All Forum Posts by: Kenneth E.

Jerry PuckettThanks for the response. I never though about using people who want to learn the business to answer my phone. I also never thought about using google voice to track call times.

Mike LaCava Allison Park is just north of Pittsburgh. Yes, we have deals here. I am not sure if I can post the company website that I partner with (which lists all of the properties for sale) so email me and I can tell you where we list our deals for sale.

Wayne Woodson Thanks for the ideas

Michael Spencer Thanks. Ill look at VDP.

Justin McClelland thanks. Good point on outsourcing one at a time.

Mike V. Thanks I had never heard of AnswerFirst.com. Ill check them out.

Hmmmm. Maybe I gave the impression I want it to be on autopilot. I do not and will keep tabs on each leg of the business. I am merely asking how others (who don’t have the time to handle all aspects of their business) deal with the more time-draining components of the business. Essentially, my time is already limited and I want to increase mailers but cannot handle the larger volume I want to take on. Thus, automating and outsourcing will be key. I cannot imagine the full-time wholesalers on here spend all of their time on each component of their business. Certainly, outsourcing and automating help them out. This is why I asked for ideas/suggestions to see if there are any creative/unique ideas out there. Thanks, fellas.

Hey all.

I am thinking about diving back into wholesaling this year on a more aggressive scale. My intent is to send more letters/postcards as well as follow-up with all potential deals (something I was lazy about doing previously). I am reaching out to the group to get some thoughts on automating my processes. Currently, I have a customized mailing list, simple mailers (letters and post cards) inviting sellers to call me (I have full time job so all calls go to “Google Voice” number where they leave a message) or visit my website to enter their information (which I will review and will get back to them). I call them back and schedule a property visit with all potential deals (screened against the criteria of my mentor who has 20 years experience and who I partner with 50/50 on the sale). Then, I negotiate with the seller.

I am curious to know what processes you other wholesalers out there have for automating your businesses (for a relatively cheap price). I really only want to be involved in the creation of my lead lists and negotiating the price at the end. Basically, I only want to be involved in the beginning and end of the process. The main activities of my processes are broken down into the following:

Developing mailing list. I’ll do this myself since this is the heart of everything for me.

Automating the creation/sending of mailers. This is hugely time consuming for me to type or write the letters. What do you guys do? Hire interns? Pay spouses? Yellowletterscomplete.com? Any creative, cheap ideas on drip campaigns? Pros? Cons? Suggestions?

Screening callers. I have a full time job and can’t answer during the day. Do you guys use answering services? Virtual Assistants? Any suggestions on the best way to automate this? I am thinking of having my google voice message refer all callers to my site where they can enter their own information so I don’t have to spend as much time calling people back and playing phone tag. My thoughts are maybe forwarding my google voice number to an answering service and having them simply enter the persons information into my website while on the phone with them. This means all roads will lead to my website. My website automatically sends submissions via email to me and my partners for immediate review.

Scheduling appointments for property visit. Do you do this yourselves?

Lead tracking. I kept notes on leads but never really had a decent way of tracking them. Any thoughts? Suggestions? I checked MQ's free lead tracking website but I am not entirely comfortable entering my lead information into the website of another wholesaler. How do you guys track leads? Do you do it yourselves? Do you have assistants do it?

Lead follow up: How and when do you follow up with people who may be more motivated to sell in the future (ie following up with them in 3-4 months)? Any cheap ideas for tracking leads? Do you follow up with calls, emails, or letters?

Negotiating. Only me. I won’t have anyone else negotiate with sellers.

So, Im curious to see how others reduce the amount of time they spend IN their business….and make time to focus ON the business. I know all of this has been discussed in bits and pieces right here on BP, but im curious to see ‘whole systems’….if you guys are willing to share. Thanks!

It always surprises me how much estimating repair costs is made into a huge hurdle for new wholesalers. Here is my tip for learning what estimated repair costs to advertise to your buyers list.....None. DON'T. Simply tell them what work needs done but don't put a price on it. Your price might be different than the price they can get the work done for so don't worry about telling them the estimate repair costs. Just learn what standards need met to make it habitable and tell your buyers that.

Rick Harmon I totally agree about attorney's wanting their clients to get the most money possible (and thus encouraged them to list it on the MLS). Several of them actually told me that on the phone, in fact. :)

The attorney leads didnt pan out, as stated above, but I just wanted some practice at the marketing component....'just to see if it would work'. It was fun to do but never yielded any profit.

I even learned a little trick here on BP where one guy suggested having your own attorney send your ----professional-looking---- 'we buy houses' mailers to other attorneys for you. The logic is that they have to read mail from other attorneys so 100% your letters should get read (envelopes opened, at least). I never tried it but thought it was a clever idea.

Carolina E

The two that came from me are these:

2. Mailers to Property owners whose assessment went way up this year. (we had new property assessments done this year in Pittsburgh and I figured some people might become motivated to sell if their taxes were to go up a lot). This was just an idea and I never pursued it.

3. Mailers to Properties that were owned by known investors who went out of business (This was a reference to a local investor here in Pittsburgh who sold crappy properties to unsuspecting buyers at high prices. He is out of business now but I figured targeting his previous customers--who by now should be aware they were ripped off--might get me a deal or two). After finding 15 of his previous customers who still own the houses they bought from him (through court records), I sent them mailers and tried this..... but didnt get any deals.

Kelly P. That sounds ok in theory but I have never negotiated on a mortgage before so I cannot help you out. The only drawback is your are counting on the PR to negotiate when they may not have the skills or experience in negotiating.

Hopefully someone else can chime in and give some advice....

Amy Arata I forgot to ask: Can you share what Prosper.com did to help you when the others defaulted on the loans and burned you?

Kyle J.
According to my coworker, (If I recall correctly) lending club has its own collections department and will seek to get the invested monies back for the lenders when the borrower falls behind. The loans are unsecured and may be risky but that is why you:

1. Can get 26% returns :)
2. Break up and spread out your loan amount into smaller chunks and lend to different borrowers
3. Personalize your lending criteria and only lend on those loans that you feel comfortable on (for example, my coworker would only lend to borrowers who were going to agree to cancel the credit card that the loan was going to be used to pay off so they couldn’t rack up a huge credit card bill again. However, I am not sure if he was able to realistically apply this standard to those he gave his money to—I’ll have to ask him)

Prashant Patel Well, I guess there is no need for my proposed BP experiment—you already bought a house using P2P lending! Ha! Can you give some details on the loan? How much was it for? How long did it take to get approved? Im guessing you had to offer no collateral, correct? What rate? How long was the loan for? Did you use the loan for a down payment or for the entire purchase price? Did you get more than one loan? Where there any good or bad things about using it? Any recommendations for others on here?

Hey all.

In another discussion on peer to peer lending I came up with an idea. I am willing to identify a multi-family property nearby that is listed on the MLS and will post the particulars on a few of the most popular 'peer to peer' lending (crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, or whatever you want to call it) websites to see if it is possible to get funding for the purchase real estate through these sites. Then I can review them all in one post here on BP. We can call it a BP Social Experiment! I am open to comments, suggestions, etc. if anyone wants to chime in to see what options are out there…

Though I have already tried two of them:

Money360.com: Already posted on there for a reasonably priced property and requested 75% loan to value (recommended by the site) and got no hits, emails, notices or anything at all. It was a simple and free process to enter my data (though it took three tries before the information finally got submitted-website glitch). But, nothing came of it so I cant recommend it or say its legit.

Lendingclub.com: I requested a business loan for $18k (thinking of using it as a down payment…but never gave that detail). I was tentatively ‘approved’ for $18k at around 12% though I didn’t pursue it. Once you do pursue the loan you are approved for, then it is posted on their site and investors can review your request, credit, etc. and offer to contribute an amount towards your loan. Once enough investors have agreed to contribute and their money collectively equals the $18k you requested then the loan is green-lit. I have a coworker who lends through this site so I know it is legit (for his lending purposes, anyway). He tested the waters by agreeing to lend $2,500 altogether, but broken up into smaller chunks of several hundred dollars that he lends on different loans. His $2,500 is currently yielding a return of 26%. This is because he is lending on risky loans to people who are in credit card debt and are being charged 29% by the credit card companies—so they are more than happy to accept my coworkers loan at 26%.

MyHousedeals.com (Offers to connect you to private lenders): I have not tried but may be willing to open an account and then post a review here on BP.

Kickstarter.com: This is a hugely popular lending site but I don’t think the lending parameters allow for real estate loans.

Prosper.com: Popular site, but again, not sure real estate loans are possible.

Any other site suggestions? Kiva.com? Microplace? Kabbage.com? Ill review a few of them (we can set a limit of, say, five sites) and I am willing to pay small registration fees if any of the sites require it.

Any specific data/review points you want me to consider? I am thinking of identifying a multi-family property that offers high cash on cash returns and then post the details here on BP as well as on those sites to see if any of them would be legit in assisting the funding of a deal.

Could be interesting…