All Forum Posts by: Ed Brancheau

What a great inspirational story and it got me thinking about so many opportunities.

One thing that you mentioned was renting out to college students and I'm just wondering if you've discovered a max radius for their school that they'll rent a room?

You definitely got a post here that I'm going to follow and come back reread a few times. Thanks!

I was just listening to a BP podcast from last month in which one investor had a similar situation. I think he was the first investor they interviewed.

http://biggerpockets.com/show359

Basically, they bought a duplex in San Francisco that had four bedrooms, two baths, and two large dining rooms. They converted the dining rooms into bedrooms for themselves and got roommates for the other four rooms.

They only put down 3% through an FHA loan cosigned and funded by them and their parents, who were getting to keep the rental profit and a portion of the resale profit (I don't remember that number being mentioned.) I think the down payment was like $40K. And their roommates covered the rent and then some.

They want to renovate and sell the units as condos but because of housing laws in San Francisco due to lack of housing, they have to stay in the duplex for at least a year before they can renovate and resell the property. But they'll likely make about 30% profit after fixing it up and reselling for about $1.8M.

That's $540K profit and, even if they split it four ways with their parents, that's going to be $135K each for basically living free of charge. Of course, they had to find the deal but they had a real estate agent find and figure it out.

Pretty sweet deal!

Yeah. I totally agree. Ringless Voice Mail (RVM; also known as "voice drops") works wonderfully for my clients especially when you have a large list. And in addition to using it as an outreach to 100s or 1000s, it can be the first touchpoint for those that you also advertise to on Facebook and Display Networks.

@Aron DeVoe Sure, I'm willing to help and I'd like to pick your brain as well.

I'm new to real estate investing but I've helped a lot of realtors and investors... which is why I'm now getting into investing as well.

Here are some things that you can do pretty quickly since you already have the funds and data from PropStream (BTW, how are you liking that? I'm about to sign up).

I hate cold-calling but I don't mind calling people that I know are already interested. So here's what I do to market my business and that I'll be doing for investing as well:

1. My first suggestion is a little confusing but I'll take a shot at describing it... Online Display Ads.
   1. These are the ads that you see all over the Internet that follow you around but you're doing to do them a little differently. Here's what you'll do...
      1. Download your PropStream list consisting of the owners' addresses.
      2. Create a set of 10 display ads about three things (your reputation as an investor in their area; how you can help them; general branding of your business) and advertise strictly to owners while they are at home. Here's how:
         1. I target their home addresses by using a 150-foot radius. This will make sure that only the owners will see the ad. Plus, it keeps your advertising expenses down AND makes sure that you're only talking to your target audience.
2. Second suggestion... Facebook Ads.
   1. Create a Facebook ad sequence consisting of three short, quick, down-n-dirty videos (these work best because they're relatable) that address your audience's concerns.
      1. Create a video ad about how you can help them with their property and show it to the Custom Audience you just created. Choose the Lead Ad option and just ask for their Name, Email, and Phone.
         1. After they submit their info, send them to a Messenger Bot that asks them a series of filtering questions. PM me and I'll send you a bot that I created that you can modify.
      2. Upload the list to Facebook as a "Custom Audience" and target that list only with the first video ad.
      3. Create a second video ad as that gives them some great info BUT only retarget those that watched at least 50% of the first video.
      4. Create a third video ad as that gives them some great info BUT only retarget those that watched at least 50% of the second video.
      5. By now, you've whittled your list down significantly to people that are extremely interested. In general, 20% of the PropStream list will watch at least 50% of your first video, 20% of those people will watch 50% of the second video, and 20% of those people with watch the entire third video. That means that for every 1000 people you plug into the ad, only 8 will come out at the end but they'll be EXTREMELY HOT! Call those people first. Then call the other 32 that watched 50% of the second video because they'll be HOT. Finally, start calling the 160 that only watched more than 50% of the first video.

Finally, you need an automated system that continues to nurture all of the leads that you've worked hard to get but weren't interested today. Because it's pretty common for people to be interested six months down the line.

 Well, since you live and work in Hawaii, you definitely know better than I. I just could have sworn that I heard Brendan mention two ADUs.

I'm not sure why the Reply added that second ordered list with nothing in it but I couldn't delete it.

I'm going through this same process myself and here's what I've discovered on BP so far...

1. If you have good credit and income, you can get traditional loans for your first property for as little as 3%. If you don't have good credit, you can get an FHA loan for as little as 3% down and the limits vary upon location and the number of units. ALSO, if you are a Veteran, you can qualify for 0% down payment! (You you're not, do you know someone that is? Maybe you can team up with them.) And my guess is that they're willing to loan a greater percentage to owners because they will take better care of their properties. Also, FHA loans are guaranteed by the federal government; so banks can be more lenient.
2. You can refinance after 12 months of on-time payments. So don't be late or it will reset. (Non-FHA loans can be refinanced every six months.)
3. You can only get 3-5% down-payment loans for your first property. After that, you have to get standard investment loans. After that, you'll likely have to put down 20-25%.

BTW, I've been attending a lot of events here in San Diego at The San Diego Creative Investors Association. They have a lot of great advice each month and I've met really helpful investors. I don't know if they have a chapter in Denver but they do have several across the country so I'm guessing they do.

I've been tagging along with an investor that's done a ton of auctions and, personally, I wouldn't do an auction yet. They're kind of confusing and you need to have all cash. And I don't know how to reverse engineer all of the other auctions that will be on that same date, I know there's a way to find them all.

Also, the last auction I went to with my mentor, we drove to every single house up for auction and checked them out as best we could. Then he wrote down prices for the properties that he was interested in. 

He told me to never go above that pre-determined bid price because auctions can get emotional... It's like you don't want to lose.

He also said that he's had plenty of times that one or more of the properties he was outbid on actually fell through and, because he stuck around until the end even when there was nothing he was interested in bidding on, he was able to buy the property at his bid.

San Diego is also getting hostile to short-term vacation rentals so I'm wary of buying properties strictly for short-term rentals. Although I was listening to the BP podcast last night (#360 I think) and they talked about adding ADU's and I think I heard that you can add two ADUs to a property in Hawaii. Maybe that helps?