All Forum Posts by: Andrew Herrig

Sent another 340 letters out on Wednesday (1/8) and received a few more calls, two of which I plan to follow up on in a few weeks. One was a woman getting ready to sell her mother's house as she is moving into a nursing home, the other was a landlord not sure if he wants to sell yet or not.

So far, I have sent out 500 letters, received 6 responses, and 0 deals. Will send out another 250 this week. Stay tuned!

As @Gautam Venkatesan mentioned, almost any property over 20 years old will need foundation work of some kind. It is just something you expect in this area. It is also not uncommon to get roof damage from the hailstorms that seem to occur every few years.

I sent out the first 160 or so letters on 12/30. Received 2 calls so far. One was a landlord who wanted what she had invested in it (over market value), and the other was from someone who is an investor himself. He was not interested in my offer and plans to try to rent it out.

The next 340 letters are ready to be mailed, but I will wait until Wednesday or so to drop them in the mail. I am traveling for work this week and won't really have time to return calls.

Speaking of, any suggestions for those of us with full time jobs? My plan is to return calls after work, but I don't like not answering them right away and having to hope they leave a message...

@Account Closed Thanks for the advice. I have already started with the absentee and property condition lists. I suppose I could do 500 absentees and 500 property condition contacts. My thinking was that I didn't want to hang my hat on absentee owners alone as it seems a lot of people don't do very well with that list, perhaps due to the amount of competition.

I will post my letter to absentees soon for feedback. Not sure if my USP is necessarily that strong.

I am starting my first direct mail campaign and figured I would post my plans and how things are going as time passes to help keep me accountable. Give me your thoughts, questions, and suggestions!

The Plan:

- Mail 1000 pieces per month (250 per week)
- Mail each contact once per month for at least 6 months
- Switch up between letters and postcards, do some split testing (no specifics here yet)

The List:

- 500 absentee owners
- 250 "poor condition" properties (properties listed as "poor" or "very poor" condition on tax appraisal records, built after 1950, deed transfer before 2010, few other filters I can't remember)
- 250 TBD (trying to get list of properties with code violations from the city, open to other suggestions)

What do you think? I will post progress soon. I'm sure I will have plenty of questions as I go along.

Thanks for the responses. I was considering starting with 1000 leads, but it sounds like that may be too low? At ~$4000 for 6 months of mailings, that is a lot of money (to me) to risk for potentially no deal.

I am having the same problem on OS X in Safari and Firefox.

@Jerry Puckett Do you have any insight on this question regarding the DFW market? I have been reading up on some of your posts to start putting together my direct mail campaign. I read somewhere that you got leads directly from the county. What kind of information can you get from the county? I have seen the tax assessors info, but this doesn't contain things like mortgage amount, equity %, etc.

I am about to start my first direct mail marketing campaign and was wondering how many leads I should start with to have a pretty good chance of closing at least one deal.?

I am planning to get an absentee owner list for 2 or 3 zip codes in my area (Dallas), with >50% equity via Listsource, and start a 6 month campaign, mailing once per month, alternating yellow letter and postcard. I am estimating it will cost ~$4 per lead over those 6 months if I do the work myself. Does that sound reasonable?

This looks like a great deal to me for the DFW area. Can I ask what part of DFW this is in? I am in the East Dallas area and I have not seen anything that good in the small multifamily market near me.