All Forum Posts by: Joshua Roat

Week 8 complete a 5 more letters sent. For anyone that's interest I've been going through the city's map of properties and looking for places where the owner's address is different.

I know there's more efficient ways to do this, however, I've got it down such that it takes an hour a week and I feel like I'm doing something. That's got me thinking that I'm more using this as an excuse to not get started. A smarter thing to do would be to send the letters to houses listed on the MLS as I know they're already trying to sell or to find ways to send more than 5 letters a week.

The bigger question that's been in the back of my mind is whether I have the time to take something like this on. I don't know if I could handle the extra responsibility on top of the 9 to 5. I know it'll work out in the long run but I'm having trouble committing to that first deal.

Last weeks goal was to send 5 letters. I was able to write up 7 letters and plan to print them first thing tomorrow morning. I'm counting this as a success even thought they won't actually be in the mail until tomorrow.

This time I found the properties by looking for homes where the owner's address is different than the property in question. This will allow me to cast a bigger net and hopefully yield some results.

This coming week I hope to get another 5 letters out, only this time I will have them in the mail before Tuesday.

Not to sound like a broken record but not a lot to report this week. I was able to mail out my first batch of letters, however, it feels like a hallow victory as they went out a week late. I think the lack of progress this week was a result of a poor goal. This week I'm going to send 5 new letters. There's 2 abandoned houses on my block which I think will make great BRRR candidates, that then leaves 3 more houses.

The goal for week 4 was to send one letter and I failed. The letter was written, in fact I wrote 3 letters, but it still lives on my computer. This evening I set everything up so that I can print the letters out first thing tomorrow morning and get them in the mail ASAP.

This week was not all that bad though. I did start a spread sheet to track where I've sent letters, how much I've offered and pulled some data from Zillow and Redfine so when I do get a deal I can see how valid their estimates are. The challenge I'm having now is finding something that I can buy for a 'fair' price, rent-out and still turn a profit. Two of the properties that I looked at won't cash flow (at least by my calculations) and the third doesn't cash flow based on the 50% model and only has a cash on cash return of 1.5%.

The goal for this week will be more letters to see if I can find a deal (I've only looked at a hand-full). My hope is that even if the deal doesn't look good the seller/landlord will still reach out and I can at least get my name out there.

Going to keep my week 4 update rather short as I'm getting anxious and want to start sending letters out. I was able to write up a letter over the weekend and started drafting a sample lease option contract. The goal will be to find units that are up for rent and then send the letter and contract to the owner/landlord.

The goal for this week is to send one letter. The two 'road blocks' that I'm facing are finishing the sample contract and I'm also debating if I want to get a new phone number. I currently live in Oregon, however, my personal phone number has an out of state area code. What are your thoughts on area codes and if people care wither or not the code is familiar. I'm also thinking it'd be best to keep my personal cell separate from the one that people are going to be calling.

Lastly, I had the idea to start a spreadsheet to track where I've sent the letters, how I found the deal, if I got a response etc. However, this will have to wait, got to send out those letters first!

Week 3 was met with early success followed by some loss of steam and focus. I was able to chat with a mortgage broker who was able to resolve some of my concerns. I came out of the conversation ready to go and started brainstorming letters to send to potential sellers. However, I quickly felt over whelmed as I have no experience as a land lord. I ended up buying Brandon Turner's book on becoming a land lord and am reading through that. My current plan is to read it twice, the first time to gain the exposure and get my feet under me, the second time will be slower and in parallel I'll start compiling all the recommended documents so that I'm ready to start looking for tenants.

My concern is that my focus should be on finding deals and that I'm going off on tangents and getting worried about what ifs. The goal for this week is to create the first draft of a letter to find potential buyers. My plan is to reach out to sellers on Craigslist, Zillow and/or Redfin to see why they're selling. The goal will be to try and set up a lease-option contract or find someone who would be open to a seller financed deal so that I don't have to find 15% down for a conventional loan.

At the start of this blog post I didn't feel like I accomplished much for my week 2 update. I felt like I spent most of the week bouncing from one idea to the next with no set goal or direction. However, as I'm writing this I feel like I can see some progress being made, now wither or not it's aligning with my goal of completing a real estate deal is hard to tell.

I started the week trying to research what I could legally do without a real estate license. I ultimately ended up finding ORS 696.020 which states that a license is required for individuals "engaged in professional real estate activities". This initially got me discouraged, however, after further reflection I don't think I'm 'professionally' engaged in real estate. I'm treating this challenge as an exercise to expand my knowledge base as an amateur investor, not a professional. Additionally, and probably more importantly I was using the fear of legal implications as an excuse not to go out and figure out what to do next.

So here's what I've now decided to do. I started watching, and listening, to some BP podcasts on the best way to find off market deals. I'm going to devote the rest of the week to figuration out how to create target lists, either by driving for dollars or using programs like list source. I'm still hesitant to reach out to home owners so I set up a call with the mortgage broker that helped me buy my house. The hope is he'll be able to provide me with some direction and recommendations so that I can start looking for deals.

Also just a quick note to anyone feeling stuck the blog post is definitely helping. I had the idea to reach out to the broker 2 or 3 days ago and kept putting it off. It wasn't until I started writing this post that I found myself saying 'I'm going to email...' and stopped myself, opened an new tab, emailed him and 5 minutes later set up a time for a quick call. 

Thanks for the idea Landon! I purchase my first home about 18 months ago at 5% down. I was able to fix it up a bit and increase the value by 6%. However, I don't believe I have enough equity to open an HLOC until I hit 20%. 

My fiancee and I talked about moving and renting out our house but after living in 10 different rentals it's pretty nice not having to move. 

I've hit a wall with my investing career so I had the idea to write a weekly blog to hold myself accountable. I've been a long time listener but am new to Biggerpockets forum so someone let me know if there's a better place for me to write out my thoughts.

I'm hoping to complete a real estate deal at the end of my 90 day challenge. My goal for this week is to read up on real state options/wholesaling. I live in Portland OR which is a relatively expensive market so my thought is that I can sell some real estate option contracts to save up to buy my first rental. I don't have any type of real estate license so I want to make sure I can legally sell a real estate contract. 

I'm thinking week 2 will be spent researching the best cold calling systems. I'll start setting it up come week 3, do a trial run week 4, then hit the ground running on week 5. Weeks 6 through 13 will then be spent writing a contract and trying to connect with a buyer.