All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Charles

@Zul Hirani

My wife and I are located up the 101 from you in Oxnard. We are currently working on our first fix and flip project.  Although I'm not in LA, I'm putting my money on half of your responses will be from fix and flip investors who say that you can make money flipping but it's getting harder to find deals and people are overpaying on the front end.  The other half will be from buy and hold investors who say that there is no cash flow in LA so you need to either buy hoping for appreciation or look out towards Riverside or even out of state. Although we are fairly new and a small scale team, we are still marketing for distressed homes in Ventura County.  If you would like to connect and talk more about Simi Valley or the rest of Ventura County, feel free to shoot me a private message.

Past Week Accomplishments:

Direct Mail - Weekly batch of 250 letters sent.

Online Marketing – One blog post written and posted. The 3rd Falkirk video was also posted tonight.

Networking – Attended the Ventura County Real Estate and Investors Association.

Offers – We actually submitted two offers last week on MLS properties. Although those numbers are nothing to be proud of, hopefully it's the start of a regular occurrence.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out weekly batch of 250 letters. We received and have added the latest inherited property list, so we actually will probably be over 400 letters this week.

Online marketing - Write and post 2 blog posts. Video 4 is already filmed, so my goal is to post that this Friday to get us back on track.

Networking – A new local business meetup is scheduled for this Wednesday. Unless something else comes up, I will be attending this meetup.

4509 Falkirk Bay

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Project is currently on track to be completed on or around October 31, 2015.  There have been no concerns or issues identified as of yet that require immediate attention or that could cause any delays

COMPLETED TASKS FROM LAST WEEK

Plumbing and electrical work continue to make progress and are currently on track. The bathtub in the guest bathroom has been completed and the master shower is making progress. Garage framing has been completed. The roof was torn off and was in better condition than expected. The problem areas were replaced and part of the roof has been finished. The cabinets in the kitchen are starting to be installed and painting of the interior is coming along.

TASKS FOR THIS WEEK

• Finish electrical throughout
• Finish bathroom shower tile
• Finish drywall replacement
• Interior paint
• Finish roof replacement
• Install patio doors
• Siding installation
• Finalize plans and get quotes for landscaping

Past Week Accomplishments:

Direct Mail - Weekly batch of 250 letters sent.

Online Marketing – Two posts written and one posted. Will be posting the other post tomorrow.

Networking – Not really networking per say, but discovered that one of my friends at work has gotten into real estate within the last year. Apparently he saw the first video we made about our flip project and then reached out to me to tell me he was doing real estate as well. Although this wasn’t intentional on my part, just proves the point that you should tell everyone about your real estate endeavors, as you never know where a partner or lead might come from.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out weekly batch of 250 letters. We just received our quarterly update of our inherited list, so we will have to see how to fit that into our scheduled mailings.

Online marketing - Write and post 2 blog posts. I also posted the 2nd Falkirk video tonight. It was supposed to be posted last week, but we fell behind due to other things going on. Video 3 is already filmed, so my goal is to post that this Friday to get us back on track.

Networking – Will attend the Ventura County Real Estate and Investors Association.

4509 Falkirk Bay

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Project is currently on track to be completed on or around October 31, 2015. Roof replacement had been postponed to later this week due to the forecast of rain for yesterday and today. Roof replacement will not cause any delays as work can be switched to external siding removal and replacement. There have been no other concerns or issues identified as of yet that require immediate attention or that could cause any delays.

COMPLETED TASKS FROM LAST WEEK

Plumbing and electrical work continue to make progress and are currently on track. The bathtub in the guess bathroom has been installed and the tile work has begun. Most of the drywall has been replaced and/or patched throughout the house. External siding was removed from the front of the house and the garage. Removal of the siding discovered framing material that was damaged by wood rot and/or termites in the garage. New framing material has been bought and is on track to be completed this week.

PLANNED TASKS FOR NEXT WEEK

• Plumbing throughout
• Electrical throughout
• Bathroom tile
• Finish drywall replacement
• Interior paint
• Roof replacement
• Siding installation

@Mark Salacinski

I recieved it in the mail a week or two ago but haven't read it yet. I'm still not finsished with the book i'm currently reading.  I actually don't read too often as I have a day job and I use my nights after work to work on real estate.

@Brionne Moss

I don't want to put too much weight into the metrics until we have sent out multiple touches, but our response rate is currently around 1%. Most of those are from the absentee list, as I don't think we have received a single lead from the inherited list yet. As far as writing offers are concerned, I'm mainly talking about MLS properties. I know that we can maintain our current direct mail budget for quite a while at the rate that we are mailing, but I don't want to increase it until we realize some profits to invest into more marketing. So I feel the best/easiest way to write more offers it to utlize the MLS. Yes, I know that everyone is on it, but even if it takes 100 offers to get one deal, so be it. The main reason that I wanted my wife to get her license was to be able to access properties as soon as they hit the market, but it hasn't worked out that way. Our rehab project has been taking more or her time than we would like, but I can look past it since it's our first one and we are learning a lot, but it's still not an excuse for us not writing offers. Between the two of us, there's no excuse for why we can't find a way to get this done.

Past Week Accomplishments:

Direct Mail - Weekly batch of 250 letters sent.

Online Marketing – Two blog posts written and one posted. I have fallen far behind with this and need to get back on the ball. Luckily, I have several ideas for upcoming blog posts already written down, so now it’s just a matter of getting them written.

Networking – Attended the Ventura County Real Estate and Investors Association last Thursday.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out weekly batch of 250 letters.

Online marketing - Write and post 2 blog posts. When I was posting 3 blog posts a week, I was back-dating the posts so that it looked like I was posting every 4 days. I have noticed that none of my recent posts have been showing up when I do a google query, so I wonder if google was penalizing me for not using the current date on my posts. I will no longer be back-dating any posts, so my new goal is to only post 2 a week so that I can try and keep from falling behind.

Networking – Nothing to report

4509 Falkirk Bay

Executive Summary - Project is currently on track to be completed on or around October 31, 2015. There have been no concerns or issues identified as of yet that require immediate attention or that could cause any delays.

Completed tasks from last week - Demolition was completed and all acoustic ceilings were scraped and retextured. We met with the tile guy and that work will begin early this week. We also met with the roofer and determined that he will begin the roof replacement on Thursday. Most of the finishings have been chosen and are scheduled to be ordered. Primed doors were hung and new walls have been installed in accordance with new layout changes. Paint scheme for both interior and exterior have been chosen as well.

Planned tasks for this week

• Plumbing throughout
• Electrical throughout
• Bathroom tile
• Finish drywall replacement
• Interior paint
• Roof replacement

Lessons Learned

Our system for combing new MLS listings as soon as they come out for distressed homes has been working pretty well. That's the good news. The bad news is that we haven't been executing once we scrub the list. My wife went to view a couple of properties on Thursday and we have yet to submit our offers on them. This is an epic fail and our lack of writing offers has been inexcusable and a major detriment to our business. Or maybe I should call it our hobby, because if it we really want this to be a business, we need to correct this ASAP!

@Tyler Mallard

I think it might depend on the lender and what their requirements are. I have been told that you need to have a renter in the property for at least a year to have the rent income offset your expenses, and I have also been told two years. I would recommend calling different lenders in your area and see what they have to say.

We used Pacific Coast Title (Westlake village branch) for our current project.  I cannot voucher for their experience with wholesaling, but our POC said that she works with a lot of investors, so she might be a good place to start.  We have been working with Tiffani. Message me for the contact details.

@Brad Srutowski

Thank you for the kind words.

@Jill DeWit

We will be looking out of state when we start looking for buy and hold opportunities. As far as flipping is concerned, we want to stick with Ventura County for our marketing, as that is closer to us and what we know the best.  We wouldn't be opposed to looking at opportunities in North/West LA county though, depending on the location and proximity to Ventura.  But the counties you mentioned are too far for us.