All Forum Posts by: Ashton Hines

I am looking to expand our outbound lead generation and after following Cole and James for a while Easybuttonleads.com is the place I’m looking at first. Does anyone have experience with their callers and the training they offer users to help close deals? Thanks for any help.

I am looking to expand our outbound lead generation and after following Cole and James for a while Easybuttonleads.com is the place I’m looking at first. Does anyone have experience with their callers and the training they offer users to help close deals? Thanks for any help.

@Danny M.

You have the right mindset and are very professional which helps. At the end of the day agents just want to close deals. Any agent that is advertising here as a preferred agent or gets hit up from the forums ends up filtering out a lot of people who most likely will never close a deal and after a while they get a little jaded to the prospect of someone else coming in fresh and needing a lot of help. I have spent WAY more time teaching folks for free that fade away and really only were on fire after reading a book or paying a guru to tell them to go put together a team than I have closing deals for investors. But, when one is serious and can pull the trigger it makes the journey getting there TOTALLY WORTH IT! 

That being said it sounds like you are really trying to make progress, just know that the best thing you can do is get pre-approved. At the point, when you have a clear path to closing a house, you should have no trouble finding a local agent who will help you out as much as you need.  

 @Jake Knight @Devon Shaw @Tyler Lingle thanks for the insight! 

We will be coming to town again for my son's DCI marching competition in August I believe, maybe we can grab a drink downtown and do a Bigger Pockets meetup. Would love to hear more about the market there. I do not do any out of state investing right now but since we will be going several times over the next 4-5 years I'm tempted to try something at some point. 

Hi Devon, 

Curious what you think about the STR market around Lucas Oil. We stayed there recently and we were able to walk to the Stadium. The house was clean but definitely not over the top nice. Have you had any clients have success around downtown with the STRs?

Another angle to consider is to ask what will be easier to rent out long term. Who will your buyers and tenant be at each price point. If the cheaper route only gets you a place that has quirks and is hard to market that will bite you long term. If the $300K lets you get in to a decent area and is the average home of the area (maybe 3/2 1500sqft or whatever) then when you go to sell or rent you will have no problem. Plus stretching a little to get a larger base to build equity will pay off I think. Just my two cents. 

You will definitely have more options if you are open to the STR and MTR world. It's not for everyone because of the more hands on management it entails but the returns can blow most long term rentals out of the water right now. I just sold a MTR to an investor in the DFW area and we were able to find something that was priced well enough to absorb some rehab, still be an ARV that would allow him to exit in about a year if needed and house hack in the mean time if the MTR does not produce well enough.

That being said there are still close to 1% deals on the DFW MLS (I just sent 5 to an investor to check out) and smaller markets that are cheaper on the front end but have a good rental base because of a college or military base are good places to look. Think isolated towns that are still a hub for rural communities, have a decent medical base, a college or two or three or military nearby.

Hope this helps. 

2 factors I think. 

1. What is your skill level on installation? If comfortable with both being done at a high level then that's great. I know hardwood can be a bit more complicated and time consuming with specialty tools. Either way, if you are going for perceived value I would do whatever could be done at the close to professional level. When someone comes in to look they won't care who did it, they just want it to be done right. 

2. What is typical in the neighborhood for the sale price of the home? Sometimes vinyl is totally normal and would not stick out as a lesser choice. In DFW however over about $700K I would expect mostly real wood. I would check out some open houses or listings online of newly renovated places and I bet there will be a consensus pick. 

Good luck with the project, that's great that you can tackle that type of stuff!

I just helped a local investor buy a high end MTR. Much of the higher rent is based on the "like for like" idea when someone in an insurance situation is looking for a placement. In your homeowners policy there is a percentage that dictates what you are allowed to spend annually on a secondary placement if needed. 

My understanding is it is typically 25%035% of the value of the insured property. For instance if we are talkings a $400k home then they might have $100K per year allowance to spend if there was a flood/fire etc. That would equate to approximately $8,300 per month if needed. Again, I have not done this but it is my basic understanding that as the homeowner you can advocate to find a place that is similar to your home and is close by so you can live the life you are used to. If you have a well appointed home and are in a central location then you would be a good draw for a familiy looking for a place. 

I'm sure there are rules and regulations an insurance specialist could correct me on, however in principal there is a math equation that is at play that is based on the value of the home. It is not solely left up to the placement company to find the cheapest place on the market. 

I'll throw my two cents in as well. I'm on my second batch. The first one (about a year ago) was not productive at all for me but honestly some of that is my fault because I just didn't have a great follow up system in place. I tried early on to keep in touch but quickly was burned out by the volume of people I was getting. I'm in DFW and there were days I would get 5 or 6 leads and it was hard to sort them at the time. I think they are working on a way to throttle the leads and only take a certain volume per week but that feature is not live yet. That being said at the time the leads were basically two categories. 

1. Very new, minimal money and interested in creative financing. 

2. Somewhat experienced but interested in off market very below value homes. 

At the time, and still similar now, I do not have a consistent flow of off market deals that are not from daisy chain wholesalers. I can offer mostly services for on market homes although I feel like I'm good at sorting through and finding quality possibilities for flips or rentals. Another problem with this is that I also flip and have friends that flip and buy and hold and if I run across a screaming deal I'll do my best to take it down personally or pass it to someone I know. 

All that being said round two has felt a little different. The leads are somewhat more filtered. Maybe this is because I tried to beef up my profile some or maybe their vetting process is a little better now but I have had more success finding people that are ok with lookin on-market for stuff. Specifically I found an investor that wants to do a mid term rental and within three weeks we under contract on a $600K home in Richardson. Now granted, so far that is the exception, but if I can use that to keep the leads coming and find a way to use that to get more organic leads here (which I've also had a few) that would be great.