All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Charles

@Mike Day

I'm an hour north of LA in Ventura County. My understanding is LA county is very similar to ours when it comes to the market. That being said, as of November, we only had 2.4 months of inventory in Ventura County. It is pretty hard to find deals, as sellers can sell their homes pretty easily by listing with a realtor. I do a monthly report based off of MLS data, and it seems like inventory is slowly increasing, so maybe the market is indeed starting to shift.

@Or Basan

We stopped doing direct mail about 18 months ago.  At our peek, we were doing about 2000 letters a month and our response rate was less than 0.25%.  But the real problem we were seeing is that homeowners wanted WAY more than we could offer.  We were often times offering 100K less than they were looking for. As someone mentioned earlier, in most cases, they could probably list their home and get close to what they were looking for.  I don't want to tell anyone not to pursue their goals, but i have seen cases where people start out and have unrealistic expectations, only to get disappointed and quit in a few months. 

@Benjamin Jury

I would contact a lawyer, but my understanding is that you do not need to be registered as a business to wholesale. 

@Michael M.

It sounds like to me you need to have a little more realistic expectations.

You wrote "Where's the big money? Where's the payday that helps me get to financial stability?" What do you bring to the table to get that big payday? It sounds like your experience is in truck/bus driving. What is the average salary for that line of work? Why would you expect to earn more than the market pays for that skillset. It sounds like you are hoping to make it big without working a regular 9-5 and reading too many "rags to riches" stories that may or may not be realistic. In this economy, I'm having trouble understanding why you are unable to find a job. Yeah, it may not be what you ideally want, but something is better than nothing.

I don’t think your lowball offers are going to get you very far in this market. I think real estate investing is going to be a tough nut to crack in your area until the market changes. As you mention, not much reason for sellers to sell at a discount now-a-days. 

@Gary Gill welcome to the site. We are right down the road in Oxnard.

@Dave Rozo  It is not my meeting.  My wife and I just attend sometimes. But yes, they are still happening.  I don't think you can post links here, but you can find it if you go to meetup.com and search for Ventura County Real Estate Investors Club.

@Jerryll Noorden  It's funny you mention that.  I searched "We buy houses in..." and "Sell my house fast" across the country a year or two ago just to see what other investors were doing.  What I found was that most, if not all, of the top positions were carrot sites. Although i was ranking fairly decent at the time with my wordpress site, i figured they had to be doing something right and switched to their services. 

@David Naiman

As a fortune builders (FB) student, i would not advise joining based off of what you wrote.  

1. i don't know who interviewed you, but we know one of the advisors (or whatever they are called), and we were told that anyone employed by FB cannot invest their money in students.

2. FB does not fund deals, at least not that i know of.  They do have a hard money lender that they work with, but my understanding is that their requirements are no different than any other hard money lender out there. 

Before doing anything, i would attend local REIAs (if you haven't already) and understand your local market.  I honestly haven't attend one of their trainings in a few years, but the strategies they were teaching are not very effective in a strong seller's market, in my opinion.  

If you don't have any money, how can you get into it full time?  How will you support yourself if it is difficult to find deals in your market?

This website is a great place to learn.  One of the good things i will say about FB is that they package the information in a way that is straight forward and that you can find easily.  It may be a little harder to find what you are looking for on this site, but i don't think FB is worth the money just to make it easier to find info. 

@Javier Pinedo welcome to the site. We are located in Ventura County as well. 

@Connor Stark

Not to burst your bubble, but here's a good thread from a local investor down in San Diego. 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/87/topics/632...

And for what it's worth, we stopped doing direct mail up here almost 2 years ago.  At our height, we were probably sending out 2000 pieces a month and our response rate was only 0.25%.  To make matters worse, the few leads that we did get wanted WAY more than we could offer.  Since it's a strong seller's market up here, especially then, it didn't make much sense for a seller to sell at a discount when they could list with a realtor and get almost what they were looking for.