All Forum Posts by: Josh Miller

Hey @Dimitri White this was 3+ years ago so unfortunately don't have those contacts any longer.  I will say that at one point I used a hard money lender named Aaron Impens who was super shady and ended up demanding more than the contractual agreed-upon amount in order to sign the release.  About a dirty of a business practice that you can imagine.  Also confirmed in one of the local meetups that I wasn't the only person he did this to.  Have you checked out some of the larger nationwide lenders like limaone?

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

Start with this 2012 post by Joshua Dorkens stating there are 28.1 Million "Real Estate Investors" in the US. Bigger pockets post

According to Biggerpockets stats https://www.biggerpockets.com/stats , over 1000+ new members signup every day and at the time of this post, they have 1.6 million+ members.

Jump onto Facebook and I see lots of investor groups in the 50k - 100k range but nothing larger.  

Talking to some real estate software providers, they have between 300 - max of 20k paying users.  

I am interested in finding out how many people are not "learning", but are actively looking every week for a new investment property to buy/flip/wholesale AND ARE ACTUALLY BUYING?  How many investors are purchasing multiple homes every year?  Does anyone have a good scale on this number or have any resources I could dig into?  

My hypothesis is the US has 30,000 active investors but it's just a guess so posing this question to see if anyone has done any actual research into this number?

As a side discussion. With 85-95 million SFH in the unites states, lots of opportunities. :)

@Kevin Trinh my only direct mail tricks are 1. Run list through USPS verification system to remove duplicates.

2. Run through USPS verification system to get deliverability status.  Save your postage and don't mail to anything non-deliverable.

3. Consider sending a text message before the letter.  Say something like "hey john, I put something in the mail for you and may have forgoten to seal the envelope, wanted to double check you got it?" 

4. Test the **** out of your response rates and make sure your making changes to your letter as needed.

5. Your list source is Everything!  How old is your list, are you removing people who have sold, etc.

6. Gold in the returned mail, make sure you are getting those addresses and doing a second search on them.  If you cannot mail to original address than neither can anyone else.  

7. How often are you hitting the same contact, consider changing up the piece you are mailing and the timing between the pieces depending on owners motivation level.  

8.  I am not a mailing house so saying this in all sincerity, consider how much its costing you in Time to do those mailings versus using a 3rd party.  Time is all we have, what is your time worth?  Can you use your time growing your business if you are not touching envelopes? No judgement here, just food for thought.

9. Personally I would stay away from "double dipping" as you put it.  Stay focused on one niche, stay personal.  Create the worlds best "home insurance letters".  

10.  Going to repeat KPIs again because it's by far the most important thing on this list.  Make sure you are measuring the hell out of your response rate but most importantly how much is a deal worth and how much did it cost you (include your time) to get that deal.  

@Jonathan Greene Hey brother, don't be jealous, plenty of sunshine for everyone :).  

@Jonathan Greene thanks for grammar correction. I was homeschooled so I will blame it on my mom :).   If I were to say the two things that brought me success was 1. thinking of myself as a marketing agency and not a real estate investor and 2. Taking massive action and not waiting for things to be perfect.  "Perfect is the enemy of good".  My goal is to write 1 post a day, it was approaching midnight so that is what I did. 

Grammar aside, I hope you value my point that marketing should come first in a real estate investors educational path and be the major focus.  What is very interesting about the marketing I ran is the nicer it looked, the worst it performed.  This went for direct mail pieces and adds.  I spent thousands on a beautiful direct mail piece that absolutely tanked.   I think a lot of it has to do with the homeowners I was trying to reach.  A perfect example of this is my old company name.  I started with HouseFastCash with a horrible logo and had amazing success.  I thought it sounded cheezy and so rebranded and came out with a really nice new name and a beautiful logo and my numbers immediately started tanking.  Sometimes ugly just works.   Still no excuses and hope you will forgive me for my horrible spelling and grammar.

Are you jJust starting out in real estate and want to know the key to success?  The key is marketing.  If you have millions in the bank, screw marketing.  Put your money to work in rentals or syndication and be a "real estate investor".  However, if you only have enough funds to purchase 1 house, or if you have no funds at all, spend your time learning marketing. YOU ARE NOT AN INVESTOR if you don't have cash.

The key to quick cash or building up a rental portfolio is getting the deals.  Unlike what all the coaches and infomercials teach, you cannot simply go online and buy some software and pick and choose which deal you want to get.  Deals only come one way and that is by marketing.  So, if you want to someday be a real estate investor, first become an expert at marketing.  While their are hundreds of things an investor should learn like choosing the right corporation type, running comps, cost of flips, etc etc, all important.  Learn these later.  First, get the deal.   The logical step is, well if I get a deal, how do I know its a deal.  STOP.  Start marketing first :).  It's so easy to jump around in this business and focus on a thousand different things.  Don't fall prey.  Focus on marketing, get some marketing out the door (text messages cost $0.0075 and $0.15 to get the number).  Deals are hard to come by so get practicing and focus on nothing else.  

I bought hundreds of homes my first year after leaving my corporate job and marketing is 100% the reason why I was able to do it.  I'll repeat myself.  I love bigger pockets but would strongly suggest not to try and learn it all.  Just learn marketing and it's almost impossible not to succeed.
 

Great question @Steven Lowe.  The sale price is pretty easy.  The market determines that.  In fact, I blasted this house at 189 and the market said it was worth 205.  Regarding how I found the deal.  That is where all the magic happens.  I do what's called point list stacking which is where I find all the motivated sellers in an area, give each of the different pain points a different value, add up those values, and market to them till they tell me to stop or they sell.

10 Things I did differently than typical wholesalers

Address: Chandler, AZ 85226
Purchase Price: $132,559.74
Sell Price: $205,000
Hold Time: 1 month
Expenses:
Taxes $ 352
Title (Selling) $ 1,723
Title (buying) $ 1,570
Hard Money Fee $ 1,311
Insurance $ 62
Interest $ 600
Photos $ 150
Total Expenses $ 5,767

Total Profit: $66,673

1. Don't always wholesale. Try wholetailing when it makes sense. This house is in Phoenix so of course, I first tried reaching out to Keyglee. They offered me $140k for the property. A few other investors offered around the same. I knew the house was worth a lot more so I decided to wholetail. Because of this decision, I made $66k instead of $7k. I had zero dollars invested both ways, well worth the one month wait.

2. Buy Sub2. I didn't want to come up with $132k so I purchased the property subject-to the existing loan of $122k. This meant I only had to come up with $11k at closing. Originally I had the house under contract at a lower amount but I paid slightly more so the seller would agree to leave his existing loan in place.

3. Infinite Returns. In order to achieve a truly infinite return. I used a hard money lender to come up with the $11k. (Plus 1 month of interest on the existing loan). This did cost me $1,311 but people often think only wholesalers can buy/sell properties with no money. In fact, you can do an entire flip with no money and I set out to prove it and did.

4. Hire a professional photographer. After closing, I spent $150 on a professional photographer. Worth every penny. If you want to sell for top dollar. Be professional. Even though the house was complete crap and needed a complete remodel, good pictures sell a house.

5. Contact Everyone when selling. I put it on Zillow and sent a text/e-mail/rvm marketing campaign to every single cash buyer, neighbor, and realtor in the area. Marketing is all about sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time. The realtor who ended up responding to my e-mail did not receive my text message or see it on Zillow. It was only the e-mail that worked. The e-mail was also specific to what a realtor wanted to hear, not a cash investor. I would have also put it on the MLS using a flat listing service but there was no need.

6. Consistency is king. The way I got this deal was really the key to everything. It was through consistent marketing. Don't do what everyone else does and just blast everyone once. This specific campaign was targeted at homeowners and the person only responded after receiving a text 6 months after initial marketing started. My initial campaign consisted of Facebook adds along with text/e-mail/RVM/direct mail every 4 weeks.

7. Don't just use standard text messages. Yes texting is hot right now but be creative and use something other than "Hi John, do you own the house at 123 main st?". I like to show what value I can bring to the table. In my text messages, I include videos, photos, emojis, and links to various funnel pages. I provide as much content and value as possible.

8. Automate your marketing. I am technically retired (since May) but this was part of an automated campaign that was going out that I left running for demo purposes. I only accidentally saw the response when looking at my funnel and noticed someone had signed my contract to sell me the house. Automation is key, without it you will either overspend in marketing or kill yourself with the mountain of time and VAs required. Set up a system that automatically sends out text messages (it's the cheapest), followed by ringless Voicemails, followed by e-mails, cold calling, followed by occasional direct mail (i like sending holiday postcards that get noticed). Testimony after testimony will attest that it takes 8+ touches to make a sale and using multiple different types of touches helps all the more.

9. Send the right message. Use different marketing campaigns to your different audiences. If someone is a landlord, hit them with the "tired landlord" special... tired of those tenants, toilets, taxes. If they are a distressed homeowner, hit them with the "financial distress" special.

10. Send it to the right person. People talk about list stacking which I always think is funny. Don't list stack. Point list stack. Think about it. If you have someone that shows up as vacant & absentee (two lists) or probate & tax-delinquent (two lists), which person would you want to market too? Obviously the latter. The only way to do this is to assign a point value to each type of list. That's why this person was on my list.

There you have it. Hopefully one of these 10 items proved helpful.

I love people. I get my joy in life from meeting and helping others. If you are the same way, I welcome you to join me for some coffee and weekly get-togethers. 

The format is simple. We will start the meeting by networking, followed by every person saying something they have and something they want. After that, we will wrap up with some Q/A and more networking.

Hope to see you there!

Meeting every Wednesday from 6 pm - 8 pm in Seal Beach.