All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Garland

@Todd Olivas Glad it helped you out and may you have a prosperous 2018 as well! Shoot me a message if you have any questions.

@Sam Atkin Glad you received value from it! I actually have my own proprietary database and method of farming phone numbers. I pull from several different sources to get the most up-to-date number for an individual. I pull my lists from rebogateway's investor title toolbox. After I have the list, I then add the numbers to it.

@Jack Douglas I'm glad my post provided you value, Jack. I think that skip tracing and cold calling lists is such a novel idea with investors that there aren't any true "best-practices". Because of this, investors are experimenting and not really having any idea of what they're doing. I always tell people that it's exactly like direct mail because your data and list is directly correlated to your response rate. Just like your direct mail list, if every mailing address is incorrect then you need to blame the county, not your direct mail company. It doesn't matter how great your yellow letters or postcards look, if they aren't reaching your seller then it's all in vain. Similarly, if your numbers are bad and outdated, then you need to blame the data vendor, not your cold caller.

@Tiffany Alexy Hello Tiffany, and thank you for the input. Do you think it'll be possible for an agent to grant us MLS access to pull cash buyers? Also, do the buyers of properties have phone numbers already in the MLS? Ideally, I'd like to get the buyers who purchased a property within a mile radius of our subject property and hit them with a text or voicemail blast once we get the deal under contract. I figured this could be a viable workaround.

Lastly, what do you think we can offer to an agent or broker to make it enticing to work with us. We have a lot of retail seller leads that want over 200k for their properties. We only want properties in the 120k and below price range. I already have a list of property owners that I can refer to any interested agents. Anything else we can do on our end? Thanks in advance!

@Dedric Polite Hello Dedric. Thank you for commenting. I've noticed a need for this recently since I'm expanding. I have a buddy who's a wholesaler in Fort Lauderdale that's absolutely crushing it using agents. I don't think he's marketed his last couple of deals to his buyers list at all. I'll be on the look out for any in Huntsville or North Alabama that comment on this thread!

@Caleb Coblentz I'm going to send you a DM, Caleb. Thanks a ton for dropping a line here.

@Shaine Cobb I'm also going to send you a DM, Shaine. I visit Aiken often because I have a friend who lives there. It's a lovely town, and it's nice this time of the year. I think the next market we're targeting is Augusta. We're working with a hedge fund that's purchasing property in several markets in the eastern US. However, they have very specific buying criteria. Consequently, not all of the properties that we receive from our sellers qualify so we're left with deals that we can't move because we don't have buyers in those markets, except for the hedge fund. I'll explain more in the message.

Hello BP community!

Crazy to think this is my first forum post. I usually just comment on other investors' posts on here so hopefully this reaches the right people. I'm currently marketing to several cities for my wholesale company. We're actively cold calling about 10k absentee high equity homeowners, and we're adding 10k more in November.

I want to start placing the properties we get under contract on the MLS, and I also want to refer the retail leads to agents or brokers. We have a ton of leads that want retail, but they're too far apart for our cash offers. I already am referring them to an agent here in Charleston, but I need realtors in my other markets.

So this is what I need: an agent or broker that's willing to place the properties on the MLS without the agent having a listing agreement with the seller. Essentially, our contract will be good enough to list the property on the MLS. In our contract, there's a clause that states "the buyer has the right to market the property in any way, including but not limited to, placing the property on the MLS with a licensed broker or agent, Zillow, Craigslist, and similar house-buying websites." Our last deal in Charleston came from a realtor who had a cash buyer and they snagged it up quickly and didn't try to negotiate our purchase price. Also, it's becoming a bit difficult to manage the transactions virtually so an agent will help out. We'll pay the 3% commission out of our wholesale fee, or the agent can add it to our marketed price. For instance, if the deal is under contract for $35,000 and we're marketing it for $47,000, the agent can market the deal to their buyers and on the MLS for $48,410.

We're currently looking for realtors in Greensboro NC, Durham NC, Winston Salem, NC, Columbia SC, Greenville SC, and Spartanburg SC. If anybody in Charleston SC is interested please let me know. I'm able to meet with you.

I realize this is a specific request, and a lot of agents will debate the legality of this. However, I know this is possible and want to find the agents that are willing to work with us. I'm not here to waste anyone's time, and I have a potential deal in Greensboro so I'd need to get the ball rolling soon.

@Guy Levy Great question, and a big reason why we're able to conduct transactions virtually is because our team is very good with analyzing properties and we know our markets well. We use simple formulas to develop our offers. Also, we vet our sellers heavily on the phone to ensure they're providing all of the repairs needed to the home. In some markets that are landlord heavy, we'll take the Zillow or Rentometer average rent and multiply that by 54-57 then subtract our wholesale fee to generate an offer. In other markets where rehabbers are purchasing properties, we typically use the MAO formula or just take the retail value and multiply that by 50% to get our offer.

Regarding repairs, I have another simple formula that I use that works well. I take the square footage of the home and multiply it by 15-30, depending on the condition of the home. If a home just needs cosmetic work and updating, I would multiply the square footage by 15. If there are extensive repairs needed, then I would multiply the square footage by 30. This gives me a large cushion when I present the deal to my buyers. Most of them can renovate the property with probably half of the price I estimated, but it's always safe to be conservative when generating your offer. There's nothing worse than putting your deal out to your buyers and all of their offers are at or slightly above your contract price.

@Guy Levy Yes! Our company is pretty much all virtual so our acquisitions managers use Zillow in addition to Rebogateway to develop a cash offer for the property.

@Guy Levy Hello Guy, I have a very basic call script for my cold callers. They start the conversation indicating they're local investors looking to buy a property near theirs in "X" city. Then they ask them if they have any properties they've been thinking about selling. While we have the exact property address and name of the seller, we don't mention this on the call because some people get freaked out when you spill all of that on the phone. Our responses are typically more positive since we leave the introduction ambiguous and fairly open-ended. If they're interested in selling, we gather the standard property information, such as the address, beds, baths, square footage, etc. Then our callers will ask the seller for a good time for our acquisitions team to contact them with an offer. After they complete the call, they update the webform and it goes into Podio. Please let me know if you'd like for me to be more specific.

@David Wurzel Copy that. I'm reading it now.