All Forum Posts by: Jason Fraser

when using seller financing as a buying strategy, how do you determine the number of payments that you are willing to do when making the offer to the seller? Similar question with offering a down payment, is there a standard percentage i.e 10%?

congrats!

I found a real estate attorney that I liked through networking at my local REIA. The benefit is that he is also an investor.

Referral is another way to find one.

@Matthew Dovner

I highly recommend checking out this BP article written by Sharon Vornholt. It came out at a perfect time for me before I launched my absentee owner mailing campaign recently.

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/03/18/marketing-one-size-doesnt-fit/

I'm doing both driving for dollars and doing direct mail. I just started an absentee owner campaign where I'm split testing white envelopes vs color. I'm also doing this with paper color. It's in a smaller batch to find the one that will work and then I plan to ramp it up. Plus right now I'm budgeting to go deep (multiple mailings to the same person) vs wide (one off to a larger group).

As for driving for dollars, I do it primarily in my farm area which is between my home and office and where I do most of shopping anyway. Whenever I run errands or how to the office, I'll take different side streets on my way to my destination looking for FSBOs and for rents. Plus I like to see what is else is happening in the area (new businesses).

As for your absentee owner mailing, are you targeting out of state vs. in state owners?

Bryce

Welcome to BP. I also live in SLC.

Best three strategies based on what you mention would be...

1. Networking - I'm part of SLREIA salt lake real estate investors association. They have a monthly meeting the second Wednesday of the month in Sandy. Google them for the website for more details (I can't post the link here ). They also have and wants section the website where you post what you are looking for and see if anyone is selling properties that fit your criteria.

A few of the investors I know from SLREIA have rentals mostly on the west side of the valley (west valley, Kearns, taylorsville, rose park)

2. Driving for dollars in a farm area. You mentioned an hour radius of SLC which puts you Orem/Provo to the south, Ogden to the north, tooele to the west and past Park City to the east. That's a lot of diversity and ground to cover.

I have a primary farm area between my home and my office. When I go to the office or run errands I try to drive down different side streets for FSBOs, for rents, and vac ants. Everything else I have an agent put me on a hotsheet in areas I look for properties in.

3. Working with agent like ken said. You can ask them to set you up on a hotsheet to have properties that for your criteria (I.e. Area, price, property type - SFH vs multis etc) emailed to you as the hit the MLS.

Do you mean someone calls you from your mailer and how to keep track of them of them? I'm just using a spreadsheet through google drive which I can access on my PC, iPad, and phone for the time being.

There's more advanced customer relationship managers (CRMs) out there like realty juggler, zoho crm, highrisehq. Realty juggler is $99 for the year and the others are free but will then charge you a monthly amount beyond a certain number of leads.

I put my first batch of envelopes in the mail tonight for a new absentee owner campaign. Even doing a split test white envelopes vs color.

I'm also in the process of putting together my first written offer on a FSBO i called last week.

@brian

@Brian Gibbons thanks for letting me use your marketing material and words of encourage.

@Kevin Cook .thanks

@Mark Scarola Sorry to hijack your thread. To answer your original question. Depending on what the investor is looking for, you can always pick up the phone and see if the seller is motivated, what the situation is, and what they want and then pass the information to the person.

That's why networking is one if the most important marketing strategies. I met a few guys through my local REIA who invest in land. Land isn't an imeediate interest of mine, but I have Craigslist ads for land sent to my email. One of the guys told me what to look for so if I come across something worth checking out, I can always inquire about it and pass it one of them. I can always make a bid dog fee from it is the way I look at it.

@Brian Gibbons

Brian I'll have to check out your REi skills website. It looks like it has tons of great content.

Would you be ok if I used the special report you mentioned in your post for my market(Utah). I of. Of course I would customize it for my use.