure was more appealing than staying in my current W-2 position. I loved the idea and methods behind the work I was doing but the politics made it nearly impossible and I was miserable. So it was time for a change!

Primarily we focus on properties in Baltimore, MD but depending on the numbers will take a look at almost any property in MD or DC. We are growing our network and have partners in a few other states to pass any stray leads that find their way to us.

@Richard Hickman - Great Question!

@Greg Dickerson - Great answer for inbound leads. I'm curious as to what others do in their business. 

In general, we typically call once a day and leave a VM. If it's been 1-3 days with no contact, we may also text and/or email sellers who have expressed interest in selling. A different approach and follow-up schedule might be used for those you reached out to either by calling, door-knocking, texting, etc. as timeline to sell is likely to be longer than an inbound lead.

Ultimately, a potential seller's level of motivation, asking price, timeline to sell, and condition of the property will determine whether we keep a lead in our follow-up campaigns. For instance, if the house has been recently rehabbed, is rented, and the owner isn't in a hurry, we may follow-up every 3-6 months. There's not much motivation - however, motivation may change as time goes on so we stay in touch. 

For a highly motivated seller, we may call them once in the morning and if we don't hear back from them, we'll try to reach out once again in the afternoon or evening. Then once daily for several days to a week. When possible will try to text, email, find them on social media, etc. to see if we can make contact. Then every 2-3 days for a couple of weeks, then 1x per month, then 1x every 3 months, and push it out. We've had good results from this, and leads you wouldn't think would respond often do after the 3 month follow-up. Everyone says different things about how many "touches" or times you must follow-up to complete a sales cycle. Some will be ready to sell right away and others will need a LOT more time. 

In general, if someone is annoyed at you for following-up, they'll let you know or simply not respond/answer the phone. As long as you aren't calling someone more than 2-3 times a day to follow-up on a "hot" lead, then you're probably fine.

I wish it were that simple but it's not. They'll be back. I also wonder why no one rags on folks who buy an undervalued property and resell it for a profit. Some of the folks hating wholesaling have boasted doing the very same thing. Aren't you "fooling" the seller to sell at a discount so you can resell it? 

And real estate deals fall apart constantly. When that happens, it means something was wrong. Retail deals fall apart just as easily. For example, maybe the appraisal came back less than the offer price and the bank won't lend on it. Ok, the offer price was too high, you go back, renegotiate, find a different funding source, and/or cancel the contract. End of story...

With any contract, you want to know the escape clauses and how to protect yourself in case things don't go as planned.

REGARDLESS of the exit strategy, sellers KNOW you are not paying retail and KNOW you are making a profit. Like Marcus said, it's such a small percentage of people who will sell at a discount, and it's usually because they are having a major problem solved by selling the property.

I've had sellers state or claim they don't know what houses are selling for, but this information is so readily and easily acceptable I just don't think that's true anymore. I have not once ran into someone who truly didn't know or over estimate the after repair value of their property. When you ask the right questions, you find out they all have an idea and it's usually fairly accurate or overinflated.

Many wholesalers do operate under the notion that THEY are the buyers. However, not everyone! Every single contract that I have wholesaled, the seller KNEW we were wholesaling it. GASP! Yes, that is possible folks!

Also, if a seller agrees to a price and/or terms and receives EXACTLY what they wanted, regardless of whether the contract is wholesaled, I'm not seeing what the problem is. The issue really lays in inexperienced wholesalers making grandiose promises to sellers and not being able to follow through, leaving sellers worse off than before. 

Once you have a reputation for being honest and credible, I really don't see the harm in wholesaling contracts when the sellers are aware.