All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Charles

@Matt Lawenda

Welcome to the BP.  My wife and I just completed our first flip down in Oxnard.  We would be happy to share any of the experiences we learned on our first deal.  Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to help you down in Ventura County.

Happy New Year’s everyone. Not much going on in this week’s update. I was hoping to get a lot accomplished on my week off last week, but there was a bunch of little things that kept popping up and distracting me from my business goals.

Past Week Accomplishments:

Direct Mail – 547 letters mailed. That catches us up from the week we missed due to the holidays.

Online Marketing – One blog post written and posted. I did not get ahead on writing posts like I wanted to. Every time I tried to get started, I would get distracted by something else that we needed to do. I should have set specific goals for each day and stuck to them. Lesson learned for my next week off.

Networking – No networking events attended.

Offers – No offers submitted.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out weekly batch of letters.

Online marketing – Write and post two blog posts.  I discovered that there is a different way that I can use Linkedin to publish some of my posts and hopefully get more visibility.  I started using that method last week and hope to continue it in the future. 

Networking – No events planned for this week.

4509 Falkirk Bay

We completed the list of repairs from the buyers. The electrical panel needs to pass the city inspection and that should be the last item that we have to take care of. The buyers are set to do another walkthrough on Wednesday and sign their loan docs on Thursday. We’ll see what happens.

@Chris Vail

Thank you for reading.  One of my wife's goal is for us to be able to move up to Sacramento, where she's from, one day. Not sure if we are on the same page with that goal though. ;)

@Johnny Park

My wife and I are new investors in Oxnard and just completed our first flip.  Please let me know if there is anything that we can do to help you with your investing goals in Ventura County.

As far as a broker is concerned, my wife got her real estate salesperson license earlier this year and went through the process of choosing a broker.  She may have some insight into the few around here that she interviewed. If you would like to PM me, we can exchange contact info and i'll have her give you a call.

@Phillip Y.

The loan going through is probably one of the areas that I am least concerned with, as the family is pretty well off and is putting a good amount in as the down payment.  But of course, until everything goes through, there is always a chance that something could go wrong.  

@David L.

I am not familiar with the AZ market, but I feel like you pointed out some of the reasons why people rent instead of buying.  You mentioned that you believe most of those are "short obstacles," but i'm not sure I agree with that.  For some people stuck in the "rat race," saving any money is difficult and saving for a down payment is exponentially difficult.  If these people aren't willing to do whatever they need to do to fix their credit or money issues, buying a home may never be a reality for them.  I think most of us would like to believe that it should not be rocket science for them to overcome the obstacles, but i know many people who will never shore up their finances enough to ever buy a home. 

Happy holidays everyone. If I remember correctly, I originally set out to do these weekly updates until the end of this year. I mentioned before that I would probably continue to do them until we closed on the Falkirk property, and that is what I’m going to do. We are scheduled to close on or before January 15th, so I will probably be writing a couple more of these. At the very least, there will definitely be one more after we close escrow, if it happens to come sooner than the 15th.

Past Week Accomplishments:

Direct Mail – No direct mail sent out. We were concentrating on trying to get Falkirk through escrow and then went out of town for the holidays. I have the week off from my day job so my wife and I are going to crank out the mail from last week and this week.

Online Marketing – No blog posts written or posted. Same excuse as above, but I hope to use this week to start getting ahead on writing a few posts that I can use over the next couple of weeks.

Networking – No networking events attended.

Offers – No offers submitted.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out weekly batch of letters from last week and this week.

Online marketing – Write at least 4 blog posts and post 2 of them.

Networking – No events planned.

4509 Falkirk Bay

We agreed on terms with the buyers and have addressed most of the items on their “list for repairs” and the $2500 credit for the dock. Although I did not really want to credit anything for the dock, my wife and her colleague convinced me that $2500 was not worth the deal falling through and increasing our days on market. The buyers signed off on all of their contingencies last Thursday so the only big ticket item that should be left is for their lender to fund the deal.

2016 Goals

Since this is the last post before the New Year, I might as well mention my goals for our company for 2016. At this point in our new investing careers, our goals are really quite simple, and that is to do 4 rehabs in 2016. I have not seen any metrics from any investors on how many offers they are writing to get a deal in today's market, so I'm going to make a wild assumption that it's anywhere between 50 and 100. So that means on the low end we will need to write 200 offers next year and 400 on the high end. Seeing that we wrote less than 20 this year, it is obvious that we are nowhere near the pace we need to be to reach our goals. In order to fix this, we will be increasing out marketing budget once we sell the Falkirk house and split the profit with our partner. I am hoping that we will be able to at least double our current budget, but we'll see when the final numbers come in. Also, this past week I've read a couple interesting posts from investors who have been having success on the MLS, even in today's competitive market. I hope to be able to emulate some of their systems to increase what we have been doing as far as the MLS is concerned. Lastly, I am hoping that my wife will be able to do real estate full time and quit her side job after Falkirk sells. I am able to cover our living expenses through my day job, so if we are able to pay off her remaining bills from when she lived in Sacramento, I think we will be able to have her do this full time. Again, once we get a final payout on Falkirk, we will see where we stand.

@James Berry

Welcome to the site James.  My wife and I are down the freeway from you in Ventura County.  Although we don't really do much with buy and holds, please let me know if there is anything else that we can do down here to help you get started. 

My wife and I just finished our first fix and flip project and are currently looking for our next deal. If there is anyone rehabbing in Ventura County, we would love to connect with you.  We are interested in either buying wholesaling or JVing on future projects.

@Andy Cross

If you are interested, if you PM me I will give you her contact info.  It is located in Thousand Oaks.  There is also another one in Ventura County, but not sure how regularly they meet.