All Forum Posts by: Rob Pene

I know A LOT of investors do extremely well with mailers, but I also hear that you'll need to have some coin to spend to be successful with it...so what's the next best alternative especially if you need to be more cost minded?

when I think of that question I always ask myself where do I have the most control over the allocated budget I have for "marketing" to get leads.

lucky for me, I've got an unfair advantage because of my background lol

but if I had a little bit of coin and a little bit of time, I'd pump $$ into PPC because I know the phone will ring AND I have a little more control over the marketing spend.  I can stop the campaign and tweak it if I notice that its not yielding the kind of results I'm hoping for. 

unfortunately you can't do that with a list and direct mail.  once your send it out, there goes your money and you're now stuck to chance, "odds", and the best you could do in trend research on a list provider, etc...

BUUUT, if I had a decent size budget, I'd spread it out between a healthy balance of PPC and tossing up my own website and throwing proper seo campaigns at it to rank for the necessary "motivated seller" terms that have decent search traffic...this way I have control over my budget and can see the short term (PPC) benefits along with the long term (SEO) benefits.

the only caveat to this approach is you WILL NEED to really know your stuff for PPC and SEO...but if you obviously have a marketing budget you'll probably want to carve out some room to consult or hire someone who knows what to do and how to do so that you're not throwing money at the wind bc if you try to do it on your own, you might as well just send mailers lol

sorry so long, but the cool thing about real estate is that there's always an alternative path to a solution...its just a matter of finding it and where there's a multitude of counsel, there's bound to be gem of an answer somewhere!

have I spent money on mailers? YES

did I get a call from it? NO

have I spent money on alternative means to generate leads? YES (online)

did I get a call from it? HELL YES!!!  more like waaay too many calls for me to handle on my own so I had to form a team of Investor Votrons to work it (again this is a biased pov bc online and digital stuff is what I do as a day job lol)

I know a couple people out in Detroit that are wholesaling properties and doing well at it too

welcome to BP

What area in Missouri is it?

this is a good list, 

I didn't even know of some of those :)

thnx for posting

yea, that'll be a hurdle finding good real estate agent that is investor friendly...if you go to reia meetings you might be able to find some investor friendly agents OR you'll be able to find buyers who have agents on their team you can then work with 

short sales DO take forever but its one of those things that once you get it done, you move on and work on more deals, then when the check comes in, its like a nice surprise bonus :)

but you essentially run your scenario by the agent (find someone who specializes in short sales though) then the agent should be able to direct you from there.  also, another option would be to find a buyer directly who would be willing to work the short sale with you (create a short sale presentation, do the dirty work like working with the agent bc they'll more than likely have a short sale agent on their team, etc)...its a lot easier that way AND you'll be able to begin building a relationship with that buyer for your future deals :)

do you have a realtor on your team? I'd reach out to someone you know or get a referral from someone you trust and run it through them...at least explore more options with them but shortsale is definitely a clear option

have you tried to browse zillow and the agents and reaching out to some of them?

a vacant house is a great start but unfortunately unless you've got the direct contact information to the owner and have either made contact with them to gauge motivation, simply having a vacant list around the country isn't that unique...kent clothier has an already established vacant list that's making people a ton of money so in terms of tackling that market you'll really need to have something unique or of massive value to offer in order to get some attention in that space

great start though and i think you've got something cooking with that nationwide bird dog system, you may want to explore that a little further and possibly pivoting yet maintain the nationwide bird dog system...food for thought

faxing works, original or physical copies work as well, and pdf electronic PA work just as fine too