All Forum Posts by: Zachary Telschow

Are these wholesale leads you're tracking? Rental properties? Properties that have closed? 

When you say "Property Management" I'm not sure what features you use or what's important to you. That being said, I know a handful of guys that have used SparkRent and have been pretty positive about it.

I'm relatively new to real estate investing and want to ensure I'm following best practices from the start. That being said, I'm curious how everyone else is managing this process.

1) Where are you storing your lists of addresses/people to contact? Are you using CRM software? Google Docs/Excel? Some other means?

2) Once you have that list built up and you're ready to send out a batch of letters, are you printing and stuffing the letters yourself? Having a VA place an order through an online vendor? Is there CRM software that allows you to place an order through an online vendor?

3) Recurring drip letter campaigns are widely recommended. Do you manually track when a list is due for another mailing? Do you have staff that take care of this? Do you vary your campaigns or are you typically sending the same series of letters? How do you place these orders? Again, printing yourself, online vendor, somewhere else?

I really appreciate any feedback.

I'd say you need to weigh the ROI of each option along with the commensurate risk and decide which choice is best for you. If your student loans are at 8%, for instance, you can earn the equivalent of 8% on your money simply by paying them down aggressively. But depending on your market, you might be able to earn far more in real estate investing. For me personally, a huge spread (16% vs 8%, for instance) would make it an easy choice. But what if I could only earn 10% and the loans were 8%? That's a lot of hassle and additional risk for a 2% marginal return - I don't think I could justify that. Obviously, all deals aren't created equal, either, so if you figure out what you need to make a deal worthwhile it gives you clear criteria to eliminate deals that don't meet your needs.

There's a lot of "your mileage will vary" involved in this one (stable job? emergency funds? etc), but one thing to consider is the cost of financing for your student loans vs the rate of return you expect to earn or save. As an illustration, let's pretend we live in a simplified, unrealistic world. You have $100k in your pocket (lucky you!) and two choices:

A) Pay off your $100k in student loan debt, relieving you of that burden and saving the 5% interest you were being charged there, or

B) Buy a rental property for $100k, which generates $10k/year in income after all expenses are paid. 

In this grossly simplified example, the rental property is the better choice. Paying off debt that has an interest rate of x% is the same as earning x% on your money, in which case I'd much rather knock down the debt. But if you find that a different choice makes or saves you 1.5x% compared to your debt, you may want to continue holding your debt and make that alternative choice.