All Forum Posts by: Sharon Vornholt

River City. I used to use Republic Bank.  You wan't a small locally owned bank.

Do you come to KREIA Ian?  It's the 4th Thursday of every month.  There are folks in there getting loans all the time.

Sharon

You're welcome @Bhekizwe M.

@Aaron Shehan -  

There are a lot of folks in this thread that know direct mail.  The one thing you need to understand is that direct mail is not something you do a few times and you're done.  It's a long term strategy. You need to mail to those folks every month until the house is sold. Something like 85% of your deals will come at or beyond the 5th mailing. You haven't mailed nearly long enough to get discouraged.  

In general have found the leads from list brokers to be pretty poor when it comes to probates. Often they are actually working obits which is not what I recommend you do.  

You need 4 pieces of information to be successful in this niche; the name and address of both the deceased and the executor.  You will most likely need to get that information locally rather than from a service for best results, and that will take a little detective work.

I start mailing as soon as the notice comes out.  That may be a recent death or it may have taken place many months ago.  You really don't need to know that information.  When the probate is opened that is an indication that they are ready to move forward with the sale of the house.  As I said for some folks this is immediately, but for others it may be as long as a year.

With probates you are looking for the ones that have some sort of problem which is no different than any other group of sellers.  Some houses will be sold retail and that's OK.  We are looking for those that need repairs, updates or have some other sort of problem that makes an investor deal look more attractive to them than listing the house.

As someone said, no matter how you get your leads you will need to verify that there is real property.  I do that on the county tax assessor's site for each and every lead.

I do know that some areas in Texas have the information online so check there. Google probates + your county.

One last thing to remember; working probates is pretty simple but it's not always easy.  Most people will quit so hang in there.  Be a 1%'er.

Best of luck.

Sharon

@Cornelius Charles -  Those of us that do direct mail monthly, love folks who mail quarterly.  Even better we like folks that quit after a few mailings. We get your deals.

I have been doing direct mail for more than 20 years and I can tell you this; you need to mail monthly until you buy the house, someone else buys the house or you take them off your list for some reason. 

Take AO's for instance - who on earth would you quit mailing them so long as they are AO's?  Time and circumstances change all things.  The out of town owner who isn't motivated today will almost certainly become motivated at some point in time.

I once bought a house after 3 years.  That's 36 stamps and 36 postcards or letters.  I made 12k on the house.  You can do the math.t

You need good lists hen mail monthly until the house is no longer available.

Probates will typically be sold in 15 to 18 months. NOD's will catch up on their payments or the house will be sold at the Commissioner's sale. As you can see, most will "age out" on their own. Absentee owners will get mailed to as long as they own the house.

80-85% of your deals will come at or beyond the 5th mailing.  I have a lot of stuff on my blog on DM, marketing etc. 

Good luck.

For anyone following this thread, I just did a post over on my blog on "Using the NCOA Database" (National Change of Address). There are some companies that do this, and I also have some resources for finding people when you still can't find their address.

Louisville Gals Real Estate Blog

@Cornelius Charles - If you aren't mailing every month you are wasting your money.  Investors like me that mail every month end up getting the deals in the months everyone else isn't mailing to them. 

You are better off mailing to the amount of people you can afford to mail to monthly (and mailing to them every month), than mailing to a bigger list quarterly.  You will get much better results.

@Adam Phebus- When you scrub a list that means to clean it up.  Checking whether a property has sold is as easy as going on the tax site.  In some areas that might be the appraiser's site.

I also just wrote a post over on my blog that has some resources for using the NCOA database, skip tracers etc. so you should check that out.  

And yes it does take forever. That's a job for a VA.

Thanks @Brian Gibbons.

@Cornelius Charles- 

Remember that time and circumstances change all things, so when it comes to absentee owners you need to commit to mailing to them until the house is sold.The seller that isn't motivated this month (or even this year) may have a "life event" that changes that like a divorce, a death or something else. Suddenly they are a motivated seller.

 I have bought houses after 2 or 3 years.  So for the house I bought after 3 years that was 36 stamps and 36 pieces of paper and 36 envelopes. You can do the math.  I made $12,000 off that house.  Remember 80-85% of your deals will come at or beyond the 5th mailing.  Often it's the last guy standing.  Get a new AO list every 6 months or so.

Probates will generally be sold in 15 to 18 months in my area.  I mail to them until the property is sold.  New people die each month and they get added to the list, others come off.

You have to create systems and use a calendar to chart when mailings are due.  You also need some type of database.  A lot of people use Podio today which is free.

The average return on direct mail is about 2% these days so on 1000 mailers you could expect   about 20 motivated sellers to cal you.  On average is you need to talk to about 20 sellers to get a deal. So for each 1000 mailers you might expect to get a deal.  Now in some areas that number is closer to a 1% return on direct mail, so you would need to be doing about 2000 mail pieces a month to get 20 calls.  Every area is different. But even if you spend $1000 to make $10,000 that is still a great return. 

So my question is, why would you stop?  The whole point is to build momentum.  Direct mail takes a while to get that momentum.

You have to get someone to look each property up on the tax assessor's site to see if it's sold.  In a best case world you would do that quarterly.

This process is simple, but no one ever said it was easy.  I mail every person every month until the house is sold.