All Forum Posts by: Jon Mason

@Devan Mcclish  good points as well...I hadn't considered that I might have a harder time selling the properties if I move out of Nashville into the suburbs, but that makes sense.  I was thinking if I focused on a sub-market outside of Nashville, I might be able to avoid some of the competition that might come with dealing in the hot areas like east Nash.

@Tom Shepard Good points. I plan on marketing to absentee owners with at least 50% equity, and then would like to sell to buy and hold investors in the area. I don't have a buyers list yet, but will be attending some auctions and REIA meetings to network and make some contacts. I also have another wholesaler I'm working with in Nashville who has graciously agreed to help me get rolling.

I looked at listsource.com and built a list based on the above conditions and came back with 1,127 people.  That includes in-state absentee owners.  If I were to exclude the in-state absentee owners, it would drop the list to 130 people.  

Are these numbers too small to work with?  

I'm just getting ready to start doing some direct mail in the Nashville TN area, and I'm unsure of how to analyze a sub-market to determine if it would be a good candidate for wholesaling?

I've lived in Nashville all my life, so I have a pretty good handle on the different areas.  I live on the south side, so my gut was saying hit the Spring Hill and/or Columbia zip codes.  I'd like to know if there's an objective way to analyze those zip codes to determine if it would be a good sub-market?  I feel like I should be operating off of more than a gut feeling when spending that much money on marketing.

I have a relative who owns a house that I could get for 70% of ARV. It has a foundation issue that needs to be fixed, but aside from that it just needs some lipstick. It's a great property in a great part of town that's going no where but up. The problem is, my relative is going through a bankruptcy and he said the "paperwork has already been filed with the bank", I guess to surrender the house to the bank? I called the bank and nothing is on file for the property, so it's still evidently in the works.

I talked to the homeowner about purchasing it from him, but he said the house is tied up in his bankruptcy.  He had the house on the market for a while, and someone (the bank maybe?) told him to to take it off the market because of the bankruptcy.

The homeowner doesn't seem to have a lot of details or understanding about what's going on, which is compounded by the fact that I'm new to this as well, so I'm not sure how to approach it.

Trying to figure out how I buy the property for a fix and flip.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  

I'm about to invest in some direct mail marketing, and I'm wondering how you determine what a good market is within a city to focus on?  I suppose there's no way to know what areas will have less competition?  I have a rough idea of a couple of zip codes I'd like to focus on, but I'm unsure of how to vet them out.

Tyler - just curious here, but have you tried yellow letters? I'm a total noob, so do your own research, but from what I'm reading (about to launch my own marketing campaign), the responses on yellow letters seem to be more favorable than post cards. Many also seem to recommend alternating between yellow letters and postcards. Someone else chime in here if I'm off base, again, no real experience here, just lots of reading.

I really like Wave.  (http://www.waveapps.com).

I know there are a lot of wholesalers in TN, so I'm fairly certain it's not illegal, but I wanted to call the Tennessee Real Estate Commission and find out for sure for myself. When I called them, the individual I spoke with said that anyone with a deed to a property can sell that property without a real estate license, but if you have an LLC you would have to have a license because now its a business.

So, I think the first part of his statement would be covered by doing a double closing, but is the second part true and is everyone else doing it that way? I would think most would've set up an LLC.

A lot of good points on this thread. It seems that many people are hung up on the fact that there are a lot of slimy people wholesaling. I get that. However, there are a lot of slimy people in every industry, even non profits where the whole point is to help people. Let's assume for a second that we're in a state where wholesaling is legal. What would an honest, ethical wholesaling transaction look like? Maybe someone could present a step by step explanation of how that would unfold?

If you guys are looking at trello, you should really check out kanbantool.com as well.  I think it's more intuitive and flexible than trello, and within each task you can have a checklist and also put notes associated with that task.  I'm in no way affiliated with this organization, I just like their product.  It's a tiered pricing model, so you can get a free account or you can choose from paid plans that have different levels of additional features.