All Forum Posts by: Dylan Bowman

So I’ve been DMM now for about 3 months. No real leads yet, which I expected. The calls that I have received are people telling me to take them off of my solicitation and are not happy about me mailing them.

Then to make matters worse after I’m already discouraged about my efforts as a real estate investor, I come home to find a dead chicken in my front yard wrapped up in a black plastic trash bag.

So my question is what can I do better?

What am I doing wrong? How can I target seller’s who are actually motivated and not waste my time or theirs. Better lists? Cold calling? I also D4D on occasion when I can find the time. But that takes time away from my kids on the weekends which is hard when I work out of town most of the week.

I have now realized I should take my return address off of the mailers at least lol

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Yes, you can absolutely do this. I'm in the process right now of refinancing my first rental property from FHA to Conventional. I also got my preapproval for my second property. My lender said if I find my second property we can also close the refinance and my new property at the same time. That way you can kill two birds with one stone. But like Joel said, definitely talk to a lender. You can also repeat this same process every 6 - 12 months assuming you have another down payment saved up.

@Jorge I. Pimentel Hey Jorge, congrats on starting your investing career. You have a pretty good amount saved up! You may live in a pretty high priced area but there are always deals to be found. start looking for a good realtor now. You can actually search for realtors in your area on the bigger pockets "network" link. You will likely qualify for an FHA loan so you will only have to put about 3.5% down. That should save you a lot of your money (depending on purchase price) for other things like a rehab or just to save. if I can go back I would look into duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes. Maybe try to find one that is being offered at a discount do to pour management and vacancies. you can still use a 3.5% down loan on apartment buildings, but no bigger than 4 units.

Good luck, happy hunting. 

@Carlos Gobert The book on flipping houses by J Scott. The Book on estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott. 

Pretty much all of the bigger pockets podcast are a great way to learn from. Check out the webinars and blogs on this site as well. Tons of great info. 

@Randy Gutierrez Hey Randy! Check out "The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs" by @J Scott. It will answer all of the questions you just asked and you can also go back and reference it if you ever forget anything. 

@Cornelius Moye look into Hard Money Lenders. Check out the "Network" link on this website and Bigger Pockets gives you access to hundreds of different lenders. Also look into HELOC's that can help you with extra capital. Even if you start out slow and house hack the next home you move into until you can save more money to really get started investing might be a good idea. If you haven't already I highly recommend reading @Brandon Turner 's book "The book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down". That will give you a whole list of different options that might be available to you.

@John Thao Try setting up a call list of different lenders. You will have a 45 day window of opportunity that allows multiple lenders to pull your credit report without it affecting your credit rating. One lender might tell you no and another might tell you yes. A good lender will tell you exactly what you need to do to fix your credit enough to be approved. 

Hey BP, I’m meeting with my first highly motivated seller Saturday. I’ve built a good relationship with him and he needs help with back taxes and also solar panels on the property that he cannot afford to make the payments on. I’m trying to come up with different ways I can help him and this one might be an option if I can get him to sell it to me and take over the debt and then refinance into a 30 yr mortgage. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Back story on the property: The home is owned free and clear. The owner owes an estimated 28,000 in property taxes and 55,000 in solar. The property is 20.0 acres with two homes on the lot that need a ton of repairs but are live-able.

I was that person 3 years ago that heard “Learn how to invest in real estate using other people’s money in your spare time”. Long story short I got suckered in to the whole over-hyped dream land of real estate. I thought everything was going to be easy and that it wouldn’t take much work. Some people in the class paid for the one on one training, which was $50,000 at the time.

I gave real estate a shot and I tried to start educating myself, making connections, listening to podcasts etc.. But then I just gave up. I didn’t do anything at all and I just fell off from BiggerPockets. I was that person you see on the site that ask’s one or two questions and disappears.

3 years later it’s 2020. I feel like I’m finally getting my life and my finances in order. I have money saved. My “WHY” is very strong. I want nothing more than to see my kids everyday and not miss out on their entire childhood because I work crazy hours.

So I finally did something about it. I put together my first direct mail campaign. I outsourced it through yellowletters.com. I’ve been driving for dollars and mailing different addresses that fit my criteria. I read almost every day now. Podcasts everyday. Also I’ve been talking to people that actually do this for a living and getting advice from them. I’ve talked to multiple lenders and have been pre-approved, also real estate agents.

My goal is to get a property under contract within the next 6 months or less. I wish you all the best in your real estate investing goals. My advice to everyone starting out. Just “Take Action!”

@Charles Gibbs Thanks Charles! I just sent you a message