Do these goofy letters actually work?

General Real Estate Investing
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Do these goofy letters actually work?

Sylvia B.
Rental Property Investor · Douglas County, MO · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes

In 2011 we bought a piece of land between our house and the paved road so that we could put in a driveway and avoid using the (terrible) county road. It came with a house, so we started our landlord adventure. That parcel was put in an LLC with other rentals and all was good.

About 2 years ago we decided that it would be best if the land that the driveway is on was owned by our trust, just like our house, so we split off the part with the rental house and deeded the rest of the land to our trust. Again, all was good. If we ever decide to sell, the driveway goes with the house, or if we decide to sell the rental, we retain ownership of the driveway and the woods that screen our house from the paved road.

So for the past year we have been getting letters like this once or twice a month:

They obviously got the information from tax records - "recently" sold properties. I guess they assumed we bought the property and are now regretting that purchase and looking for someone to give it to. The market value of that land is $2000-2500/acre - about $48,000 to $60,000.

What idiot would fall for such a scam, especially in this this red hot market? And how do they arrive at those ridiculous numbers?

Hence the title, Do these goofy letters actually work?

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Justin Sliva
Member since 2022 · 8 posts · 28 votes
4y
Quote from @Sylvia B.:

In 2011 we bought a piece of land between our house and the paved road so that we could put in a driveway and avoid using the (terrible) county road. It came with a house, so we started our landlord adventure. That parcel was put in an LLC with other rentals and all was good.

About 2 years ago we decided that it would be best if the land that the driveway is on was owned by our trust, just like our house, so we split off the part with the rental house and deeded the rest of the land to our trust. Again, all was good. If we ever decide to sell, the driveway goes with the house, or if we decide to sell the rental, we retain ownership of the driveway and the woods that screen our house from the paved road.

So for the past year we have been getting letters like this once or twice a month:

They obviously got the information from tax records - "recently" sold properties. I guess they assumed we bought the property and are now regretting that purchase and looking for someone to give it to. The market value of that land is $2000-2500/acre - about $48,000 to $60,000.

What idiot would fall for such a scam, especially in this this red hot market? And how do they arrive at those ridiculous numbers?

Hence the title, Do these goofy letters actually work?

Sylvia, this is a direct mail campaign.

What may seem goofy to you, is far from it. Right now this goofy letter yield a deal per 2000 sent in this “red hot market”. Pre-covid it was 1 in 800 sent.  There are a couple fallacies in your post, where you insert your opinion as fact (the letter came from my company). It’s not a scam, it’s merely marketing. Obviously, you aren’t the target market but you did open the envelope and it did invoke some feeling. So the marketing worked to a point. We can only see so much from county records. As for assuming we picked your property, because you recently purchased and regretted, we mailed vacant land in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas to non corporate owners 20 - 200 acres. It was a total of 7800 letters, currently under contract from the goofy letter is 272 acres. It was a letter to their 40 acre and they said “hey, we have 272 acres, give us your best offer on all of it.” So we did and they agreed. We will do a simple parcel split on a portion and sell it all. 

I read in the above comments "Sadly" it works. While the offers may seem low by house wholesaler or BRRR strategy offers, vacant land has fewer exits and typically more deed/title problems. These opportunities all come at a cost. Secondly, vacant rural land gets handed off to family members after deaths, more often than not, they have no desire to keep it and don't want to deal with the disposition (time, issues on deed, no realtor will take a 30k listing), this again creates opportunities.

I’m always down to chat with a fellow investor. We both may gleam an idea or two from our conversation to help our businesses. 

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