All Forum Posts by: Greg S.

And that gets everything caught up to now...

Goals reflection from last week:
Continue to repost my craiglist ads offering probate leads for sale - PASSED. I received three responses this week of people who seem interested. It was funny because I had actually come to the decision that I would stop posting the ads. My wife is a referral agent for a local brokerage, and I had been contemplating getting more aggressive in searching out properties where the executors are looking to list. However, if I can get some quick cash by selling the leads, I'll give it a try to see how it works out.
Visit 5 more open houses - FAILED. I only went to one, which was really just to make sure I hit my monthly goal of 20 open houses. My parents and sister-in-law were visiting today, so I didn't have much time to spare.
Get 100 additional probate leads - FAILED. I managed to get 33, which was enough to send out my next batch of mailings, but not enough to hit my goal.
Mail out 120 postcards - FAILED. I only put together 90, which are going into the mail tomorrow.
Call the FSBO's and For Rent's that I have numbers for - FAILED.

Thoughts from this week:
I slacked off a bit this week, and am hoping to get back into my routine for this coming week. I did manage to hit my September goal of 20 open houses. My goal for October is to visit an additional 15 houses. I have a lot of events on weekends this month, and will probably have to skip 1 or 2 Sundays. I feel 15 open houses is achievable, and hopefully I will be able to get to 20.

My postcards last week resulted in zero calls. I'm up to around 300 postcards this month, with only 1 return call. I'm going to have to alter my marketing. It's a shame since I still have over 1000 of these cards, but it's a waste of money to buy stamps for something that is providing zero results. I think I may use the cards solely for repeat mailings, and transition to click2mail.com or yellow letters for all of my new leads.

Goals for this week:
Visit 5 open houses
Complete last week's goal to get 100 additional probate leads
Figure out a new marketing plan
Send out a new batch of mailings
Call the FSBO's and For Rent's that I have numbers for

Goals for this month:
Visit 15 open houses
Capture all of the probate leads between July and September
Mail to 250 new leads
Continue tracking all of my actions using biggerpockets
Visit 5 more local banks to discuss funding for my first rehab purchase
Develop new marketing material

[b][u]9/23 Update
Goals reflection from last week: [/u][/b]
Contact the mortgage specialist - DONE
Mail out 90 post cards (3 sheets of labels) - DONE (going in the mail tomorrow)
Go to the probate office to pull at least 100 probate leads - FAILED. I went to the probate office and tried a new method. I'm attempting to automate the process and brought home a few printed documents. I am going to try to write a program to pull the name of the decedent, executor(s), and adresses.
Visit 5 open houses - DONE, I went to 6, putting me at 19 total houses.
Repost my craigslist ads offering probate leads for sale - DONE

This past week's progress:
My open house goal for September was 20 homes. Assuming I make it out next Sunday, it looks like I will meet that goal easily. October is going to be a busier month, so I think a goal of 15 homes is more likely.

I failed on my goal to get 100 new probate leads, but I did spend about half the week sick. A few weeknights were wasted where I couldn't accomplish much of anything.

So far, I've been unhappy with the call rate I've been getting on my postcards. I've mailed out 210 postcards this month, and have only received 1 call. Unfortunately, I ordered these postcards in bulk earlier in the year. I still have over 1000 left. Hopefully the call rate will go up once I start some repeat mailings. Once the cards are gone, I am planning to switch over to click2mail.com. I also may mail some yellow letters along with the post cards.

Goals for this week:
Continue to repost my craiglist ads offering probate leads for sale
Visit 5 more open houses
Get 100 additional probate leads
Mail out 120 postcards
Call the FSBO's and For Rent's that I have numbers for

[b][u]9/17 Update
Goal reflection from last week:[/u][/b]
Visit another 5 open houses - PASSED...made it to 6 for a total of 13 so far
Return the call from the HML - PASSED...the guy was a bit rude and did not seem like he was interested in working with a new investor.
Mail out 110 postcards to make up for last week's missing 10 - PASSED...mailed out 120 since the labels are in sheets of 30.
Put an ad on craigslist offering to sell probate leads to help fund my marketing - PASSED...I haven't gotten any responses
Contact the mortgage specialist my realtor referred me to - FAILED...I sent the person an e-mail but it came back undelivered. Looks like I will have to pick up the phone for this one.

Progress this week
To be honest, pretty much everything I accomplished this week happened yesterday. I procrastinated everything until the end of the week, but I managed to get it done. If I hadn't set those goals last week, I definitely would not have followed through.

I've seen a total of 13 open houses so far and already feel like I'm starting to get an understanding of the market. I'm also building relationships with some of the realtors that I've met.

Goals for next week
Contact the mortgage specialist
Mail out 90 post cards (3 sheets of labels)
Go to the probate office to pull at least 100 probate leads
Visit 5 open houses
Repost my craigslist ads offering probate leads for sale

[b][u]9/9 Update
Goal reflection from last week:[/b][/u]
Send out 100 mailers - FAILED, only sent out 90
Visit 5 open houses - PASSED, but only if I include the houses I visited today. Last week, I attempted to visit 5, but 3 of the houses on my list turned out not to have open houses. I went to 5 more today, for a total of 7
E-mail 3 hard money lenders - PASSED, I e-mailed 5 and have so far heard back from 3 of them.

Progress this week:

I didn't make as much progress this week as I would have liked. I got a bit caught up with the beginning of the year duties for school, and I didn't set aside enough time for my business. I did manage to contact the realtor I know just to let her know my plans and get her input. In addition, I contacted 5 HML's in the area, and have heard back from 3 so far. Two of them responded to the e-mail, and one of them left me a voicemail and I have yet to return his call. I need to get better at responding to people the same day they get in touch with me.

So far, my best option for hard money is 4% Processing Fee, $400 Atty Fee, $30 wire fee, $250 inspection fee, and 14%-15% interest for a 1 year loan with an automatic 2nd year redemption option at an additional 3%. The lender can offer a committment in 24 hours and provide funds in 5-7 days.

Goals for this week:
Visit another 5 open houses
Return the call from the HML
Mail out 110 postcards to make up for last week's missing 10
Put an ad on craigslist offering to sell probate leads to help fund my marketing
Contact the mortgage specialist my realtor referred me to

This is another busy week (Back to School Night is Wednesday, which COMPLETELY drains me for the rest of the week). Once that is passed, I can hopefully get into a bit more of a routine. At that point, I'd like to start visiting some banks and pulling more probate leads from the county surrogate.

9/3 update

Well, my open house tour turned into a bit of a bust. I had plotted a route for 5 open houses listed on realtor.com. I visited the first one a little bit after noon. It was a pretty good candidate for rehab, since it was extremely outdated and had a terrible floor plan. However, the price - $149,900 (short sale) - was probably close to 3 times what I'd need to get it for. I spoke to the realtor for a while before heading on to the second house. I get to the address and...surprise, no open house. I go to the third house...surprise, no open house. I manage to get a tour of the fourth, which was a waterfront property in great shape, before heading on to the fifth which ALSO did not have an open house.

When I got home, I found that 1 of the addresses actually has an open house scheduled for next week...my mistake...but the others were listed for today. I'm not sure what happened, there.

Anyway, while I was out I saw a "For Rent" sign and a FSBO, both of which I plan on calling. I also dropped 90 postcards into the mail. In addition, the hard money lender returned my e-mail, which I'll detail in a later post.

Goals to accomplish by Wednesday:
E-mail 2 more hard money lenders
Print an additional 10 postcards to hit my goal of 100.
Contact my realtor to let her know what I'm doing and get her input

These are light goals since school starts tomorrow and there is lots of work in order to get my classroom ready.

I had transitioned over to the "blog" within biggerpockets for my last few updates. I like posting in the thread better and plan on switching back to updating this thread. The next few posts will be my previous blog posts, copied and pasted, to keep everything continuous

Thanks, James! It's great to hear from other people who are going through the same things. Best of luck to you, and please keep me updated!

Thank you, Steve. I hadn't thought of that and it's definitely something to consider.

Well, I slacked off again, and have not done much of anything over the past 5 months. My experience in this business has been a series of ebbs and flows of motivation. I really need to focus on consistency, and getting some kind of routine down so I can better hold myself accountable.

To begin, I'm going to try to identify where I veered off course. There are hundreds of excuses I could make, but it really boils down to a fear that I assume every aspiring wholesaler has, which is not being able to follow through on a promise to get a house sold. I was scared to death that I would get a house under contract by convincing the seller of my ability to close quickly and with cash, and then find out it wasn't a good enough bargain and I actually wouldn't be able to close it. I eventually came to the decision that, at least at first, any house I contract, I want to be willing to close on myself if necessary.

Now, this is ultimately a lot more risk to take on, as I'd be rehabbing instead of wholesaling. However, there are some benefits to changing stategies. First off, this change forces me to severely narrow my target area. Instead of focusing on an entire county, I will be marketing to 3 towns that have entry level houses below $200,000 and are max 15 minutes away from me. I will be sticking to direct mail, primarily probates at first, but plan to send mail to preforeclosures and absentee owners as well. Second, by making the decision that I will be purchasing the house myself if I cant find a buyer, it requires that I be extra careful with my numbers and due diligence.

Basically, if a property looked like a deal, I would treat it as my own rehab. I would bring in an inspector to make sure I didn't miss any massive problems. Next, I would create a basic scope of work and bring in General Contractors and/or subcontractors to give me quotes on prices. All this would be done within 7 to 10 days, at which point I should have a fairly reliable rehab estimate, and could chose to either market to other investors or pursue hard money lenders on my own. I'd be forced to risk some of my own money for the inspection and possibly getting GC's to give me an itemized price for the work, but if I lost that money I would consider it the price of an education.

That's where I'm at right now. Goals for September:
1.) Visit 20 open houses
2.) Send out 400 postcards (100 per week to start out)
3.) Visit 10 additional local banks (I already visited a few last week)
4.) Find and speak to 3 hard money lenders

Bryan,
I'm still picking up the terminology of this business...Is "spec" just another way of saying "rehab"?

Thanks,
Greg