All Forum Posts by: Jim Pellerin

Craigslist ads will actually expire after 7-45 days depending on your location. http://www.craigslist.ca/about/help/posting_lifesp...

The key to looking for properties on Craigslist or any classified site for that matter is history. History will determine motivation. What I do is I reply to any ad I see but keep track of it by coping the property address in a spreadsheet along with the date posted. Most people repost frequently. So if you are checking the ads everyday and you see a property show up everyday for 2 or 3 or more months then you know they are a motivated seller.

If I had already contacted that person, I send them another reply telling them that I know I had already contacted them before and was just wondering if they might be interested in my offer. Basically, you are trying to determine how motivated the seller is.

Lots of cash to invest? Interesting problem you have.

So the short answer is .. it depends. Do you want to be a passive or active investor. And everybody has their own Investment Strategy preference.

In general, what you suggested makes sense. Short term deals for quick cash. Buying a rental property every year for long term passive income. Personally, I got rid of all my rentals in favour for rent to owns, but that's a personal preference.

Since you are just starting out, I would partner with someone in your area on a few Fix and Flips. If done properly, these could bring in $10K to $20K, after financing. Do 3 or more of those a year and there's your $50K+.

While looking for properties to fix and flip, you could always do some wholesaling to other investors and even the ones that you may be involved in for your Fix and Flips.

Depending on how much capital you have access to, you could always become a private lender. For example, $1,000,000 at $12% to 13% is $130,000. This would pay your parents 8% and your own $50,000. The challenge is having that much invested at that rate consistently. But it's not usually that hard to find,

SEO is only one part of the overall approach to lead generation.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your site. Here are the main ones that I use.

1. Search Engine Optimization - This requires regular content creation, on page optimization and off page optimization through backlinks from authority sites. This can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months depending on your key words and the competition for those key word. Don't fall for anyone telling you they can get you on page 1 in 30 days. Oh, and if done incorrectly it will actually hurt your rankings with Google. Been there. Done that with the wrong company.

2. Google Pay Per Click (Adwords) - This is you paying for traffic. You will need to know the keywords you are looking for and the ads have to be written so that they will attract potential customers and convert well. I spend only $10 per day.

3. Facebook Promotions - Same as Google Pay Per Click but I am using this a lot more lately. They are a lot cheaper than my Google Adwords and seem to be providing better leads. I'm paying about $.40 per lead. I spend about $10 per day here as well.

5. Web Site - The key to driving traffic is to make sure your web site will convert. It won't matter how good your traffic generators are and that you are generating traffic if people aren't signing up. I converted all my sites, yes I use more than one, to Investor Carrot. They have training on how to do all of the above or you can also hire them to do the SEO and manage your paid traffic for you.

6. Autoresponder - You will need to use an autoresponder to do proper follow-ups to make sure your are building a relationship with your potential customers. I use Getresponse because I find they provide the best solution for me. There are many out there to chose from.

Since I implemented the above solution, I don't have a problem getting leads any more. I generate anywhere from 10 to 20 tenant buyers a day for my Rent to Own business. I usually have to turn off the paid advertising after about a week because my sales team can't handle all the leads and follow ups.

Disclaimer: Yes I am affiliate with these companies but it's only because I use them and they do a good job.

Hope that helps.

There are a few things to take into consideration when choosing an investment strategy. Time, money and risk.

1. By time I mean whether or not you have enough time to be an active investor or do you just want to be a passive investor.

2. By money I mean how much capital you have to invest or access to.

3. And by risk I mean how much risk are you willing to take.

Then you can look at the 4 main investment strategies.

1. Buy, Rent and Hold - You need money or a joint venture partner with money. You will have to manage it, or hire a Property Management company. But these types of investments are moderate risk, if done properly.

2. Fix and Flips - Again, you will need money to purchase and renovate. But you can always do a joint venture. Flips can take a lot of time if you are managing the work yourself, but you can hire someone to manage it. These are very high risk investments if you are just starting out and don't know what you are doing. But they can be the most lucrative, if successful.

3. Wholesaling - Buy low, sell higher. Basically, flipping without the renovations. This doesn't really require a lot of money if you are just putting properties under contract and assigning them. You can spend as much time as you want on these but it is a very active strategy. If you stop working, you stop making money. Nothing passive about it. The only risk s that if you don't assign the property, you would lose it. 

4. Lease Options - Specifically sandwich lease options. You don't need any money to acquire a property from a motivated seller. Again, you can spend as much time on this strategy depending on how much money you want to make. But if you stop working, the money runs out, so it's not passive. There is medium risk because you are managing a property and your are subject to something happening with the owner and the buyer.

You can make all of these strategies more passive by hiring people to do all the work. And you can implement all of these strategies with no money using joint venture partners.

The last thing you could do is just become a private lender if you have lots of capital. Not much time required and minimal risk since the investment is secured.

 Yes. But we charge the owner.

Not a home inspection. My property management company does an annual inspection to make sure the tenant is taking care of the property. We charge the owner a fee for that service. The maintenance and repair services income is the difference between what the property management company charges the owner and what they pay their contractors.

Property managers will make money as follow:

1. Placement services

2. Monthly management fees

3. Yearly inspection fees

4. Maintenance and repair services

My experience is that property management companies mark up the cost of their maintenance and repairs. They either charge a project management fee directly or they just bury it into the cost of the repair. I would just ask them how much they mark up the cost of the maintenance and repairs. Now some property managers don't mark up the costs.

Andrew,

Here's what I do. I use a CRM tool called Base CRM. 

Base has the ability to setup a unique phone number directly from the service. It will record a call and log the call into the CRM with the contact related to the phone number of the person who called. Now the service will record calls but doesn't offer voice mail. So what I do is call forward the CRM Phone number to my 1800 number which does provide voice mail. When the caller calls, the 1800 number answers and then when the person leaves a message it is recorded directly in my CRM as well as in my 1800 voicemail service.

The other tool I have been looking into but haven't used yet is Proquest Technologies. Watch the videos. They are very informative. The service is geared towards realtors but I talked to their sales guy and I think there is a good fit for my business. It's ideal for a mail out campaign which is asking people to dial a number for more information.

You could always find a joint venture partner to finance the properties for you. They buy the property and you do everything else. Split the profits.

The other thing you would do is find a motivated seller. You could either get them to do a Lease Option to you or do "seller financing" through a subject to. Then on your end you could either just rent it out or also find a tenant buyer to do lase option with. You could always buy it once you debt ratios are reduced and you can qualify or not.

I ran into this problem about 10 years ago and started doing Lease Options with motivated sellers and have never looked back.

You may have lost the deal but at least you didn't lose any money ... just the opportunity. 

"It's better to have offered and lost, then to never have offered at all" .. sorry, I couldn't resist.

I have been in this game for over 20 years and have lost a lot of deals and lost a lot of money. Yes at first it was frustrating trying to put my first deal together. The funny thing is that I wouldn't have done any of the deals that I did 20 years ago. The other thing is to be working on many deals at a time. So if you lose one you can always work the others. 

Keep moving ahead.