All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Lipson

I've been to this meet up several times. Unfortunately, a majority of the time the speaker is there to sell you something, although from what I understand this isn't much different than what happens at a lot of REIA meetings all over the country. There have also been some purely informational speakers that have been excellent and well worth the cost of membership.

It does suck having to sit through obvious sales pitches, but there's nothing that says you actually have to.  The networking and deal announcement stuff in the beginning still makes them very worthwhile events to attend, but once the networking is over, you can always leave.  I've done this a few times and it makes the evening a lot more efficient.  

You should be able to wholesale it, you just likely won't be able to assign the contracts on the properties. You'll need to do a double close, which will cost you a little more since you'll have two sets of closing costs to pay. I'd definitely double check with a lawyer in your state to make sure there is nothing prohibiting it. 

If this is the case, you'll need to have some kind of funding on your own to cover the initial purchase. If you don't have your own funding source, many hard money lenders have programs available for this type of scenario that will provide you with short term financing and a POF letter. Just Google "transactional funding" and start talking to the different lenders to find the one that works best for your circumstance.

@Account Closed - The most obvious marketing expense is going to come from direct mail.  Unless you plan on spending a lot of your own time collecting leads, creating letters and preparing them for delivery, even a very small, multi-touch campaign is going to cost you several hundred dollars.  If you plan to scale that up to develop a consistent stream of calls coming in, it could easily get up into the thousands of dollars.  

 I'm curious about this as well.  

I opened up a separate business account just because it makes it much easier to separate and track business expenses.  I believe the only part of it that cost anything was ordering the checks.  Even if there were a small processing fee, it just makes more sense to me to knock something like this out now, a why put off until tomorrow what you can do today type of deal. 

I don't think that it is.  Every search I've run on it seems to lead to a dead end.  

From one Mass newbie to another, welcome!  

Thank you everyone for the advice and suggestions.  I appreciate it. 

I'd definitely be interested.

Over the weekend I started driving around the area in which I live, and was honestly a but shocked by how many properties I came across that were either vacant or in a major state of disrepair.  Within a fairly concentrated area I found about 15 such properties, took some pictures and recorded the addresses, but I'm not really sure what to do next.  

I know I need to research the properties and track down the current owners, but once I do, what's the next move?  Should the first attempt at contact be a letter, knocking on the door, a phone call?  Maybe a mix?

I'd love any advise that could be offered on how to make contact and, probably more important, what to say.  

Thanks!

Hi @Robin McLaughlin,

I'm also on the South Shore.  It's great to have another investor close by come aboard!  I don't have much advice to offer yet, but I would definitely setup some keyword alerts for either categories that you're particularly interested in, and/or the geographic areas to which you want to stay connected.  In my case, I'm getting pinged whenever Massachusetts, MA, Boston or South Shore are mentioned.  

Good luck!