All Forum Posts by: Cornelius Charles

@Michael Quarles

Thank you for all the great info provided. I understand this thread is old but it came up when I was searching for the answer to one of my questions. For an absentee owner campaign, I was wondering if anyone kept metrics on response rate for out-of-state owners versus in-state owners. You mentioned that you should separate the list between out-of-state, in-state but out of city, and in city. Is this so you can keep your own metrics of what works in your area? I am asking because I am wondering for budgeting purposes if I should just focus on out-of-state owners or if the number of leads is similar to in-state owners. Thanks for any insight you can provide.

@Coline Tabrum

I've been in Ventura County since 2001 and have seen that Ojai attracts a certain buyer.  Although not everyone would want to live in Ojai, it seems like those who do are anxiously waiting for anything to come on the market and then are willing to pay what they have to in order to live there.

As for the Avenue, it all depends on your comfort level.  As someone who has lived in different neighborhoods throughout Southern California, I would not be opposed to living off of the Avenue if I only had myself to consider.  But seeing that I travel frequently for work, I'm not sure I would be comfortable leaving my wife there alone to fend for herself for several weeks at a time.

Not sure how far you are willing to commute, but you can also check out parts of Oxnard, Santa Paula, and Fillmore.

@Jose Tamayo Jr

There is also a Ventura County REIA that meets every month at the Mimi's Café in Thousand Oaks. I have been to a few REIAs in different areas of Southern California and that is definitely my favorite one. All discussion and no sales pitches during the meetings, plus open networking at the end. You can find it on Meetup.com. Or if you PM me, I can send you the direct link.

Hey Chris. My wife and I are new investors in Oxnard. We are going to be starting a couple of direct mail campaigns in the next few weeks. If you are interested, maybe we can pass you some leads that may not make sense as an investment but may work as a primary residence. Feel free to contact me if there is anything we can do for you. 

@Krystal Quinn 

My fiancé and I are new investors in Oxnard.  Welcome to the site.  Let me know if there is anything that we can assist you with in Ventura County.

@Andrew Bassuk 

I think two or three of the hard money lenders I have talked to will lend 100% of the purchase and repair costs. In return, they expect a good portion of the profit and also some control over the rehab process.  I don't remember the exact details, but if you shoot me an email to remind me, I can see if I can dig up their information when I get out of work so that you can contact them directly.

Hey Andrew.  My fiancé and I are in Oxnard.  We have a rental property in Sacramento, but are looking to get into fix and flips in Ventura County. We plan on starting our marketing campaign full force when I return back to town from my day job in mid-April.  Feel free to contact me if there is anything we can do to help you out in the meantime and maybe we can meet up when I get back.

What’s up @Demond Henson . Actually, we only have one rental property. And after learning more on how to analyze rentals, it’s not doing as well as we had first thought, lol. I wish I could say business is thriving, but I’ve been out of town with my day job for the past 4.5 months and my fiancé has been planning our upcoming wedding, so we actually haven’t done much in the past 4 or 5 months. Unfortunately, I’m probably the wrong person to ask about setting up a business structure. It is something we chose to do, but I don’t have enough expertise to advise anyone else for or against it. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. But from what I have read on other posts, most people seem to think that you should get started by finding deals, and then you can set up your business structure at a later date.

@Andy M. 

Hey Andy. You can "drive for dollars" to find vacant homes in your market. If you do, you can then try to locate the owner to see what their plans are for the home and if it would help them out if you were to buy it from them. If you can get the property under contract at a great price, you could then either wholesale it or set up a JV arrangement with another investor.

Also, you can start attending your local Real Estate Investors Association (REIA) meeting and network with other investors. The head of my favorite REIA group likes to describe investing as a 3-legged stool, with the 3 legs being time, money, and experience. If you have time, but no money or experience, you can locate other investors that have money and experience, but no time. If you offer to help them with whatever they are not able to accomplish due to lack of time, they could be willing to let you be a part of their team in some capacity.

Thanks for the reply Ted.  I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure I understand your response fully.  What do you mean by self promote, because the whole existence of my website is to promote my business.  But to clarify, I am using WordPress hosted by GoDaddy.  I realize that this may not be the best solution, espeically when our business outgrows the IT work i can handle on my own, but it seems to be working fine in the mean time.