All Forum Posts by: Michael Lerch

I setup a google adwords account with a credit for $100 included from the webhost I used when I signed up with them. I blew it all in a few days because I didn't know what I was doing. Now that I'm more familiar with how it works I was looking to start this up again. I'd like a 2nd chance with that adwords credit, but every time I've entered a code it's always for new adwords accounts. 

@Martin Scherer  That's a great point. I do know of a few wholesalers who do make $50k+ a year, but like you said, you have to do a lot of deals to net that in the end. They are also not in markets like mine. They're in metro city areas. The guru's do a great job of selling their systems, but when they talk about their deals and flash their checks they're all higher margin deals in those big cities. 

I think we have to take a step back and think about the term "Wholesale" and how that works in other industries. To make money as a wholesale distributor you need VOLUME because you're passing on the profit to the retailer. In our case this is passing it on to the @Martin Scherer investors with over 30 years investing experience to make the big bucks doing buy and hold or flipping. I'm not saying you can't go out and be like Martin here from day 1, but it takes capital, skill, and a little bit of luck from the get go. What makes wholesaling great to start off is minimal investment, gaining experience, and serves as a great entry into the more profitable avenues of real estate investing since you can find great mentors that do buy and hold and flips. Do I think wholesaling the guru way just tying up properties getting started with limited experience is the best way to get into real estate in general? Heck no! It'll always be a local mentor that can do 1 on 1 even if it's another wholesaler.

To go back to the wholesaling and volume point: Are you getting enough deals in your market to hit your volume to actually make money as a wholesaler or just spinning your wheels breaking even or even losing money?

There's always pros and cons with getting licensed. For me I don't think it would fit my business model from a time perspective. Yes, it opens up other revenue streams, but I believe it would actually distract me from doing what I do best. If there were more barriers that made it hard to wholesale unlicensed I would consider it for that reason, but at this point it doesn't make sense to do that just yet.@Jesse T.  

@Mary B. I've definitely had my share of tire kicker buyers. You could sit down with them over lunch, know exactly what they're looking for, serve it to them on a platter and NOPE! For one reason or another whether it be price, cash on hand, or just hubris they don't buy it. I've learned to ask the right questions since then. As I venture into other markets to virtually wholesale I will probably JV with credible wholesalers I know who can get the job done while I learn more about their market and buyers. Seems worth it to me.

This should probably be a blog post, but thought I'd throw it out here as a question.

I've been busting my butt for 3 years wholesaling and I've managed to do under 10 deals in West Michigan market from 3k-5k assignments each. After listening to a certain guru podcast about setting goals and figuring out how much you need to make per deal to cover your cost per lead and then some to hit your own profit goals per year I realized that I've pretty much been breaking even in my business. I want to break that cycle.

I feel like my market takes a lot of work to get a deal, I can honestly say that now after 3 years of hustling to make deals happen without feeling like a total newb with mailers, bandit signs, networking, being top dog on google yahoo and bing, but I'll see other wholesalers in different markets across the U.S. putting in a similar effort with great work ethic like mine and just churn deals out left and right consistently. I just shake my head and ask myself "Why is it so much harder to do that here... could I do the same if I were over there? Am I just suffering from grass is greener syndrome or is the grass really greener while I'm eating short dried up brown grass trying to survive?" 

Side story: In college I did a sales internship with University Directories out of Chapel Hill NC. Great program by the way! We were trained for 2 weeks there how to sell print ads out of the back of our college directories to local businesses back in our college towns. I went to Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the great city of Marquette MI. Great town, but absolutely DEVASTATING to sell any kind of print advertising (just in general anywhere really, but in particular here) and we finished with about 30k in sales that summer. We didn't hit our goal, but we did well considering our market size and it was 2009 when businesses were tightening their purse strings. Day after day we would report our results for leads, sales calls, and actual sales. Then about an hour later listen to the daily sales call from HQ in Chapel Hill reporting in the Top 10 sales totals from the previous day to give them praise and congratulate them. All these other big market colleges like in Alabama, Ohio, NC, CA, Texas, and so on were absolutely CRUSHING IT! Every day was a 5-10K+ day! If they had 2 or 3 good sales guys at a big college on a good day would report in something crazy like 30k. I even trained with some of these guys, hung out with them, and felt like I was on par with them in sales skills when we would role play our scripts but they were killing it and I wasn't.

My point here is this: I feel like I've been trying to fish in a small pond for far too long. Not only deals in quantity are low and hard to come by, but also the overall amount of equity in houses around here don't allow for 10-15k wholesale deals. Does anyone feel the same in their market? I believe some markets are iffy for wholesaling while others are particularly primed for wholesaling success. 

Feel free to disagree. I will always wholesale in my backyard, but now that I've cut my teeth over these past 3 years and come to this realization I will start marketing with the same effort to other cities to actually have a business that makes money and not one that just breaks even.  

I use a nifty little program called Hello Sign. It's very similar to the others. Integrates into gmail. Love it! 

Just throwing this out there that I've used Williampaid for about a year now for my lease option deals with tenant-buyers and it's been great! I actually appreciated their detail for verifying everything.

@Jake Lowing  way to go! You're on the right track, keep goin!

Hey there,

I'm looking for lease option leads. Wholesalers don't throw away those motivated seller leads that have little to no equity. I'd be happy to buy the lead(s) or JV with you anywhere in the United States!

Criteria:

Single family home 3 bed 1.5 bath 1200 sqft, 1995 or newer (will consider older if in great shape with updates)

decent neighborhoods. no war zones or shady areas of town. huge plus if in great suburb near shopping areas with great schools.

I will consider any deal, but generally I look for houses that are in good shape and have about 10% or more equity or a little behind on their mortgage within reason. 

Best motivated sellers are people who couldn't sell their house and need to relocate for a job and would consider renting the house out.

Please contact me in the signature below or visit my website and fill out the lead form!

I look forward to working with you :)

I like your idea @Antonio Coleman on the educational approach. I've heard of wholesalers sending out postcards with a link to their website or free ebook on "how-to" FSBO or something like that. I may try to implement something like that. It's better to attract bees with honey than with a stick as they say.

I think I may have mixed a wrestling match up with a monster truck rally but I hope it got your attention :)

Here's what I've been thinking about as I'm putting together my marketing strategy for my wholesale business. After listening to Michael Quarles on podcast 81 I realized the "fruit bowl" for equity was pretty much all I should really be mailing to.

I mailed out to equity and got fewer leads and most wanted retail BUT they were all laser focused on sellers I could actually do deals with that had equity vs. other lists who may have a few who have equity, and a few who might actually be motivated (with no equity, underwater, waited to the last minute to sell). 

The PRO/CONS of this are:

PROS: 

-Laser focused on sellers who have equity no matter their situation and could potentially accept a wholesale offer. 

-Equity list with criteria from the Michael Quarels isn't overwhelmingly large for my market that I would need to compare it to other lists to narrow it down further.

-Because of the above I don't feel like I'm wasting money on mailers hitting people's mailboxes that are in no position to do a deal in the first place so I'm maximizing potential for a deal and my ROI on the mailers while minimizing my time calling every single non-motivated seller back, looking up comps, and making offers that will go no where.

CONS:

-In the back of my mind I feel like I might be letting a few deals slip through the cracks that could have been good sub-to, lease option, or other creative deals. I suppose I could make a better mailer campaign to target those if I wanted.

-I can't think of any other CONs at the moment except that it's not a ton of leads if you're looking for quantity, but because I have a full time job I'm looking for quality to maximize my time I spend on my business.

So what do you think? Does Equity list conquer all or do you think it's better to spam out as many letters to probate, inherited, absentee, foreclosure, etc? To me it seems like equity is the only list worth buying and mailing to.