How are you finding deals? What do you do with the ones you do not keep?

Question

So what is everyone doing to find deals. I will share the things I do- as I do them, maybe others will as well. 
So today, I sent out 350 emails to agents in texas asking if they know of any parks for sale in their areas. I have 1400 agents emails in texas- 2 in each town with more than 1000 people in it.
So- out of that I will get some good leads. The parks that are good, but I am not interested in, I will probably put under contract and then flip the contracts, or pass on the lead for a 'fee' if the deal gets closed.

I will do this same email blast to about 30 states I am looking in.
So that is one of my ways of finding deals- what say you all?

Gerald L. · Answer

i wish California was so cheap.

Joe Hartman · Answer

No problem Sam. Glad I could finally give some info instead of just ask questions.

Jim... with these agents, how are you working out compensation in situations where the sale is not up front (conventional lending, cash offers)? How are things set up on 100% owner financing, lease options and newly established partnerships with the sellers to take over as operational manager? Do you spell out these things prior to them locating deals?

As always, thanks for your help.

- Joe

Sam Craven · Answer

excellent information guys, thank you.

Joe Hartman · Answer

In addition to what Jim stated:

I've used easyoutsource dot com. You can find very cheap labor... pay less for simple processes, more for someone that needs to create/toubleshoot.

Post your job and offer it as an ongoing position. In the middle of the job description, ask them to answer a specific question/or perform a specific task in the reply or you will not consider them (maybe ask them to access HUD and pull a 3 listing). This weeds out the people that apply to anything/everything, helps you find someone that can take orders, has good enough english skills to understand the task, and is willing to do some actual work.

After reviewing the applications, set up some interviews on skype. Find out what you need to know, let them know that you are a serious business owner and a nice person to deal with at the same time, and see if they fit the bill.

Hire at least 2 people on a trial basis. Let them know what task they are suppose to do, ask them to time how long it took them to do each task. If they had problems, ask them how they figured it out. Then, keep the best, fire both, keep both depending on your needs and their performance.

Most of these applicants will be from the philippines. They consider it an honor to work for an American company, and will treat you with respect. They also get embarrassed if they can't figure things out, and might stop responding out of shame. Treat them nice and let them know that you expect them to make errors in the beginning and get better as time passes. If something does go wrong early, take some of the blame yourself. Use things like screencast, jing, dropbox and/or gmail drive to train them and share files. If they ask questions, document it and save it in a FAQ in case you lose a worker and need to hire another.

Or, you can go to odesk and get someone to build you some software that can automate all that for you. Or find a out of the box product that might be able to do that for you. Or go to fiverr dot com, type in "scrape" and see if anyone will scrape what you need from those sites for $5.

Jim Johnson · Answer

Sam,
I always learn the skill first- then I personally train the VAs. I use 'camtasia' a lot- which records my screen and I talk as I do my work. The VA, or anyone that works for me can redo the training over and over if they get stuck. I found one really sharp VA that worked with others, I trained the first one, and then she trained the rest. I will say tough, if you can record our screen and your process- it saves time over showing the same task over and over.

On odesk, I look for contractors with lots of hours, good English skills and maybe they worked a support desk at some point. I also like good word processing skills and excel skills. I would say to look for VAs with over 1000 hours billed. My top VA has about 2800 hours with just me- I think I have about 6 active contractors right now. I have run as many as 10 full time.

In business- outside of the VA- I present all of my own documents, leases etc with the same program. Then my managers only need to push the play button and I know all of the docs are presented the way I want them to be presented.

Sam Craven · Answer

Thanks Jim, sounds like a pretty effective use of time and money.  I'm toying with the idea of hiring VA to search hud and other auction type websites to run an analysis for me and deliver the best 30 a week for me to possibly write offers on instead of me looking through 300 a week (which I usually burn out from quickly) but searching through the VAs, I dont really see that skill set written about.

If you would, expand on the learning curve of hiring and training a VA.  Did you go through a company or an individual?  what other things to look out for?

Jim Johnson · Answer

Sam,
I trained VAs from odesk who built the list, and they also maintain it for bad email addresses etc... I send the emails out- and share the email address with the VAs. They log in, and I separate the emails I want something done with into special folders. We use dropbox, and excel to keep the lists up to date. 
It took a while to train a good team to do this. 
In all- I probably have about 10,000 into the lists and training.

Sam Craven · Answer

Jim Johnson are you hiring VAs from Odesk or elance to build these lists?  And are they just using google to pile the lists manually or is there a more streamlined way to do it?

Jim Johnson · Answer

I have never had an agent tell me there is a upfront fee. I protect agents on any deals they bring my way- and I will sign agency agreements on deals- but not for entire areas. So they need to say- the 40 space park on the south side of town, or put in an address or something. 
I will protect the agent within general agency rules- some agents want 1, 2 or 3%... some want a flat fee- like $10,000.

Joe Hartman · Answer

Jim (and others),
I just spoke with a real estate agent that does only MHPs. She mentioned that there is a "buyers" fee of $500 up front, and that this is standard commercial investments. Is that what others are hearing? Would you even consider having this one agent if you're looking for property in 20 different states? She seemed knowledgeable about MHPs in general (she has bought 8 of them), but really only knows 2 states in depth.

I know that fee doesn't fit in with what you're doing here. How are you handling the agents that send you these leads? Are you giving them a finder’s fee? Taking them on as a buyer’s agent for any deals that they find?

Thanks

How are you finding deals? What do you do with the ones you do not keep?

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