All Forum Posts by: Doug Smith

Hey Carlos,

I assume you're talking about your deal on Harvard Circle. I looked into it and can see that something really strange (and rare) happened.

Your deal was approved yesterday with the numbers you mentioned.

Today, another deal with higher numbers was posted by Tommy Weisz, owner of cashhousebuyersusa.com.

Here are the 2 deals side-by-side. Yours is on the bottom....

http://screencast.com/t/fXagAc59CRi

A couple of things...

1. Tommy's deal should NOT have been approved. It's our policy not to post duplicate deals. Gracie reviews and approves deals in the DFW market. I'll ask her why a duplicate deal was approved. I apologize for this.

2. Do you know Tommy Weisz? He either took your deal and raised the price (which is against our policy) or he also has a contract with the seller.

I'll leave his deal there for now, but I'll take it down as soon as you have a chance to see what's happening for yourself.

We definitely do not raise asking prices, ARV amounts etc. on the deals that are posted. We don't get a cut of the deals, so that wouldn't make business sense. In fact, we want the deals that are posted to be as cheap as possible so that the website and its listings have the most appeal.

Again, apologies for the duplicate posting. Tommy's deal should have never been approved.

Thanks,
Doug

Hey guys,

Looks like I'm late to the party. Five or ten of you have already chimed in. I'm Doug Smith, investor and founder of MyHouseDeals.com. I'll quickly respond to a few of your comments...

Zubair: Throughout the years, tens of thousands of investors have come and gone as members. I think just 1 or 2 complained to Ripoffreport, so I'm happy with that ratio. Ripoffreport is bad for small to mid-sized companies because we get Googled more to see what kind of bad stuff is out there. Dell, for example, has 1,218 complains on Ripoffreport, but I doubt people even look them up or care that they have that many complaints.

Drew: Thanks. We do a 10 to 15 minute interview with each person who emails us saying they bought a property off our site. Glad you're getting some value from them.

Joel: Those values are mentioned in several of the interviews and will be different for each person.

Rob: If you aren't interested in buying properties from MyHouseDeals, it's still a good place to post. We see that the top wholesalers in many markets use our site to post and sell their deals.

Drew: Yes, these deals are posted by real people. Our staff just reviews and approves them if they meet the wholesale criteria.

Michael: Agreed.

Brian: I've met plenty of people who use our website as their #1 way to find deals. And I've had others tell me that they can't find a good deal on it. Guess it just depends on one's buying criteria.

Jon: Agree with much of what you said. On the MLS, good deals go in seconds. On MyHouseDeals.com, they go within a day or two, presumably because we get a lot less traffic than the MLS. Since they go fast, it's best that our members either check the new listings daily or unsubscribe. As for something else you mentioned, some sellers on MyHouseDeals post all of their deals to the site right away and some only post if they can't sell to their internal list. It's really case-by-case.

Carlos: We get a lot of repeat business on the $197 emails, but there's certainly no pressure to pay for that service. Hope you get a buyer for your deal. Wholesalers who post good deals tend to.

Mark: Sellers post their own numbers, and we warn investors to do their own due diligence. If you see someone posting deals with bad comps or inaccurate repair numbers, please mention that in the "property discussion" section on that deal's page. This will help keep them in check.

Will: Like with Mark, please use the property discussion section to call these people out.

On a related note, I've spent six years of my life and untold sums of money to build a website where wholesalers can post their deals, where rehabbers and landlords can purchase them, and where investors in general can profit. My team and I have also worked hard to convey the value of our services in a way that is appealing but doesn't come across as "scammy."

So many of our members love the site because they do get value and they do profit. I take a lot of pride in that. But if you're not a big fan, just know that we continue to work hard on making improvements. And it's my hope that one day, maybe one of those improvements will bump us up on your like-o-meter, even if it's just a little bit. :-)

Happy (and profitable) investing!
Doug

Hey Joe!

Glad to hear you're having success with the website. We'd love to interview you about it and post it on our Success Stories page if you have time. A side result would be that you'd be semi-famous in the Dallas investing community since that page gets a lot of visits.

For the properties that seem to be sold already, are you calling the sellers a few days after they're posted? For best results, you can check the listings daily and only focus on the ones that were posted that day. Good deals are kindof like fruits and veggies. They get rotten after a few days.

Best of luck with the deals and lenders ... and your investing in general!

Doug

Hey Will. I've called on lenders before. The vast majority were individuals, but a few hard money lenders were, in fact, peppered throughout. If you see too many of these and are unsatisfied, I'll gladly give you a full refund of your membership fee. I'll send an email to the email address in the footer of your messages so that you'll have mine.

Ok great, I'll put it on my developer's "to do" list. Thanks Will!

Hey Will. Thanks for your input.

A good chunk of the sellers mark their deals as sold on their own without us having to ask them if it's sold or not ... which is very nice.

And another chunk responds to our regular emails, texts, and calls. If they don't respond to those, our system automatically marks their deals as sold.

But you're right, it could be improved if there were a way for the buyer to notify us that a property has been sold.

Maybe there could be something like this on the property details page... "Did the seller tell you their property was already sold? If so, click here." And if more than 3 buyers click it in, say, a 4-day period, an email would be triggered to the seller saying "multiple buyers say your deal is sold, so we're about to mark it as sold." If the seller fails to respond to that email, it'll be marked as sold or they can click a link to say "No, it's still available."

What do you think about that solution?

Thanks again,
Doug

Hey Douglas. Thanks for being a member! We try to keep the Sold/Available status accurate by following up on deals on day 7, day 26, day 45, day 75, day 120, and day 160. (We call, email, and text sellers.) When you call about a deal that has already been sold, it may be between one of these followup dates. It can be frustrating to call on a deal that has already been sold, so if you have any suggestions for improvement, I'm certainly open to them.

Thanks!
Doug

Hey David! Doug Smith here. I founded/run MyHouseDeals.com and just came across your posting.

We started offering a constantly-updated list of private lenders to Premium Elite members in early May. That's just a month ago, so most members won't have a significant amount of experience in dealing with them yet. But if someone in the BiggerPockets community has actively pursued them, it would be great if they chimed in.

(Although I can tell you that David Sims in Dallas, TX used a pre-release version of the same private money list to raise over $1 million from 3 lenders back in February.)

All of these lenders are members of MyHouseDeals.com, and they filled out a form saying that they're looking to lend private money. Then they submitted their "amount to lend," "interest rate," etc.

Each lender is different, but you can use the terms they submitted as a starting point. So when you call them, you can say something like, "I see that you were interested in lending up to $100,000 at 10%. Is that still the case? Ok, great. I have a deal that might meet your criteria..." When you have a deal ready, you'll probably want to call those with the lowest interest rate requirements first.

Hope that helps!
Doug

I agree with Joel. Almost 10 years ago, I promised myself that I would never give up no matter what obstacles I faced, and I strongly feel that has been my key to success as an investor. That perseverance was most critical during the first year as I tried to overcome the learning curve and self-doubt.

I've never bought at the courthouse steps, but I often use courthousedirect.com for title searches. Cost is about $5 per document downloaded. Has really come in handy for me, especially on Sub 2 deals. It's also a great resource if title hasn't come back yet on a deal that you're wholesaling and you want to begin marketing the property ASAP.