All Forum Posts by: Lucas Machado

@Rami Shahmram I always attend Dade REIA (www.dreia.org) and Broward REIA (www.breia.com). BREIA's next meeting is tonight...Hope to see you there!

BiggerPockets community,

We have an employment opportunity excellent for a new and motivated real estate agent in South Florida that desires to build a large client base immediately.  Listing agent must be ready to work intensely (this opportunity is not for 9 to 5er).   See the full description below.

If you are interested or know someone interested, please let me know. The job application is also online at Indeed.com.

Thank you.

Summary

New real estate brokerage, House Heroes Realty LLC, seeks a licensed real estate sales agent as part of our team. Through extensive online and direct-mail marketing, the brokerage is generating motivated home seller leads every day. The brokerage will immediately refer motivated seller leads to the sales agent on a daily basis. Additionally, our related company buys properties to fix and flip and the sales agent will be the listing agent for those rehabbed properties.

The brokerage will provide the sales agent approximately 15 referrals each month of homeowners that contacted us about selling their house. Approximately 5 of those referrals are ready to sell in the very near future. We have a backlog of approximately 175 home seller leads, which previously contacted us about selling their property, that will transition to the sales agent. The sales agent will be entitled to 25% of the commission on every closed sale from these referrals, and 75% of the commission on listings that they obtain through their own means.

The agent is expected to follow-up with prospective/current clients via our established online/mobile CRM database and document all contact and events. The agent is expected to contact the home seller lead, provide property and strategy analysis, explain the MLS listing process, and persuade the home seller to list through the brokerage. The agent is further expected to meet prospective clients in person, market themselves, and generate referrals through their own excellence. The agent must absolutely possess the highest ethical quality, as our core principles are honesty, integrity, and providing value to all people. The agent must be available to prospective and current clients at all times, including consistently relaying offers, showing properties, and advising as to preparing for sale. The agent must be focused and "all in" on this position.

This is a contract (1099) position.

Required

• Writing skills - able to write detailed, professional, and persuasive listings
• Evaluate home values via analysis of comparable properties
• Understanding of standard Florida real estate contracts and supporting documents
• Coordinate property closings, including but not limited to: conferring with escrow companies, lenders, home inspectors, etc.
• Reside in Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach Counties, and provide services in each county.
• Available outside of standard M-F 9am-5pm hours in order to accommodate sellers’ busy schedules (i.e. evenings, weekends)

Preferred, but not required:

• Spanish
• Experience helping sellers successfully short sale their home
• Willing to publicize self (write blog articles; participate in realtor organizations; video testimonials with clients; pictures for social media)
• Experience/willingness to do your own marketing for seller leads

Job Type: Full-time

Job Location: South Florida, FL

Required education: High school or equivalent

Required licenses or certifications: Real Estate License & Driver’s LicenseWrite your marketplace ad

@Marcus Jefferson How much time and/or money are you willing to invest in developing motivated seller leads?  Are you in this for a couple deals, or are you looking obtain high quantities of leads? How prepared are you, when a motivated seller lead comes in, to execute?

My business generates over 100 motivated seller leads every month, and I've been working on building a motivated seller funnel for nearly two years.  This topic is very near and dear to my heart.

Our website "went live" about 10-months ago.  Last time I checked, we were number 1 in organic search for "sell my house Broward" and middle of page-2 and top page-3 for similar searches for Palm Beach and Miami-Dade County (my farm area).  Google can be tricky in terms of ranking, and time is major for Google recognizing your site as an authority.  Most sites above us were established 3-5 years ago.  I have spent many hours on branding, blogging, social media, back-links, YouTube videos to climb the SEO ranks, and I have more work to do to reach #1 on all the major searches (hard to fit everything in a 24-hour day).  Building free motivated seller leads online is not a simple button you can turn on, but if you are committed to it, it can be source.  As an aside, don't fall for any blackhat or promises about SEO growth.  It requires a long-term commitment to the process - Google will penalize you for shortcuts such as backlinking on low quality sites and "copying" "WE BUY HOUSES" blog articles that are on the internet 10 if not 100 times.

We also spend quite a large sum on Google Adwords, which is nice because it doesn't require time to rank on Google adwords.  The returns on deals are so high that spending a few thousand per month on adwords easily pays off on one fix-and-flip per year (and the goal is more than that, particularly long term).  Google Adwords is nice because Google recently changed the number ads they show about 6-months ago (it used to be 2-ads, now you have to pass about 4-ads to get to the organic results).  We also do Facebook advertising, Bing advertising, Google Re-Marketing, etc.

As far as direct-mail, you need quantity and consistency.  I've heard stories about people sending a few letters and landing a deal, I'm sure it's possible but it has not been my experience.  DMM can yield great quantities of motivated sellers but you need volume and consistency.  We have had best success (not surprisingly) on probate DMM, to which we send a white business letter and typically get a 1-2% response rate.  For everything else we mail "postcards" which are super cheap and have a fairly low response rate (.3-.6%), but the call-ins are more motivated.  I note our response rates are in South Florida, which is extremely competitive - in a different geography I'm sure our rates would be much higher.  I plan to run some split tests in the New Year to try to up my response rates.

@Steve Milford Great post, thank you.

@Elizabeth Nenque I can't speak from the perspective of moving into the home, but I have some experience on the issue in fix-and-flips.  I handled it by re-doing the financial analysis, based on both the rental period and then ultimately the flip.  We buy with private cash, which for us has a higher rate of interest than a traditional mortgage since our lending is not intended for long term buy and hold.  Even if there is a big payout at the flip end, no one wants to be bleeding cash every month if the previous homeowner/tenant is dragging their feet.  Take a hard look at the cash flow on the property to see if it is acceptable.

My other perspective on this (could be applicable to both moving in and investment) is "great deals" are rarely a perfect situation.  If it's a vacant home and move-in ready you can expect to have plenty of bidders, and limited motivation for the seller to give you a great deal.  Our best deals are always when there is a difficulty, including problem tenants or remaining owners. 

@Kai Wong The guidelines you are asking for, to my knowledge anyway, don't exist and could not exist because it depends on the local neighborhood how much you should anticipate to change for a specific feature.  

Additionally, this is investment and with investment there comes risk. We can make intelligent ARV estimates, which simply turn out not to be accurate due to changes in buyer preference or market demand. You mitigate your risk by having spread in your deal. For example, you have an ROI goal or use a 70% rule that based on all your estimates gives you X% of profit. If it sells for less than you expected, you should still have a reasonable profit.

I don't even really come up with a "hard ARV" unless there is very clear evidence. Normally, I create a range from high to low ARV and consider each potential scenario before closing.

Also consider: while I appreciate you putting thought into this as I have spent many hours analyzing props, the biggest challenge (at least in South Florida, could be different elsewhere) is finding, financing, and executing, not calculating the ARV.

@Kai Wong 

J Scott's guide is pretty detailed, so in terms of putting that into practice, start analyzing 10+ properties everyday and in a month you will have developed skill and in a year it should be second nature.  

As an aside, once you've done that several hundred times, start thinking about the analyses in levels based on the seller.  Specifically, if a person wishes to sell for $750,000 and there is no home sales above $250,000, you can immediately stop your analysis and save yourself considerable time.  Quite often, sellers have unrealistic price demands when they are not motivated to sell.  Sellers often call to just ask for "an estimate" and so advising them of the most comparable 3-5 recent sales suffices.  Where you really need to dig in and spend time is where the seller is motivated and the comps are sparse/unclear.

Since you are just starting off, Redfin should be a fair resource for sharpening your skills in comparing different properties. Once your ready to close a deal though, make sure to heed J Scott's advice and contact a realtor to make sure you have seen all available comps. Realtors and their assigned assistants have access via MLS to more sales than you will find scouring Trulia, Redfin, and the like. Touch base with an agent to make sure you are seeing everything. Took me over a year to see just how much information I was missing.

@Daniel Cuevas I'm not sure if you have a background swinging a hammer (I do not), so for our business we primarily use a price per square foot of $30.00 per square foot for major rehabs to determine if we are "in the ball park" with the seller before spending considerable time analyzing the property.  There is always hundreds of properties to analyze, so if your spending anymore than 10 minutes putting together an initial offer it will take up a lot of time on owners that may have no interest in selling at your price.  

If we are close or in agreement with the seller, we walk through the property, take detailed pictures, and if it is considerable work consult a trusted GC.  I certainly would not make major renovation decisions without a walk through with a good GC/inspector.  My point is, not to discourage you from making good estimates, but don't get too hung up on math from your desk as when you visit the property/walkthrough with a GC/inspector expectations often will change even if you spend hours calculating on your own.

Good example: we entered a contract on a 950 sq. ft. property last week that appeared to be CBS from our Google streetview and based on our conversations with the seller who did not have much information as she lived out of state.  Month-to-month tenants allegedly paying $1,000/month.  We estimated about $30,000 repairs.  When we visited the property it was wood frame with extensive termite damage, loose and old electrical wiring, and collapsing roof.  Tear down.  Went from $30,000 repair 3-6 month project, to a $125,000 year long construction project.

As @Jeff B. noted, negotiate with the seller to see if he will remove the tenants prior to closing.  I'm not up to date with traditional financing practices since we always buy with cash, but follow-up with the seller to see if the tenants are month-to-month or have expiring leases.  On our flip deals with month-to-month tenants, we have for the most part removed month-to-month tenants without too much difficulty with "cash for keys."

@Kelsey Lee One mechanism for no-money wholesaling is "co-wholesaling."  For example, a wholesaler colleague has a property under contract and unfortunately can't find a cash buyer.  You can help your colleague by finding a buyer on your cash buyer list, and in exchange request a piece of the wholesale profit.  Everyone wins.  You can also "co-wholesale" by asking for permission to contact your cash buyers about the property and pitch it to your cash buyers at a higher price, and you profit by keeping the difference between the price you obtained and the asking price from the first wholesaler.

@Assi S. will do! Check your pm.