All Forum Posts by: Jay Luke

Alright guys I wanted to share with you about our first deal! We used @Jerry Puckett and did a mail drop of 1k yellow letters to high equity home owners. Given the fact that my business partner and I both work full time and work had been slower I will admit some of the cost for our leads went onto a credit card. We dropped 667 pieces and had enough calls and leads that we had to hold off because we didn't want to get overwhelmed. We had a seller contact us stating that she had a property she needed to sell. After speaking with her we find out that the property is owned free and clear and costing her 700.00 a month just sitting there. She was a widow and her mortgage just doubled. (didn't know husband did an interest only) We were pre approved with our HML and could buy the property out right if we couldn't wholesale it. We had listed the property on CL and within 2 weeks it was sold to an all cash investor looking to flip the property. We set up closing and everything went smooth as butter. We utilized the purchase and sale contracts found in the fileplace. I can honestly say that if it weren't for BP we wouldn't have accomplished this deal.

Everyone says to take action so that is what we did. It feels absolutely wonderful knowing how the process works and how to accomplish a deal from start to finish. We bought the property for $18,500.00 and sold it for 30k with end buyer covering closing costs. How did we do for our first deal and 3 weeks worth of time? No more marketing money coming out of our pockets!

We dropped the last 300 from our batch and have had 12 calls already this week.

Disclaimer****I will caution though that from my understanding it's not normal to necessarily get a deal on your first drop. So I wouldn't recommend putting yourself in debt if you can't afford the cost of leads. 

@Jay Luke Thanks man Glad to help. Our Buyer came from someone we met through our Local REIA. Get plugged in to yours and find out who buys, who holds, and who has a buyers list themselves. We had it under contract for a couple weeks before we found a buyer they closed on the property before the date on our original contract though.

Hi @Jay Luke ... looks like you're close to doing your first flip deal, congrats! I agree, I think you should find a good deal first. Being a lender myself, it is always hard to answer the question "how much will you lend me" or "can I get preapproved" because all private/hard money lenders' security is in the real estate itself. In other words, the sweeter the deal, the better the financing options, as @David Oldenburg eluded to. There are a lot of moving parts in the flipping business, but in my opinion the best method is to get the good deals under contract right away. Have a few days in there for your due diligence and that's when you can decide to wholesale or flip yourself, depending on financials. Unforutnately, as you know, $20k in CA is not a ton of money, and most all lenders will require a min of 20% down (that is our min anyways). Therefore, you should also have some investors on your team to provide more capital. Keep in mind the lenders that will allow other investment properties to be used as cross collateral and seller financing options to count as your down payment. We allow any method of financing your down payment, but not all lenders do, so make sure you have all of these options weighed out. Hope this helps get you started, it all gets a lot easier!

Best, Ben

We finally got our first deal closed. ARV on the house was about $125K We got it under contract for $79,400 and assigned the contract for 5,600! With this being our first deal we know that it is possible and there will be more to come. I want to thank Bigger Pockets for providing the wealth of knowledge. And we already have a second house under contract! Look out Augusta here we come. My partner @Andre Elston and I are going to be on the podcast one day hopefully. LOL

Hey Kyle J., Deborah Saddler, Mehran Kamari, Brandon Turner, Jared Adamson, James Vermillion and Al Williamson! Thank you ALL for the welcome! I was in Oregon visiting family when I wrote this introduction and didn't realize all of you responded until now.

Brandon, thank you for the links and I look forward to your upcoming podcasts!

Kyle, Jared and Al, are you guys having any luck in this booming market? I have been getting about 6 calls/day from "motivated" sellers. I have not gotten a sale as of yet but it is nice seeing a growing response to my hours and hours of putting up Bandit Signs! What do you guys see working best for leads? Thanks!

Hey Kyle J., Deborah Saddler, Mehran Kamari, Brandon Turner, Jared Adamson, James Vermillion and Al Williamson! Thank you ALL for the welcome! I was in Oregon visiting family when I wrote this introduction and didn't realize all of you responded until now.

Brandon, thank you for the links and I look forward to your upcoming podcasts!

Kyle, Jared and Al, are you guys having any luck in this booming market? I have been getting about 6 calls/day from "motivated" sellers. I have not gotten a sale as of yet but it is nice seeing a growing response to my hours and hours of putting up Bandit Signs! What do you guys see working best for leads? Thanks!