All Forum Posts by: Matthew Wilson

Government Lists! They are FREE (and dont let your county say otherwise). Code Violation lists, probate lists, fire damaged properties, water shut off, there are a LOT of them that are free for you to receive from your county clerks office. Simply email them or call and ask about the process for receiving these lists.

As for finding potential buyers: Attend meetups with goals, desired outcomes, and a purpose and become a regular at them. Another route is to utilize the cash buyers filter within a tool like Propstream and cold calling them from there, or posting into facebook groups is another popular method.

Hello BP Fam!

I am reaching out looking for advice from my direct-to-seller comrades in the small multi-family space as well as any individuals who are operating within the real estate as a business vehicle (compared to that of a "passive" investment). I am in the planning stages for making a Real Estate business that would operate as a hybrid between wholesaling and an investment firm, taking a note out of the business model of the popular wholesaler/IG account InvestWithAce (Ace Properties). 

As part of driving the sales portion of this business I am building out seller personas so that I, and the team I am building, can quickly identify seller motivations and the kind of marketing/messaging that would be most appropriate for the seller. Most of my own experience has been on market through agents or targeting distressed single-families, and from theory. My current understanding of the sellers position is whether they are coming from a point of Pain (looking to retire or walk away from real estate, bad tenants or property issues causing headaches, inherited the property, law suit etc) or from a point of Gain (looking to cash-out or 1031).

The end state from this will be to build out strong seller persona's (To be shared later with the the community!) and effective marketing products (direct mail letters, post cards, whatever it may be) that speak to a seller the clearest and result in a lead conversion and an effective solution to both sides of the transaction, as well to avoid talking to unmotivated owners (looking for astronomical prices or not interested in selling at all)

Any advice or experiences you have had are much appreciated!!! 

Hi @Jose Aguilar,

The best thing I think you can do right now is pick 1 direction you want to go in real estate (is it BRRRRs? Wholesaling? Flips? Short term rentals?) and learn as much as you can on that subject. I read 30 books over 24 months before I ever got my first (and currently only) real estate deal. Once you have a high-level understanding of how things fit together, I then recommend going out and networking with as many people as you can and building your core 4 (Deal finder, lender, contractor, property manager). You can do this at meetups, by reaching out to specific BP members, joining facebook groups, there's a whole bunch of ways. 

Most people are not going to want to take you in and tell you how to do everything unless you pay them money for it. If you don't want to pay money for courses, you need to find out how you can provide value to an investor in order for them to dedicate their time, money, or knowledge to you. There are a bunch of BP podcast episodes on this subject. 

When it comes to books, 3 that were very influential to me in finding partners/mentors were:

1. Multifamily Millionaire vol. 1 by Brandon Turner & Brian Murray

2. Raising Private Capital by Matt Faircloth

3. How to Invest in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down by Brandon Turner

There is a lot of money at stake when it comes to real estate investing. Some will tell you it is high-risk but being educated is one way as investors we mitigate that risk. 

When it comes to building your core four, 2 books have stood out to me the most:

1. BRRRR by David Greene

2. Long Distance Real Estate Investing by David Greene

I hope this helps you out! Please let me know how your journey goes.

Hi @Sariel Fu,

In addition to Facebook marketplace as @Eliott Elias suggested, definitely network with some local investors.

My business partner and I found a company which works with a lot of high-end clients that simply just removes their appliances for a flat fee, fixes them up (if needed) and resells them typically to investors. Most of these are like-new condition with no problems at all.

In our situation we owned a washer and drier that was 7 years past its operational lifetime, a refrigerator that was way to big, and a broken microwave. We were able to replace all of these with comparable type appliances (make/model) that were only 2-3 years old for about $900 total which wouldn't get a new refrigerator alone in our market. We were then able to sell our old appliances (minus the microwave) for about $500 so all in we spent $400 for Like-New appliances and saved a lot in capex.

We found this company through a combo of facebook marketplace and from a couple of referrals from other investors. You just might find an awesome deal but always do your due diligence still!

@Steve Stotter Propstream has a lot of great info. Also a newer one I am seeing pop up on Jamil's instagram is PrivyInvesting which basically gives you estimates on true value of a property as well as some other featrues.

I think the MLS could provide a lot of the comps information as well.

Hi Simran, 

I think this is a great idea for a capstone project. Some additional value inputs you could include are credit score & monthly income. You can use the credit score to get an estimate for local interest rates when factoring that into your app and use the monthly income for metrics like DTI.

I think this is a cool idea for a first time home buyer. I think a bigger challenge for people who already have a couple rentals (think 2-7 properties) becomes estimating the ARV and getting more granular into the metrics that affect true market value for a potential property.

Another cool idea would be to include estimates for local rehab costs? There's some cool sites out there that can do this and give a general range for material+labor costs with just a zipcode. 

I know this was a lot but that goes to show the growth potential with this idea! Let me know if you need any architectural advice (i.e. are you building this in Python? will this be containerized? etc) I would be happy to help or connect you with someone as needed!

 It is certainly a strategy some people have gone with. Although there are some pros/cons, in the end I am of the belief that building partnerships and learning the skills around that will pay off far more than the cashflow you'd get from getting to close on an investment by yourself and offset the cashflow you'd be losing out on by splitting it with a partner. 

I am not super familiar with using an unsecured loan (so thank you for opening that idea up to me!) but I did find a BP post on the topic that was pretty informational:https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

The more tools in your toolbelt, the better.

I'll throw some instagram handles at ya:

@ beardybrandon

@ thedatadeli

@ InvestwithAce

@ pacemorby

@ thehenrywashington

@ davidgreene24

@ rei.bizwillie (lol sorry this is mine and I'm still learning!)

There are a bunch out there, first thing I would recommend is narrowing in on your goals and find somebody making content who is successful in that area. 

Hope this helps @Owen Dashner ! Let me know how your search goes!

Hey @Abner Sanchez,

I agree with @Jon Puente, a mortgage broker could help you find the best available offers out there. I have only spoken in the past with people from David Greene's team at The One Brokerage but they were able to get me and my partners a plethora of different options to choose from and (although there's no guarantee) could help you find an even BETTER term than Chase without costing you much!

Hope this helps out! It is always beneficial to have all the right information before making a big decision.

Where are you looking to invest?

Hey @Chad Blankenship ,

Saving up for that 20% can definitely be a daunting task. I was in a similar position as you (great job, credit, hustle, knowledge, but limited capital), and realized the best thing I can do was network and try and find the right partner(s). It worked for me and I ended up finding 2 equity partners who funded 80% of the DP and rehab costs for my deal.

I would recommend that same strategy or something similar. Definitely recommend reading Raising Private Capital if you have not done so yet. It will give you all the info you need. There are also a bunch of blog posts here on BP around finding partners.

Try attending meetups, reaching out to specific investors in your market or asking people in your sphere of influence if they'd be interested in real estate partnership opportunities!

If you have more questions feel free to reach out and connect with me!