All Forum Posts by: Dev Horn

I believe you also need to be careful about how profits are distributed when an SDIRA is used to finance a purchase & rehab. If the SDIRA is the source of 100% of the financing, I think that 100% of the proceeds have to go back into the SDIRA. Again, I'm not an expert on this - there is probably a lot more info about investing with an SDIRA here in BP. Worth a search to make sure you don't go down the wrong path...

Hi Patrick Mcclellan - If you want to get a good "textbook" for this business, I highly recommend J. Scott's book which is available here on BP:
http://www.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook/

As far as marketing goes, there are lots of strategies to consider. You are welcome to look at the Marketing Portal that we provide for our licensees to see examples of marketing that works for attracting motivated sellers:
http://marketing.webuyhouses.com/

"Huge" is a relative measure. I'm guessing Michael does not REALLY use that language in his agreement. ;-)

Abraham L. - there are couple of approaches ~

First is to purchase mailing lists with ethnicity coding - absolutelists.com and dmdatabases.com offer lists but - disclaimer - we have not used them.

Second approach is to drop mail within "area trade zones" inside of zip codes - hitting every address in zones that are 80%+ Hispanic, etc. We're working on strategies in that second approach with a vendor called National Mail-It. If you want to learn about it (it's very cost effective), feel free to contact Gary Garvey there at [email protected] and ask him about "shared mail" (they're just a vendor for us - we get no benefit from recommending them)...

Approach 1 is more targeted with a much higher cost/address; Approach 2 is carpet-bombing ethnic areas at a low cost/address.

Ha - I was thinking exactly what Jerry Puckett said - if you do marketing in Spanish, you better be able to TALK to people in Spanish, make offers & give them documents in Spanish, etc.

But if you can work in Spanish, this is a great strategy. We're working with a direct mail company that enables us to target by ethnicity within zip codes.

Right. In my past, I was a Certified Financial Planner. Real advisors have passed a rigorous certification exam and have knowledge in a broad range of investment vehicles & strategies. It comes down to WHO PAYS THEM. If you are getting "free" advice, that person has to make $ in some way, so it's usually on commissions from products. To get unbiased advice, you really need to pay a fee for that advice.

Ditto on the education. There are financial strategies that enable you to leverage your investments while diversifying them - for example, having $ in stocks and using that asset to collateralize a loan for real estate. But as the others suggest, financial strategy can get complicated. When you seek advise, try to get it from people that "don't have a horse in the race" - i.e., if a guy is a stock broker, he'll probably suggests stocks, etc. Might be a good idea to talk to an expert financial planner that is not beholden to any particular asset or type of transaction.

I have never purchased a vacation rental unit, but again this year we've rented our beach house for this summer via www.vrbo.com. It's a great source to see what comparable rentals are going for (and to see if they are BOOKED or VACANT in the peak months, how quickly they fill up, etc.), and you might even consider contacting a few of the people on there to ask them about their vacancy rates, maintenance/property management, etc.

Be careful about marketing properties (to end buyers) if you do not own the properties. That is taking on the role of a broker, which of course requires a license.

As Kyle suggests you should explore networking opportunities in your local community. An ad in Craiglist that says "Looking for cash buyers to purchase houses at a significant discount to ARV" might not be a bad idea, but not having tried it, I'm not sure how productive it might be.

I bought a lot in Southlake (TX) about ten years ago for $50K. After building a new home there and then all these mansions exploding all around it, we sold it a few years later and the LOT was valued at $100K. I made a good profit on the house, but the big boost to its value was that LOT.

Man, I know NOTHING about your deal yet, but a lot in North Dallas for $50K would spin my head around!

Best of Luck to you Rob Padilla!