All Forum Posts by: Misty W.

I think most new investors, and old, need to make a daily list of things to do. It's great to say you will network with other investors, or do a mailing list, but making a daily to do list gets you in the habit of marketing everyday and giving you much smaller goals that you can execute rather than saying you need 2 deals a month. So, on my list daily are things like checking for evictions on my local court website, mailing to 10 vacant houses, pulling expired listings, responding to craigslist ads.

I tell newbies to pick just 3 avenues of marketing and rock them consistently. Yes you can find lists of 50 different ways to market, but you will never be able to do them all at once, consistently, so pick three. Maybe it's bandit signs (commit to putting up 2 a day), expired listings (call 3 a day or mail them a letter), absentee owners (buy a list and mail 10 a day).

Find one REIA meeting to attend each month and commit to following up with 2 people there. Saying you will go and collect as many business cards as possible usually means you will just have a stack of cards that never do anything for you.

Find one local investor each week to call and network with, find them through local signs or websites or tax records of people that own many properties.

The key is to think small, while thinking big.

I would be looking at creative options. Learn about doing deals subject to and lease options. The sellers in these situations need a solution and don't typically care about your age. Most people think I'm 15-20 years younger than I am, so I get asked a lot in everyday situations, but have never been asked in real estate dealings. As long as you sound like you know what you are doing, there is not an issue. For the other times, pull out your "partner" that has been doing this a long time. This should be a mentor or other local REI member that has been doing it a long time and is available for any questions. Letting someone know you are new isn't a bad thing if they feel like you can always get answers and help when needed.

We do this with lease options, and yes you can find motivated sellers. The key is they need motivation, just like any other seller. If they have few options because they have no equity they are open to this. However, with that little equity, it's not always worth it for you to stay in the game. You can just assign your interest to an end buy and collect an assignment fee. If you stay in you are responsible for paying the rent even when the house is empty and if there is no equity at the end for you to collect it doesn't make financial sense to take on the risk. Look at lease option cooperative assignments, it's an easier way to do it, with less risk.

I email offers all the time. I then send contracts by Docusign. Always agree to terms before sending an actual contract over, whether by email, fax, mail or Docusign. People get stuck in minutia with contracts, get the main ingredients agreed to, then they are more likely to sign without changing anything.

I don't think you have to specifically market to low equity lists, you end up getting a lot of them from normal marketing you do everyday. Having an exit strategy for those leads is where lease options come in.

As for doing LO's long distance, I either partner with a local real estate agent, or hire a local assistant and they get paid a commission on each house they show. They don't have to do anything except take some photos, put up signs and show people the home. All paperwork is done by docusign or faxing, Internet ads are placed by us (usually still in my yoga pants). It's really the easiest thing to do long distance, especially when assigning because you aren't in charge of the tenants after the assignment. I hire most assistants right from Craigslist, I even usually get real estate agents and property managers applying that are looking for side work.

You say you don't know any buyers that would purchase on a lease option - kind of made me laugh, because that is the easy part of a lease option! Trust me, once you actually market a lease option you will have buyers coming out of the woodwork. Not all of them will be qualified, but there are WAY more buyers looking for a lease option than sellers willing to sell on a lease option. Call Brian or feel free to shoot me any questions.

There is a new one in Haymarket starting in May. That's the closest I know of. It's a CAZA meeting and you can see it on Meetup.com.

A lease option is a combination of renting and buying. You have a regular lease and then you have the option to buy the house during the time of the lease. When people talk about wholesaling the option they mean assigning the lease option to an end buyer. This is typically done on very low equity or no equity deals. If there is a lot of equity you can do a sandwich lease, similar to a Sub2 but without getting the deed. You deal with the tenant/buyer for the duration of the option until they are ready to buy and then you do a double close to get your equity out and the seller is paid off.

Haha, Brian!

I love marketing, wish I could get paid for giving people marketing ideas for businesses I'll never create. That is my dream job. I just had a brilliant idea for marketing locally that I'm trying, don't want to say what it is just yet, will see if it works. It's centered around partnering with businesses that do a lot of marketing already, that would add my info to their marketing and vice versa. It's marketing that sticks around for awhile because it's valuable, so my info will be sitting there for months rather than ending up in the trash immediately. (So vague, I know, lol)

I've just started marketing to evictions in my area and I'm actually finding two other ways to increase my marketing at the same time. Luckily I live in a state that has most resources online (Virginia), in Pennsylvania it's harder to find this information, so your area might be good or not.

I look through our court system each day, I can search by date, name, etc. I search by date and the list shows me plaintiff, defendant, and type of hearing. I'm looking for Unlawful Detainer and it's super easy to just scan down the list (I have a county court and a city court, in a smaller location so there aren't many hearings each day.) As I'm scanning I notice that a lot of the filings are the same people and or companies. Some I know are apartment buildings, easy to skip over, a lot are LLC's so they are investors, and then there are the one offs that are likely people that became landlords when they couldn't sell their home. Those are the people I want to send a tired landlord letter to.

The other listings, people that own multiple properties or LLC's, these are potential cash investors, so I set up a different letter for them. They may want to sell, or buy more, so I talk briefly about both.

If I click through the case listing I can also see the attorneys for both parties, so now I have the list of attorneys that handle evictions. I send them a letter to keep an ear out for landlords that want to sell. I also mention probates as they likely deal with those as well.

So from one list I get tired landlords, cash investors, and attorney leads! This is something that a VA can easily do as well.