All Forum Posts by: David Cowan

Hi, Stan Esperon ! Welcome to BiggerPockets! I also live in Torrance. Let's be in touch and see how we might be able to help each other.

Federico Gutierrez First of all, greetings from a fellow Clevelander! I was born and raised in Cleveland, but currently live in the Los Angeles metro area. I would love to connect with you at some point to talk about Cleveland real estate. Because I'm very much interested in investing at home. And it seems there are some great opportunities for the people who really know what they're doing. Unfortunately, there are a lot of greedy people out there. Those are the people who give investors a bad name.

@Brandon Battle and @Zachary Myers

That was a lot of great information! Thank you!

First pick your geographical area (State, and then city or zip code, or area code(s) etc). And then you can click on the "Property" tab and choose the equity(%) from the dropdown menu. Also make sure the last purchase date is 5 years earlier, or more. Personally, I look for houses with purchase dates of at least 10 years ago. High equity (so that you'll know they're able to sell you the house with enough equity to sell you the house. No less than 30% percent. It depends what kind of deal you're going to do. If you're wholesaling the deal or flipping it, you'll probably want them to have more equity than that otherwise there may not be room enough for you to make a profit.

But, high equity first and then all the other criteria second. Because no matter who your seller is, they need equity in order for the deal to work for you. So you can get enough of a discount. 

An absentee landlord with low equity can't sell the house cheap enough because too much is still owed on the house. Anyway, that's my two cents. @Alma Alejos

Do a number that you can consistently market to, every month for 6 months. You'll have a better chance of getting deals when you hit them several times. Also, I've heard a lot of folks say to start with a smaller number, like 500, for example. That way you can make sure you're able to manage the number of calls that come in. It doesn't matter if you get 50 calls if you're not able to call them all back in a reasonable amount of time (within 24 hours, but preferably right away..like within 15 minutes.). Keep in mind that they may have gotten mail from someone else, and will be looking to get their problem solved as quickly as possible. So your chances are better if you're the first person to call them back with a solution to their problem. Good luck, 

@Andre Eakins ! By the way, I'm from Cleveland, Cuyahoga County. Opposite ends of the state. Have you checked out Indiana at all? I keep hearing that Indianapolis is a hot market right now, especially for rentals. I'm thinking I'd like to get in over there at some point, for some cashflow properties.

Congratulations,Dimas Espejo ! I'm currently reading the millionaire real estate investor, by Gary Keller. It's available in audio book as well. There are a lot of really great ideas in there.

That could be a cool idea,Jim Viens ! The question is how do people feel about coming outside and finding that some somebody has put stickers on their car? There are a bunch of companies out there who will print 1000 business cards for around $40. Then place the business cards on cars and around different places in neighborhoods where there's a high percentage of high equity homes with long ownership or where are lots of pre-foreclosures or absentee owners. That way, you're more likely to find somebody who needs a deal. I've just started doing the same thing myself. So, I'm still waiting to see if I'm actually going to get any deals from doing that. But since my budget is very low, I don't have a lot of money to operate with, so I'm just doing what I can in addition to driving for dollars and searching online forums for sellers. I would love to know how people respond to having the stickers on their cars, though. Let us know how it goes if you do it. It just seems a little bit expensive when you can get 1000 business cards for $40, though. If I were going to use dickies, I probably wouldn't put them on peoples cars. I would probably stick them on the inside of bathroom stalls and places like that. You know when somebody sitting there on the toilet and then look up they've got no place to go. So they're going to see it. The thing is to post them in places where people aren't going to be pissed off when they see it. Well, that's my two cents. Good luck!

Welcome, Alma Alejos ! 1) Join listsource.com you'll get your lists from there. 2) Pick your area. Find an area where investors are buying and market to that area. 3) once you've chosen an area, use listsource.com to get list of high equity properties (30% equity and greater) in your area. 4) use a mailing service like yellowletters.com or click-to-mail to send out your postcards or letters to potential sellers. 5) it takes a few months typically, to get the first deal because a lot of people will respond to your follow up rather than the first contact. Obviously, this is just the quick and dirty to get you started. You will learn a lot in the process of doing everything. Reach out to some cash buyers here on bigger pockets. And find out their criteria for buying. Also get recommendations for good title companies in your area. Because you can't close the deal until the title is clear. Good luck!

Great ideas,John Stevenson ! Thanks a bunch for the tips!

Welcome, Mark Bouman ! Cool that you already have a couple of properties under your belt! I'm sure belonging to this forum is going to help quite a bit. Good luck in your future endeavors.