All Forum Posts by: Michael Hastings

Hi @Adam M., when I was in California, I worked with people like yourself through a variety of bartering websites.  Since you are looking for an exchange of services, not necessarily cash, you may find some people willing to bite if you place an ad on one of those sites.  There are a lot of them out there, if you search within google.  Also, Craigslist is always the go to, I bet you would find some takers there for bartering as well, to give your new camera a workout.  

@Derek Wheeler, thanks for sharing this.  Your experience is most of what I have heard about both realtor.com and Zillow leads.  As someone who is studying to become an associate broker in Colorado, I am designing a business plan for lead gen and would like to count these as a source into my marketing plan.  The moment I get hell bent on not accepting that using these sites as a source of leads, instead looking to more telemarketing, door knocking, social media and mailing to obtain business, I see a youtube video or hear a podcast where an agent went all in with these lead sources (online) and is hitting it out of the park.  I know there are a lot of variables to account for when attempting to make these sources convert (quality of leads, volume of leads, area, follow up techniques, etc.), but the opinions vary so widely and the amount you spend (as you demonstrated) can be expensive, when compared to using other methods to generate leads.

Wish I could find better statistics on expected success with these online sources, when worked through.

Hi @Lanis Olanisa, that is understood.  I have heard a lot of mix opinions about this.  Some agents swear by it to bring them buyer leads in addition to other lead generation techniques they may be using, but many agents (and coaches and brokers) state that it is a waste of time, too expensive and gets you a lot of "tire kickers".  I would ask that the Zillow Lead Sales team provide you with some references who are local to you, so you can gauge their success and check with a few agents not using it in your market to see what their opinion is about this.  Also, they should be able to pinpoint for you what the expected return is on your spend (Every $1 spent on leads SHOULD bring you back $x).

Like @Chris Mason stated, the overall consensus seems to be that using this as a lead gen source is lackluster.  

Sorry, and maybe it is me, and I have just been investing in the stock market for too long, but 12% ROI year over year, in addition to RE property depreciation, writing off expenses and loads of tax benefits seems like a good return to me. What am I missing? Maybe I am assuming your are looking for buy-and-hold, but really are talking about flipping?

Hi @Account Closed, I would agree with the earlier poster who stated "the price is the price".  In these cases, comparable sales of units in this building or buildings nearby would give a better indication of the accuracy of the posted (asking) price for this property.  In the end, the value of any commodity is the price that someone will pay for that commodity.  Even Zillow themselves acknowledge that the Zestimates they list with properties have an error rate.

Read about it here:

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-h...

Hi @Anthony DiRico, this topic has been discussed ad nauseam here in BP.  There are tons of locations in the midwest and southeast that offer lower entry points for RE, such as:

Birmingham

Nashville

Memphis

Indianapolis

Cleveland

Kansas City

Oklahoma City

Houston

Parts of Atlanta

Chicago

The list goes on and on, as this does not even touch smaller metro markets like Topeka KS, Des Moines, IA, Buffalo, NY, etc.  You can search the forums for the many threads on this topic, and find an area that suits your investment strategy.  

@Jeff Martin, I used a 401K loan to buy my first investment property, and it was painless.  The reason that I chose to go that route is that the pay back time was chosen by me (I took at 20K loan for 3 years) and the payments came out of my paycheck.  The interest that I paid was 6.25%, which was inline with what my conservative investments would have been getting in the 401K program anyway.  The loan does not hit your credit and the mortgage broker that I worked with told me that they did not even need to count the 401K loan against my debt to income ratio, since I was the creditor.

@Chris Lopez, thanks, already signed up, cannot wait to take the information in.  Thanks!  (Preparing for a market downturn?  Mmm, this is promising...)

Hi @Alex Witte, this is a "for rent by owner" call.  Some realtors would call owners like this, to try and gauge their interest in buying additional investment property, becoming a potential lead source.  The switch here, is that you are looking to buy the property that is for rent, and I believe this has been discussed thoroughly here on BP, sometimes referred to as "Driving for Dollars".

I don't think you need an LLC or a website or anything else for that matter, except the desire to try and make a deal and the cash available (or financing) to close the deal. The likelihood is that the person will say "no", but that just means you need to call another person, and another person, and another person and so on, until you get a bite.

I would do exactly as you said.  Introduce yourself, offer information on why you are calling and ask them if they are interested in selling their property.  They may so no.  But they also may say "yeah".  So if that happens, then what will you do? (Rhetorical question, but I think you know what I mean).

Give it a try, nothing to lose here. 

Hi @Boukari Harris, sorry, but I not sure what you mean?  If you are analyzing or deciding to buy a multi-family property, I am not sure how having tenants in the property should be taken into consideration of the price to be paid for the property at all.  Unless it is a property that has over 5 units (commercial), in which vacancy rates and the rent roll would be important to the valuation of the property, anything that is a 4-plex or lower, I would suggest that the value of the property should be based on prevailing comparable value (local comps), not on the tenants in the property.

Can you elaborate on your question, maybe I can help answer?