All Forum Posts by: Nathan Witte

Our top-performing marketing channels are cold calling, text messaging, and direct mail. I have a few VAs cold calling every day bringing in good leads, and we have had a TON of good success with text message marketing. My VAs do all the texting using Smarter Contact and send my team the leads. 

We're also sending out about 10K mailers every week. Direct mail works when done in volume and consistently, but does cost a bit more. 

I would def recommend testing some VAs on cold calling and text messaging to find leads for you. We can help place you with VAs if you're interested.

Look, be careful here. There is a big difference between ways to REACH people, and actually converting people into leads, specifically, motivated seller leads.

Instead of giving you an opinion on what someone thinks is best to generate leads, I will attempt to teach you how to think analytically so you yourself can determine whether something is right or wrong.

The first thing you need to tackle is defining a lead, and more accurately, a motivated seller lead.

So first a motivated seller is not someone that wants to sell their house.

It is not someone that needs to sell their house, and it is not someone that desperately falls on their knees begging you to please buy their house in cash right now or bad things are going to happen to them.

NONE of these are motivated sellers.

A motivated seller is anyone and everyone willing to sell their house below market value I don;t care for the reason why.

Now,  when you send 1000 absentee owners a call, mailer or text, you could get one contract signed (it is more like every 3000 mailers for one contract, but let's just go with 1000).

That means from the 1000 people you get 1 deal. So in other words, 999 out of a 1000 said "NO". That is a 0.1% conversion rate. Zero Point One Percent!!

How about the foreclosure list. Same numbers. How about tax lien list. Same numbers, How about the probate list. Same numbers.

Several things. Do you think it is a coincidence that ALL these lists have similar conversion rates? Come now, of course not.  The conclusion here is that it makes no difference what list you use. It is all the same. This means, the KIND of "motivation" you lal are targeting, is irrelevant, and thus the conclusion is, none of these lists target motivation. It is completely random.

Now, here is an explanation why.

All these leads are organic leads. These people looked for me, found me, and asked me for an offer. They didn't see an ad and didn't get a mailer, call or text. They were motivated SO THEY DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT> This is a characteristic of motivation. If someone is motivated they wil take it upon themselves to find a solution to their problem. They went to Google, found my website ranking #1 everywhere, and opted in.

So in other words, these people are the real deal. Real motivated, and not just random people curious how much cash you would offer for their house for ego's sake.

Guess what. I get around 100 to 200 leads every single month, all organic. I RARELY get foreclosures, absentee owners, job losses, tax liens, or probates in my list of organic leads hitting my inbox daily. RARELY.

What this means is that if you are looking for "off-market " properties and you do what everyone here is saying, you will be having as much success as everyone here is experiencing, a 0.1% conversion rate.

The difference between you all and me is simply this. You all accept that 0.1% is the norm and acceptable.

I simply did the research and applied strategies based on data common sense and logic.

The result of analytically approaching lead generation will result in this:

My wholesale fees are $50K and up!

Now plenty of people will advocate cold calling and door knocking, driving for dollars, bandit signs etc. etc because "they are cheap". Gang please Who gives a smurf's butt if it is cheap. If you can't get deals from it reliably, it is completely irrelevant how cheap it is, right? Hence common sense, logic, strategy, and DATA.

Lastly understand this concept.

Today you are fine. Nothing wrong with you, but tomorrow knock on wood, something happens and you BECOME motivated. My question to you  is this... Who knows that you just became motivated? Serious question. Who knows you are now motivated?

NO ONE KNOWS!! Only you do.

You do not magically appear on propstreams "motivated seller" list. You do not magically get a tag next to your name that says John smith now is motivated. NO ONE knows but you. 

My point is this. 

You can not target motivated sellers. NOTHING can target motivated sellers.

The only way to reliably get in touch with motivated sellers, is for you to make it extremely easy for them to find you.

SEO is obviously the best, but you can also do PPC, or Facebook ads. Facebook ads is far better than PPC. If you want to know why, just ask and I will again give you analytical proof as to why.

Don't blindly follow advise from people here. It is mostly mere opinion. Always analytically understand a concept and then draw your own conclusions.

Good luck!

Ohh btw.. see those deals I posted above?

Those deals are completely invisible to most of you. You will NEVER find them. You know whay?

None of them were on any list. Not the absentee owner's list, not the probate list or the foreclosure list.

Let that sink in ,

All you are doing is deliberately competing for louse leads that are not motivated while the actually motivated seller leads are just open for grabs if you simply understand what and where they are.

@Nathan Witte May of 2025? $35,000 saved?  The longer you wait the longer you are not getting benefits of home ownership.  Remember their are 5 ways to make money here.  Cash Flow, Income Tax, hedge against inflation, debt paydown, & property appreciation.  Think about how much you gain or how much you lose if you moved your time frame up to May of 2024 or December of 2023?

You can buy a $500,000 property with $17,500 down and have another $5,000 in the bank or you can buy a $250,000 condo/townhome for $8750 and $3000 in the bank.

I just want you to challenge yourself to push yourself to do more faster!  You can be 23 and stay ahead of the pack or you can take this time to blow other 23 years old out of the water by what you can accomplish between now and May of 2025.

Hi @Nathan Witte!  That's great that you're so eager to get started in real estate investing! It sounds like you're already off to a good start by learning as much as you can about the industry.

Here are a few ideas for what you can do while working towards saving for a down payment:

• Get involved in your local real estate investing community. This is a great way to learn from other investors and network with people who can help you find deals.  Here is our next event:  https://www.biggerpockets.com/...
• Start learning about property management. This is an essential skill for any real estate investor, and it's something that you can start learning now, even before you have a property.  Get a 1:1 meeting @Mark Ainley or @John Warren above!
• Get your real estate license. This is not essential, but it can be a valuable asset, especially if you're planning to do any wholesaling or flipping.

If you are at all interested in the construction and rehabbing lets talk more!

Agree 100% with @Bryant Brislin. 

As I've said in a previous post, wholesaling is not an entry-level to investing in real estate. I transitioned my flipping business to a wholesaling business because the model suits me better for scaling the way I want but that doesn't mean is an easy business to get into. I would say most people give up because they get sold on the idea of wholesaling as a hustle and making millions.

I'd suggest teaming up with someone who knows what they are doing and can see around corners to avoid lawsuits, wasting seller's time and wasting your time on deals that may not work. Also, I feel like there is a myth that someone can make tons of money wholesaling just by dabbling, putting in maybe 5 hrs, 10 hrs, a week. It's a full-time job, it's the same as saying you want to open a restaurant.  So if you already have a full time job, kids, etc, then it may not be something you realisticaly have time to do.  If you only have, let's say, 20 hrs a week to put towards it, then even more, you may want to team up with someone who can find a role for you where you can do something with the small amount of time you have.