All Forum Posts by: John Ma

Pretty simple to get a Lambo:

All jokes aside, Lopez puts out good content on personal management and business development.

I think it'll be fun to hear where everyone came from prior to active REI.

I've had a heavy hands-on automotive experience. I have an engineering background in motorsports, however worked in nuclear right out of school, and then switched to navy weapons.  Its more systems engineering and proj management than technical engineering.

A lot of that can translate into what I want to do for REI in terms of building the lifecycle of automated systems.

What sparked this thought was a comment someone suggested to me. Basically he was inferring that wholesaling is grunt work that wasn't worth my time and I should be buying wholesale deals to rehab to retail flip and grow from there.

Although rehab flips and buy/hold rehabs is what I ultimately want, I simply just don't have the capital like many.   Cheap houses in my area are in the 400-500k range with at least 100k as a 20% stake when using OPM for a rehab proj.

So here comes wholesaling. My thought process is reguardless of how many struggling-to-support-a-family wholesalers there are, its a good foundation for any type of REI. Finding the discounted deal is the backbone of it all and compliments.

Feel free to share your stories and such

Is there anyone that markets for sellers in San Francisco?   I was considering moving to the Presidio area of SF.  Altho the property prices are high, i do enjoy that area.  I'm curious if anyone markets to sellers in this neighborhood.

 So it sounds like your approach is assign the contract regardless of how much you're making off of the seller.      

I like to listen to pod casts of certain big name gurus once in a while (the titles are always so temping to click on), and it sounds like many encourage double closings if the wholesale is making over 10k.  They don't give a reason why, but my intuition tells me its to prevent the seller from making a big deal over how much the wholesaler is making.

you're right. I know there are investors and realtors that risk it, but I am figuring out ways of getting MLS data as reliable as possible without breaking any rules.

You're right, it dosn't take long. Are you just simply using Zillow type sites? I use a combination of Zillow, Redfin, and FindCompsNow and I find them to be missing a small peices of data some times. While the data is 90% there, its that last peice of missing data that can kill you which is why I want MLS data.

@matthew 

@Matthew Vitlin

I intend on compensating whether its a fee or listing with them, but in early stages, I am trying to find ways of finding reliable CMAs when running through my leads.   

correction, I want to know what people have done in the past in early stages for quick/reliable CMA.

Yes, i would list with them assuming I get a deal going.  OR if i end up listing with someone else, I would pay a percentage of course. 

I know lawyers charge $30/email, even if its just a response saying "okay". Is it common practice to pay per email/CMA to a realitor?

I intend to compensate, but I want to know what other ppl have done in the past in the early stages when they are requesting several comps with no actual deal yet.

@Michael Seeker 

Hey guys,  I find myself pestering many agents to run some comps for my leads. I realized i have only connected with top agents and noticed many of the top performing agents simply are too busy many times to do things like that even though they said they would do it the day before.  I'll get a delayed response or sometimes no response at to my email.  

Some of the more avg run of the mill agents tend to be more responsive i have noticed.

I know some of you guys who have skin in the game have worked out systems where you have access as an assistant to an agent or the agent just simply gave your their access information, but I wanted to see what reocmmendations some others have for the ones who do not have MLS access?

I currently try to find as much comp data usign zillow, redfin, and findcompsnow. I feel like its about 80-90% there, but that 10-20% missing data can be all of the difference.