All Forum Posts by: Alvin Grier

Let me start out by saying that I know that LinkedIn has the biggest business-focused platform. 

With that said, that doesn't necessarily mean that LinkedIn is the best platform to focus on considering our focuses right now with our business.

I recently spoke to a social media expert that told me that (considering my current workload) I should focus on one single social media platform to implement  a strategic social media strategy on.

Our company goals for this year are heavily reliant-upon us:

A. Finding motivated sellers of SFR properties, and

B. Getting more local potential private lenders to get into our funnel of coaching, etc., (via our email mailing list) with the end goal that some of them get added to our list of private lenders.

With that said, considering what our two focuses are (mentioned above), which of the major social media platforms do you think is best for us to focus on developing and building a solid footprint on as a company?

I really need to focus on just one; even though I'm familiar with them all.  As I age and mature (not to mention have kids) I'm getting more and more focused on FOCUSING.  

Thanks in advance for your help and insight.

Most of the lists I've gotten from Kent Clothier had outdated info on them.  Many of the people told us that they had gotten rid of the subject property long ago; like a year ago.

I think the lists were accurate at a point in time, I just don't think his lists are updated as rapidly as some of the others like Listsource.

@Alvin Neal Detroit (brick only) and all surrounding suburbs.

Thanks for all of the productive, thought-provoking replies. I'll try to respond to everyone in a single reply...

- @Rene Martinez No, I've never tried pay-per-click ads, but I'll consider it. Has anyone reading this used "We Buy Houses"-type PPC ads successfully? If so, did you find it to be worth the investment?  Although they let you move at your own pace, so-to-speak, it seems like it can get pretty costly.

- @Account Closed , how did you go about creating such a group? Did you create a limited seat Meetup.com group, or something like that? Very interesting concept. Do you guys meetup in-person to discuss business ideas as well?

About a year ago, we got hit with a substantial misdemeanor charge/fee for bandit signs.  

As a result, we decided to stop with the bandit signs. 

Unfortunately, bandit signs was our primary source of leads.  

Since then, we've seen our numbers of leads take a nose dive.  We've been consistent with our out-of-state absentee owner and probate mailings, but our phones don't ring like they did back when we were active with the bandit signs.

We've tried the following to supplement our mailing campaigns:

- Calling landlords from the local newspaper

- Calling FSBO's from Zillow

- Paying a VA to send "are you interested in selling" messages to landlords posting their properties on "house-for-rent" websites

- "Driving for dollars"

...and a few other things that I can't think of at the moment.

I don't know if it's the seller's market we're still in in this area or what, but we're having a challenge right now getting leads coming in.  

I understand that ideally you need to have a multitude of lead avenues working for you, however my question is:

What's working for you?

As I review the filing dates and the status of the cases that I create this thread about, I notice that most of them were still in "open" status, and were filed within the last month.

I think that means that the inventories come later on in the case, which is likely why I didn't see estate inventories in the files.

I believe that I either need to hold-off on mailing the PR's 'till I see an inventory that states that it contains real estate, or just go ahead and mail them now and call them until I can find out whether or not there's actually real estate in the estate that's available.

The benefit of mailing them now, is that I might be able to get a jump on being the first person that contacts them about the property, so that could be a good thing, even if I have to waste some postage sending stuff to PR's that won't even have properties in the estates they're in-charge of.

 Thanks Rick.  Yeah, I'm just going to continue mailing all of the leads I gather, and then use the info I get from calling them to get a better grasp of what's going on with these situations.  

When you say that you "envision writing a book with chapters and research the heck out of it thoroughly," are you saying you research a thoroughly as if you were going to write a book based on the info you learn by researching?  

So, in summary, my question is should I still mail the Executor/PR about the property that I know is in the Decedent's name at the county, even if there is no mention of it in the probate file?

While researching probate case files, I come across the following scenario quite often:

- There's no Estate Inventory sheet in the file

- The Decedent (the deceased) has a property registered in their name, which is the same address that shows up when I look them up in the phone book.

So does this mean that the case just hasn't gotten to the point where the inventory has taken place yet? 

I even came across a situation today where the inventory sheet had "n/a" in the real estate assets section, but I knew for sure that the Decedent passed-away in a property that is in their name with the county, which confused me.  

I'm still learning the probate process, so forgive me if this is a dumb question.

We do that as well.  I tend to over-analyze sometimes, however my concern is that even if you change the font, they probably start to recognize the return address eventually, as well, so changing the font might not get much accomplished in that regard.