All Forum Posts by: James Reynante

Hi @Jennifer Allem - I currently have two different websites that I use for my vacant land wholesale business... One for motivated sellers and the other for buyers.  Why do I do this?  Mostly because I don't want my motivated sellers to easily see that I am turning around and re-selling the subject property for a profit. Of course with a little bit of research, both website entities can be traced back to me.

Hi @Marcio Curvo, Welcome to BP!  What is your RE investing background/experience?  I have a been investing for a number of years on and off. Only recently have I been really focused on investing activities on a regular basis. I have done mostly Buy&Hold, but now I am working more and more with wholesaling.

I think you'll find this website very helpful, Jim

@Zachary Robertson - As for frequency of sending direct mail, it all depends on your marketing plan. For my marketing, I send roughly 4000 pieces of direct mail every month and I spread it out over the weeks. I schedule my mailing service to send about 1000 every Thursday.  Other investors like to send all 4000 at the same time. Either way works. I just like to spread out the mailers because it tends to even out the responses throughout the month.

As a follow-up mailing, I send to the same list 6-8 weeks later.  Repeating the mailing to the same list just as @Kim Younkin mentioned, is one technique that lots of people seem to forget or ignore. Try sending a different postcard or letter each time... new content, variation of the formatting, etc.

Hi Andrew,

I am a wholesaler and currently pay my birddogs $10-20 for each qualified lead, plus they get a piece of the profit if I actually end up flipping the property. The people that birddog for me have a very specific list of property characteristics that I am looking for, because I don't want properties that are white elephants (e.g., 1bd/1ba condos, 4bd/1ba SFRs).

I also expect that they qualify the seller leads... they can't just hand me a list of property addresses. Which means that they have at least talked with the seller, got their contact info (name/address/email/cell phone) and verified that the seller is interested in selling AND expressed some level of motivation.

I have found that it is okay to start with either postcards or yellow letters, but the most important thing is to START. I know of two RE investing newbies that agonized over which method to begin with... one of them spent almost 8 weeks (YIKES!) before finally deciding to start with postcards. In the end the only thing that he really accomplished was to delay getting his first check by almost 8 weeks.

Just a couple of points regarding my own experience:

• I get a better response rate from yellow letters (6.2%) vs postcards (about 1%)
• Direct mail is easily my most successful method of marketing for sellers
• I have a VA scrape FSBOs in Craigslist, and then email/text the sellers
• I also have a VA scrape "For Rent" ads in Craigslist... hoping to find tired landlords that may be considering selling their rental property
• I have not tried putting out bandit signs ("We Buy Houses"), but some people swear by them.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give: You need to start doing something (just one thing) and then keep doing it consistently. After you get that one method fine-tuned and working, add a second method. Just make sure that you always keep your marketing consistent and regular, so that your incoming deal flow is consistent and regular.

Good Luck to you!!

I have been able to get a few wholesale deals from zillow, in particular the sellers were burned out and just wanted to get out of their properties... but I don't get very many deals from here.

My recommendation to you: you can look for wholesale deals in zillow, redfin, trulia, etc but do rely on this method as your main source of deals. Instead, use it to supplement your other marketing efforts... in other words, use zillow as a way to reach sellers, but also scrap craigslist for sellers, send direct mail to absentee/high-equity owners, etc.    Personally, my best deal flow comes from direct mail marketing.

 I have tried a few different marketing techniques, but the most effective one for me is direct mail. I like to mail to both: a) Absentee owners; b) High equity owners.  I subscribe to two different list services that provide owner names based upon my criteria. There are some low-cost/no-cost ways for getting lists of owners, but I have very little experience with these methods since I want to get as many names as quickly as possible. Hope this helps!

Have you tried looking at Fiverr? Here is a link to the Logo Design section:

https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-logo-design/#filter=auto&page=1

Sounds interesting. Please send me the details on the deal... thanks!

Hi Michael- I send seller's a 1-page Purchase Agreement. It contains my offer price plus the term. I purposely keep this document short, very simple and easy to read. If it is too long, too complicated or contains too much legal content, then I find that most seller's are afraid or worried to sign it.

Remember, the Purchase Agreement needs to contain just enough information so that you can lock up the property under contract.

Good Luck to you!