All Forum Posts by: Todd C.

Hey all - 

Got a potentially awesome deal here. I could get a 3br/1ba, totally redone house, that is up for foreclosure in 2 weeks. He owes between $130-$140 and comps are estimating the worth around $180-$200k. Can I legally do this? If so, do I simply just sign a purchase agreement like any other wholesale? Thanks!

Todd

Hey all - newbie investor here that is focused on wholesaling at the moment, but has ultimate plans to get into 100+ unit apartment complexes eventually.

The reason I'm posting here, however, is because I was able to locate a fully-rented 2-family home in Trenton for a cost of $69,000. The monthly rent totals $1,450 and I'm in the process of negotiating a seller-financed deal with the owner. I guess my questions really surround everything else I'm not accounting for. What other information do I need from him to make an educated decision? Taxes, maintenance, what else?

Thanks!

2/5-2/6/15 Update

So far this week I have written and sent out 100 pre-foreclosure letters. I sent a few on Wednesday, with the remainder having gone out yesterday. So far I've received 1 phone call from a guy who's house is going into a short sale as he is underwater. Outstanding mortgage > $400k, with the house only being worth around $250k - so for obvious reasons, not feasible for me to help him.

Next week, I move back to absentee owners. The one issue I have marketing to these pre-foreclosure guys, is their time table. A lot of them I won't be able to hit more than once, and as everyone teaches you, it takes upwards of 5 touches prior to a sale...

Until next time.

Hi all-

Similar to what so many have done before, I plan on using this forum post as step-by-step outline of the steps I take until I close my first few deals. First a little background on myself:

I am a 26 year old guy living in Manhattan, working a full time job that frequently requires me to be in an office for upwards of 70 hours a week. Beyond that, I'm in a self-study course for a test that requires 300+ hours of studying (the test is in June). I have a girlfriend that requires my attention and no car in the city. Long story short, this is a LARGE uphill battle. 

I've always had an interest in investing in both equities as well as in real-estate. I have liquid cash, but not nearly enough to put towards a project like a rehab yet - I just don't feel comfortable yet. With that said, Wholesaling was the avenue I wanted to sharpen my teeth on. 

I've started about a month ago. My first step was purchasing a list - came out to approximately 400 handwritten (yes, by me) yellow letters. I did this mostly while at work (20 a day), I would typically get in an hour early and write them as quickly as possible, and however many I had left I would do sporadically throughout the day when there was down time. About 200 of them have been sent out, with the other 200 just waiting to be stamped and mailed. Thus far, I've received 16 calls. No warm leads, no deals, just people wanting to find out more information. Beyond that, I've just created my website, www.cashfornjhouse.com - also yet to deliver any leads. Finally, I've also utilized craigslist as a marketing source and I've spoken to a number of home owners, again mostly people that would sell "for the right price." I did, however, have one guy that was motivated - his tenant just moved out and he subsequently had a leak in the kitchen that he doesn't want to deal with. The problem is he refused to budge on his asking price. He was asking for $105k with the house across the street listed for sale at $115 (bigger and doesn't need a whole new kitchen). I wanted my first deal so I told him I would see what I could do. No one wants anything to do with that house at that price, for obvious reasons.

I've since moved onto pre-foreclosures as, in my opinion, that's where the low hanging fruit is. After sending out my first 50 yellow letters to this list, I did some digging on BP and it seems like I could get in some serious trouble for sending them out? I sent it out to NJ and I really hope that that is not the case.

My marketing plan is as follows: 1) Month 1: 400 letters from List 1; 2) Month 2: Create website and start Google adwords campaign (done), 400 letters from List 2; 3) Month 3: 400 letters from List 3; 4) Month 4: Go back to list 1 and send a 2nd round to all 400 investors, repeat for Months 5 and 6 with lists 2 and 3, respectively; 5) Months 7/8/9 will be sending post cards to the first 3 lists (pay someone to do this), while starting on list 4. 

Hopefully at that point I will have closed a deal or two and can outsource some yellow letter marketing. My goal is to have someone send out about 600 letters/month for me, with me still doing my 400/month. 

I hope this wasn't too long.

Looking forward to updating everyone along my journey.

I appreciate these motivational posts as, although I just started about a month ago, had my first deal fall through. I went into it knowing that the agreed upon price was just way too high, but I wanted my first deal under contract and the seller wasn't budging on price...bad decision looking back.

Does anyone know how much Chris charges to work with him? Got my first wholesale contract signing tomorrow and the spread is not too wide. Just want to make sure that I am not dipping into my pocket to close the deal.

@Cody Alexander I'm looking to purchase a list to work with my direct mail campaign. The $600/month campaign I was looking at included a list of 500 leads and 1 set of 500 yellow letters being sent out. Is the campaign you're talking to a drip campaign or a 1-blast out to 3,000 people using 3 different techniques?

I created a list off of ListSource  - honestly, I don't believe it was drilled down as much as I would have liked. But you live and you learn..

Hi all - 

Throughout my real estate investing career (~1 month) I've sent out approximately 400 yellow letters and and have done a ton of craigslist advertising. Thus far, however (keep in mind that I've just recently sent out the letters), I've only received 1 motivated seller (his asking is way too high) and a few additional leads that weren't motivated, for a total of 10 leads. Not too shabby, right? 

This is only the beginning with me. I'm determined to get my business off the ground.

A bit on myself - I'm currently living in NYC, originally from NJ. I work in finance, which is an extremely demanding job (typically work from 7AM-8PM every day, including some weekend work). With that said, my transportation home to NJ is limited and my time to market is also limited, however, I am determined to get this to work like a well oiled machine.

Now with that said, I'm trying to formulate a good marketing strategy for myself. 

Ideally, I want to ramp up quickly, but in a calculated manner. At this point (pre-1st deal) I'm comfortable spending about $600 a month in marketing. 

Because of my limited availability, I will need most of my marketing to be automated, therefore, I am planning to have a service write and mail about 500 yellow letters a month on my behalf. Now my 2nd prong here is going to either be bandit signs or creating a presence online. To be honest, I won't have the ability to get out to my targeted area every Friday evening to place out signs and pick them up every Sunday afternoon - It's just unrealistic given my circumstances. So that leaves me with either paying soemoen to do it or creating a website. As of now, I'm leaning towards creating a web presence using the M5 Automated Marketing Machine This system, however, comes at a cost close to $100 a month and I'm wondering if that's the best way for me to market myself and my company. Has anyone had much success with online leads?

Finally, I'm thinking about setting up a local phone service through Vumber so I can direct leads to different #s in order to track where they are coming from.

Does this seem viable? Should I really only be focusing on 1 strategy first and work my way up? Thoughts?

The situation is this. He owns a home and this was a rental property. His previous tenant moved out in November and he had another lined up to move in, however, there was a major leak in the kitchen that he doesn't want to deal with.