All Forum Posts by: Mark Shaver

A list from Mike LaCava's article "6 Ways to Flip Houses With No Money":

• Real Estate Investor Partners
• Hard Money Lenders
• Private Money Lenders
• Real Estate Wholesaling
• House Flipping and Crowdfunding
• Seller Financing

My explanations

Some strategies don't leave real estate on your property. But you get the money and experience to find the right property. It's better than just working 9-5 year after year.

An elephant

The old joke says “How Do You Eat An Elephant?: One Bite at a Time”.

1st bit. Learn to find a property for 50% of ARV (After Repair Value).

Resell the information to an investor. Get your 1.5% of ARV. Do it several times.

2nd bit. You are already able to find the real estate for 50% of ARV. Now you have to learn how making the estimate of repair. (See the Chris Feltus's article "The 70% Rule").

And now you have to learn how to look for builders willing to buy the house and make repairs. (Dad? Dad's construction friends? Construction friends of your friends?)

The builder-buyer gives you half of the profit (30% of the market price). Of course, you will not have a property after repair. :-( But you will get 15% of the market price and experience. :-)

Repeat the second step 5 times to collect 75% of the market price in cash.

3rd bit. Find a new property again for half the price. You already do it easily. You buy and repair. You use the money you've saved up before. Soon you receive the repaired real estate with a 100% market value. You'll still have a 5% cash reserve. Bingo!

The percentages are conditional. The principle "One Bite at a Time" is important.

Image via Pixabay.com

I agree with @Jonathan Greene that Craigslist requires too great patience. 

Сats wedding

When a cat-bride asks a cat-groom​, the owner of the cat-bride brings her on the territory of a cat-groom.

Image via Pixabay.com

The cat-groom is strong at his place. It finishes the cat-bride in 2-3 days.

Complete failure

If to bring a cat-groom to a cat-bride, then there is trouble. Even the most skilled cat-bride will have few chances of success.

If it's an inexperienced cat, then there will be double trouble:

• he will have a nervous breakdown
• in the future, it will avoid a cat-bride even in his place.

Craigslist

When you call according to Craigslist's announcement, you enter on strange territory. It's called "Cold Calling". You do not know who else competes for seller's attention at this time:

• a dog who waited the whole day to walk
• final 5 minutes of a match of a favorite football league
• an exciting voice from a bedroom "Are you coming soon, honey?".

MLS is a cats wedding:

• there are many cats per one cat-bride
• all the cat-grooms are screaming, but only one cat can get a cat-bride.
• the cat-bride is in its place.

Craigslist has two additional problems:

• a cat-bride may not be the bride at all
• and often a cat-bride is not even a cat.

Website usage

To save your nerves, consider @Jerryll Noorden 's suggestion. Make a website and organize an influx of visitors (SEO + Facebook Ads, PPC,...). Visitors come to your website. They're ready to see your offer. The website is your place. You have full control of visitors' attention.

Work with Craigslist

Nevertheless, it's possible to work with Craigslist without nerves, but it will demand a certain organization. The following information technologies will help you:

• programming language for parsing of Craigslist's announcements and to export the cleaned results to a CRM
• the CRM for calls and accumulation of information
• marketing automation for a long personal impact on sellers.

Strategy choice

For beginner investors: Make your website. Organize visitors flow from the Internet (SEO, paid to advertise).

For more skilled investors: Try to work with MLS Listings.

For advanced investors: Try to organize a real estate flow from Craigslist.