Wholesaling Strategy - I have a budget!

[Nick Peraino]

I have spent the last 18 yrs of my life as a musician, living hand to mouth. After much careful consideration I've decided to invest in RE. Conveniently, after making this decision, I received a check from the IRS. I want to use some of it for my direct mail campaign. My question right now is... Do y'all think $1,000 over 6 mos ($167/mo) is going to yield reaults here in Pensacola FL? Podcast 77 and 81 focus on wholesaling/marketing. Michael Quarles suggests 10% call rate, 2% of that 10% may close ...I think, may be off a hair on those rates. So I should expect 100 calls over 6 mos and to get about two deals. Any insight or suggestions on the marketing or even on my newfound situation of having a workable budget for the first time in my life and mountains of motivation welcome!!

[Larry Higgins]

@Nick Peraino Like Lakeem I'm a big believer in cold-calling.  But I would recommend you be very targeted in the beginning.  Being new to all of this I would highly recommend going out and finding 100 vacant properties and then prioritizing them into your top 10-20 based off of free, public records.  From there you could skip trace your top priorities and work them thoroughly and completely until you get in touch with the owner.  

I love vacant properties, but even more so for newer investors.  The reason being is that in my experience, it's the number one overall indicator of a deal.  The more distress indicators you can add to that the, the better the odds of a deal become.  For example, a vacant house is a good lead, but a vacant house with a deceased owner, or out of state owner, and delinquent property taxes is  a MUCH better lead.  That's just an example.  I call it checking as many boxes as possible.  The more boxes you can check, the better the odds are of not just getting a deal, but getting a much better.

Other benefits to truly distressed vacant houses are that they are so much easier to negotiate and move, especially when you're green.   There's a lot of room for error in those types of leads.

Driving and cold calling isn't passive like mail, but when you take a targeted approach, your cost per buy will be tremendously lower.