All Forum Posts by: Jamey Grant

My two cents - 

I have worked with a few agents doing marketing - mainly worked with dentists - doctors etc. - we have done mainly stuff like doing Facebook and Adwords ads where we are able to customize their strategy a bit more than some of the "big" national providers - we have set up follow up email funnels - retargeting etc. - and I think the real estate agent market as a whole is one of the tougher ones I have ever worked in.
It seems to me you have a small group of agents who are spending a LOT of money on marketing (ie $10-20k or more a month) and then the vast majority of the rest are spending very little to nothing on marketing programs (+/-$500-$1000/month) - typically waiting on referrals or leads generated by the agency they are associated with . . . . so a lot of feast or famine . . . 

The best luck I have had marketing to anyone is with case studies - and cold email / voicemail drops - then retargeting and live call follow ups.   Lead with the 2nd best example you have of making an agent money - consistently . . . .   Something like:  "Hey - I wanted to share with you a simple strategy we used to help an agent in Austin, TX make an extra $20k in gross commissions in just the last 4 months . . .  She started with us in January of this year (2017) and has already CLOSED 5 deals. . . . . "  ) something like that . . .

Send that to 500 agents and follow up with voicemail drops - have some sort of lead capture page where the case study was that is set up to retarget those agents on FB and Adwords - with a "Hey I have another case study that we just put together - this agent did $24k in commissions in 3 months . . . check it out " (the second case study is better than the first . . . . so it feels like things are getting better - not worse . . . )

Make it super easy for them to call you - set up instant chat on the landing pages of your site and have some one who can respond quickly to calls emails and chats . . . like within 5-10 seconds fast.  ;-) 

Set up tracking so you can tell which prospects visited your page - clicked through your emails - etc. then cold/warm call those agents who clicked on the site and your emails the most.
There are a lot of crappy marketing groups hitting on realtors - so most are pretty skeptical - so you have to be as transparent as possible - and really be genuine in the way you are pushing your service - or they tend to run like the wind.

Thanks for the response - Pretty sure I can look at the deal and tell if it would work - just so you know the 30% isn't exactly the way fundbox or bluevine work - but I appreciate your concern.

And yes - I have seen the margins on plenty of PM companies - I have worked with 6+ PM companies helping them set up marketing . . .  and not afraid of that level of debt load . . .

To buy in and start with 50+ units gives me just THAT many more folks to network with and get referrals from  . . . well worth what they are asking for the company . . . .

I get it - to start from zero and just start hammering makes since - and actually that is more my personality - but for the price - AND with owner financing - this deal works - so just curious about what other may have seen with financing a Property Management company - either with receivables OR other wise . . . 

I am interested if anyone in the property management business has successfully used any of the new "receivable advance" financing groups out there like Fundbox - Kabbage etc.

I have used Fundbox with my online marketing/data management company to help onboard larger corporate clients that want me to upfront fund their Adwords spend.  Most of my clients just pay the ad spend themselves - but I have 2 corporate clients that - because of accounting - actually really can't do that very easily.

My real estate based interest in this is that I am looking at purchasing a Property Management Company that is looking for 30% down and will owner finance the rest of the purchase price - and if I can use a receivables advance to fund a portion of that 30% down - it would make coming up with the rest a little easier.  If they are running $50,000 per month in rent - the company is getting $5000 +/- as their management fee.  I could - based on what I do now - probably pull $4000 from the monthly receivable in an advance - maybe more based on gross revenue??  Pay it back over 6 months . . . not a bad deal - if those groups looks at PM companies . . . .

I am just trying to put the pieces together - and working to tie up as little of my personal capital as possible on the front end as this is a distressed sale and to really make this work the way I want I will need a decent amount of cash on hand to fund marketing and staff to get things straightened out on the ground.

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.