All Forum Posts by: Ushi Hastie

@Claude Diamond  is that really you?!?!  What an honor, thank you for chiming in.  I think you're right.  Content marketing, hunting down a prospect & getting them on the phone is where it's at & will be my next endeavor.  

My tax delinquent mailing has been dismal.  I've sent hundreds of handwritten letters so far with only a few responses (polite declines).  Which I suppose is an improvement from the sometimes angry/livid phone calls after sending thousands of the standard ugly yellow obnoxious "3rd/Termination Notice" post cards to absentee owners earlier this year. I noticed that I would mail a zip for the first time & would occasionally get msgs "stop sending me your fing postcard!!!!" .... apparently everyone & their brother is using that postcard that probably worked great 5 years ago.

I did get some good leads from those mailings, but realized too many people are using the same method & I didn't want my company name represented like that.  This is why I decided to send handwritten letters to a smaller & what I hoped to be more motivated list.  I'm going to wait until a month or 2 before the tax foreclosure sale & get them on the phone. The tax sale here isn't until February.  

After some frustrated reflection, until then, I have decided to take the phone call approach to vacant & severely distressed properties in a couple zip codes with heavy investor activity near where I live.     

Thank you to everyone that has given me your advice & opinion (positive or negative) about mailing.  After 8 months of direct mail, I feel like at least in my neck of the woods, absentee & the other typical motivated prospects are receiving too many letters & most of them are ending up in the shredder.  Taking the time to personally call them will set me apart.

@Jay Hinrichs, @Carl Brown

Thank you for your advice. I was checking my VA's work with scrubbing the TD list and there were too many mistakes so I decided to do it over myself. Which got me to heavily contemplating this past week, why don't I just pick up the phone instead of jumping through all of these hoops/spending so much money mailing?

Hi Stephanie!  Welcome, considering the vast topic of RE investing, I still consider myself a novice.  The beginners guide is a great start.  Also, I live in Seattle & am focusing on starting out in the wholesale arena, if you have any questions about wholesaling I will be happy to help you if I'm able. 

@Ned Carey I think my tax delinquent list will end up being around 1K people & while it's not a large list, I was considering alternating handwritten letters & postcards. What do you think?

Btw, funny story!  Im fearful of something like that happening & skim my lists looking for any familiar names ...

@Min Qiu  I haven't used any of rebo's other lists, but the tax delinquent seems spot on.  You just need to scrub it yourself since it includes people barely behind on taxes.  I'm not sure how often it or when the TD list will be updated. 

@Kimberly Farrally

You're welcome!  Btw if you use rebo you need to go through the list & cross reference it with your county tax assessor website. The list includes everyone that is delinquent in taxes.  After inspecting more closely I noticed a lot of people pay their taxes by the end of the year every year, but will show up on the list as delinquent & they would be a waste of time to market to. 

Also, think of it as a marathon.  Not a one & done mailing.  I'm not really concerned with the tax sale date.   I plan on tracking everyone that's at least 2 years behind in taxes & mailing them every other month until they either respond to my marketing, pay their taxes & get off my list or eventually go to foreclosure & lose the property.  

@Kimberly Farrally

As far as I'm aware, list source does not offer tax delinquent lists.  I use & reccomend rebo gateway.  In Washington the tax forclosure list is published in August & the sales will happen on a single day in February. 

Thanks guys.  There are a lot of prospects I'm hoping to catch before they get a flood of marketing from other investors, that are 3 or 4 years delinquent, but have not had a notice of default recorded yet.

Research is finally completed for the east side (I'm marketing to Seattle & the surrounding cities with Investor activity). 

The complete list of all cities is about 600-700 folks at least 2 years & $5K or more behind in taxes.  Takes about 10 days from ordering to be printed & hit mailboxes.  Thank you, I'll let you know how this mailing goes...

@ Oyama Lewis,

Thanks for sharing.  I'm anxious to test out my new postcards,  I'm not going to mention I know they're delinquent either.  I think now that the year is more than half over & many of them have to make a decision, I should see a better response.