All Forum Posts by: Brian Beers

@Will Parks we recently started doing private/hard money loans after getting tired of tenant problems. We never ask for any upfront money which is definitely a red flag. all of our deals come from a mortgage broker. Obviously there’s a cost for you as a borrower to go through a broker but at least you’ll have confidence the lender is legit. 

@Rob Lee we used UpWork to find this one. In my post I noted it was for real estate calls and happen to get someone who applied with experience.

@NaDean Bowles we use 8x8 which is about $20 per month. Quality is good. We used google voice but eventually got flagged/shut down for too many calls. We’ve used upwork for one off jobs and MyOutDesk.com for 100% vetted full time people.

@Brian Gerlach most commercial mortgages require anyone with more than 20% ownership to sign/guarantee the mortgage. The property would be titled in the LLCs name

@Ryan Dossey I used a similar approach but my VA did all the work. Pulled the list from propsteam, skip trace contact info and made the calls via google voice number. Got my first lead last week and closed 2 off market houses on it. Not bad for a $300 cost.

@Davidson Francois we recently got a VA setup to make cold calls to owners of our target area. After 2 weeks of work she got me a real lead. That lead turned into 2 houses under contract this week, at $50-60k each. They will be rentals for us. Not bad for a $500 total cost.

Last year we purchased 3 rental properties in the Philadelphia suburbs through the MLS. Our goal is to have 12 by end of 2020. Since there has been very little inventory lately that's met our criteria I decided to try finding off market deals. Here's what we did.

#1 Find Virtual Assistant - upwork.com. I put posted job and found a VA who had experience in making real estate cold calls. She even attached an audio file of her making a call. Her english was good enough. $12.50 per hour. 25 hours of work for $312 cost.

#2 Find Leads - propstream.com $100/month subscription. I gave VA credentials & criteria. Exported list of properties to Excel

#3 Get Contact Info - beenverified.com. $25/month VA uses to find numbers for landlords

#4 Phone Number - Free local Google Voice number for VA to call from

#5 Script - VA already had one she used with previous clients. It was good enough for me.

She started making calls on January 27th, 2020. On January 31st she had her first real lead for me.  I met the seller today, February 8th. We are very close to a deal on this house, $62,000 almost turn-key 2 bed that we can rent for $1,100 (Section 8). The seller is 85 years old and has 8 other houses he'd entertain selling.

After spending an hour chatting with the seller he says "I've got a son who owns a house around the corner and wants to sell too." We meet the son 20 minutes later and put an offer to buy his 4 bed room for $50,000 (+$10,000 in rehab) that we'll get $1,800/month (Section 8). 

At the end of the day this VA cold calling campaign has cost us roughly $500 and may lead to 9 houses purchased at a reasonable price. You read in the books and hear on the podcasts about finding off-market deals. It feels awesome to actually put those ideas into action and make something happen. There is no magic formula - just take action and do one step at a time.

Fingers crossed we can close both of these houses this month! I've increased the VA's hours per week from 10 to 20 and will continue to fill the pipeline. Hopefully I'll have more leads than I know what to do with! 

@Sheryl Sitman I have not heard that. However I am in Montgomery County so we may be a little different

@Robert Stamper we’ve got a few Sec 8 houses outside the Philadelphia area. I’ve spent a lot of time recently researching the program.

Section 8 Bible is great to get started with. Other than that get out and talk to other current Sec 8 landlords in your area. One of the first rentals we bought was previously Sec 8 and the seller gave me a ton of good info when I asked.

Here is HUD 2020 FMR guide. The rates do vary from the table. I've heard it can go between 90-110% of whats here depending on a number of factors. Our properties were getting 92%, which $100 cheaper than posted.

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY2020_code/select_Geography.odn

We don’t have any 5 beds now but I have heard that you could have Up to 8-9 people and they are tougher on the house. My opinion it comes down to a math question of does the increase in cash flow vs a 3 bed more than offset the additional repair work when your turn the unit over.

@Henry Lazerow Our local broker shopped it and found USLI has best rates for us https://www.usli.com/