As a real estate investor, you are a marketer first.  Your success hinges on your ability to effectively market your business.  Regardless of your specialty, you may use some of the well-known, effective marketing methods.  These methods include, but are not limited to; bandit signs, newspaper classifieds, yellow pages, billboards, business cards, radio, television.  The effectiveness of these methods vary per market, per design, per marketing-message, etcetera.  You need to analyze and conclude what works best for you.

To be a smart marketer and a sound entrepreneur you must track every effort you make for analysis.  As they say in Martial Arts, “Don’t do something for nothing” meaning, if you’re going to throw a kick, kick to break a rib, if you’re going to throw a punch, punch to knock-out.  So if you’re going to spend money marketing, don’t just close your eyes and funnel the money into various methods and throw a Hail Mary pass.  Sure you may get some leads, but you will have no idea where they came from.  You won’t know what’s working best or what’s working the least.  You need to track your marketing efforts.  I’m going to focus on how you can track these efforts for a minimal cost with Google Voice.

Google Voice is a telecommunications service by Google that launched in March of 2009.  This free service allows the selection of a single U.S. phone number with your area code of choice.  Incoming calls to the number may be configured to ring any number of your phones simultaneously.  You can set custom call forwarding schedules, allow different callers to hear different voicemail messages, transcribe voicemails, and the list goes on.  There are enough Google Voice features to warrant a dedicated blog post.  Today, I’m just going touch on how you can use Google Voice to inexpensively track your marketing campaigns.

Using Google Voice to Track Your Marketing Campaigns

1. I suggest that you get one Google Voice phone number for each marketing method.  Get one unique number for your bandit signs, one for newspaper ads, etcetera.  Create a separate Google account for each number that you need.

2. Sign-up for free Google Voice invites.  The wait varies on the invitations, my first invite took about 2 months, my second invite took about 3 weeks.  Each invite for Google Voice allots you with one phone number.  For my additional phone numbers I went to eBay about purchased my invites, no waiting period.  They are going for about $6 a pop there.  This is a very reasonable cost.  Time is money so you have got to love eBay!

3. Once you have your invites you will be able to proceed with your Google Voice account configuration and phone number selection.  Make sure to login with a unique Google account prior to proceeding with the ‘invite’ link and configuring your account.

4. While configuring your account, you may make various customizations to suit your preferences.  You may choose to forward the number to a main number of yours (or to a Virtual Assistant), or you may choose to keep it strictly virtual and just have the callers leave voicemails.

With dedicated phone numbers and Google Accounts for your various marketing campaigns, you will be able to track specifically who called upon what.  You will easily be able to see what is working better than others.  You may then make an educated decision to reallocate your marketing budget.

Personally, I set up five numbers* so that they all forward to my Vonage number (VoIP is another great technological tool).  I disabled the “Call Screening” and “Call Presentation”.  I also set it so that the Caller ID doesn’t display the callers’ number rather it displays the Google Voice number.  The Google Voice numbers are programmed in my phone for what they are attributed to.  So for instance, when someone calls on my classified ad, the Caller ID says, “Classified Ad”.  This prevents me from being blindsided by an ad response, when I’m expecting a call from my accountant.  I forward all of my Google Voice phone numbers to my Vonage office line which also rings my mobile phone.  I do this so that I can use the Vonage Dashboard to monitor all of my calls and not have to specifically login to each Google Account to track different calls.  They all show up in an activity feed and are identified by their number.

* Google currently only allows two Google Voice numbers to share the same forwarded number.  Since I have 5 numbers, the first two are forwarded directly to my Vonage office line.  The second two are forwarded to a Vonage virtual number that is forwarded to my Vonage office line, this goes for the 5^th number as well.

This is just one of the many ways you can use Google Voice.  The more you embrace the advances in technology, the smarter your decisions become and the more efficient you will work.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Track your real estate marketing with Google Voice

Many real estate investors have a website.  But if you don’t have a website, get one for yourself as soon as possible.  Why?  Because the website can help you not only in branding your company, but it will also help you generate more leads for your business.

If you already have a real estate website, let me ask you few questions:

Do you know where your visitors are coming from?

Do you know the source of your biggest lead generation website (you know, the site that sends you the most traffic)?

Do you know your best keywords that bring the most traffic to your website?

what page on your website is most popular in regards to the traffic it brings you?

Do you know how long people stay on your site?

If not, then why not?

Now, you might be thinking:  Why do I need to know all of this?  I’m just a real estate investor and I’m in a business of buying and selling real estate.

How Understanding Your Keyword Data Can Build Your Real Estate Business

Let’s say that you know which keyword brings you good traffic from Google. You head over to Google and type in the keyword phrase, hit the search button and notice that your website is ranked in the 8th position on the first page.  That’s good, but not good enough.

You decide to head over to Google’s Free Keyword Tool and find out that the keyword gets about 700 searches a month on but you only get about 80 clicks.  Now that you are armed with this powerful information, you can go back to the web page that was ranked in #8 position and start optimizing it to get higher rankings.  You optimize the keyword phrase in the title, tags, description and the page’s content itself.  Then you do some backlinking from some authority sites such as BiggerPockets.

Within few days to couple of weeks, you notice that your site has moved up in the rankings to #3 spot.  So you do some more SEO.  Before you know it, your website is ranked #1 for that term and now you get about 200 clicks per month.  How do you like that?

What if you did that to 5 of your keywords and end up getting 1000-1500 more clicks per month.  What do you think about that?  I think you could get few deals out of those 1500 clicks, don’t you?

Now that you see the power of this data, you might be asking yourself:  How do I get this data?  How much will it cost me?  How much work will it take to get it?

I’ll tell you right now.  This piece of software is easy to use, it takes about 10 minutes to install and get this, it is 100% FREE!  Interested?  I hope so.  Now, I realize that you may already know about this software but if you don’t, you’re in for a treat.  This free software is called Google Analytics and can be found on, you guessed it, Google.  You need to have a gmail account to get it but that’s it.

Once you login, Google will give you instructions to install few pieces of javascript tracking code on your site and you should be all set.  All you need to do from now on is track your progress and watch your statistics.

So there you have it.  Think about what I just shared with you.  This info does not require you to go out and try to do all kinds of internet marketing to get more traffic.  This information allows you to use and improve what you ALREADY have at your disposal.

That’s all I have for today.  Let me know if you have any questions by commenting below and I’ll answer them for you.

To Your Success,

Peter Kolat

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How To Get More Traffic To Your Real Estate Website Without Marketing

I have the worksheet I use of a ‘quick and dirty’ hard money purchase analysis and I thought I’d share it with you…download here! First if you don’t know much about worksheets, don’t worry; you simply input a few numbers at the top, and the worksheet automatically calculates the fields without your assistance. You just get to read the output.

Why I Use Hard Money: My Theory

Let me explain why I call this my “Hard Money Buying” worksheet. First, I hate putting my own money in purchases, since I’m already putting in my valuable time I feel adding my money to boot is too much to ask. With hard money or what some call private investor funds (rich guys that have more money than time) I seek to borrow not only the acquisition funds but the rehab funds and all the carrying costs including interest payments for 6 months. This is more than enough time to bring the property back to market either as a rental or a sale opportunity.

The Hard Money Worksheet

There’s a screen shot below…and then I’ll give a tour of what’s on it.

First, the grey fields are the only fields that you use to input data. Everything else is auto populated off of those data fields. The “yellow highlights” are there so your private lender gets an eye-full of the good news! As I get “more serious” about a property, I’d do more “complex” calculations, but this worksheet is the basis for my private lender to make his decision from…after all if they won’t lend, I’m not buying.

For example of how I use this worksheet, the screen shot shows my Acquisition Cost at 61.54% and 65.24% after 6 months…if my lenders cutoff is 65%…I’m asking for an exception to the rule. They may say “OK” or they may not. I may have to fax “this deal” to a number of private or hard money lenders to see which one accepts my exception.

Private funds in my experience want about a 12% nominal rate and worse case, 5 points…so the worksheet reflects this. The worksheet reflects the 6 months of turnaround time and tracks the carrying costs over that time. Private funds usually won’t lend if they are letting you in with “none of your own money” at a LTV of greater than 65%. The worksheet gives me two looks at LTV…one before 6 months of holding costs…and one after. This gives me the options with my private money loan request.

Next you’ll see the output for when I sell, the worksheet spits out gross profits for sales prices of 80% of appraised value growing in 5% steps up to 100%. So I can see what my profit potential is if I “hold out” for a higher sales price…or cut the home for a quick sale.

Now depending on the deal, I want to see a monthly cash flow projection as well. So there are inputs for annual property tax and hazard insurance estimates, as well as a 10% estimate for “management expenses”. Feel free to add any addition expenses the cost of a property manager, advertising, vacancy, and collection losses, etc. over the 10% I impugned in the “Est. Insurance” field until you feel you’ve adequately represented the “outflow” and then estimate your potential rent keying that in in the appropriate field as well.

For debt service, it is assumed a 90% loan at 8% amortized over 30 years on the 100% Sales Price figure. If these terms are too generous for you, feel free to calculate the final cash flow by hand using your own figure for monthly debt service…if they feel right…you’re in luck because the worksheet cranks out a lovely “Est. Cash Flow for you!

There are some fields that are nice to show private investors like “cost per square foot” and “rent per square foot”…but they are more for “them” than for you.

NOTE: This worksheet is equally useful for a “fix and flip” scenario using 100% hard money…or a monthly cash flow analysis to help you make long term hold decisions.

Have fun…and happy investing!

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

My Hard Money Buying Worksheet – Yours Free!

This week I’d like to be both practical and a little futuristic. On Bloodhound Blog, my blog, Bonzai, and several other blogs, such as, A Life That POPS, lately, there has been talk about changes in the real estate field, and one of those changes, the team approach, is a topic I’d like to relate to investing — not just “team” as in professionals you use for guidance or as vendors to make individual deals, but a partnership “team”, a small, local investment company. I was going to write about Economic Conversion, but I’ll save that. Investment groups are nothing new, just as real estate teams are nothing new, but how these teams/groups function in a biz 2.0 world will, no doubt, be changing quickly.

It’s difficult for one person with a notebook to keep up with all the information inundating us in the information age. The concept of a local diverse, super investment team using some of the practices of Business 2.0 is an appealing idea. How such a team could be arranged is open to many possibilities, but allow me to build one possibility. Let’s say you’ve decided to become an investor, or you are an experienced investor, and you’ve realized it would be much more effective and efficient if you formed a partnership team. You’ve been a leader all your life and you’re skilled at bringing people together to achieve a common purpose, so you thought you’d use these skills to create an investment team. Your idea is to build the team on four strengths: Internet/information mangagement, financial expertise, real estate expertise and local government expertise.

Internet/information management:
With constant innovations taking place in online information search all the time, the investor who’s being fed the most focused, contextual information has an advantage. Having that expertise on an investment team, someone skilled in web 2.0 concepts, allows the players to consider a steady stream of useful information that can be analyzed on a daily basis. Many local governments are putting up websites with updated changes you can feed into by email alerts. Although small cities may not be on the edge of information yet, all this is rapidly changing. Also, by hooking up the investment team with web 2.0 tools, you’ll be able to make information management efficient: blogging to encourage interaction in the communtity; online meetings for the team, quick information display and contact management through something like Open Office, Web Officeor Zoho (check them out carefully — each has strengths and weaknesses) to be accessed anywhere; mapping technology for visual inspiration — being connected will be light years ahead of those investors who aren’t and will bring the following categories together in powerful, useful ways.

Financial Expertise:
Having someone knowledgable about financial management and loan products with their finger on the industry’s pulse will be a powerful addition to the team. New products are coming out all the time — being quick to take advantage of the innovatons, knowing the trends of loan products and having connections to lenders will place the team in a good financial position to maximize profits and design each investment with the most efficient and profitable financing.

Real Estate Expertise:
This could be a commercial agent or a real estate attorney, anyone with real estate expertise that has comprehensive knowledge of the local RE market, access to market information and connections to all the local RE players. People who spend all their time in the RE business hear things and know things that the general public would not be aware of, plus they have a feel for the trends and red flags to consider. Someone experienced and connected to the local RE community will be a valuable addition. You might also want to consider someone who has experience with building and knows about the product itself — building and buildings — at least enough to be helpful in identifying maintenance, repair and renovation costs.

Local Government Expertise:
It would probably be helpful to have someone on the team who knows local government, who has experience dealing with zoning and planning, knows all the players and how to navigate the system. Insider knowledge would be helpful in effectively analyzing information by understanding the mindset of the local players for future development in different areas of town – what concerns for development are a top priority? Are there plans to promote growth on the east side? Are there plans underway to provide incentives for downtown investment and re-building?

Building a strong local investment team like this has pros and cons. The pros are a co-ordinated team approach that if managed correctly could be synergistically more powerful and efficient than an individual effort. If pulled off, it could be attractive to private lenders who want to put up money but not get bogged down in nuts and bolts. It would be attractive to banks, giving them confidence that the well rounded approach would be effective in producing results. It would be effective in making good investment decisions, and being the first to recognize opportunities for investment. It would be good for the gathering, managing and analyzing of information and helping with the due diligence process, having four areas of expertise investigating the viability of a project. It would give each team member more confidence, drawing from the strength of each other, bouncing ideas around, communicating and receiving feedback. It would add financial strength so that larger, more profitable projects could be handled.

The cons, or possible problems, are settling disagreements among team players over strategies and investment choices, creating equitable partnership arrangements, deciding where responsibilities lie with each team member, ending partnerships if it’s not working for a member — there can be many problems with any team or partnership arrangement, so it would pay to take the necessary time to work all these out and to choose carefully. However, I believe all the problems can be worked out if there is an easy exit plan for dissatisfied members. I believe the pros outweigh the cons, but not if it’s poorly planned — four minds can be worse that one if teamwork is not executed to its full potential.

If teamwork IS executed to its full potential, I think an investment team could achieve extraordinary results, especially if all the modern tools of information management are used to provide speed, co-operation, comprehensive knowledge and efficiency.

Note from the editor: Read more about assembling your real estate investing team and be sure to look at some of the great suggestions in the comments.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Investment Team – A Real Investment Team

If you’re selling your home by owner, you’re probably very familiar with all the reasons for doing so: no commissions, more control, less stress. Obviously the real bottom line is simple: more money for you.

So let’s just assume that when you’re selling by owner, it means that you want to make/save as much money as possible. Following that line of thought, you might not see any reason for using a FSBO company, one of those help-you-sell types that you can purchase marketing through. You might be perfectly content to stick a sign in the front yard and wait.

Well, in today’s buyers’ market, wait you will.

Here’s my solution: use a FSBO company.

You may be thinking, doesn’t this contradict the whole point of selling on your own? If I use a company, shouldn’t I just use a realtor? Well, no. FSBO companies counteract the primary problem of selling by yourself: they bring you buyers and create professional advertising.

If you decide tomorrow to sell your house and you buy a red and white sign at the hardware store and put it in the yard, only the people who drive by your home will know it’s for sale. This is a start, and it’s good, but you want to cast your net a little wider. You want to reach as many people as possible so you can find THE buyer—the one who’s going to pay you what your home is worth, in the shortest amount of time.

FSBO companies usually offer advertisements with their websites, magazines or other marketing tools. They build their business around reaching consumers and bringing them to your property. This is very, very important.

Plus, you’re still saving thousands of dollars: compared to a 6% commission, a one-time fee for advertising/buyer-gathering is always a better deal! Personally, I’ve been very satisfied with Buy Owner, after using several other companies. BO is the only company that left me with no complaints. Do some research and determine which company’s best for you. (Ask me about any one of them! Odds are, I know about it, if I haven’t used it myself!)

Selling a property is important—so important, in fact, that you want to do it right. Consider a FSBO company. You’ll be glad you did.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Using a Homes For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Company

No matter how you’re selling a home–whether it’s through the cost of a realtor, by auction or using my preferred method of selling “for sale by owner”–your #1 goal is getting the property seen. If no one sees a home, no one will make an offer on a home.

So how can you get your property publicized?

1. Word of mouth: Tell everyone you know that you’re selling. Encourage them to pass on the info—if you have homemade marketing materials, use them.

2. Post everywhere: Leave information about your home on grocery store bulletin boards, at your company postings, at the library, in the school district, you name it!
3. Market it well: Be thinking about the absolutely best way to make your property stand out.
   In my opinion, your best bet is to combine your efforts with a FSBO Company. There are many established real estate marketing companies out there. I’ve found one to be most helpful, and I found it by trial and error. A good marketing real estate company (i.e., one worth paying money to) should be able to help you with the next steps:

4. Create a brochure/flyer: You want something professional-looking, if at all possible. Think good design and highlighted features.
5. Use professional photographs: Taken with the best lighting, maximizing the look of space and style, the photos should show your home at its best.
6. Virtual tours: These are becoming more and more popular—so much so, in fact, that you really need them. Especially today with so many people relocating and transferring, potential buyers may be out of state or even out of the country. You want them to be able to learn about your home anywhere.
7. Focus on features: Your advertising must highlight the positive aspects of your home. You want to make it easy for potential buyers to see why they should be interested.
8. Overall service: If you are going to go with a FSBO company, it should provide service to assist you with the overall process.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Your Home

The agentBOOST website concentrates on connecting buyers and sellers of real estate to agents in their area. The agentBOOST homepage claims that it is “a better way to find a real estate agent.” According to the site, there are three steps to finding an agent:

1. Our users tell us about the properties they are planning to buy or sell.
2. Agents have five days to bid on the opportunity to help with the transaction.
3. Users are free to interview and hire any of the agents who placed a bid.

By using their service, this startup company claims that buyers and sellers will save money and real estate agents will increase their sales. The Registration is quick and easy. A password is sent to the user’s email immediately after filling out the form. Once you have a username and password, a client is able to add a property to their profile to buy or sell. There are several fields for the user to complete including property type, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, minimum price, maximum price, preapproved, and under contract.

The site claims that users will typically get bids from real estate agents that are below the “standard” 3% charged by full-service companies. I am excited by this premise, as I am a huge fan of reducing agent commissions! Does an agent who sells the average priced home in Los Angeles of $565,000 really deserve over $16,000 for their efforts? NOT A CHANCE! If agentBOOST is successful in reaching mass saturation and bidding for commissions becomes a thing of the future, I think the consumer will be more then better off! I’m sure this is not something that established agents would like to see succeed, but I think it may also give new agents the opportunity to compete in some markets. I wish there was a service like this when I was starting out as an agent (back in the day).

As I don’t have any property for sale, nor am I seeking a property to purchase, I cannot vouch for the site’s success in linking buyers and sellers up with agents, but there are other features to discuss . . . Design-wise, the site is very clean and uncluttered. It is visually appealing and there are no ads that I could find. As I mentioned earlier, I think the site is focused on the average home buyer or seller and newer real estate agents or those less motivated by overpriced commissions.

I certainly think that this is a site worth watching and hope it, can help bring real estate agent commissions back to planet earth.

If you’re selling your home, check out agentBOOST for sure!

Note: This is a paid review. We get quite a few requests per week and are selective in our reviews. These reviews will be blunt, but fair. If you’re interested in a review from this PR5 blog, purchase a review from ReviewMe.

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

ReviewMe: agentBOOST Can Save Real Estate Buyer’s & Seller’s Commissions