All Forum Posts by: Mark Sewell

Oh man, I was in that same place.

I went to some insurance agent buddies of mine, and just asked them if they have any contractors among their client base - figured if they cared enough to pay for basic business liability insurance, and have been in business a while, then they can't be all that bad.  They recommended some roofing & exterior guys, and since that was some of what I needed to finish up, I called them.  It worked out, they did that work quickly, per the agreed number, as agreed.  So they offered to do some work inside and we did that as well. They did well for me, and probably saved my bacon on that project (still lost money on it but at least I crossed the finish line).  Maybe I was just lucky.

I can share the contacts for those guys if you are interested.

Chris, I get what you are saying.  And you aren't wrong.  But I think really people are unsure how to ask the question in a better way...

Is this area likely to see some appreciation?  

Is this an area where a lot of other local investors have rental properties?

Are there other considerations that I should take into account?

I think more than anything new investors (like me) seek some validation -- eg., am I on the right track here? Is this really a bad idea and why?

And as you point out, it is probably hard to answer that without getting really granular right down to the address or subdivision.  Houston is just so - all over the place.

FB is great for seller leads - but the knock on them is that they generally aren't all that motivated.  I've only had a handful of them, but they were all in the 'would like to sell' segment vs 'really need to sell'.  But that is probably to be expected.  

Ideally, for me, the thing to do would be to get organized and handoff some of these leads (that aren't listed) to realtors.  Get a fee, even if it is only $25 or $50 and plow it back into the FB machine.  Win win win.

@Isaac Magee huge respect for sharing the break-even deal.  Thank God you bought it right - could have been worse.  Ask me how I know.

I have heard some of the local pundits say that Sharpstown is going to be good area and gentrification is slowly moving in.  And in fact I would say that area the OP is talking about is right on the border there with Bellaire so it is already happening, to some extent.

Were we thinking maybe Tuesday night?

@Marcial Pimentel didn't realize you also commute to Galleria - we should go have lunch.  In fact I have a lead that I cannot do anything with, in Copperfield, but it might be perfect for what you were describing the other night.

Yes, get to a RE Investment meetup and just find some folks that are out doing it.  Starting running in the right herds. 

Hardest part will be finding some deals, but you can start by analyzing a few dozen/hundred of them.  It won't take you long to get good at working the values of the property (after repairs) but the tricky part is getting the repair estimate right. 

Get a HM lender that is local - even if you got the funds, these guys are investors themselves and an excellent set of training wheels.  

And fergawdsakes -- don't talk yourself into a deal just because you really, really want to 'take action' and get started asap.  That's what I did.

Reach out if you want to go have a brewed beverage.  Not an expert, but I can at least help you with a few contacts.

I just saw a great discussion on Revenue Generating Activities -- or 'RGA's .  For those of that have done less than ten deals, I think they said, we should not be spending time on CRM systems and brand building, etc.  That was a Propelio video on YT (Grant Kemp) which offers a ton of good free content.

Maybe we could debate what to do when, but I've done like 3 deals -- and one of those was just buying a note -- so this topic really speaks to me loud and clear.

Look up a guy name Ron Rana -- he runs a couple meetups over on the westside.  Another guy over there on the eastside is Fabian Alvarado.  I like those guys.

One HM lender that I CAN recommend is Catalyst.  @Austin Pool can help you.

@Barry Pekin yeah - guilty.  I don't consider myself a wholesaler but I am trying to figure out my own lead generation game, and I have looked at every system out there - not what I should have been doing.

If you are going to have any systems at all, to start, it would be a follow up system.  It might just be an excel spreadsheet to start.  I'm working on a lead right now that we initially contacted 11 months ago.

The other one would be call rail or someway of tracking your calls.  Nice to have but not super critical to start.

You can do the county or you can do a 15 mile radius pin drop.  That's all I know.  

Or you can try to write ad copy that doesn't have the word house in it, or otherwise won't get flagged by FB.

A better way, actually, is run a REACH objective campaign at a lead list that you upload.  So you can hyper-target your audience this way - but you still need 1000+ people on your list for it to really work.  Plus FB won't find/match them all, so you should really have 1500 or more in the list you upload.