All Forum Posts by: Michael Miele

I used to work with Rob at Wiechert Realtors in Marlborough. He dealt with rentals and was always busy. I have a friend that used JPS and was very happy. He had a single family home that he rented and JPS did everything for him, which is what he was looking for because he didn't want to be a landlord. I'm not sure on their fees but if I decide to go with rental instead of flipping I will definitely be using them. Hope this is helpful.

@Brie Schmidt Thanks for the info. I may reach out to Jerry and see what he can do with what I have for a budget.

@Matt McConkey Thank you for the info. I'll let you know what we decide to do. I want to start in the first or second week in Jan. so the next few weeks I'll be getting pricing and figuring out which way to go. 

My plan is to do letters not postcards. I feel the letters with have more of a personal touch to them.  I'm definitely going to look into those websites that were mentioned. 

@Adrien C. I like the idea of having someone stuff and label the envelopes for me. Also the post office told me once I buy the stamp machine each stamp will only cost between .20-.25 cents. Thats only if I send mail to near-by towns, which I found over 2,500 properties to mail to. 

@Chris Policicchio I can't believe I didn't think about how many calls I will be getting. I guess I assumed I would get some but when you put it that way, I might get a few a day. I'm ready for it. I have a full time job outside of investing (10 Years till retirement, unless we have a few real good years in real estate) and I am always available to take calls, so I'm going to leave my number on the letters. My father is our GC and he takes care of the day to day issues at the job sites. I'm waiting for the day when I'm too busy and have to hire someone to do these types of small jobs but for now I'm going to do it myself.

@Eric F. My problem has been consistency. I will send letters to properties I find while driving for $$$ and never follow up with multiple letters. I'm hoping this time I stick to it because we're investing a good amount of money to not follow through.

@Ranny BBloch I never tried email. I wouldn't even know where to go to find peoples email. I'll have to look into that. Thanks.

Our company typically flips one property at a time. We try to get 4 done per year. We have set our goal to be flipping 6-8 homes per year over the next 3 years while also holding properties as rentals. The problem we're running into is finding the deals. Every investor is on MLS looking for potential deals and that is driving the prices up to we're its not a deal for us. I drive for $$$ all the time. I send letters to distressed properties, but my problem is I don't consistently send multiple letters to the same house. I usually send one and done. I listened to a podcast on BP a few weeks ago and they were talking about direct mailers. They mentioned how their company sends out thousands of mailers every month. With that said our company has taken that advice and decided thats what we're going to do.

Our plan is to print up a letter and mail it once a month for 6 months to each home in our area that meets our criteria. I looked through MLS public record and found 2,500 homes that work for us.

My question is, What is the cheapest way to send 2,500 letters per month. 

1. Print each letter, address label and return address label on my printer, stuff and label each envelope and place a .47 cents stamp on each. This includes buying all the envelopes, labels and paper for letters.

2. Buy a bulk mailer stamp from the post office which is a one time cost of approx. $400. This will make each stamp about .23 cents. Then do all of the line 1.

3. Have a print company print everything and all I do is stuff envelopes and stamp.

4. Find a company to do everything for me.

I don't have an issue with doing everything myself, I'm just looking for the most cost efficient way to go about doing it. 

Thank you in advance,

Mike 

@Stephanie Polydoroff In Massachusetts theres a website for the registry of deeds. Every time a deed is transferred, a mortgage is issued, or lien is placed on a property, it always gets registered at the counties registry of deeds.  I just type in the address and everything pops up. First I look at when they purchased the property and how much their loan was for.  Then you can see if other mortgages were obtained after the purchase. Those are usually 2nd mortgages and for less than their original mortgage.  You can also see when the owners were served foreclosure notices and other liens such as, Municipality, mechanics etc.. because those get recored also.

In the case of the auction your talking about, my guess would be the first mortgagee was willing to accept $126K because thats probably what was owed to them by the owner. The 2nd mortgagee was probably owed $22K and ended up getting nothing.

I would contact a real estate attorney in your area. Im sure theres a website thats available to the public they could refer you to. 

Good luck

I'm sure I'm in the same situation as many other investors out there. I'm competing with a lot of other investors in my area. Its almost impossible to purchase a flip house through MLS because everyone is bidding the prices up. Everyday I drive for $$$ and send out letters to distressed properties. I think my problem is, I only send out 1 letter and sit back and wait for the phone to ring. I do personalize the letter and handwrite the envelope because I think that makes the owner more apt to opening it.

I would love to hear how other investors go about direct mailers. 

How many letters do you send? 

Do you send the same letter more than once or do the follow up letters reference the first letter and so on?

How long do you wait to send follow up letters?

Other than driving for $$$, how do you find distressed properties?

Thanks in advanced

In my experience, most of the time the first mortgage is foreclosing on the property. A lot of times the owner has taking out second and sometimes third mortgages on the property. Usually the first mortgage wants to get paid what they're owed which means the second and third mortgage gets nothing. For example. the total debt amount might be $300K. First mortgage $200K, Second $100K. Therefor the property could sell at auction for $200K. The First mortgage usually has priority over other mortgagees so once sold at public auction, all other liens are wiped out. This doesn't include town, city, or county tax liens. Those usually have priority over all mortgagees. 

In my area the certain auctioneers charge a fee which is typically 3%-5% of the purchase price. If thats the case it would be posted or disclosed prior to bidding.  

Hope this helps

I'm about to upload a budget template I use to the Free File section on this website. It will be under Templates. I'm not an Excel guy but was able to figure this out. Theres a few columns, if you put in your purchase price, closing costs etc... then you put in an ARV, Real Estate commissions etc.., every time you enter money paid out like materials or labor, it automatically subtracts from your potential profit. Hope you find it helpful.

I'm a house flipper in central Massachusetts. I'm also a realtor and have access to MLS. I also drive for dollars and send out personalized letters to homes that look distressed. In today's market if there's a deal on MLS you're competing with a handful of other investors which drives the price up on the property making it not profitable in the end. What I would like to hear from others is how do you go about finding potential flip properties that are not listed in MLS. Or if there's a good podcast on this site that I could listen to, that would be great also. I look forward to reading your comments.