All Forum Posts by: Brian Davis

I was listening to Sean Terrys recent podcast and he said the same thing as Michael Q. He continues to market to the unmotivated seller who calls through an email campaign. (basically no cost to do this). And from what I gather, he always emails an offer and then throws them into this email campaign.

This seems to be a very good, cost effective approach and was wondering if anyone else has experience doing this email campaign.

At the end of the day, to get the email address and have your VA input this into Aweber and send out a contract, it is a very easy system to have in place. Sean Terry was the reason I had posted this question initially but I don't think he ever covered the subject fully until this last podcast. (check it out if you haven't..great FREE material as always from him..thx Sean!)

yes, it should be a "Vacant Dwelling under Renovation" policy...we have been getting ours through a broker and the provider is Lloyds of London..maybe find someone that can deal with them..it should be less than 1% of the ARV for a 1 year policy...then once you are done with the policy, cancel it and they will reimburse you for the remaining year. I believe you must pay at least the first 3 months of the policy even if you only have it effective for 2 months. If you go with a 6 month policy, you cannot cancel for a refund...so I always go with the 1 year policy. hope that helps

I had posted on another discussion but was thinking this should have its own thread. Does anyone know of ways to find out if someone is trying to avoid probate? I just pulled up an article http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Probate and was thinking that if I could easily find these people over the past couple of years, it may be a very good list to mail to. Any thoughts?

I am looking for deed transfers within the past 2-3 years, not really sales (I believe they would look like sales in the data)...looking for deed transfers for a nominal amount..hoping to find people that are looking to avoid probate, title 19, etc...I have done some digging around and I think that's the list I am trying to pull.

I am also trying to figure out what kind of criteria is used for the inheritance list if anyone could throw me a bone..i was told that to be inherited in our state, the property needs to first go through Probate..so I am curious as to why I would mail both lists...it seems if you have a comprehensive Probate list, then why buy an inheritance list?

Any chance a recording date within the past 2 years where the owner is out of state would give me something I would want to mail? if I go under 300k on that list I get 550 records which wouldn't cost too much...I have looked for equity in the past when mailing absentee owners and have tried to avoid more recent transactions but I am dealing with data that may not be as complete as in other places

we use attorneys to close our deals, not title companies. I guess there are title companies that help out the attorneys in pulling title/title insurance but I have no experience with them. I called first americans CT title company the other day and I was told they don't have a database of transfers/deed types or anything that would help in compiling an inheritance list on my own.

I am really going crazy trying to put this list together or something that would somewhat resemble the list. If anyone has any ideas on some other way I could put this together, please let me know.

I was also looking at listsource but it seems that CT has limited data on deed types with transfer prices..maybe I am using it wrong or maybe our data is limited here.

I have a project manager that runs the day to day construction of the projects. We should do 12 fix and flips this year. We have been renovating multiple homes at a time for a solid 2 years (the 1st 6 months we had only 1 going on back in 2011..1st flip we bought in April 2011)

the arrangement is that we pay our guy a salary and a smaller % of each deal, so the quicker and cheaper they are, the more he makes and the more we do. I really like the setup..it allows me to focus on finding, funding, staging and selling and I don't have to act as project manager/general contractor. (I also know very little about construction in comparison to my guy..its tough to run the job when you have no clue what you are talking about)

the thing is, we have a few hourly guys that do the general carpentry/misc odds and ends..trim, doors, windows when necessary, tile..i like having a few guys like that..im sure using subs on everything is quicker and cleaner but these guys work well and are relatively inexpensive for what they can do. If I need them somewhere, they go there...if I need someone to dig a hole, they don't tell me its not part of the contract.. so I like to keep those guys busy so they stay with us...I have to keep my project manager busy because he is salary and the 1 person I really need.. (so if I don't get a new project within 3 weeks, we will have to start remodeling my basement :)

as for the 20k deals, our ARV is typically in the 150-225k range so the expectation is 30k minimum (if using 70% formula for simplicity sake, that's where we gotta be)...I have been mailing lately so I can be closer to 50k or possibly do higher ARV homes to hit that (I really believe that you get what you expect)

I am doing half of these houses on my own with hard money and the other half with 50/50 partners so it starts to suck if the profit goes below 30k...I end up walking with 10-12k at the end of the day..i could sell houses as a real estate broker and make that kind of money which is not what I am looking to do (this is why I am now a real estate investor)

on a side note, I could live well off of 100k a year in income also if I wasn't married with 2 kids...lol..I would actually probably be ok on 30k..haha..but that is not my reality :) they are expensive

Awesome mike..you print that directly onto the envelope in house? You find a better response rate or just doing it out of boredom..haha

I also hear that some people view a fish as good luck..maybe I'll split test that with the elephant and see what happens :)

Anyone ever split test the graphic on the return label? I just put an elephant on mine...it means good luck so was thinking maybe someone else would think my letter means good luck..lol..hoping my next seller is supersticious :)

Does anyone know if this information could be gathered online from real quest or list source? We don't have title companies in CT