All Forum Posts by: Mark Sewell

Well, it doesn't have to be perfect.  It may not ever be perfect.  But get it as close as you can.  Think of it as a bucket -- you won't want holes in your bucket, particularly if you are going to pay to fill it.

If you have a pretty decent site that shows you as credible, then fire away - take massive action.  Just know that it matters.  I see spikes on website visit metrics every time we mail letters or postcards.  People want to know who it is that is sending them these letters and postcards.

Honestly I don't have the answers myself.  Testing and more testing.  Paying a lot to learn.

I would have answered these questions yesterday, but that was before the podcast with Brent and Adam dropped today so now I am rethinking it a bit.  I found this to be very interesting, and pretty creative.  They actually lead with the text message... wow.  You might want to give that episode a listen.

I would not bother spending the money on the mail until you have your online presence established.  Essentially you are just driving traffic online to check you out, when you send out mail or any other form of direct contact.  They will want to look to see if you are real and credible.  SEO is a bigger part of this than you might suspect.

Get good at SEO, Social Media marketing and creating content. You'll never be without work, and those skills aren't limited to just REI.

Where in SE Texas are you at, if you don't mind me asking?

Some of you are familiar with Carrot.com websites and Adrian Nez that is one of the coaches over there.  He recently did a call about using data to drive decisions, and he showed us how to use listsource.com data to find out which zipcodes in our areas have the both cash buyers/transactions in the last 12 months.  I figured they would be down south of the medcenter or around EADO or Indy Heights or some of the places that we discuss quite a lot here on the forums.... Nope.

NW side of town by a mile (Sugarland 77379 came in 5th).

Zipcodes / cash transactions in last 12 months:

No other zip-codes had over 100 cash deals in the last year.  So investors like these areas, either has flips or for buy/hold rentals.  

Honestly, I'm not even sure how to explain this, other than the economic effect from the completion of the Grand Parkway.  No industrial presence really, other than the so-called Energy Corridor along I-10 but that is certainly nothing new.  And heck, Exxon moved up to the The Woodlands.... 

Granted this data only takes into account Fort Bend and Harris Counties, so it could well be one of the zip-codes up in Montgomery County might be right up there also.

But I would say this reflects the movement to the NW.  I'd say buying it up out there along 99 isn't an altogether bad plan.

@Cody L. brother, I had to laugh.  For you Katy is BFE, man!  You don't even stray outside the loop, for the most part, right?

@Jay Hinrichs I wonder if you are familiar with a guy in Kelso, WA who was a builder/developer there.  His last name was Fundingsland.  He was part of some massive project up in the hills above town, really pretty area.  I grew up not far from there, went to Kelso HS, and I had a lot of friends and some relatives that lived up there in that neighborhood.  Then they developed mudslides and the whole subdivisions - hundreds of homes - were condemned.  Crazy to imagine the scale of that.  This would have been sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s... Not sure exactly. When I left school and joined the service in 1987 all was fine.  Since you are/were big in Portland, only an hour away, I figured you might have some recollection.  That guy was a distant relative of mine, like my grandmothers uncle or something.

Probably a scam.  If this was a true owner financing deal, the seller would direct them to work first with a RMLO or some such entity to get qualified.  Or even if the seller did their own approval process in-house, they would do this first.  And then if the parties like each other, then there would be a RE contract, and escrow, etc., just like any other transaction.

The NW side continues to push outward.  Eventually Aggieland will just blend into Houston, with a few semi-rural suburbs towns connecting them.  I think as we see more jobs/businesses relocating to areas right outside the 99 Grand Parkway up there, it will have a measurable effect on places like Anderson, Navasota, Waller, etc.

Love it man.  Keep it coming.

And you are right - personal referrals as being trustworthy are almost as good as any others, and certainly way better than none at all.