All Forum Posts by: David Lecko

Hi Garrett Masiulis , I think you have a pretty great list! I would assume you are also tracking the owner address so you can send mail to the owner. You might also want to track your rehab estimate once you talk to the owner and how much you would expect to rent it or sell it for, as well as your maximum offer price. Deals typically have a funnel with the wide end being lots of leads -> then getting some calls back -> then getting a deal. You may find that it is more efficient to start tracking minimal info (address, owner address) so you can spend time getting as many leads as possible and getting your mail out. And then filling in the rest of the info once you get a call back on that property. What do you think about that?

Yes, I think just asking if they are interested in selling is the best way. I think the most common time an existing landlord would be interested in selling is if they are retiring, if they had a bad experience with a tenant such as an eviction, or if their property has a lot of needed maintenance. I'd be curious to hear other situations any investors have come across when a landlord is wanting to sell.

I recently found a phone number using white pages .com. You can actually start a trial I believe to search a few contacts without keeping a subscription. Also, your county likely publishes court information online which can be useful for piecing together what might have happened to the owner. Also, I've heard people using TLO.com. It may have a subscription but I haven't tried it myself. Best of luck!

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!