All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Garland

@Alexandra Preziosi I, personally, have never used bandit signs in my business due to the strict coding laws in my area. It's not worth the time because by the time they are placed, they'll be removed by the city. I think there's a place for them, but not when you're first getting started. The reason being is because they're not targeted enough, and you'll end up vetting a lot of unworkable leads opposed to actually speaking to potential motivated sellers. I highly suggest getting an absentee high-equity list of at least 1,000 leads or a niche list (e.g., tax delinquent, inherited, etc.) and mail them.

I don't think you'll have much luck getting leads by posting Craigslist ads. It might be a better use of your marketing dollars to get a virtual assistant to go through all of the FSBOs in your area and send them a message through Craigslist to see if they'll accept a cash off for their property. However, that may not work because it seems like Craigslist has become increasingly saturated with investors or salesmen and not enough genuine consumers with intent to conduct business. 

I realize I didn't directly answer your post regarding bandit signs. I just feel like your time and funds will be better spent working a targeted list.

@Alexandra Preziosi Hello, what's your current response rate and how many letters are you sending out monthly? Also, what particular mail piece are you using? Those are all critical things to know so the BP community can assist you with increasing your response rate.

I've tried multiple methods with direct mail and I found that yellow letters get the best response. However, you'll find a lot of people that just call from your mail piece out of curiosity, or they're upset that you sent them such a personalized letter. Back when I was mailing, I would close most of my deals from yellow letters; however, these leads require a lot of followup. I rarely closed them on the first call. When I use yellow letters, I like to be extremely personable and have each letter reference the last one I sent. For instance, in my last batch of letters I sent to absentee senior homeowners, I made it sound like my family and I were looking for our first home. The response rate was crazy, and the people were relatively nice. Sometimes, if you get too personable and start talking about their issues in your marketing piece, the sellers will get upset. I learned this the hard way when I mailed 3,000 mortgage late homeowners. I put in the letter that I can help them sell their home quickly if they are behind on their mortgage. I got a high response rate, but a lot of threats and angry voicemails from that letter.

Honestly, experimenting works best whenever you're sending direct mail. What may work in one investor's market may not work in yours. However, there are general rules to follow, like you shouldn't place a website on a yellow letter. If you answer the questions I asked in the first paragraph, then I can help you out more.

@Ben Valentin I definitely think you should still try to find deals the way you have been, but also start your own marketing campaign. You want to be generating leads from multiple sources so you'll always have a surplus of deals coming your way.

I didn't want to sound like I was being too critical of wholesalers. There are probably a handful of serious ones in your area. You need to find them and get on their buyers' list. Whenever I have a wholesale deal, it won't be made public because I market it directly to my cash buyers that are in my CRM. This is likely why you aren't seeing the best deals because these transactions are happening privately.

@Ben Valentin I understand your issue. Essentially, most of the "deals" that you'll come across aren't really deals at all. You can pretty much guarantee anything that's on the MLS is retail value. If an agent has a hot deal and he works with other investors, then they've already called their cash buyers and sold it before it can reach the MLS. If you're going to work with agents, then I would reach out to the ones who work with foreclosures. They work with a lot of discounted properties; however, you'll still encounter some competition and may find yourself in a bidding war.

Wholesalers can be very shady. A lot of them may be trying to market deals for other wholesalers, or they may be new and not know how to evaluate a deal properly. Oftentimes, they think that just because a homeowner wants to sell their home that they have a deal. They'll get the home under contract and market to cash buyers hoping to find someone with little experience to purchase the property.

I suggest you start generating off-market deals yourself. This is really how you'll be able to find the deals that fit your buying criteria because you'll be negotiating with the seller directly. Have you tried generating a mailing list, SEO, or cold calling?

@David Walls I would suggest staying away from BellesLink or any company that doesn't require an on-site inspection. The data is usually inaccurate and outdated with the free or cheap tools. Even using TLO, which requires an on-site inspection, has poor data. It can get you by, but I think they overcharge for what they offer. I heard from a very reliable source that their phone numbers are only updated every 6 months.

Hello @Keenan Smith! Your post caught my attention and it hurts seeing that you spent so much money on direct mail and didn't get a single call from a seller. I can offer my input, and maybe you'll have success on your next campaign. This may seem self explanatory, but did you ensure the inbound phone number you placed on your postcards was correct and matched your records? If you were one digit off, a seller would be routed to the wrong number, and this will result in you not getting any calls. You indicated that you mailed absentee owners and tax delinquent property owners. Both are good lists, but you may have forgotten some important steps when filtering your list. Firstly, did you add equity filters to your list? You can do this in List Source by going underneath the "Property" tab and filtering by "Equity Percentage". I like my filter to be at 60% minimum and have it go all the way up to 100%. Also, I would suggest adding a filter to the "Length of Residence". I like starting at 3 years and going to 10+ years. This will remove the buyers who just purchased their homes who put a large down payment on it. Also, you want to add this filter because most absentee owners would have experienced some sort of issue with a tenant or a problem with the property within the first three years, which will allow you to negotiate your purchase price down.

If you're sending post cards, be mindful that you need to send at least 3,000 to get a decent number of workable leads. 1398 yellow letters are fine because their open rate will be much higher. However, I noticed the quality of lead initially isn't great. When I was sending mail, I would close deals from yellow letters months later from when I initially mailed them. While the response rate for post cards is lower, the quality of lead is higher. I think this is because the message is more direct on the post card opposed to the yellow letter.

Did you send the postcards through first-class mail? If so, you'll get a certain number of returned postcards. I always suggest sending your first batch in your campaign through first-class mail because you'll know which addresses are undeliverable. You can then take those leads, skip trace them and then re-send your letters to the new address. This will prevent you from sending the subsequent mailings to the incorrect addresses. I, personally, stopped doing direct mail a while back. Since I was sending about 10,000 pieces a month, I was getting well over half of my letters returned. This was so wasteful. I now skip trace all of my lists and have my team cold call them. It saves time, money, and also the environment. I'm a bit of a tree-hugger.haha. I hope my post helped you out, and please let me know if you'd like for me to elaborate on anything I stated.

@Jeffrey Carusotto I've used TLO in the past, but I currently go directly to the bureaus because the data is more reliable and updated. TLO pulls its data from the old Tux file which is updated once every 6 months, and a lot of data included in their reports is intentionally watered down. When I used it, I recalled getting a lot of "no hits" and the phone numbers being hit-or-miss. Additionally, the date of deaths were usually always incorrect. Sometimes there were people listed as deceased, but they were still living and vice versa. The pricing also presented an issue. Years ago, I had a plan for around $250 per month for 3,600 searches annually. However, as my business grew, I needed more searches. My account rep quoted a crazy-high price of $4,500 per month for 7,000 searches monthly. I do about 20,000 searches monthly and would never pay that amount for their data.

To address your intitial question regarding the bureaus, TLO is affiliated with Transunion so you're essentially puling data from one of the three bureaus by having it; however, it's the least reliable source out of the three. The other two bureaus won't sign up real estate companies so you'll likely need to contact a reseller who can sell you the data. The big advantage of going directly to the creditors is that you can pull credit reports, verify employment, and get access to several other skip tracing tools that will help you locate a property owner. TLO is fine when you're first starting out, but as you scale you'll want to move to a more robust data provider. There are other options that charge less and provide better data than TLO.

Hello @Aaron Millis, if you already have the parcel number then you'd need to go to your county's tax assessor site and look up the address. There should be a search function that allows you to search by parcel number. This link has all of the counties in Georgia listed, and you just need to find your county and it'll have the tax assessor's site listed. If you can't search on the assessor's site by parcel number, then try your county's GIS site. This should also be listed on the link I posted. I hope this helps out!

@Jay Statzer You're already ahead of the curve because you use the SSDM File; a lot of people don't know about it. Also, I have done a ton of door knocking (and fence hopping) in my day to find sellers. Every additional step I took to secure a deal put me in a better position than my competition. It looks like you're on the correct path by door knocking and going the extra mile.

I haven't used Intelius or any of their products before. I know a lot of law enforcement personnel use it so the data must be solid. However, they may just be using it for the background checks opposed to finding updated phone numbers and addresses. I'm unsure where they're gathering it from, but I have to believe some of it is watered down since they are a data reseller. They might be receiving credit header data, but are required to dilute the information before reselling it to consumers.

@Jay Statzer It's going to be very difficult to find accurate contact information without spending money on it. If you're not allocating sufficient funds to locate property owners and choose to go a cheaper route, you'll continuously receive subpar results. Tools like Spokeo and Beenverified are inexpensive because the data is unreliable. For instance, if you type in your name in one of these tools, I highly doubt it'll have your most recent address and phone number. Imagine if you had a list of 1,000 leads and used Beenverfied or Spokeo to verify if your addresses were current. You'll likely receive a ton of returned letters and waste a lot of money in the process. The companies that charge a premium are pulling directly from the creditors, who in return are getting their data from department stores, phone providers, and various other reliable sources. They require an on-site inspection of your home or office and charge a lot for their services, but this barrier keeps anyone with a computer from accessing extremely sensitive data.

To verify death, I suggest you get access to the Social Security Death Master File. You'll be able to run a social and see if the individual is alive. I have this file feeding straight into my database, and it's extremely useful. I found that TLO and similar tools are extremely inaccurate when reporting dates of death and the Master File is really the only way to independently verify this. I hope this post assisted you in your search!