All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Charles

From my experience in Ventura County, there are not very many reasons why a seller would need to sell at a discount in today's market.  Of course there will be exceptions, but not sure how much time and money you will be spending trying to find a needle in a haystack.  When we stopped direct mail about a year or so ago, our response rate was 0.25%.  The few leads that we do get now from our marketing, we are so far off in price they are looking for and what we can buy it for, that it's not even funny. If they put their home on the market, they can probably get close to what they are looking for.  I'm sure others will have their own opinion, but i'm just not seeing how wholesaling is viable in Southern California (based off of what i'm seeing in our county) in this sellers' market.  

@Jathin Reddy Good question. I was wondering the same thing.

Lindsay, my understanding is that they are starting to crack down on STRs, but i'm not sure if it's a city thing or a county thing.  My wife is a local realtor and would know more about that than i do.  I can PM her info to you if you're interested in talking to her.

@Jesse Hopcus I don't know anything about that course, but i do know a little about the Ventura County real estate market.  It's a huge seller's market right now, so it's tough to get anything at a discount. I would suspect it's the same in LA.  

Wow.  2 deals a month with a $1000 budget in Southern California. that's amazing. 

@Ariel Lee

The only type of marketing I am doing now for the investing side is SEO work. Our site is ranking pretty well for quite a few keywords in our area, so I will continue that for when the market turns. After direct mail, we actually used a company to help us with google AdWords. We did that for 4 or 5 months and only got a handful of leads. We weren't reaching anywhere near our marketing budget and the determination was that there just wasn't enough people searching for "sell my house fast" type keywords in our area. Partly due to the size of our county, but mostly to it being a huge seller's market and sellers having many options to sell their house without needing to search for investors to sell to. This is my assumption as to why we are not getting many SEO leads, despite being ranked 2nd for quite a few keywords.

For direct mail, we targeted absentee owners, divorce, NOD, and bankruptcy (I think I'm forgetting one). We also looked into targeting only people who were on 3 or more lists, as those should have a greater sense of urgency, but that number of people was so small we just would not have been putting out enough mailers.

All that being said, I have shifted most of our marketing focus to my wife's realtor business, as that seems to be the best strategy in this market. Mainly doing SEO, but also testing the waters with Facebook ads and google AdWords. I set up realtor AdWords campaigns a little over a week ago. Although we haven't gotten any good leads yet, our click-through-rate and cost-per-click appear to be a lot better than our investor campaigns were. I will continue to collect more data from AdWords and then do some tweaks after a few weeks to try and maximize results. 

@Daniel Jodrey  My wife and I "house hack" a single family home with a studio in the back.  We look at it more as a primary residence than an investment property, so we were more concerned with the rent from the studio offsetting some of the mortgage payment than anything else.  My wife is a realtor and can help you with your search for a property to buy or a rental. Feel free to send me a PM if you would like her contact info.

@Ariel Lee

I don't want to be a negative nancy, but I wanted to share our experience. We stopped doing direct mail over a year ago. We were probably averaging between $1000 and $1250 a month at our peak. Over the two years or so we were doing it, our response rate was less than 0.25%. I've talked to a few large wholesalers across the country, and most of them said their experience is similar, except they have the ability to spend $10,000 a month or more to get their deals. The few leads that we did get, their asking price was so far from what we could offer, that it wasn't even funny. The sad part is, they can probably get close to what they are asking by putting their home on the market, as it's a huge seller's market in our county.

@Tarquinn Curry   i agree with Max.  The few people that i have talked to who are actually doing fairly decent in Southern California have been doing it a long time and already have a good network built, or are spending 1000s and 1000s of dollars a month on marketing.  We were sending out about 2000 letters a month at one point and our response rate was less than 0.25%.  The few leads that we did come across, we were so far off on what they were asking and what we could buy it for, it was almost laughable.  What makes it worse is that they can probably put their home on the market and get almost what they are asking for (at least in our county). 

Hey James.  My wife is a realtor in Ventura County.  Although it's a little more south than you are referring to, she is currently helping a couple of investors look for MFRs in their areas. If you let her know what you are looking for in terms of a property, she should be able to help. Let me know if you would like me to put you in contact with her.