All Forum Posts by: Sean OToole

Congrats @Ori Skloot! Amazes me how many people pass deals down the street for stuff across the country.

While the prices may seem crazy to those elsewhere, I think cage homes (yep that's a thing) will be part of the story by the peak of the next cycle in Bay Area. Check out: https://www.facebook.com/Vox/videos/18316085836022.... A friend's kid working in tech is renting a master bedroom CLOSET (walk in) in SF for $900/mo. In the right location you could probably rent the nice cages shown in that story already. Having visited Hong Kong, it opened my eyes to where we may be headed. Makes SF today feel quaint, and relatively cheap.

Bank owned properties? Corelogic does offer tax services - https://www.corelogic.com/solutions/property-tax-services.aspx

@Andy Lim As you are already a customer, know that my support team is always there to help on questions like this as well. Just click Contact Support in the main menu to chat with them. They can also help you with getting the most out of your subscription, and coming up with good lists for your target audience. Best, Sean.

@Joshua Hively your question doesn't make a lot of sense. Corelogic is the company that offers the Listsource produce. The tax bill mailing address goes to the owner of the property. If they are listed, then they are likely the owner, or perhaps acting as agent for the owner. 

@Brayan Sandoval it sounds like you are likely targeting absentee owners? If that is the case, there will be two addresses - the property address and the mailing address - both on listsource and at the county. But listsource's addresses for each shouldn't be different from the counties. The reason for this is simple - an absentee owner, by definition, doesn't live at the property, so needs to get their tax bill at a different address, often their actual home. If you want to do match-append to phones or email, you'll want to use the mailing address for that. You may also want to consider other sources that already have the phones matched and included.

As to your bigger picture issue - lack of results: for most folks that aren't successful with direct mail it is not the list that is the problem - it is the message. Too many folks start mailing folks on a list without knowing anything about who they are mailing. What problems do they face, what questions do they have, what needs do they have? And instead of writing a message that is compelling to that audience, they blather on about themselves (I buy homes, I pay cash, I'm the best, I, I, I). If you are local to your list, start by door knocking, and rather than trying to do any business with them, offer them something like a $100 gift card for 30 minutes of their time. Have a bunch of questions ready - have they ever thought about selling, if they sold how would they do it, is evicting tenants and cleaning up the place keeping them from selling (for absentee owners), how many pieces of mail do they get offering to buy their house, how do those mailings make them feel, etc. You can only write successful copy if you understand your audience. And no, the "killer" postcard that worked for the guru in Utah 10 years ago is probably not going to work for you. Guys that are great at direct mail are good at messaging, and improving that message over time. And as @Ian Kee pointed out direct mail is not the only option. I actually think it makes sense to start by door knocking or cold calling, as you get instant feedback on which messages work and which do not.

Hi @Rafael Campos, thanks so much for the kind words, I just want to clarify that we are in 5 states - AZ, CA, NV, OR & WA. We're working hard to be available in the rest and getting closer every day. Until then I'd say the closest comparable product would be the combination of Corelogic's Listsource and RealQuest products. Hope that helps.

Hi @Gabriel De Almeida, we are working hard to get out your way, and were hoping it would be by now. It's a lot of work, and I don't have a firm ETA yet.

An ideal list vendor would give you the ability to differentiate between local, in state, and out of state absentee owners, as those groups have different needs and your message should be different to each. You should also make sure that they offer a good equity estimate so you can target owners with the ability to sell at your target purchase price. Also helpful is age criteria, as again your message to younger owners should be different then to older owners. Vacancy is another good criteria, both on the situs address and on the owners mailing address - there likely won't be many hits on that criteria, but it's obviously useful. From there most will have standard criteria around property type, estimated value, etc that you can use to not waste money targeting properties you aren't interested in.

@Nicholas Makhonuk - took me 10 years to find phone numbers this good, but tradeoff is no exports. Couple of things to keep in mind:

1. We were the first to offer all-you-can-eat, look at as many leads as you want, flat fee service. The tradeoff in that vs. pay-per-lead services is that we do limit which fields you can export, and the number of exports. Its a great tradeoff as we provide lots of tools so that you never need to export.
2. My support team can connect you with match-append vendors if you really want to match phone numbers to our exports.
3. One of the main reasons people want to export phone numbers is to load them into robocallers. I'd suggest doing your due diligence on the TCPA, do not call compliance, etc. before letting yourself get talked into that. Note that just having a vendor check the number against DNC is not enough - you actually have to register yourself. The liability can be huge.

Hope that helps,
Sean 

@David Lee I’m not aware of any company in the space that offers 24x7 support, but we do offer limited support over the weekend, and usually respond to weekend requests in a few hours. Looks like your issue was already resolved, but feel free to pm me if you ever get stuck again.