All Forum Posts by: Joshua Durrin

I'm confused. Do you have the properties in contract or not? Second, did you make it so that the contracts are assignable? 

If neither, consider locking the properties up by purchasing an option to buy and then executing the option simultaneous to the resale to your buyers. 

Curious how your house in Alameda worked out by the way. 

Hi Stephen, Consider an FHA 203k loan on a fixer and you might extend your affordability (assuming you purchase at a discount). FHA 203k loans enable the buyer to do some repairs on the property prior to moving in. It's a great first-time home-buyer / newbie-investor financing option requiring little to no money down. However, you still need to find the deal. Good luck. Josh

Great feedback all.  These benchmarks are really helpful.  Thanks for the help.  

@John Horner.  Thanks John! That's a great offer.  The list was about the same cost as you mentioned though, maybe just under what you mentioned per name.  The mailers were $.78/envelope.  These costs seem reasonable.  It's just that my list is huge for my capabilities currently.  But that's also a great suggestion to work with a rep and establish a relationship... forward thinking.  :)  Great idea!

Thanks @Brandon Proctor.  

Alameda county tax sales (and many other counties nationwide) are auctioned online.  Check out www.**************.  You have to register there in advance of the auction and have the deposit money verified prior to the auction.  Lots of properties to choose from there.  

Hi all, 

Thanks for the inputs.  @Victoria Winters, great point.  That's exactly what I'm working on narrowing in on is quality... not quantity.  @Larry Turowski, you mentioned some great ideas.  My list was absentee owners with more than 50% equity but I hadn't narrowed it much further than that.  I'd be wise to narrow it further based on house value perhaps and increase the equity margin.  @William Baumann, I did find that option to purchase a partial list... but then wondered... what part? ;) This gets into the quality of the list... hence posting my question.  But as you mention, I WILL be starting soon.  Better to have failed a hundred times and succeeded once than to never have started.  @Jerry Puckett, I'm targeting 1000 for my first list, hoping for a 2-3% return but expecting a 1%.  One real deal out of 1000 is really all I need to get started. @Joseph Ball, point taken.  However, I definitely need to get money coming in on this first deal.  I'll be ramping up the marketing soon afterward for sure... my pockets won't get "bigger" otherwise.  This first marketing campaign also is somewhat of a test-marketing one for me, as it'll be my first.  I'm further thinking to narrow in on my most desirable zip codes a bit further and take a selection from each (partial list feature) to test which gets the better response so that the next campaign is money better spent in a proven hot area. 

Thanks again for all the insights.  See you out of this rat race soon.  :)

Holy crap! Marketing is expensive! I went to listsource.com to build my list and had 10,000 people or so on it. I filtered the duplicates and only had names where the mailing and property addresses were whole. Further I filtered out corporations and only had absentee owners with more than 50% equity. 10,000 names is a huge expense. Then I went to yellowletters.com and saw the mailing costs were about 4x the list cost. It's clear I need to have a better targeted list to keep my costs low as I'm just starting out. What would you suggest? Should I narrow my search area (removing zip codes) or should I narrow the amount I take from each (say a percentage of names from each)? Other demographic filters you can think of? Thanks for the help.

Thanks @Elizabeth Colegrove.  I'll definitely be listening to that podcast.  I'm working my way through the whole series, currently on show 56.  Thanks to you and the others for offering your wisdom and guidance to all of us newbies trying to get out of the rat race.  

I agree with @J Scott.  Seems like the numbers are there, but investors will be looking to invest in you on a project like this just as much as the property itself.  You'd be looking at partnering with an experienced investor in a good cash position.  Perhaps spend a portion of your earned-income money on a good partnership agreement you can use and be prepared to market yourself as the project manager to your new-found investment partner.  Also you might consider putting together a quick business plan, firming up the numbers you're assuming, so that you can more confidently present the project and yourself as the manager... showing you have something to offer to the partnership and a reason to collect some of the returns.