All Forum Posts by: John Horner

That's awesome, thanks for the info, yeah it's amazing how good some of them look!

Just curious, what did they charge for a job like that?

A lot of the high end houses in my area have these listing photos that look so amazing they almost look fake. Every room looks spacious and flawless and the lighting is perfect.

I am wondering who does these photos? Can you hire a general photographer to take and touch up photos like this or are there photographers who specialize in real estate?

I would disagree with this whole statement. If you don't have MLS access, a realtor is necessary to pull comps. We list the comps our agent sends us in our informational packet on each property.

I would only do an assignment through a title company, do not take money from an investor outside of closing.

I would also consult an RE attorney about the RE laws specific to your state and to draft your contract for you.

Nice work, this is inspiring!

I am striving to have flexibility like this someday!

I already stated for my own investments I use COC return, but because we wholesale to investors, and all of those investors give us their criteria in CAP rates, we calculate those to find out where we stand.

Why wouldn't I want to compare CAP rates from an area on the West side of Columbus to an area on the East side? Completely different style houses, tenants, etc but I have the ability to invest in both areas, and CAP rate is a quick way to compare the 2.

As for expenses, depending on the style of house, location and price point, we can estimate rather accurately what expenses will be. Lower price points and worse areas will equal more vacancy and maintenance, brick homes will equal less CapEx, Condo's will equal much less overall main and capex but you will have the Condo Fees instead, more expensive homes will equal less vacancy and maintenance. Forecasts are forecasts, we estimate the best we can with the information we have.

We're not talking about picking a CAP rate and buying at that point forever. We're talking about tracking CAP rates so that we know what deals look like in relation to other deals in different areas at different times. If we track them correctly we will know when they start changing and when to adjust where, when and at what price point we buy.

On this site alone people use CAP rates to analyze SFH's all day, every day.

Lastly, I don't think anyone uses the sellers claimed info to calculate CAP rates, that would be irresponsible, I use neighborhood specific rental comps and expenses.

@Omi C. , I use convential loans for my rentals so I also mainly use COC rates for my own investing.

We also wholesale so we use a conservative CAP formula for that.

You are very correct. While CAP is a universal term, everyone calculates it differently.

You should use your own CAP rate formula on deals you're interested in so that YOU can compare deals that YOU are interested in.

You can't take anyone's word for it in this business.

My partner and I have used this, we have been very disappointed.

We chose the few areas that were left around the Columbus, Ohio area, which was only a couple hundred per quarter, and we got a few calls from people but no deals.

The part that was surprising was how many people called that should have had nothing to do with this list. No one had passed away, nothing was inherited and the deed was never transferred. Yet somehow they were on our list. They would call just to ask why in the world we were mailing to them. Lance and Sean Terry and many other call this the best and highest motivated group you can mail too, I just don't see it.

This list is expensive, around $1/lead I think, so to pay for numerous leads that have no reason for being motivated seems like a huge waste.

In my opinion, this is a numbers game, even if it was a highly motivated list, 200/ quarter is such a small number the odds of getting a deal out of it is slim.

@Account Closed , love the idea, but just not possible for some people, like myself. I still work a full-time day job, and we sent out 5500 mailers this month on top of PPC and SEO to multiple websites as well as other marketing channels.

All this to say I have WAY more calls coming in then I can personally answer. I used to let them go to voicemail and call them back but now I have an answering service answer with my business name, take some basic info and I call them back when available.

The bottom line is that it's a numbers game and to get those numbers to come in you have to automate your business at some point.