All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Garland

@Jarrell D. Trust me, I went through the struggle of using sites like Beenverified, White Pages, etc. It's really a shame that they profit off of selling bad data. Additionally, the guys who own these companies aren't investors, so they really don't understand how much bad phone numbers can negatively impact your budget. When you're marketing on a tight budget, it's really a let down after you spend the time and effort on generating your lists, and then the phone numbers aren't good. I went through that when I started out years ago. I used this company called Microbilt, and man...it was ROUGH. However, I did learn a lot about skip tracing along the way. You can shoot me a message if you want me to help you out.

@Benjamin Blackburn Hey man! I send it out to all of the numbers that I have on file for the individual. I can see when the numbers were updated in my database, so I could just narrow it down to the most-recent ones. However, since I already have the data, I don’t want to waste it by not utilizing it.

When I do my text blasts, I do narrow my list down to on cells, though. So I do exclude data with this method.

I'm getting away from wholesaling and into rehabbing/rentals due to the simple fact that if I can make a large wholesale fee, I know the greater profit potential is likely worth the additional time and effort. If someone will pay a wholesaler $50k, then that is obviously a screaming deal. Hard money is so easy to get nowadays. With that type of spread on an assignment, you can get the financing for the deal and might even be able to raise private money to finance your down payment, if you come up short. I just don't think there's any longevity in strictly wholesaling, especially in hot markets. The cost per deal is getting so high that you almost have to rehab and sell a house in order to recoup your marketing costs and make a profit.

Additionally, the whole dance of getting buyers in the property and possibly renegotiating with the seller if your buyers' offers are too low isn't necessarily ethical. Also, it doesn't help out your brand reputation if you're constantly asking for reductions or you're hoping an uneducated buyer will come along and buy your overpriced deal. By the time you find your buyer and close, you could have closed yourself, had a contractor come in to touch up the property, and list it. This isn't true in all situations, but this is definitely possible for the ones that need light repair work.

I know this isn't the popular opinion with a lot of folks here on BP, but take this from someone who was stuck in the "wholesaler mentality" for a long time. I just look back in frustration at all of the deals that my company gave away that we could have easily closed on and listed with minimum repairs needed.

@Brayan Sandoval That hurts...$10k spent and no deals. I'm not familiar with Maricopa, Arizona and unsure how competitive it is, but I don't think your cost per deal should be $10k or more in this market. Even in Phoenix, that cost per deal is relatively high. I agree with the previous posters regarding their suggestions, and I'll add my two cents. 

So the mailing address discrepancy could either be List Source, your county assessor, or a lot of the properties could have been sold already. About how many addresses are different? Is it every property or just one out of every 50 or so? Unfortunately, it's difficult to know if the county is outdated unless you ask other investors in your market. Also, you need to measure how many returned mail pieces you've gotten. Based on my stats when I did direct mail back in the day (2015), there should be no more than 10-20% returned pieces. But, honestly, that percentage is still on the high side. You should send out a batch or partial batch with first class mail to determine your returned mail percentage. If you send your mail using standard mail with no return postage, you have no way of measuring how many addresses were bad. I'm not a huge fan of direct mail when it comes to marketing to sellers, but I understand it has its place. I think newer investors should use direct mail as a way of learning the game before they invest money on the other techniques that get you in touch with sellers more directly. It's a form of pull marketing so the sellers that call in and leave voicemails most likely want to hear from you. Those conversations are a lot easier to have than a cold call, which could be overwhelming due to not having any prior experience.

I'm not a huge fan of List Source data. It served me well for when I first started, but I didn't use them to pull time-sensitive lists, like Pre Foreclosures. I just didn't trust that it would be that updated, and those lists really only are good for a short period of time. The positive is that a good skip tracing company can conduct your searches with an outdated mailing address. I know when I run my searches, I can search a mailing address from 10 years ago and I still get the most-current phone number and the current address. Skip tracing using the seller's updated mailing address works best, but it can also be done with the property address, although you may get a lower hit rate. If you have to update your addresses just to do a skip trace, then that defeats the purpose of the company conducting the search for you. You're doing all of the work for them! lol. Now, if the names and property addresses are just flat-out wrong, then that's a different issue. Meaning, if the property addresses on List Source and the tax assessor aren't tied to the correct owner, then there is a problem. In this case, your list is inaccurate, and you need to switch list providers. However, if the mailing address is just outdated, you can still do a search.

I'm curious as to why the mailing addresses are different from the property addresses on your Pre Foreclosure list, though. From my experience, most of the homeowners on this list live in these homes. So the property address should be the same as the mailing address for an overwhelming majority of them. But there are better lists to target. I was just discussing this particular list with an investor that messaged me today on BP. Most individuals on the Pre Foreclosure list are in denial that they're behind on payments, and they truly think that they can work with the bank to bring their loan current. As a result, you'll get pushback from the sellers because of this. If you want to target these individuals, it's best to wait until the auction date is available on the Master of Equity for your county. At that point, I would skip trace these leads, cold call them, and door knock. You still have 30 days to make a deal happen, which is plenty of time. In some states, you can actually put a contract down and provide proof of funds to extend the auction date. You'd have to check with your state regulations on this, though.

You need to stop the bleeding and not spend more money on lists or marketing until you narrow down your current list, or scrap it and pull a more-targeted one. I can share some laser-tight criteria that you can pull in List Source to get the best return on your money. Just let me know, and I'll make a followup post here. You want to have a laser approach when it comes to your marketing, not a shotgun approach. If you start off unfocused, you're setting yourself up for failure. Start off on the right foot, and it will make your marketing campaign and acquisitions process so much easier. Hope this helps!

@Jill F. Thank you, Jill! I’m always testing and learning. I may update this post or create a new post on how I’ve been marketing so far this year. I’m cold calling but doing some other “ninja” techniques. My ultimate goal is to get my marketing costs super low by being more targeted and managing my follow-ups better.

@James K. I’m glad that my post was helpful! Yes, I think 11 AM is the perfect time. You’ll be catching sellers on their lunch break and if they can’t talk then, you can atleast schedule a time to call back after work. I like calling between 5-8 PM, but there isn’t enough time to work all of the leads that come in. If we send them at 11, we can get through all of the leads and have a fresh start the next day.

My team cold calls from 9-6 PM EST on Monday through Saturday. We just take off Sunday. I hope everything goes well with your first campaign.

@Chase Reynolds Currently, we only skip trace. We used to do campaign management but we don’t provide this anymore, as a lot of investors wanted their campaigns customized. Just a lot of logistical issues and moving pieces involved, and the cost per lead started getting really high.

@Jon Keeney Glad to help, Jon! I mainly rely on VM broadcasts because I'm able to cover more ground quicker. Since I'm in several markets, it's easier to set specific days to broadcast to a specific list. I can easily predict how many leads I'll receive based on the amount of numbers I broadcast. With cold calling, the amount of leads I receive varies based on the day and market. Additionally, my dollar goes a lot further with VM broadcasting opposed to cold calling. When I do VM drops, I have them routed to a Callrail number, and it gets sent straight to voicemail. Our VA will then filter through the leads that leave voicemails and call them personally. He'll shoot the abandoned calls a text to try and get in touch with them. If they called in, it might have been an accident, or the individual may not like getting routed directly to voicemail.

Currently, my marketing methods in order of preference are text broadcasts, VM broadcasts, and then cold calling. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

@Dave Lee I'll shoot you a DM with the requested information. It's against forum rules for me to openly solicit my business on here.

Rebogateway is better compared to List Source and a lot of other list-pulling sites. Their pricing is very competitive and their data is way more updated and complete than List Source. I would only recommend it, however, if you're doing high volume. They have a few lower-tier plans, but those still are based on you pulling thousands of records per month.

@Ester Tellez I developed my own system and database that I get my phone numbers from. A lot of the tools on the market have outdated phone numbers and they're taken directly from public records. I was frustrated by the lack of accuracy that a lot of the skip tracing tools offered so I decided to take matters into my own hand and seek out the most updated numbers for my direct mail lists.

@Autumn Allen I agree that door knocking and referrals aren't a scalable marketing method. I was doing that initially when I started and it was a tough grind. It taught me the value of a lead, and I ensure we maximize each one that comes in our CRM. To answer your first questions, I would say that the 70:1 ratio is still correct. However, I've been leaning heavily on voicemail broadcasts recently. It's easier to filter through the calls and my virtual assistant can handle it. Currently, we're receiving a 2% response rate from voicemail broadcasts, and we're averaging a 40% voicemail drop rate on our lists. So if we have a list of 10,000 phone numbers, 4,000 will deliver, and we'll receive roughly 80 calls. Out of those 80, we can expect that 10% will be interested in selling their property.

I think 30 conversations to get one contract is off, at least when it comes to this form of marketing. I can understand door knocking or talking to a highly motivated list, like sellers that are going to get foreclosed on in a few weeks. However, we need to look at cold calling like direct mail; you're still casting a wide net in order to get a lead. Unfortunately, a lot of investors believe that just because you have a phone number that the rules of marketing don't apply. We still need to market to a lot of homeowners and we still need to followup consistently. The real advantage of targeting individuals with cold calling is that it is active marketing, not passive, and you can get to your motivated sellers quicker. Also, you're targeting individuals that may be dodging creditors, so they change their address every few months. 

I suggest increasing your volume and getting an auto dialer. It's still a numbers game, just like direct mail. However, you will see a higher response rate cold calling. I'm not an attorney and the decision to market this way is ultimately yours, but I would say that I haven't had an issue with the law doing this. Also, the investors I skip trace for and provide numbers to haven't had any issues either, and I've been doing this for over 2 years. As long as you're being professional on the phone and taking people off your list if they request it, you shouldn't encounter any issues. You need every advantage you can get in a competitive market so I'd risk a small fine in order to get a huge deal. Additionally, I'm really ambiguous when I'm calling. I use virtual numbers and don't divulge my full name on the voicemail and text broadcasts so it's practically impossible for someone to trace a call back to me.

Lastly, I would focus on the followup whenever a lead calls in. You're rarely going to contract a seller on the first call. Even if the seller is highly motivated, they're going to need to feel comfortable working with you before they sign paperwork. On our first call with the seller, we're looking to gather information and we don't even discuss the offer. The second call, we discuss the offer and our justification. Once we hit the third call, it's then time to send off paperwork. My advice is to not rush into trying to contract the deal on the first call. I hope this helps and let me know if you have any followup questions!