All Forum Posts by: Joseph Ziolkowski

Hi Michael! Kudos on your first cash buyer man! Don't be discouraged about the lack of calls. The first time I put up signs, it took almost a week before calls really came in. The second time, I got almost no calls at all. 3rd time, it took only a couple of days. It's a crap shoot. A lot depends (I think) on what you write on the signs. Are they eye-catching? Are they just plain ol' "we buy houses" signs? Just to give you an idea, I decided to take a little time off recently (after having been putting up signs for months and months) and not do any marketing at all. I actually didn't want any calls for a little while because I was focusing my energies on another project. I'm still getting calls anyway, albeit just a few. So keep at it. After you've put up enough signs in enough areas, just try to stop the phone from ringing. Good luck out there!

Hi Jason,
To the best of my knowledge, you wouldn't need to disclose the fact that you're a licensee. You have no principle interest in the property in this kind of a set up, and you're not selling it for someone else. What you're really doing in this case is selling information. Just make sure you cover your butt. Even if you did have to disclose anything, it would be only to the other wholesaler because, from what I could tell from your posts, that's the only person that you're dealing with. Remember, you aren't selling property here. Just info. Hope it helps!

Great point Charisse! Also, if you don't feel like stopping in at the office and talking to people, you can find your local Section 8 office online as well with just a little digging. That can be a great source of info.

Hi Tom,

Often times they will call me just from my bandit signs, but I've also had some luck calling for rent signs. Though, at least by me those folks are sometimes just people that can't pay their mortgage. So it usually works out either way. I've never done postcards. It's on my to-do list for sure, I'm just busy enough right now with the other less expensive stuff.

Thanks for the meetup tip Khary. I didn't know that.

Bill is totally right. If it takes 2 weeks to run a title search (maybe find a different title company/attorney?) then that isn't your fault. The seller will likely understand that. Though you should give yourself at least 30 days anyhow. But so many hiccups can occur with financing. And flipping to a retail buyer is all well and good if you can do it. You'll probably make more. Only thing is in wholesaling, to get the properties cheap enough to actually wholesale them and make any money, they will typically (though not always) need some work. Or a lot of work. That being said, a savvy investor understands this, and when they buy it as-is, which is how you should probably sell it, they will be completely happy to fix it, and in fact will even have the funds lined up. They won't come back and sue you because they didn't know the level of repairs and wah wah blah blah blah. Most wannabe home owners won't have the money, the savvy, or the desire to do the level of repairs the home is likely to need at that stage of the transaction.

Also Michael, regarding your buyers list advertising, I rarely post a property that I don't have online. I advertise to rehabbers/landords that I have residential 1-4 unit properties for 50-70% ARV available for cash. Then I tell them a little about myself in the ad, and why they should definitely, certainly, and totally sign up for my vip buyers list.
I direct them to my website, which isn't even really all that great, but it has a buyers list form on there that I set up free at wufoo.com. It has some basic questions in there that gets sent to my email and lets me know if I want to get in contact with them. I've got maybe 10 on my list, and I don't know that any of them are "go-to" guys per se, but I know that they have access to cash. I have maybe 20 others that I might call if I've got no one else on the line, but that's good enough to get you started.

That's an excellent point Khary. Follow-up and responsiveness is huge, and that's a lesson I had to learn over time. I think I was too scared to answer the phone at first :) How would you say that you give your business the impression of being a reputable real estate firm? I'm definitely not implying that it isn't, but how do you project that to folks? Because I'm sure most of us are just Joe Shmoe that started with a course or something at some point.

Also Michael, if you're paying 2 bucks for bandit signs, I feel like you're paying too much. PM me if you like and I can tell you about a place where you can get the big ones for just about half of that.

Thanks Tom. I must say that the signs this weekend pulled in a better response than usual. I wrote some pretty outrageous things on the signs though, so more folks read them. As far as craigslist goes, I had that problem at first. Just choose to hide your email address before you post. I get almost no spam now, and at least 5 leads per week with a couple of free ads. What the heck, right?

Hi Michael. I can only tell you what gets my phone ringing. I don't do direct marketing. Nothing against it, I just don't do it. Just this weekend, over the course of 3 days, I've gotten over 30 calls from 20 bandit signs, 2 ads on craigslist (posted yesterday) and 2 ads on backpage (also posted yesterday). In wholesaling, once you have the structure set up, and all of your intital capital expenditures are made (if you choose to do all of that first) I would say that for me, marketing is at least 80% of what I do. If I actually go to look at one in ten houses of people that call me, it's a good day. The price we need to get to wholesale something means that we have to weed through a lot of sellers. Hence the fact that marketing is huge.
I spend a lot of time on education as well. Education on marketing, new wholesaling niches to explore and master, negotiating with buyers and sellers, legalities for my area, learning comps for my farm areas, etc.
So ok, maybe marketking is 65%-70%. Education is 20%-25%. The rest is negotiating, inspecting, and traveling to and from the bank :lol: I'd love to know the more experienced wholesalers' take on this as well. Is this an accurate depiction in your estimation?