All Forum Posts by: Wesley Merville

In my area, not so much. (Attorneys)  If you do, mail quarterly.  Bear in mind you will only get a 1%-2% response. So that is 9 to 18 calls on a list of 900.  You need about 20 calls to get a deal. At a minimum you will need about 1000 on that list to get results over time. Some will come off, and more will go on the list.  You never quit adding people.

Eric,

Before you send out 100 letters to the latest probate leads, let me tell you what I do.

Determine if there is a property associated with the  estate.

Make sure the decedents spouse is NOT still living in the house.

Verify no recent mortgages, back taxes, leans, etc against.

Check to see if the property is listed on the MLS.

These are the basic steps I take to make sure I am mailing to a motivated seller with a property. I do a lot more to verify my info but, this will keep you from sending 95 letters to people who either don't have a property to sell, are the widow or widower of the deceased, have a property that is upside down and has no equity or the property has already been listed by an agent. I like to deal with properties with 100% equity if I can. It make the negotiations and sale so much easier.

Then when you have your list together send out your probate letters every 30 days until they call you or the house is sold.

Those are the basics

Regards,

Keith Saunders

The benefit of having a Ground Rent is that you can depreciate the entail puchase price of the property. 

Work the numbers. Make sure your tax accountant knows this.  

We do everything from cosmetic rehabs to tear-down/spec building.  We use subs for everything, and at the time we were doing this many projects, I had two full-time project managers and a part-time coordinator (basically a personal assistant).  These days, we're doing 10-20 per year, with a single full-time employee (project manager).

I actually did a Google Talk a few weeks back about how to scale a flipping business and basically turn it into a passive endeavor.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to turn it into a book (or at least an eBook) at some point...

I now add "Expectation" to that list...

Basically, knowing your numbers and working backwards to create a plan to execute to those numbers.  As one example, if you're doing direct mail, you have to know your metrics:

- What percentage of mailers result in a response;

- What percentage of responses result in a property viewing;

- What percentage of viewings result in an offer/negotiation;

- What percentage of negotiations result in an accepted contract;

- What percentage of accepted contracts result in a purchase.

If you can assign accurate percentages to each of these aspects of a marketing campaign, you can work backwards to determine that, "I need to send X mailers, on average, to generate a deal."  If you want Y deals per year, you need to send X * Y mailers in that year.

This is one example with marketing/acquisition, but you should be defining and executing on these types of metrics in all aspects of your business.  

Hello, 

Here is a local FB page for Baltimore area people- https://www.facebook.com/groups/358674524275464/

We meet for lunch every Friday and it is open to everyone.

Hope this helps.

Mark