All Forum Posts by: Phil B.

I'm at .481 per letter just for the printing and postage doing it myself.  Add .13 per address for the lead.  Outsourcing the 3000 would cost me .277 more per piece but that doesn't take into account my time, wear and tear on my equipment, 3 trips to the post office, making a total mess of my office, etc.

Put another way, knowing I can only do about 40 per hour tops times the .277 per piece I save by doing it myself, comes out to $11.08 an hour.  My time is worth a lot more than that.

ok, where do I start?  Postal permit $220 per year.  This gets your yellow letters down to .309 per piece, standard mail. (not first class)  Leads in bulk .09 to .15 per lead.  Used decent envelope printer, $7,500 (lease for $250 per month for 39 months).  Envelopes, paper, ink, etc.

I planned on 6000 pieces per month.  I just completed sending 500 of the first 3000 and it took me forever.  I bought the wrong printer first $400 down the drain.  Then I bought another "cheap" $400 printer and although it was fast (70 pages per minute), the envelope feeder only held 8 envelopes at a time.  Try doing a 3000 piece mailer feeding envelopes 7 at a time.  You really need that $10,000 + specialty envelope printer if you plan on doing them in bulk.

Stuffing envelopes - I timed it.  I fold the letter, stuff it and place the precancelled stamp on it at a rate of 94 envelopes per hour.....takes forever.

Add in screw ups (see my post about 3000 yellow letters down the drain) and you have yourself a time consuming, repetitive, completely boring endeavor.

If you plan on sending a few hundred a month you can swing it on your own but if your time is worth anything you'll outsource.  Once I get these first 3000 out the door I will be outsourcing to YellowLetters.com.  I really tried.  I read everything I could.  I created my own handwriting fonts, bought special printers, etc.  it really is a major pain in the butt.....at least that's my experience.  I couldn't justify the extra cost by outsourcing until I tried a large mailing myself.  It's just not worth trying to do on your own in my opinion.....at least not at my volume.  If I was going to send 15,000 pieces per month forever and shelled out 30-40k in equipment, then it might be worthwhile.  It's painful man.  I just spent 2 days stuffing envelopes and I didn't even make a dent in my pile of letters.

Have you considered something waterfront / vacation rental?  I don't have much experience myself in the rental business but I do live in Tampa and I know those little waterfront rentals fetch a lot of money, are typically rented WEEKLY.  I believe the quality of tenant would be a bit better since you'll probably be renting to vacationing families.  If you had something like that and a decent property manager who specializes in these type of vacation rentals I would bet you would do well.  Good luck.  Continued success.

Why no mail on Friday?  Just curious.

I understand about doling them out.  I did a couple of small batches previous - 300 or so at a time and know what to expect at that level so if I can get that kind of response every few days I should be ok.....I hope.

.....and on an unrelated note.....will someone PLEASE tell me how you highlight and tag a person's name in posts on here?

I don't worry about building rapport with tire kickers, no.  So many people call to actually bust chops or yell at you for sending them a letter that to me at least, its just not worth it.  The leads are not completely qualified but if the person is really interested in selling he or she will leave her info.  No matter how you decide to do things, its still a numbers game.

Hiring a call center is on the expensive side but my time and stress is worth hiring them.  Im not dealing with ticked off people all day - they are and to me that's a huge bonus in itself.

I am honestly still getting started.  I've done a few small mailers and have had several leads come through but I am literally dropping off my first partial batch of 3000 this morning.  For now, Im dropping off about 400 mailers every 2 or 3 days for the first 3000.  Im shooting for 6000 pieces per month out the door but am finding it is waayyyyy too time consuming to do myself at this volume, even with a proper printer.  Just stuffing all those envelopes is taking me and my kids forever.

@Michael Q. saved my butt on this mailer by sending me a new batch of Yellow Letters free of charge after I messed up my first batch of 3000 (I put the owner's mailing address where the property address is supposed to go on all 3000 original letters).

As for the costs - I think it works out to $100 a month plus about a buck a call which is expensive but again, worth it to me.  I also rent a vanity 800 number from them as well.  Their rates are posted on their site.

The nice thing about the call center is they will pull whatever script you send them depending on who is calling so I can build my investor list too and they call the same number but get the "investor script" which asks for their contact info and some investing preference info. 

I have another business outside of real estate from which I learned early to automate as much as I possibly can so I can concentrate on the really important stuff.  I just don't have the time or blood pressure to support dealing with all those initial calls.  If I lose some, I lose some but the call center guys are trained to handle these type of leads.  They know what they are doing.

I use PatLive for a call center and they do the initial screening.  This is the script they read through for me so I get per screened leads.

This below is the lead I receive via email after the rep gets off the phone.  The reps fill in as much info as they can get out of the caller.

Your message from PATLive is as follows...
Date of Lead: 8/5/2014 1:15:02 PM
Name: 
Caller ID: 
Questions and Answers:
Do you have a house for sale?

May I get the complete property address?

How many square feet is the property?

How many bedrooms and bathrooms does the property have?

Thank you. [Caller's Name], let me get some contact information from you, so I can have one of our property specialists contact you back to discuss your options.What's the best number to reach you?

And, the best email?

[Caller's Name], is the house currently listed with a Realtor?

Why are you selling the home?

Comments:

This lead is
For Selling.

ok, ok....but Im on a DIET!!!

If you can obtain the loan with full disclosure, there will be no trouble but I don't think the bank will go for it. You cannot tell them the use of funds is to buy and rehab a property at that point since you already funded it yourself. If you do, then strip the LLC of that loan money to pay yourself back, you can get in trouble - you lied about the use of proceeds to get a loan.

The use of funds is to pay yourself back and that needs to be disclosed.  If you can manage to close a loan somehow with that disclosure, you'll be fine as long as the bank clearly understands what the money is being used for.  

I have to run this by my CPA. I can't imagine an LLC not having to file a tax return, which was the original question. I had an LLC startup last year that never got off the ground - no revenue, no banks, no nothing but a tax ID, LLC registration with the state and an s-corp election. I didn't file a return for it and my CPA almost had a cow. I just assumed you have to file but Im gonna ask him Monday.

So basically, you are waiving any protection an LLC would afford by electing to treat the LLC as a sole proprietorship? I know the IRS has specific rules for corps and LLCs regarding minutes and the way business is conducted. If the owners don't treat it as a corp, you also lose the protection it affords.