All Forum Posts by: David Tower

wow Jon I'm sorry that's been your experience. From what I understand, Phoenix is very competitive market. Are you part of Sean Terry's mastermind group there? He is the MAN!

Hello and welcome!

My mentor suggests that a PROPERLY executed yellow letter campaign (search the forums here) will yield an 11%-15% response rate IF the mailing list is targeted.

Out of those responses who were motivated enough to respond, about 1 in 25 will be a deal(high motivation, high equity). In addition to the 1 wholesale deal about 3-4 people would be interested in either seller financing or subject-to.

As for finding leads on a shoestring budget, there are MANY posts in the wholesale forums here on BP that give proven examples from veterans.

Some of the most popular are:

Bandit Signs - It will help if you know where your buyers want to buy and saturate those areas. They aren't super cheap, but they are very effective. If you want to stretch your marketing dollar you can put them up on Friday nights and take them down Sunday evenings and use them again.

Driving for dollars - drive around your target areas and look for vacant and rundown houses. Use the county online tax assessors database to find out who owns the house (mine doesn't show the tax mailing address...grrrrr) When you find the owner, send them a yellow letter (see above)

Online free marketing - Craigslist, backpage, and kajiji are the major players. Market a couple times per week on each of these sites. There's debate about the quality level of lead you might get here, but hey....it only takes 1 person if they are the right person.

that should be good to get you started. there are plenty of other marketing methods, most of which can be costly. You'll be able to find more ideas than you need here in this forum. The marketing page on REICLUB also has a ton of info.

good luck

Ezra, welcome to BP

I highly recommend starting out by reading every page of the wholesaling forums. I recently started at the back and I'm still working my way forward. I read through about 75 pages so far and I picked up a lot of information.

In regards to your last questions...for a basic wholesale deal, yes you're going to need a significant amount of equity spread to make it a real deal.

For example - there's a house worth 100k ARV that needs 10k in repairs. A typical cash-buyer is going to want to pay 65%-70% of ARV minus the cost of repairs. We'll call it 60k (70k minus 10k in repairs). Now, let's say you want to shoot for a 10k assignment fee. That puts your maximum offer at a whopping 50k.

If the owner owes 75k, the bank is going to need 75k to pay off the mortgage when it's sold. That means there's no deal unless the seller pays the 25k out of pocket (not going to happen)

As for the contract being recorded, most people don't bother with it because it requires both parties signatures to be notarized.

For a way to not get banned, I was able to find some good suggestions here http://www.biggerpockets.com/topics/51757-successful-craigslist-ads?forum_id=93&page=2

Basically you can post every day if you delete the previous day's posts. Also if you use multiple e-mail adresses you can post multiple per day. Apparently if you use a different e-mail you can link out to the same URL or even list the same contact phone # without being flagged....except by the competition *evin grin*

I was wondering which sub-section of the Real Estate area of Craigslist everyone is advertising?

According to the T&C, you're only supposed to advertise a business in the "Services" section. In my area I do see some HTML ads similar to mine there.

I also see some short,basic, non-HTML adds in the "Real Estate Wanted" section

I was wondering if anyone gets away with putting their fancy HTML ads in any of the other sections (real estate for sale, FSBO, real estate wanted, etc)

I was thinking I'd put smaller ads in the other sections with my cell phone #, and my HTML squeeze page links in the services section to comply with the T&C but I'll do whatever I can get away with.

Some people are spamming 3 different versions of the same ad on the same day so they seem to be getting away with it.

Thanks!

Hello BP,

I'm about to order some business cards to blanket for sellers....the ones you leave everywhere saying what you do.

I was planning on saying I offer $250 or $500 (hadn't decided yet) referal bonus on any house we buy but I started thinking about the possibility of that somehow turning in to a legal nightmare. Does anyone have experience with that sort of incentive?

Thanks!

As I've been learning and planning my strategies I've been planning on forming an LLC via Legalzoom. I was thinking I'd seem more "legit" if I were able to put Tower Properties LLC on my business cards and buyer facing websites. I'm thinking now though that a DBA will be fine, and I'll save the $300 for marketing. Any suggestions there?

Also, when marketing for SELLERS (squeeze page/yellow letters/bus. cards/etc)....should they ever see my company name or should I be only a "person" to them? Would they be less likely to feel scammed by a company vs. Joe Investor?

Do you put your squeeze page URL on your yellow letters? "call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx or visit my website" kinda thing

Thanks!!

Also, do people include their squeeze page URL on their yellow letters?

thanks

I was going to start one of these, but instead used the power of the SEARCH feature =)

Anyone else want to share?

I know this would be a touch indelicate, but wouldn’t be “too†different than marketing to probate and inheritance lists.

I had an idea to look at the obituaries and find the addresses of the people who died and then put up a few bandit signs in their neighborhood. It could be like 2 for 1 marketing. Semi-targeted to the heirs of the deceadant, AND would get additional exposure to the general public.
Also, since rapport is so important….Is it a good idea to try to build rapport with an heir by asking about their relative who died? (In a delicate way of course)

What do y’all think?