All Forum Posts by: Matthew G.

@Eduardo Pallares I have a friend that owns an e-commerce site and sells on Amazon. It's not easy. He spends a lot of money on marketing in order to be at the top of the Amazon search for his products, but his prices are constantly undercut by Chinese sellers. Chinese sellers will undercut everyone and even take a loss selling their product just so that they can get as many 5-star reviews as possible. Once they've solidified their search position they raise their prices back up. It's very tough trying to be a middle-man.

That being said, what are you trying to achieve? Are you looking for a passive investment that you don't need to do much work? How much ROI do you want? There are a lot of ways to invest in real estate, so it really depends on your goals.

@Rashad Jones Jennings I have a business line of credit through Chase. They looked at two years of tax returns for the business as well as assets of the business. My business is not real estate related, but I use the LOC to purchase real estate since I don't need the LOC for my actual business. The best way to increase your business credit is to increase your gross revenue. It's not like personal credit where if you spend more and pay it off they give you more credit.

Congratulations! That sounds like a great investment. What kinds of costs do you incur running the property? How much do you net?

@Timothy Thorne, you should check out the book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth. Most of the examples are tech companies using different traction (marketing) channels, but they can definitely be applied to non-tech companies. They found two interesting themes in their research. First was that most founders only considered using marketing channels that they thought they should be using because of their type of product (i.e. direct mailers, door hangers, bandit signs, etc. for wholesaling). This means everyone else is using the same channels and often the most underutilized channels were the most promising ones. Second theme was that it's hard to predict what marketing channel will work best. You have to run tests and see which one if best for you right now.

With tech changing so quickly, there are new ways to market that didn't exist a few years ago that people still may not be using. I've never seen "We Buy Houses for Cash" ads on my Instagram feed, but I see bandit signs all over. Maybe you can create an Amazon Alexa skill where people can ask "Alexa, what's my house worth?" and after it gives them the house estimate you can ask them if they are interested in selling. You're probably going to get your best deals from motivated sellers, so an app or website that helps people find out of state movers could be another way to get in contact with these sellers first.

I've never done wholesaling since I'm a passive investor, but I think it's a good time to consider new, untested marketing channels rather than just following what everyone else is doing.

@Zach Barber I've never tried this site but they use AI for screening. https://naborly.com/

I've only recently started contributing on BP but my initial impression is that the site feels like Quora for real estate rather than a real estate meetup. At meetups we share our deals, what we are looking for, find people who we can work with and ask questions. The post restrictions prevent that type of advertising and promotion, but it helps prevent this site from just being a Craigslist for real estate. An experienced investor doesn't have the incentive to stay on BP answering questions if they don't get any benefit themselves. That being said I think the networking aspect of BP needs to improve and could help retain experienced investors.
 

I still find value at going to local meetups, not as much for learning anymore but just for networking and meeting new people. I've tried the member search and it was slow and difficult just to find a friend that was on BP. Networking on BP is basically be as helpful as you can and hope that people connect with you. As you gain more knowledge and connections outside of BP though, the site loses value because you have to put a lot more effort into it than what you get out of it. I guess BP is more of a knowledge/learning base than a networking one anyway.

@Aaron Tandy If your goal for higher education is just to get higher pay, you should look into coding bootcamps. They are about 12 weeks long and $15k+, but depending on the area you are in and how much tech companies there are, you could land a 6 figure job. Just because you go to college doesn't mean you will have a higher pay getting out, the only thing for sure is more debt.

@Jerryll Noorden why are the results in your chart is from '05?

@Uzi Pablo You should definitely not be an active real estate investor. Your skills are in business and programming and you should stick with it. Your focus should be on preserving wealth through real estate. Don't take real estate deals with better returns that are riskier, just play it safe now and don't lose it. You probably have a circle a of wealthy individuals that you know, so get advice from them and see how they invest their capital and who they trust. You want to get advice from people wealthier than you.

@Jerryll Noorden How long did it take for you to set up your SEO before you started getting a significant amount of leads?