All Forum Posts by: Eric F.

I am on your parent's' side. Finish college. You should have a backup plan, always. Successful people always do. Richard Branson did not start Virgin Airlines without a guarantee from Boeing he could return the planes no charge if it did not work out. Unless your job is a high level job you shouldn't quit college to focus on work and investing. You don't need to quit college to find a couple of buy and holds. Finish what you start. This applies to college and life.

You're 21, no family (I assume), with a job and you are going to college. If you take a break now when will you go back? You won't. You will never have more time. 

@Cody Dover you need to crawl before you walk. VAs are all the rage, but how can you train a VA to do something you cannot do yourself? You can't. Your idea of sending a contractor out to look at it before you step foot into the property yourself is insulting to the contractor's time.

I don't want to be rude, but worry about saving time looking at properties until you have too many deals to run your business any other way. If you have not done a single rehab yet you don't need to to spend your time creating systems to handle 20 at a time. 

Stop worrying about VAs and systems at this point in your career. Do some deals first, then worry about scaling up. If you spend all your time reading about VAs instead of calling sellers to find deals you will never have deals. Too many investors spend time reading about crap they may have to know far off in the future they never do a deal in the present. It drives me crazy to see people trying to figure out how to "virtual wholesale from anywhere with VAs" and spending hundreds of hours reading about it when they have never even sent a damn postcard or gone on a seller appointment. 

Books like the Four Hour Workweek are great, but the biggest crime Tim Ferriss ever committed was leaving out the fact he worked 80 hours a week for years so he could work 4 (which he never actually did, it was a marketing gimmick)

@Account Closed When I saw "we" for the installation I am referring to the professional I hired who installed the skylight after realizing I couldn't just undo 10 bolts and put a new plastic cap on. I just could not believe something that looked so simple (order a new skylight cap + 10 bolts) turned out to actually need an entire new skylight + frame + flashing + whatever else it needed!

I wouldn't say my family was pessimistic or tried to discourage me but when I first got interested in real estate I am not sure if they thought it worked. I did two things. 

First I bought my dad The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller. This book doesn't have any mind blowing strategies or secrets, but it lays out the advantages of buying rental properties to fund a retirement in an easy to understand way. 

Second, when I decided to go into wholesaling/rehabbing full time my dad was apprehensive. I had a pretty good job that I was doing well at, but I wanted to try real estate while I still could. If I was married with 2 kids I couldn't take a risk. Right now I only can mess up my own life. No one depends on me. I took him to meet a very successful investor and after that my dad supported me 100%.

Granted I was in a different situation. I had already had another career for 10 years and the absolute worst case scenario is I go back into it. I could find a job instantly (CPAs here have I think a 2% employment rate). Do you have a job now? Did you go to college? Perhaps they are afraid to see all the time and effort you went to going to college and getting a degree, then a job "go to waste." That is understandable from their perspective. 

Are you trying to quit your job now to pursue real estate? If so, they are right to be alarmed. At 21 I doubt you have a year of income saved + a year of expenses (marketing, etc). I would not quit without that. If you only have a 3 month lifeline you will be making a bad decision. If you are just looking into it on the side while keeping your job then what do they care anyway? The worst case scenario is you spend your time learning about real estate instead of watching TV, which is how I imagine most people get started while working a job.

@Adam Christopher Zaleski did you talk to the tenant when you saw the crate? 

Is this housing that only college students would be interested in? Since you are a professor and the renters are college students I am guessing it is a college area. If you evict, which seems a bit aggressive especially since you actually allow 2 dogs, would it be hard to fill until the next semester/year? 

This sounds like something that can be fixed with a conversation. He is in the wrong, but you are very generous to allow two dogs so he should be happy to pay the fee, although if we think back to when we were in college we know how much $200 feels like!

@Brad Woodall "I have offered to refer a lot of the tire kickers to an agent and told them their best bet is listing with a agent because they want top dollar. All of them have declined so far.

I mark them all as followup in my CRM and I'll try back in a couple months."

Those are your best leads. Call every single one monthly. Do not let them slip away. I find the best leads to follow up are ones where the house needs major work to be listed, not just paint and carpet but real work. As we all know, when the seller first wants to sell they plan on doing the work themselves so they can list it full price, and I wish them luck and even offer them advice. Mark these follow up! The vast majority of these sellers, in my experience, end up never doing the work and when you call them back 6 months later the reality has set in they will never be able to get their house in listable condition. After 6 additional months of mortgage payments and utilities down the drain, with no hope of selling it on the MLS, they realize the value you offer. And by the way, this is the value wholesalers and investors offer. These houses would never get sold otherwise.

If I could buy any lead source in the world it would be "Sellers who called investors 3 months ago and decided not to sell." I'd pay 10x any other list.

@Ushi Hastie How are you getting the numbers to cold call? I saw TLO mentioned but I looked into them in other BP threads and it sounds like a lengthy application process. I have a home office so it sounds hit or miss if they will approve me.

When she first rented it, did she not pay a deposit? What made them ask for one after 2 years? Which apartment/management company is this? 

The statute related to security deposits is below

§ 42-52. Landlord's obligations. Upon termination of the tenancy, money held by the landlord as security may be applied as permitted in G.S. 42-51 or, if not so applied, shall be refunded to the tenant. In either case the landlord in writing shall itemize any damage and mail or deliver same to the tenant, together with the balance of the security deposit, no later than 30 days after termination of the tenancy NC General Statutes - Chapter 42 Article 6 2 and delivery of possession of the premises to the landlord. If the extent of the landlord's claim against the security deposit cannot be determined within 30 days, the landlord shall provide the tenant with an interim accounting no later than 30 days after termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession of the premises to the landlord and shall provide a final accounting within 60 days after termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession of the premises to the landlord. If the tenant's address is unknown the landlord shall apply the deposit as permitted in G.S. 42-51 after a period of 30 days and the landlord shall hold the balance of the deposit for collection by the tenant for at least six months. The landlord may not withhold as damages part of the security deposit for conditions that are due to normal wear and tear nor may the landlord retain an amount from the security deposit which exceeds his actual damages. (1977, c. 914, s. 1; 2009-279, s. 5.)

That is a really small sample size and probably overmailed list judging by Brad and Joel's posts. Those response numbers are not that bad to be honest. You can write off the December mailer so 4 leads from 500 postcards is acceptable. The worse response rate I have ever gotten was mailed in December.  Hit it again in January and in the mean time start looking for a better list.

Also, keep in mind the election was November. I am not sure what Georgia was like but in NC I got multiple full color postcards, some 11x8 even, every single day since it was a battleground state. Any 4x6 yellow postcard to buy a house had no chance. We sent a mailer that arrived in the week before the election and the response rate was very poor (not as bad as the one that arrived just before Christmas last year). I would guess most people just threw the entire pile in the trash. I know I did!

Maybe try a bigger postcard next time. I use the 6x9 from click2mail.

@Jackie Lange Do people send you postcards all the way to Boquete or do you receive them at a US mailing address? 

If their houses are in good condition and they want FMV and should ask for it. Why would they sell it cheaper? The houses you get at a discount are ones which need a lot of work the owner can't do, ones the owner does not have time to list because they need it sold NOW, or other situations.

You don't get calls from people saying "I have a great house, perfect shape, comps at 200k, but you sent me a 47 cent postcard so you can have it for 140k." People in that scenario are not calling you because they HAVE to sell to you. They are calling because they figure "well, if he offers me full value I guess I can sell this, but I don't need to sell it, lets give him a call."

I don't know how many calls you have gotten, but it takes a lot to get a deal. If you haven't gotten 100 yet you don't even have a big enough sample size to draw conclusions.=