All Forum Posts by: Vanessa Blais

I came across a Craigslist ad for a house for sale in my farm area.  I sent an email and the 'seller' replied with information on how to access the property. 

I went and took a look, and a day or so later, the 'seller' emailed me with a list of other properties that they have for sale in my area.

I ran down the numbers and made offers, via a reply email, on all of them which allowed 3 weeks for closing and a $100 earnest money deposit. 

On Monday, the company called me on the phone to tell me that the gentleman who emailed the list to me, who I replied to, was no longer with the company, so this new lady, "Tandi" was assigned to work with me. 

She told me that they don't pay any back taxes or prorate, so to check with our tax collector before making any offers.  She then went on to tell me that I could either do a "Cash For Deed" (and it could take up to 180 days to get the deed- though some due diligence on the company led me to some old complaints about this company not delivering deeds as far out as 10 months after closing) or a "Warranty Deed" for $2,225.00.  She told me that a 10% earnest money deposit was required, but that they don't force you to buy the house and you can get your earnest money back any time you want prior to closing. 

She instructed that I could make my offer to 'include the fees,' and to do it 'verbally' with her and she would take it to whoever the DM is and if they accepted, then she would write the contract and send it to me. 

So I made 2 verbals with the fee included, both of which they countered on, and only one of which I countered back on-  which they accepted. She asked me what name I wanted the contract in, and I told her my partners name and stressed that it needed to be 'name and/or assigns.'

When I got the contract from here, the $2,225.00 was put on top of my offer, the name did not have 'and/or assigns' after it, and they wanted a closing in 6 days- not 'business days,' just 6 days from the date they sent the contract to me. 

Suffice it to say, I walked from the deal.  I'm not putting up $3,000 for a house that's going to close in 6 days!  And I'm certainly not going to be doing business with a company that can't follow the simple instructions to put 'and/or assigns' on the contract. 

I've read some stuff about this company stealing investors from bird dogs too.  

My opinion- shady company with no integrity.

Hi everyone! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond. It's been a rather busy first quarter for me and I've been up to my eyeballs in work.

No, I never did find the answer to the skimming question. In fact, the only statute info I can find for the state of FL just says that you can only take 'subject -to', so many, without paying the underlying mortgage. That's obviously not the proper 'legalese,' but is pretty much what the statute says.

Thanks for the welcomes all! I hope to be back to being active again soon. :)

Will,
You say you are mailing to non-owner oc, but are you checking to see if there is 'distress'? Checking for foreclosure filings, divorce filings, probate filings, etc, will give you much better results than just non-owner oc.

LOL! The "4 ft Rule of Boating"- no matter how big your boat is, you always need one that's just 4 ft bigger!

Wealth is when your passive income exceeds your expenses.

Wealth' is an abstract concept, because wealth is held in the perception of the value of assets.

Today, if you own your $100,000 home outright, you nave a net worth of wealth equal to $100,000. In 6 months, the market's perception of the value could change. The market could adopt the perception that your house rose in value to $150,000, thus making your net worth of wealth $150,000. The market could also adopt the perception that your house went down in value, to $50,000, reducing your net worth of wealth to only $50,000.

Passive income streams are not immune to market perception of their value. You could own 10 rental properties that each net $400 positive cashflow, but if the market adopts a perception that rents are too high, and takes action to move to an area with lower rents, you will either have to shoulder the vacancy rates, or reduce your rent to bring them back, thus, lessening the amount of passive income you generate.

It's all perception.

I just did a Google search for "Davis County Utah Public Records Search" and I didn't find the county's records available online. That doesn't mean they aren't available online, it just means I didn't find it.

But usually, searching public records is free at the public records office. You generally are just asked to pay for printing if you choose to print. Which you don't usually need to do.

Seriously, a dozen or two donuts from Dunkin' brought to the lovely people who work at the public records office, works wonders for getting assistance from these fine people who will point you to exactly where you need to be and look.

:)

Hey Kay, I started out doing freelance work. It's a feast or famine model. REI can be too, but with REI, the paydays are MUCH bigger so it's a lot more worth it. I did all kinds of freelance work, but direct response copywriting was my specialty and it paid quite well, but still nothing compared to RE, and it was a lot more work. At least for me. (Writing copy is emotionally draining on me because of the amount of empathy I have to generate to write a compelling and effective sales letter!)

List building and affiliate marketing are just like any other sales- The #1 Rule: "It's just a numbers game."

Amazon is great for stealing 'known buyer traffic' and leveraging the power of their 'trusted brand,' but the commissions are small, and take FOREVER to pay out, so you really need to be focusing on high end products to make a decent income from Amazon affiliate marketing.

Personally, I see no reason you can't do both, but if you're going to do IM at all, I would be doing media buying to CPA offers. But that requires a good bit of training on demographic research, (not to mention design skills or the budget to outsource the design of your landing pages) and statistical data analysis so you can project the yield on your ROI. However, the good CPA networks have affiliate managers that will literally hold your hand and teach you exactly what you need to do. (The best one for this closed down just last year, but try Offer Vault for Media buying training. Offer Vault isn't a CPA Network, it's a database of ALL the offers on ALL the CPA networks and they offer a ton of free training.) PPCCoach also has a media buying coaching program that is a reasonably priced monthly membership fee (and his book is incredible).

That model requires very little time once you've been educated on HOW to work it, and it will make you enough money, with little enough work, that you'll have the time and money for REI.

And REI comes down to the marketing machine too. If you have a very good marketing system in place, it will do the heavy lifting for you. But again, you need to get trained in how to market- first in how to find a 'target' market (people in distress from foreclosure, BK, job relocation, job loss, divorce, probate,tired landlords, back taxes,) and then how to advertise (bandit signs, classified ads) and direct market (business cards, door hangers, direct mail) to them.

IMO, REI is much easier to learn because it's all just math. And it's basic math at that. Yes, marketing for motivated buyers and sellers is part of it, but at the end of the day, all you need to know to make a deal is if the numbers work for you, seller, buyer and lender.

Steve, I hear ya! Affiliate Marketing is not 'passive.' And a vendor pulling an offer is the # 1 reason I didn't do a lot of affiliate marketing. That and the 'affiliate cartels.'

You concerns about stability are well founded, especially with the FTC breathing down everyone's neck...and while lead gen is easy money, it's one of the most fraud-ridden industries on the planet- even in the offline lead gen world, and long before the Internet came along. (Sounds like you're doing CPA.)

Of course, a list is a solid asset, but again, that's not passive. You gotta keep those guys warm or they stop opening, stop clicking, and stop buying if you don't.

I wouldn't tell you to ignore REI to focus on IM. I hope it didn't sound like I was. I didn't get out of REI by choice, and I got into IM because I had no other choice, but I would rather be doing REI myself. (Of course, I'm kind of a control freak...)

And I sure don't blame you for not wanting to live somewhere that gets as cold as it gets up there. (I live in Florida and it gets too cold for me even here.)

I would encourage you to not 'quit' IM altogether, because those profits can come in quite useful for helping you fund your REI ventures. And I would really encourage you to get into REI.

If you want some one-on-one guidance in REI, send me a PM here on this forum. I've been out of the game for 7-8 years now, and a lot has changed in the nuances of how the deals are executed, (that's what I came to the forum to learn) but the principles remain the same and I am a master marketer, so I can definitely help you come up with a solid marketing plan for getting the deals to come to you.

Mainly because those are the kinds of ads that are going to get flagged and deleted by the teenagers who need to get off their mom's computer.

My pleasure Dev. :)