All Forum Posts by: Will Sifert

When my real estate agent pulls comps for me I see list price, original list price, and sale price.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I will check them all out.

Is there any other sites/ways to check what recently sold houses have sold for other than through the MLS? I work with an agent and have a good relationship with him but I don't want to bother him run comps for me every time I need to check a house especially if I am doing a wholesale deal or keeping it myself as a rental (he wont be making any money).

Realtor.com seems to work great if I want to check what is listed for sale in the MLS, and I noticed they added a "recently sold" option, however it doesn't seem to be working (at least not in my area as it shows 0 results for broad searches).

I've heard of deed fax services and I am sure I could figure out how to check my local clerk of court's records for recorded sales, but was hoping to find something a little easier, if anything exists.

How do you guys check for recent sales ?

Thanks

Couple questions (as I am trying to learn as much as I can)... How can you tell from looking at the houses that sold on the MLS if it was an investor or individual that purchased it? Also, correct me if I am wrong, but if a house isn't listed in the MLS (FSBO, purchased via wholesaler etc.) then the sale wouldn't show up in any MLS data? The only way you would see those sales is if you have some type of deed fax service? Lastly, and this might be a rhetorical question but how can you know what the majority of investors in your area are doing, unless you know the majority of the investors and are privy to their deals?

Huge props to Michael!

Michael, it's great that you are willing to help out new people but you are taking it 10x further with this offer. You are willing to spend a significant amount of your own time and money to help get someone started. That's awesome!

I don't know if I have a great resume per say, but I am willing to share my story for consideration of your help.

I've always loved real estate, in fact I've taken the class to be a real estate agent twice, even though I wasn't planning on getting licensed. I just wanted to give myself a basic understanding how everything works.

I purchased my first fixer up house about a year after graduating college, in 2001. At the time I couldn't get a loan from the bank ( I was stilling living in an apartment), but knew a "friend of a friend" who owned a bunch of rentals and loaned me the money to make the 57K purchase + 25K in improvements. I did the majority of the repairs myself and it was a great learning experience. Once I finished the renovations I realized there was very little profit left in selling it but that it had a good positive cash flow. I was also able to refinance the loan through a bank about a year later and get a much better rate. With mortgage, prop tax and insurance I was paying about $550 a month and was able to rent the house for $850.

About 4 years later Hurricane Katrina hit and my parent's house was flooded and destroyed. Luckily my rental wasn't flooded and it just happened that my tenants were from out of state and decided to move back home. It was very satisfying from me to be able to help my parents for a change, by providing them with a place to live. But what had made it even more priceless was that my dad had been adamant that I was making a bad decision when I purchased the house 4 years prior and not only did it turn out to be a good purchase but it gave him a place to live. My parents purchased their own house about a year later and the market was booming at the time so I was able to sell the house for 130K. It worked out be a great deal, part dumb luck, part great timing with the market.

In 2003 I had established great credit and my revenue had been increasing so I was able to borrow a good amount of money from the bank. I also had a friend who is contractor who was building houses and looking to expand his business. So, it was a great opportunity for us to partner up, I would get the construction loans secured and he took care of the building the house. I would also help market them. We built and sold about 15 houses before the market started going bad in 2007/08. I also learned a lot of lessons, we kept expanding and building more and had no idea that the market could go soft. We got left with about 6 houses that we had to sell for break even or less than cost to get sold. He later stopped building all together.

By 2009 I was anxious to start investing in real estate but it was hard to find something profitable since the market was doing so bad. A real estate agent introduced me to buy tax liens at property tax sales. I enjoy doing this and just finished my 4th year of going to the property tax sales but the only negative is that they happen once a year.

I started looking for other real estate avenues I could get involved with and heard an ad on the radio for Than Merrill's Fortune Builder's seminar, and that is where I was introduced to wholesaling.

The last 6 weeks or so I have been spending a lot of time reading on Bigger Pockets and trying to learn as much as I can. I have an extensive internet marketing background so I have several projects underway to help generate online leads. I have also created programs to get information from my local clerk of courts office that is generating lots of local leads that I will need to contact via the mail. A couple weeks ago I reconnected with my contractor friend and found out that he has a money partner and they are trying to find deals to rehab for rentals and needs my help to help find them good deals. Now it's time for me to get to work and try to make as few mistakes as possible :)

I completely understand that, I guess I was hoping to find out some type of gauge of what to expect, but I see now it's a silly question. There is way too many variables (quality of the list, presentation - handwritten, size of envelope, etc etc... what you say in the letter to how well you talk to them on the phone, experience level of person doing the campaign, etc.) making it impossible for someone to say " you should get % of replies / deals".

Sorry if I gave the impression I had no money to spend. I do have time and money, I just prefer to not over pay for things. The only reason I said I was mailing 1,000 people is because that is how many names I have collected so far to start with.

I want to keep my costs as low as possible not because I am broke, but because I want to turn a profit. If my expenses are higher than what I make on a deal then obviously I can't profit from that method. Mailing is just one of the advertising avenues I will be using. I know my experience level and expertise will play a huge factor as well, so feed back I get from here like "mail smaller list, several times" is good advice I will use.

The reason I started this thread was to find out if the cheapest way for me to send was to buy several rolls of stamps or if there was something else I could to save some bucks (and increase my profit.)

Thanks for the feedback. I can afford to send a lot more than $500 a month, I was trying to get a gauge of what to expect from doing 1 mailing of 1000 letters. (I also always try to do things as low cost as possible.) I do agree, a lot will depend on my experience and what I put in the letter, how I answer the phone etc... and I am going to try to learn as much as I can to do it right the first time, but like anything else, experience is gained through practice.

Ok thanks for the feedback, was wondering if you did call people if you had any tips. I've never had problems with the mail being delivered in my area so I guess I will stick with that.

My suggestions would be a lot more education before you try to do a deal. You say you having a hard time finding buyers and sellers locally, it's possible that could be because you haven't learned enough on how to find them. I like when people are straight with me and don't sugar coat things, that is when you actually get the most helpful advice... so here is yours, you need to either find a mentor, go to a seminar/workshop or spend hours reading / asking questions here (or all of the above) before you go try to do deals, especially million dollar ones ;)