All Forum Posts by: David Lecko

Parking lots is a cool idea. I just googled and found this: http://www.loopnet.com/Land-For-Sale/

Welcome, Jack! Check out the ultimate beginners guide: https://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investing

Interesting question! There is something special about connecting with someone in person. I went walking for dollars intending to send direct mail, and I actually met a few neighbors that turned into a couple leads and a few good stories. I haven't been able to do that 100% of the time, but I believe the more personal you can get, whether you're mailing or not, the better. I also had a guy call me who said "I get a lot of these cards but I called you because it looked like you put a lot of time into the mail you sent me."

Hi @Shantel James, great questions! I will answer about Finding/Qualifying properties since I spend most of my time focused on that topic.

1) Your results may vary. You may want to try several of the methods you listed (maybe not all at the same time) and test the methods against each other. Pick 1 or 2 methods and get a large enough sample size to measure the results. 

For Driving for Dollars: I would get to 100-200 houses and then gauge your response rate.

For buying a list: Saw this recommendation from Yellow Letters .com about sending to a list of 2000 and sending to them 4-5 times consistently https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/93/topics/477...

Also in that thread, the Open Letter Marketing guys mentioned buying a niche list was the best way to start out (the absentee owner list you mentioned would be pretty broad. Possibly narrow that down in some way)

Lagniappe: I saw a post about a student who got her first deal with a marketing flyer at a discount grocery store. :-) https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/12/topics/477...

2) Here's a basic list of questions you can ask a seller:

• Why do they want to sell?
• How soon do they want to sell?
• How much would they like to sell for?
• What parts of the property need a repair?

3) This may depend on what list of houses you're looking at. If it is a list of houses going into foreclosure, you might prioritize the houses where the owner has the greatest % equity first. If it is a list of absentee owners, you might prioritize those owners that haven't paid their taxes first before you look at the mortgage balance.

Does that make sense?

Hey @Joshua Howaniec I have noticed this in Marion County, too. Your source for the owner address is the county records, so those addresses should be correct... 

Occasionally I will get returned mail with "invalid address" even though the owner address matches the county record.

My next step is to use USPS's address verification to see if they will make any corrections to the address so I can re-send it.

If that fails I will do a google search for the owner name to find alternate contact methods (linkedin, facebook, maybe an address)

And lastly there is a skip tracing service called TLO by TransUnion that I have heard discussed a lot but I haven't tried myself, yet.

Why this happens is a mystery to me!

Hey @Reggie Enos! 

I agree with @Ray Lai's comment about driving for dollars and building your own list.

Also, I agree that certain target houses may receive mailers from other people. You might find that no matter if you purchase a list or build your own, you'll get additional calls after you send the 2nd, 3rd, 4th mailer (etc) to the same targeted owners the meet your criteria. Owners may not be ready to sell the first time they receive your mailer... if you are repeating mail you're more likely to reach the seller on the day they are ready to sell. :)

Hey @Sol G. and @Garrett Diegel happy to answer your questions!

Of the 73 houses I mailed to, I received 22 calls back total so far. I plan on getting more calls in the upcoming weeks and months because I send mail ever 21 days to most of these owners.

As of right now, my second mailer recently went out to these owners.

Of the 22 calls back, I have made 2 offers. There are 3 other conversations I've have that I expect to make offers on soon.

A few callers told me they didn't want to sell. I interpreted that as meaning they didn't want to sell "right now" so I put them on repeat-mail ever 180 days.

As for taking D4D home and continuing to market to these owners, I actually use a system I built that manages it all from my phone. There's more info in my signature if you're curious!

Hi @Priscilla Z., I love that you are looking for someone local. Plus, it's great that you have the duties already listed out. Those will come in handy for posting a job opening.

I've posted jobs on indeed.com with the setting: local applicants only. Craigslist was my secondary local posting option. 

Also, based on your comments: looking for someone who "loves being in front of a computer all day" and "possibly grow into a bigger position" are interesting. Hiring a college student and training them up could be an opportunity.

Florida Institute of Technology looks like it is near you and you could inquire with their career center about how to reach students with your opportunity. Their IT students could probably build automations for some of the tasks you laid out as well.

The following books have some hiring tips in general you might find interesting:

First, Break All the Rules: Hire for talent, rather than skill. Example talent: striving to grow and learn about real estate. Example skill: data mining. The book says it is better to hire the person with talent because you can teach them the skills. The book has sample talent interview questions as well.

Algorithms to Live By: Set aside x number of days to find an assistant (I'll say 30 days for this example). Refrain from hiring anyone until you have looked for 33% of the total allotted time and interviewed at least 33% of the serious applicants. Then, once you have observed what's out there, hire the next person who comes along that is the "best yet" for the job. At least, that's the most efficient way a computer would handle it ;-)

Hope this helps... please keep us posted! :-)

Hi Ty,

I agree with your advice @Kurt Pauley about driving for dollars. You drive around in your car/walk/roller blade/scooter/hover-board/bike and look for properties that look run down or vacant.

If these houses are vacant or run down looking, it is a good indicator the owner is losing some money every day they hold the property (paying taxes, possible mortgage, etc while receiving no income), making them more likely to sell for below market value.

Once you find these properties then you can send the owner mail offering to buy their property. 

Driving for dollars is a low-budget, high return marketing strategy because you are targeting specific properties rather than sending blanket direct mail campaigns which can cost thousands of dollars, and reach many people that aren't wanting to sell their property.

@Jordan Moorhead I am also house hacking currently. I have a 5 bedroom primary residence where my mortgage payment is x amount of dollars. I rent 3 of the additional bedrooms to friends for a flat fee. I pay a fee to house as well for living there, and I track the house income and expenses as a separate investment property. 

@Ty Meusburger when I sign into my BiggerPockets account, there is a Path to Profitability section that seems like a good way to learn and try out different strategies. It seems helpful, but I haven't looked into it in detail yet.

@Andre Wilson I meant to say captured 73 houses (not hours) meaning I wrote down their address, looked up the owners, and sent postcards to the owners in that time frame.