All Forum Posts by: Lucas Machado

@Troy Nonnemacher The goal is to generate off-market leads, right? There are two pieces of this: (1) get your website found by home sellers, (2) get person finding it to enter their name and contact information in the form. That's the end game. If you fail on either of those two pillars, then your site will not be successful for lead generation. It can be business oriented, family friendly, local, national, one solution or ten solutions, doesn't matter. People who search things like "sell my house" "sell a house fast" need to find it and be immediately directed what to do. Focus on designing your site with those being the only priorities.

Check out InvestorCarrot, or lead propeller to see a tried and true lead generation site. You can build your own and there are good reasons to do that (i.e. more freedom), but if you are straying very far from those formats you will not get results. Be cognizant that your landing pages should leave no doubt exactly what a person should do.

Once you set-up a lead generation site, time to create traffic. SEO, PPC. This will not happen on its own. I'm not saying message (family friendly or business) doesn't matter, but it's not as important as being found and clear direction to a form.

Welcome to BP!

@Jerel Lyons @Erica M Chambers 

This is very simple. You take the address and plug it into the local county appraiser website. For example, in my geography, it looks like this: http://www.miamidade.gov/propertysearch/#/

This will give you the owner's name and the owners address. You can then send a letter to whatever that address is.

Couple things to look out for: (1) type their name in the property appraiser to check if they own multiple properties - if they own 5+ properties it's not worth your time mailing, (2) many vacant or abandoned houses are REOs - make sure you aren't sending mail to banks, corporations, etc.

Lastly, if I was doing driving for dollars, I would not mail a yellow letter. Putting aside the fact I would never mail a yellow letter because of my model, you can do better than sending a mail piece since you are spending considerable energy building the list.

Sign up with BeenVerified or Intellius to find phone numbers, e-mails, social media pages. You can "lead" with one letter, but then call / email. Why spend hours and gas money driving around to build this "super hot" list and chance you don't make contact? Most likely they will get the mail piece, but not always. It's fairly common for owners to list the wrong mailing address (intentionally or unintentionally).

I've even seen vacant lands list vacant lands as the mailing address . . . About 25 to 50% of eviction filings I reviewed had a different mailing address in the appraiser site and on the court filing. My presumption is the appraiser was in correct because the owner had hand-written their personal address in the court filing.

Find those deals! "There is gold in the streets just waiting for someone to come and scoop it up."

Welcome!

Awesome! I'm inspired.

Some suggestions:

(1) Check out the local rules regarding marketing, I know in my market if you have a license and market that must be disclosed on your marketing;

(2) I would carefully consider how you intend to close and vetting buyers - and how committed you are to be being an agent vs. being a wholesaler; I can say I would definitely lose it if I ever worked with someone who I thought was an agent at a brokerage and then i found them wholesaling my property, Of course, that would be mitigated if they explained what they were going to do well ahead of time - and didn't pitch it as "oh, I'm gonna sell it off-market". I'm not saying it can't work, just something to keep in mind, like Miyagi said "Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later squish like grape."

(3) Watch out for co-wholesaling, although you have a license, perhaps others don't. I could see that as risky if I'm betting my listing agent career on it not being a problem.

Good luck!

@Spencer Scott

I'm kind of surprised to the suggest of ownership for 4-years+. 

First, that would be a massive number of leads. In my experience, there is no way a homeowner will accept a lower price than what they paid four years ago. Perhaps some other people have some magic to ask homeowners to take a $50,000 loss on something that happened four years ago. Particularly if it's owner occupied, the motivation is somewhat limited and it's probably in "somewhat" decent shape. That isn't to say owner occupied can't be deals, but hard for me to see four years ago they bought it, and it's not in such horrible shape they are taking a serious hair cut to wholesale prices. 

Now, MAYBE there is a small section of the 80 to 100% equity that are just so fed up they are willing and able to sell at wholesale prices that actually could be a deal at 4 to 6 years out. 30% equity? You aren't just asking the owner to take a cut at this point, you're very likely asking the bank at a wholesale price. 

Play the numbers out: purchased house for $300,000 mortgage in 2013. Perhaps that mortgage is 4-years in at $39,000. So they owe around $260,000. Even assuming there has been good appreciation to around $350,000 at the base price. Just apply a basic 70% rule without rehab. $210,000. Now, I know this is some dirty math, but you get the point. 30% equity at 4 years, I just don't see it at all. Now we're talking about wholesale numbers for multiple investors to get their cut?

Also, I mean, have you thought through what wholesaling owner occupied properties means? You prepared to walk strangers through someone's property while they are inside? What exactly are you going to tell them? You could try to not let people see the property, and in some cases that has worked on an AMAZING price, but I tend to think you're not going to pull that off on a mass basis until you have some amazing buyer's list of people that don't inspect property. Now, I Know people have been successful with this. But before entering that zone, just make sure you can handle the heat.

I would go as far as to say I wouldn't even mail in 2005 to 2007, because most of those homeowners bought at such amazingly high prices we still can't cover the debt in many cases. And, psychologically speaking, I have never done a deal in 4 years where the seller agreed to less than what they paid.

You're also has no direct motivation tie. That's fine - I've done well with general lists too. But sending ALOT more than this volume. You will get better results mailing probates, evictions (with regular owners that only own 1 or 2 properties), back-taxes, violations. Combine that with the criteria in your general list - and now you have a good list. Sure, if you are going to mass mail 8,000 then perhaps you can just accidentally hit those hotter leads ; )

Last, your budget is set to 3 months. Even though your wholesaling, which in theory could be a quick deal, most likely it's not. If it's game over in 3 months, my guess is your budget expires before you make money - but that can all vary on your market, luck, negotiation skills. I can just say when I mail something, I'm not expecting profit from it in the next 3 months.

So there seems to be this concept that "wholesalers" are out to trick, scam, find a sucker, etc.

I don't even wholesale in the traditional sense, i.e. I'd rather close to give more leverage on the as-is sale, do the deal directly myself OR make sure the seller is fully on board with understanding the process of the showings to other investors and a double close. But honestly, that is pretty rare for me. Bigger profits in waiting out the seller to meet my price and do the deal myself.

The point I want to make, for people just breaking in the industry as they find their niche and reading all this wholesaler hate here, is people have different strategies, beliefs, about the property. The idea people are "tired" of seeing wholesale lists and wholesalers are too blame doesn't really make sense. If you don't like a wholesaler, think they estimate ARV or repairs either intentionally or unintentionally inaccurately, why are you subscribing to their list? That's your option? No one is forcing wholesale deals down anyone's throat. If you feel like that's the case, perhaps its a you problem in that you are trying to work with wholesalers who don't help you. It's literally 1 button to unsubscribe or a 5 second phone call or e-mail your not interested.

Now, the other thing is people seem to think that a wholesaler is out trick/scam some investor about repairs or values. You have the address, you see the property, it's the investor's responsibility to vet this deal. Why would anyone rely on anyone they don't really know to make a deal? Also - it's not realistic for a wholesaler to anticipate some other investors strategy. In fact, sure you get a random home run deal here and there, I get most my deals when I am applying strategies that no one else is (for example, complicated rental situations where I have to keep a tenant for even 7 or 8 months at a loss, additions to boost ARV, adding units). Wholesaler could not possibly understand this and it wouldn't make sense for them to try.

You can get me a formal Broker Opinion and I STILL take it with a grain of salt. It's my money on the line, not some broker, some agent, some wholesaler. None of those people have any "skin the same" so why would anyone possibly defer even 1% to anyone of those people. If you are, well, that's a you problem. If I see the value I do the deal, and my trusted GC gives me the quote, I literally give absolute zero weight to any stranger to my business (I do rely on trusted employees, but always double check the work). 

Since my website has pretty good Google rank, often I get contacted by wholesalers. I mostly say "no thank you" since the deals 99.9% don't meet my criteria. No reason to get worked up or angry, people are hustling, trying to break in anyway they can. If they have their a contract, or a license and co-wholesaling, my understanding is that is ethical. I'm not an attorney in every state, but that's my understanding.

My main problem is wholesalers who contact me with deals not under contract or pretend to be the owner or "friend". However, this is the vast minority.

Down in South Florida - general accepted rule of thumb is around $100/sq (and I've asked a ton of people this same question). This is just the construction costs, with blue-prints, lawyer fees, surveys, etc., usually gets pushed up to $110/sq.