All Forum Posts by: Ted Schmidt

I don't remember which plane that was, but I do remember making an emergency landing in the desert near Prim Nevada and vowing not to charter private airplanes unless absolutely necessary. It was pure vanity.

With my feet firmly planted on the ground. ..If one is not acting in fee for service capacity, or an attorney, are there some restrictions on helping people get loan modifications or short sales?

Don't AG's go after scammers that take money from people in advance of any service being rendered?

@Phil Z

Thanks for your reply on this thread. I thought maybe it fell on deaf ears.

If one is acting as a consultant and not charging a fee for service then do you think that would be considered acting as an attorney?

An ethical conflict would only arise if the consultant was a paid "fiduciary" as in the case of an attorney.

-Ted

Robert,

It seems to me that you have tied your success to the performance of others. Getting help from others is important -we all need it. There is one thing that everyone has to do - take responsibility for your own success.

Don't rely on business situations that you have no control over.

I heard about Zoho on the Biggerpockets podcast today. I signed up for free and uploaded my 2014 leads in about 15 minutes. It was very simple. I just had to match my fields labels with the fields Zoho offers.

For the last 3 years I have been using a hodgepodge of systems to manage emailing, customer contacts and notes and action reminders. I can see already how this is going to make me a lot more efficient.

I am moving to Puerto Rico because most of my income comes from Internet business, since my kids are grown and I'm single, it's easy for me.

Not sure about capital gains in property outside puerto Rico if that income would still be subject to Puerto Rico capital gains of 4%?

From what I have seen so far, there is money to be made on real estate in puerto rico marketed to high income us residents.

Curtis , that works sometimes but what I found is that human nature will prevail in the long run or when there is enough money on the table and without a legal obligation to pay you, eventually someone won't pay and when that happens you get a bad taste in your mouth that is hard to get rid of.

@Curtis Daniels

All leads have value. It's just a matter of figuring out who the leads are valuable to. I have build a career out of finding value in leads.

Real estate agents will pay for leads if you can figure how they will make money off the leads. Here is a formula that I have used in the past to determine what anyone would pay per lead.

Start with the amount of revenue someone will make off a lead if they make a sale. Let's say the real estate agent stands to earn $2500 from the deal. He only has a 10% chance because he wont get every deal. That gives a 1 in 10 closing ratio - a reasonable expectation. That makes his cost per deal $250. Take that and apply a 15% marketing factor. The marketing factor is the amount of total revenue that a lead buyer is comfortable paying as his marketing expense. That makes the lead worth $37.50 (exclusive). If you want to make sure the person that you refer gets good service, then offer the lead to more than 1 agent and charge 1/2 price - $18.75 per lead.

Another advantage of selling leads is the compliance issue. You don't get paid on closed deals, which in most cases requires a license.

@Bill Gulley:
Good points.

Unsold/rejected leads are the bane of the leads business. Finding other ways to monetize those leads is the key. If a seller lead is not good for one buyer - it could be perfect for another. The only way to make it work is to have a large network of investor/buyers. You can also make the leads one price for exclusive and another price for non-exclusive.

At the moment I have more time than money so I'll trade some of the former for the latter.

That sounds dangerous.