All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Charles

@Jeff S.

 got it.  Thanks for the feedback.

We put up bandit signs, but since i was traveling in and out of town so much for our day job, we weren't able to do it consistenly.  From a couple of threads i have read, it doesn't seem like they are too effective in Southern California now-a-days.   We still have quite a bit left from our first order, so it is on our to-do list to continue to put them out.  We just started our direct mail campaign 4 or 5 weeks ago. I don't have our metrics in front of me, but i would guess our response rate is probably around 2% right now.  However, we have one property under contract from the mailings and a pretty hot lead called us yesterday. One thing i have read time and time again is that whatever you choose to do, do it consistently and for a long enough duration.  

@Shannon Bae

Our experience in Ventura County is similar to Jim's. I don't think he's saying that you won't find properties that have the potential to be a deal, but rather that there is a lot of competition for them when they do get listed and that homeowners or buy and hold guys can pay more for them than a flipper should. We haven't looked at MLS properties in a few months, but every time we did, there were 5 or 6 other investors there looking to snatch them up. One of the local investors here only looks at MLS properties, writes up tons of offers, and then eventually gets one under contract.

good question @Carlos O. I was wondering the same thing.  I haven't read about anyone else using that formula.  In Ventura County, the same size home could differ in price by over 200K within a couple of miles of each other.  I wouldn't think rehab costs would be vastly different in that scenario. 

@Jeff S. Can you please provide some insight into your rehab cost calculation?  Appreciate the way you break down the individual costs.

I’m a day late in posting the latest update. My parents came to town for my birthday weekend and then my wife bought me some tequila and beer, so my schedule went right out the window. That being said, here is the weekly update.

Past Week Accomplishments:

Direct Mail – Weekly batch of 250 letters sent.

Online Marketing – Only wrote and posted one blog post this week. Part of that was due to not getting much done over the weekend and another part was due to the time we spent on a property we are looking at. Will get into more detail on that below.

Networking – Nothing of note to mention.

House Buying – Continued to follow up with the hot lead that I mentioned last week. The seller and I came to a verbal agreement on terms and I just sent him a contract today to sign (he lives in another state). Once we have the property under contract, we will continue our due diligence with a termite and home inspection to see if there are any major items we may have missed in our walk-through.

We also received a “lead” from a lady claiming that she wanted to sell a condo that she owns free and clear. After my wife did a little bit of research, she found that the unit was listed as a time share. She called the seller back and the seller insisted that it is a condo, and told us to go to the office and find out for ourselves. I drove to the office on Saturday and they confirmed that it was indeed a timeshare, and that the lady did not own a unit, but rather a week out of the year to use the unit. We left the seller a voicemail this morning but have not heard back from her.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out next batch of 250 letters. We are a little bit behind schedule, but are on track to send them out tomorrow.

Online marketing - Write and post 3 blog posts.

Networking – The Ventura County REIA is this week, so we will be attending that. We will also need to find a title company to work with as well as locate general contractors to prepare to receive bids from them (once we get a signed contract back).

Choosing a Broker - My wife intends to choose the broker she will be working under by the end of this week. 

Lessons Learned:

We need to find a system for updating our lead tracker to know where our calls are coming from. Right now we update the tracker "as we remember to."  We are not receiving a high volume of calls, so it is not a big concern at this point, but we need to prepare a system for when we start receiving more calls.  

I also would like to do some research on email campaigns to find a way to automate sending emails automatically on a regular basis to homeowners that we receive email addresses from. 

@Randy Brockett

Good luck on your search.  I don't know anything about mobile home parks, but i thought i read or heard somewhere that you had to be over 55 to purchase in a 55+ park, even if your only intent was to rent it out.  

Just because it is listed does not automatically that a deal cannot be made of it.  I would run your numbers and make an offer accordingly.

@Adam Gratt  I guess the wording of my sentence was a little confusing.  The caller did not say that I sucked at answering the call, that was my own assessment.  All of the callers so far have been polite, but I'm not worried about receiving rude/aggressive calls. I'm not exactly the sensitive type.

@Rick H.  Thank you for the feedback.  Even though my wife keeps everything fairly organized, I think I like the idea of bright colored clipboards. That way I would not have to fumble around looking for things if she is ever not home. I'm going to text her right now about adding that to our list for our next office supply run.

. 

Past Week Summary

Direct Mail – 250 letters sent, three phone calls recieved this week (four total phone calls received from direct mail). Two calls were to take them off our list, 1 call was an absentee owner trying to find out what exactly we do, and one call was a hot lead. The hot lead owns his Oxnard property free and clear and is currently renting his house to a friend. The owner said that there is a lot of deferred maintenance and even said that it’s probably not worth much more than the land it’s on. He asked us to give him this weekend to try and get a hold of his friend, but if we didn’t hear from him by tonight, he said that we could call the renter ourselves. We will follow up tomorrow and see where we stand.

Online Marketing – Wrote and posted 2 blog posts (will post the 2nd one tonight). Again, this is one short of my goal of three a week. Trying to stay on top of fulfilling our mail and two networking events this past week made it hard to write and post. Going to have to find a better way to stay on top of this.

Networking - Attended two networking events, the Probate Network and The Ojai Real Estate as an Investment meetup. The Probate Network ended up being a sales pitch to join the organizer’s investment team. Although I was not aware this was going to happen, there was no pressure involved and there was still some good information presented. I also met a couple new contacts, so it was still time well spent.

It was the first meeting of the Ojai Real Estate meetup, and only a few of the people actually showed up. I think this might be because there is another REIA meeting on the same night, but in any case, the organizer seems like he will be a good contact to network with in the future. In any case, these were my first meetings since coming back home from my work trip, so it was good to at least let people know that I'm back in the game.

Goals for this week:

Direct Mail - Send out next batch of 250 letters. Although not completely finished, we are on track to send out tomorrow. Also will continue to follow up with the hot lead from last week.

Online marketing - Write and post 3 blog posts.

Talking with sellers – see Lessons Learned below.

Lessons Learned:

We need to find a way to keep track of the cold leads, especially with regards to follow up calls. We are currently using CRM software, so hopefully it will have some way to set up some kind of reminders or something to follow up with leads on some regular interval.

Since I work during the day and my wife currently works at night, she has been answering most of the phone calls that we received. The cold lead that we received actually called on Saturday, so it was my chance to answer the phone. The jury has decided that I absolutely sucked at answering the call. I actually was expecting it to be just another telemarketer, so when the caller said they were calling from a mailer, I was totally unprepared. I had no idea where our caller lead sheets were, and when I finally got a random piece of paper to write on, I had forgotten the caller’s name. Although I did a fairly decent job at providing the caller information, I didn’t take down any of his information. Fortunately I remembered that he said he was in Alabama and luckily there was only 1 Alabama address that we have mailed to so far, so he was easy to trace. One of my goals this week definitely has to be working on my elevator pitch and making sure I know where our caller lead sheets are located. 

@Yasmine Bisumber

 How are things looking for you out in Florida?