All Forum Posts by: Dev Horn

The other thing you see is the old FAKE QUESTION trick - such as:

"What is your favorite CRM system for real estate investing?" posted by one dude as his 2nd or 3rd post.  Answered shortly thereafter by another user (maybe his 1st post) with "We love the new REI CRM SUPERSYSTEM by ACME Software!..." followed by many details of how great it is.

Fair enough.  One approach I have seen work was done by a large investor/agent in LA.  They bombed RE agents with the message "I will buy your problem listings" -- and they've definitely scored some deals with that.  They are cash buyers & rehabbers though, not wholesalers.

Many real estate agents are wise to wholesalers and don't like to see or hear about their listings getting shopped around off-market before closing.  When you do work with agents, be prepared to show Proof of Funds if you want to be considered a legitimate buyer.

"Property Locator" is fine, or how about something more general, such as "Marketing" - that can mean a lot of things, but it implies that you are involved in finding and bringing people together for business purposes.

With that as your title, you could offer specific services, such as distribution of marketing materials door-to-door, event marketing & promotions, etc.

Investors generally suck at marketing - even guys that are doing pretty well (they are the first to admit this).  Let them know you're an expert and help them think of unique new ways to get the message out there and generate leads.

You will find that none of those people will care about your email or postcard or letter.  I'm not trying to rain on your parade - but we've done that kind of thing and it was a waste of time and energy.

The relationships that will actually work for you, people that will think about you and do things for you, those are developed by meeting people individually and connected with them on a personal level.

If I'm an agent or title company and I get an email from a "real estate investor" I'm just gonna toss it.  Bring me some business and I'll get excited.  Just telling me your out there doing your thing, that's a low to no value to me as a RE professional.

Just my 2 cents.  Spend your time on building your TEAM and your BUYERS LIST, and of course, on the search for MOTIVATED SELLERS.

Hey sorry for the misunderstanding.  I was referring to pulling the NUMBERS of records and analyzing that to better understand a market area.  Like, how many absentees are there with 50% equity in these 6 zip codes?  

As far as getting the actual mailing records, that is what you PAY for!  =)

This happens - not often, but it does.  The tax burden drives many to sell (or give up/give away) properties that become a continuous drain on their resources.  If he stops paying taxes the city will just foreclose anyway.

If this does work out, it would be cool to go back to that guy and offer to make a $1000 donation to a charity of his choice, in the memory of his mother...

It sounds like you have a pretty fair split on the work, but clearly you are taking on full weight of the financial risk.

Seems like you have an good argument to get 60% or 70% of the net, given the imbalance on the $ risk.

Wow.  Your background is very impressive!  Wish you the best, Mark...

Hi Corey - I'd back up and ask, why is your marketing producing leads where the sellers are underwater? Those are problems that an REI investor cannot solve - sure you can pass them off to an agent but that seller doesn't even have cash to pay commissions, so yeah, maybe a short sale, but again, should you be trying to solve those problems? You can offer advice but I'd move on from those leads ASAP. No gold in that mine.

Consider doing marketing where you start with a list of home owners with at least 40% equity, using a source like Listsource.com.  When you start with only people with equity, your calls will be more likely to be problems that you can solve (and make a PROFIT).

In the case with the Houston zips, our Equity % filter was set to 81-100%.

Once we get basic filters set, we might raise or lower the equity% and the "total assessed value" filters to get the # of records we want to mail to.  In that Houston example, we had a $1,000 per month marketing budget, so we wanted about 1,800 records (our per piece cost for this mailing is 55 cents).  We started with Equity% at 61%+ but had too many records so we tightened up that filter to get to the 1,841 absentee targets in that set of zip codes...

We'll also use # Bedrooms as a filter (to eliminate 1 & 2-bdrms) and in some markets we also include condos and other Property Types such as duplexes.  For owner occupants, we often filter by AGE which is on the Demographics tab.  Sometimes you'll set a filter and the Listsource will go from 2,000 records to 5 or something like that; just means that Listsource did not have that particular data type for that market area.