All Forum Posts by: Don Crandell

I'm looking for bird dogs and wholesalers in Southern California, must understand ARV and the market. Also looking for the same for north of Sacramento

If you use wholesalers how did you go about finding a wholesaler who actually had their act together. I've talked to several Real Estate brokers and when I mentioned wholesalers they said "I've never heard of that".

I am starting out with driving for dollars and usually find potential fixers at a rate of about 15 per hour. I'm not sure if they are just poorly taken care of homes or ripe for the picking. I can handle it if it's just part of the learning process, doing is better than thinking or dreaming. I drive until I have gotten at least 25 homes to add to my list. My requirements are bad yards, bad roofs (about 5% are bad roofs), and or bad/pealing paint. My next phase will be getting a list from listSource, I want to market to at least 3,000 homes a month.

I am looking for recommendations as far as listing services go (ListSource ect), what are the costs involved for a listing service, for fix and flip what should my criterion be (I'm in So Cal), I'll have to go beyond low hanging fruit. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I live in California and I'm going to start sending out my direct mail packages, but I haven't found a professional looking contract for the purchase of real estate. In my opinion it should be legal and binding in it's wording, have an expiration date or a date on which I am to fulfill my obligation to purchase the property. It really needs to look professional in my opinion, I don't want to come off like some amateur although I totally am.

I'm not a landlord but I'm into common sense, so let me just say this, crappy unit equals crappy tenant. If the slopping floor can be fixed at a reasonable cost then fix it. If you get it cheap enough then wholesale the property off to a rehabber. I don't remember the podcast but they did talk about crappy units in nice neighborhoods and the crappy units always attracted crappy tenants.

I think that there are different people involved in flipping homes, hyper low ballers. low ballers, newbies, and everyone in between. In SoCal I think you have to really think outside of the box if you want to find good deals. The thing that got me researching home flipping was an investor who bought a condo down the street from me, they bought it for around $100K, replaced the burned down garage, did the kitchen, bathroom, new paint and carpet thing and sold it for $240K three months later (that condo was NEVER on the MLS, because I was looking on realtor.com and zillow.com for it). If we want to find deals in SoCal we are really going to have to work outside of the box in order to find good deals. In my opinion the the people who are paying 80 percent or more are people going for the low hanging fruit.

I also suggest that you listen to all of the BP podcasts for ideas.

Okay, yes I am a noob.

I have experience buying a home at an auction, which went fairly well for me. I plan on selling this place during the summer of 2015 and will need a replacement home to do a live in flip with.

My credit score is around 760.

I have a considerable amount of construction experience.

Currently I earn around $75K a year.

I live in Riverside County, CA

I also have a real estate salespersons license.

Plan A

So on to the question, I can go the easy, although from what I have read, the more risky rout and buy a home or contract from a wholesaler. Risky because being a noob I don't know who to trust as far as a wholesaler goes.  

Or

Plan B

I can go and try my hand at direct mailing to supply myself with a possible project. The problem I have here is that I am out of town half of the week and would not be able to babysit a telephone. I could however hire out an answering service to handle all of the incoming calls and get back to the callers within a day or so.

My job represents the biggest hurdle.

Plan A, in order to double check or fact check a wholesalers facts I would need access to the MLS to do comps. In order to do comps I would need to be employed by a real estate Brooker........,,,,or maybe I can gain access without being attached....any info on this? I remember one podcast mentioning MLS access through a site outside of the MLS which carried the same and current info as the MLS.

Plan B, I would need to get back to callers in a reasonable amount of time before the leads go stale.

If I go with Plan B I might be able to go with traditional financing. I also posted a question about buying from a wholesaler and using traditional financing, which also looks possible, so Plan A might work.

I am looking for a good strategy given the information I have supplied. Thanks in advance./DC

I have listened to all of the podcasts at least once and a running theme has been that the guests read the Articles daily. Are these people talking about blogs or are there actual articles on this site and if there are where would I find them.

Hey, John it's not the volts it's the amperage. There is a huge percentage of the population who are scared stiff of electricity. I stand by my statement, I have been shocked well over 1000 times, including last week when I had to replace a GFI which had gone bad. The slight tingle told me that my electrical system had not gone bad, which had been my fear, I had thought that I was going to have to run new wires through the wall. Lucky for me, it was just a warn out GFI. 

Water can kill you also, if you drink too much water in a short amount of time you will land up with water intoxication and DIE. So I suppose you would warn people to stay away from drinking fountains because of the potential danger.

Why worry about something which has a snowballs of a chance of happening.

In 2006 my home was bought by a guy deep into what I have come to call the gold rush, 2002-2007. This guy landed up paying $385K for the same P.U.D. that I later bought for $167K plus buyers premium. So on to my story and experience. I had been looking for a home for the sole purpose of buying and then selling. 

The auctioneers and potential buyers met at one of the addresses of the homes to be auctioned off that day in October of 2008. I was waiting for a plain townhouse to come up, it was a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath 1500 sqft unit. As most auctions go it was predictable, the price started low but jumped up rather fast. It was between myself and anther bidder or two, but I wasn't caught up in the emotion or noise of the moment. My theory is don't buy a home you want, buy a home you have to buy because it's too good of a deal. Well my top ceiling offer was , I had at that moment enough of the bidding game and said, "That's It, I'm Out". My cousin/realtors jaw was agape, I am not kidding you. He was standing there with his jaw nearly on his chest.

Now comes the interesting part, the auctioneer basically starts begging me to get back into the action, well if you don't want to bid $5000, how about $4000, NO I'M OUT, well how about $3000 NO I'M OUT, come on..$2500, just $2500, well I must have of been feeling like a pigeon waiting to be plucked so I agreed. The bid was in, and it seemed the auctioneer did not attempt to cajole the other bidder. Going once, going twice, going three times..sold (in my mind I was thinking ) to the squab with the butter sauce.

My actions should have of told the other bidders that all they would have of had to do is up the bid a small amount and the home would have of been theirs, but this did not happen. My cousin/realtor was able to pick up his jaw and I had my first house. I have thought off and on that some of the bidders may have of been shills. What do you think?

By the way I did get an okay deal in the end, NOT a great deal just an okay deal. Some times you have to settle for okay.