Rockford, IL · Member since 2018 · 15 posts · 15 votes
I'm new to wholesaling and It's been three months and no deal. I've tired direct mail and using online marketing methods. I'm not getting any leads. I'm slightly discouraged, but I'm not sure what's 'normal'. How long did it take you to get your first deal?
@Ashley Burks My first deal that came from marketing took about 200 phone calls to FSBOs. I got better with time and now I can usually close 1 deal for every 25-30 calls. My problem is that there are hardly any real FSBOs anymore, most of them are on the MLS as flat fee listings, the ones that look like FSBOs on craigslist and kijiji are actually agents :P
So now I'm turning to something I did only a few times in the past. Door knocking houses that have been on the MLS for over a month. I did my first 15 on Tuesday and have an appointment to buy a house on Monday.
In my experience online marketing for sellers is a waste of time. Direct mail can be good but it's extremely saturated, you need a budget in the tens of thousands per month to really make it work.
Contact a few realtors and have them put you on automatic response, tell them what your looking for, use key words like as is, tlc, needs work etc. check every day do comps, a good site is total view for comps. Just make sure the contract has the words assignable after the buyers name (you).
@Ashley Burks Took me a few months to get my first wholesaling deal. It just requires persistence, hard work and constant follow up. Regarding what I do now, it took me almost a year to do my first mobile home deal. The hardest part of being a successful real estate investor is finding what works for you and your personality. What may work for one person may not necessarily work for you. And vice versa. Hope that helps. Good luck on your real estate investing journey! :)
@Emma Bennett you’re on the right track, just make sure you do your comps well! It’s good to drive your comps to, just to make sure your comparing apples to apples. Use bps deal analyzer. Estimate your repair cost, and your comps will tell you your ARV of the house. Plug all that in the analyzer. It took me a year to find a private money lender going to meet ups. We had no money at all when we started. You’ll always find what your looking for! Good luck!
@Kate J. Yes bypassing the agent is the whole point of door knocking. Unless you mean their commission? I don't have anything to do with that side of things. That's between the seller and their agent. All I want is for sellers to get my offer, and to do that, I have to bypass the agent.
@Doug Pretorius Do they get the comissioin in the end? It would be weird if the seller would give money to an agent who did not bring a buyer. The strategy sounds interesting. Also the sellers usually sign out the property for about 3-5 months to a listing agent.
@Ashley Burks My first deal that came from marketing took about 200 phone calls to FSBOs. I got better with time and now I can usually close 1 deal for every 25-30 calls. My problem is that there are hardly any real FSBOs anymore, most of them are on the MLS as flat fee listings, the ones that look like FSBOs on craigslist and kijiji are actually agents :P
So now I'm turning to something I did only a few times in the past. Door knocking houses that have been on the MLS for over a month. I did my first 15 on Tuesday and have an appointment to buy a house on Monday.
In my experience online marketing for sellers is a waste of time. Direct mail can be good but it's extremely saturated, you need a budget in the tens of thousands per month to really make it work.
Doug do you have a script for calls and door knocking? That would be massively helpful.
@Kate J. Like I said, that's up to the seller. And yeah 3 months seems to be pretty common here for listing agreements. It's too early for me to say with based on results, but it seems like door knocking is like any marketing. Some of the people you speak to are motivated, most aren't, but with time may become motivated.
@Tania Salas Let's say the house has been for sale for a month or more, I'll say something like:
"Hi, my name is Doug, I noticed your house has been for sale for awhile and just wanted to let you know my wife and I can take over your payments. Here's our card. Let us know if we can help. Have a great day!"
or I'll leave a note on their door that says: "House won't sell? We take over payments!"
If they don't have payments then I'll suggest a lease purchase. If they don't want to wait I'll offer a low cash price.
@Ashley Burks five months of marketing with amount of letters increasing every month. We started with 100, then 200, then 400, then 800, then 1600 and one finally stuck in May.
Just be persistent, 3 months is not that long and I’m starting to find people are now just getting back to us after our 7th campaign. Leads are now calling in that did not call from the first 6 letters sent to them.
Success happens when you’re just about to give up.
@Ashley Burks Try using the white pages app...that’s what i use but fair warning you do have to pay a small fee for the searches but its well worth every penny
Would it be wise to have a buyers list first before you actually have a seller. I have read posts where it’s the opposite. They say it’s easy to give money away ( find a buyer). Any opinions on this?
@Jana Weaver. Find buyers before the deal. Most wholesale deals aren’t actually deals. It’s a big misnomer that you find the deal and the money comes. Not true.
@Ned Carey why do you think buying at an auction is cheating? If you can buy low and sell at a profit, that is good. In fact that is a route I am looking at since I am new to this too.
Took me about a year, starting from scratch, But I had learned so much. Now I have a great network and a system all set up, planning on having big next year!
@Christi Hawkins Almost exclusively. If I happen across an FSBO I'll knock there too of course, but they are rare in my market. You seem shocked that I would knock on a house listed with a realtor? Well, it's out of necessity I'm sorry to say. I've tried countless times to make offers through listing agents but they always refuse. I was advised to report them to the real estate council, but that would be a unpaid full-time job, and my offer still wouldn't get into the hands of the only person with the authority to accept it.
@Doug P. I am shocked but its been a few years so I'm sure things have changed. I always told my seller if anything like that happened to please contact me. I would have contacted you and asked you to please contact me with any offers and to not contact them again. It happened once but it wasn't a investor or wholesaler it was buyer trying to convince them to cut me out and sell directly to them but thankfully they didn't go for it. There used to be an "unwritten rule" you didn't cross a Realtor sign I'm guessing that's all changed
@Christi Hawkins I'm not a licensee so if there is such a rule it doesn't apply. A listing agent did contact me the other day from my door knocking efforts, they refused to present my offer, but they didn't tell me not to contact their client again. Besides what can they do to stop me from marketing?
Let me be clear: I'm not interested in cutting the agent out of their commission, the seller hired them and should pay them. I simply want to buy their property.
@Doug P. Those may be ancient rules. They can't do anything about your marketing and I would have at least given my sellers your verbal offer if it were really low The licensee is obligated to present all over regardless of how low
@Ashley Burks I love where your head is at. I've also considered this route. Seems like a sure fire way of finding motivated situations.
I think finding out who the best attorneys for this (bankruptcy, divorce, etc.) are in the area and then getting your name and number worked into their minds would be the best bet. Probably sending a couple pieces of marketing materials to them (over a month or two) and then calling would be how I'd get started. If you have a low budget maybe just start smiling and dialing.
Please let me know if you have a different approach.
Comparison is the biggest Joy stealer. Everyone's journey is different consistent effort every single day is going to yield results . Trust the laws for every action there is a reaction. If your patient your work well not be in vain. Can someone explain to me why people are in such a rush to do their first deal? I hear this a lot... it's going to happen why get in such a panic about it happening so fast? What's with the get rich quick microwave mentality?