All Forum Posts by: Michael Nicholson

@Account Closed Thanks! I am appreciating the positive vibe that you are putting out. I will def let you know how it goes.

I think if you're going to place door hangers, why not knock on those doors instead, unless it's a bad area. The ultimate goal is to make contact with the homeowner and knocking on the door might be the quickest,cheapest, most effective way. Also I considered doing some variation of door hangers whereby I simply tape my letter to the door of the property if it looks like no one is home when I drive by. Another little tip I have for mailing on the cheap is to skip the envelope all together. Fold your mail piece, buy your stamp and send it off that way. I just tried that on my most recent mailing campaign. I will let you know how it goes.

I had "new shiny toy" syndrome...was listening to different podcasts and then would get excited about flipping or multifamily or etc. I also would read the books recommended by the different podcasts and that led me down different roads as well. Lastly, I have had a few concerns about the ethics and morals behind wholesaling; not sure if it's the right thing to do. In spite of all that, I have sent out 3 mailing campaigns and have gotten 3 calls but not deals. It could be that I need to work from a different list and find better leads. Currently I am driving for dollars and looking for ugly houses in good neighborhoods and sending them a letter. I was using the absentee owner with high equity list and got a few tire kickers.

Most dmers do it on a 4 week to monthly basis 6 times. You want to be consistent but you don't necessarily want to spam the potential sellers. But then again, there really is no wrong or right way to do it. All it takes is the seller being in the right frame of mind, and opening up your mail piece or viewing your post card and seeing a solution to their problems. So really it doesn't matter how many times you mail them, but it does increase your chances that you will catch them at the right moment with the right message.

Call for rent signs and try to see if you can find any tired landlords. You might get a better deal out of going direct to a potentially motivated seller than trying to buy off the Mls and or buy reo properties. Also get connected with a local real estate club and some local legit wholesalers. You may be able to find some good deals that way because those guys are already doing the hard part of searching for and finding deals. Good luck!

Find a list of potentially motivated sellers, send either letters or postcards to those potential sellers (you can purchase these through various companies or create your own), and do it a few times. Test different lists and mail pieces and strategies till you find what works in your market. I create my own lists through driving for dollars ( driving around neighborhoods and looking for the ugly and seemingly vacant houses) and looking for absentee and estate owners on my country website that are in my target driving for dollars area. You can purchase lists though listsource, rebogateway, and other places. I want to start knocking on doors but when I told my wife that I wanted to do that she looked at me like I had two heads. Maybe further down the road on that one, lol.

Go to the wholesalers and network with them. They are easy to find: you can find them on Craigslist, if your see any signs that say "we buy houses" call those numbers because those are wholesalers, look on google for "sell my house" and your city name and you should be able to find a wholesalers website, local real estate investor clubs, etc. That's where I would start...

Thanks for the response @Jay Raught

@Bob Note buying is not something that I am very familiar with. Is this something that you need to have lots of cash to get into?

@Bob E.undefined

I haven't used EDDM, but I have looked into it. There are a couple of good videos on Youtube that explain the process, but basically, you supply the mail pieces and drop it off at the designated post office (gotta fill out some forms and pay for it online first), and then those mail pieces will go out on the respective mail routes that you picked, hitting every mailbox along that route. 

It is cheaper because you basically are only paying 15 cents per mail piece versus 47 cents for a stamp. Yet, like I have heard a few people say, it is more of a shotgun approach. You may hit a wide area for less money, but it may not be that effective. I think it is good in those circumstances where you know that most of the neighborhood is going to hit your criteria (war zones for examples where all of the houses need some love). It is also good if you don't mind wasting money on non-targeted leads that may or may not generate anything of value to you in the long run.

As far as lists go, if you are trying to save money, and you are mailing to absentee owners, you can save money by looking up the streets in your target areas on your county website and finding all of the owners who have different mailing addresses than the street address. You can save your time by paying a Virtual Assistant in the Phillipines 3$ an hour to do this for you. It will more than likely be a lot cheaper than buying a list from list source or rebogateway.