All Forum Posts by: Sean Dezoysa

I know these are solid for agents as people don't instantly think to refer a friend to their agent who sold their last house with perfect consistency. It is less clear to me if investors would also benefit from this. 

Say you compile a list of people who contact you about buying their house in a distressed situation. Some result in you buying from them, most do not. But it's still a fairly narrow list. Would you guys continue mailing this list say every quarter, to see if they have friends they could refer who are in a similar situation?

@Tony Guardado I split tested them against Answer First a number of years ago. They couldn't follow the (basic) script very well back then. Answer First was much better.

I'm going to be giving them another test as I see them and AF are still the price leaders. If they still aren't good then AF gets my business again.

My CRM can automate direct mail sending but not with stamped envelopes. So paying people to manually stamp mail would significantly raise complexity and cost.

Do you guys find the lift in response still makes it worthwhile to go through this?

@Harvey Yergain, last I checked all the major metros in Ohior were on the decline. I believe Michigan also has this issue in parts.

I would think personal reps/executors of estates who are motivated, just don't want to deal with the hassle. So a company who specializes in taking the hassle away could be in alignment.

Every investor offers to buy as is, cash sale, so I am thinking of de-emphasizing those points in my marketing and focusing on paying all, or some of the costs of the estate handling. Say a $2,000 credit towards attorney fees. I think most lower cost deals could absorb that.

If legal maybe I could have a $10/hr assistant offer to handle the paperwork of the estate. Or coordinating discussions between beneficiaries. If not illegal or too uncomfortable, no problem of course. Just a thought.

I wanted to ask if you guys thought this was a genuine value add that executors would likely find compelling. If it seems too soft I'll certainly keep digging for something even better.

Do you guys have any tips for getting emails and phone numbers of cash buyers?

Getting mailing addresses of absentee cash buyers is simple enough (listsource.com, title company etc). But those cheaper, faster contact methods are absent. And when I've tied up a property speed is my number one concern.

I have thought about marketing for them on Craigslist, which should then yield the email. But then through that avenue you don't know who the real buyers are. One book I read even suggested staying away from Craigslist, saying a lot of them tried to steal deals he already had under contract.

I've read up on the Ohio markets. Other than Youngstown it sounds like investors appreciate them (Dayton, Toledo, Cincinnati, Colombus etc) as solid cash flow markets. 

I thought when a city loses 5-10% of it's population continuously for decades, landlords would be fighting over tenants and in a gloomy state in general.

Is this wrong? Does population loss not affect landlords as much as one might guess? 

Any clarification on how this really pans out would help a lot, thanks.

Say the wholesaler is responsible for getting the deal at a decent discount and the other party does a BRRR on it to cashflowing status.

Is the wholesaler's contibution worth 50% in this case?

I'm suspecting maybe not. What would you guys ballpark a fair percent to be around?

In the book "Probate Real Estate Investing" the author says that adding 50 leads per month to a 6 month followup campaign is a good target to yield deal flow off off. 

He also mentions a response rate of 2-3% is reasonable for probates filtered by house assets, and that compared to an absentee list which generates about 1% response the probates are very high quality.

Do you guys feel these numbers are even in the ballpark, or likely to be wildly optimistic? I've never heard of results following from such a small list even if it's put on a 6 month mailing campaign.

To be fair, at month 6 you'd be mailing 300 leads though. That sounds more reasonable.

You sometimes hear of people using things like lumpy mail with coins taped to the top, fedex envelopes etc to get people's attention. 

What about the concreteness of what a sale looks like and could mean, represented by a draft purchase and sale agreement? 

Stated price could be left blank with a "call for quote." Or a sample figure could be used, derived from a percentage of the Zillow Estimate or similar.

One could word it to be a sort of first round offer, or simply put somewhere that it's subject to a serious discussion to determine actual value. 

For getting attention I'm curious if others have tried something similar to this and whether the draft agreement is a decent call generator.