All Forum Posts by: Steve Ramer

This week has gone a little slower. Partially because it was a crazy weekend, and partially because I might be acquiring a 4-plex in Kansas City with owner financing where I already have a couple of houses. The numbers look good, but the property needs work. I'm still not completely through the county list of tax delinquent properties, but I'm definitely NOT STOPPING. Just temporarily slowed down. Once I have them all, I might move on to another county to continue to add to my list. Debating whether or not to mail out to just the few I've added this week, or save them for next week when I'll have a lot more. I'll probably wait. I still have the around 200 that I've mailed once this month.

I guess I'm pretty much doing this for myself now, as a very public journal. Anyway, yesterday I mailed out another nearly 100 cards in envelopes I had written on. It's definitely time consuming and tiring to do this by hand, but I hear the payoff in the end is worth it, so I'm going to keep trucking. Only 200ish tax delinquents on my list so far, but that list is still growing.

I added several more items to my list over the last few days, even with the kids around. We still managed to have a good time--took Loveland Pass into Keystone for some pedal boating. Beautiful scenic route, if not a little scary with no guard rails at nearly 12,000 feet. I've got a few more written out that I'll be mailing tomorrow morning.

@Robert Hetsler Than you for the offer. I'm sorry to hear about your divorce situation. I'll connect with you on BP. While not exactly the same experience, it definitely sounds like you have a unique perspective on this type of situation. Guidance would be great (even to help understand the commercial investing universe--@Jean Bolger also does some commercial investing), but let's definitely find a way to generate some income together!

Thanks @Ethan Summers. I did take your advice and get a PO Box. I just wrote the PO Box # and City/State/Zip on the return address.

Also, thanks @Bill S., @Luke Miller, @James Green, @Jean Bolger, and everyone else. One thing I've noticed is that doing this solo is definitely unsustainable, particularly if I want to keep a consistent lead flow. I spent all my free time (and then some) this week tracking everything, writing on envelopes, printing cards up, and stuffing. I still only managed just under 100. 

Pro tip: I did find at least one more thing I can automate and still keep it in my handwriting--I took a photo of my handwritten return address on an envelope, imported it to GIMP (like Photoshop), then removed all the background with the fuzzy select tool. That ONLY left my handwriting against a transparent background. I then made a template of that with the greeting card envelope in OpenOffice Writer (think MS Word). So next time I'll just run the envelopes through my printer for the return addresses.

Now I just need to rinse and repeat next week, for the next just under 100 addresses. I want to touch the contacts at least once a month, so that only leaves about 400 leads for me to work with at a time. At least as my list gets pruned through deals or dead leads, I can add some new ones. Is that the right process for manual marketing?

@Bill S.

I'm exhausted, but I finished writing all the addresses and stuffing the envelopes now. Hopefully good to go for tomorrow. Guess I should get a PO Box though, so I'll know if there's any returned mail.

Just following up, holding myself accountable in this thread. I've combed through county records this week, which was extremely tedious, but came up with just at 100 so far (approximately one out of every 7 or 8 I looked at has potential). The basic skip tracing was a nightmare. I'm not 100% certain on all of them, but I think the majority are close. I don't envy people who do that for a living.

I found a message I liked online and printed it up on card stock (four to a page), with owner name and property address. I bought I cutter from Wal Mart, but oddly it was lacking blades. I'll exchange that today. After I cut them up, I'll write the owner addresses on the envelopes, probably while watching a movie. When done with that I'll stuff them. Will probably have to do the post office tomorrow since it will most likely be closed by the time I finish tonight. Maybe Wal Mart has stamps?

Anyway I'll comb through more records and repeat these steps next week. Maybe I will get faster too. Who knows?

One more question- should I maybe put my website on the backs of these cards?

@Bill S. Thank you. Adding this to my Podio task list. I have the kids this weekend but will get cranking when they're occupied. I might just call these people after work Monday.

@Luke Miller I agree that 100 is small in this market. That's why I felt it necessary to have a laser-targeted list. I don't want it to take 5 years, but if I'm consistent in the follow-ups maybe it won't. Also I've been looking for smallish wholesale deals from other wholesalers, but they're all well over 80% after repair costs, and considering my obligation to child support an maintenance, I think my inexperience is a massive disadvantage and risk, both for finding hard money or getting a funding partner. People who have been doing this for years can deploy $200K here and $200K there (or all cash if they do fewer deals) and it's a drop in the bucket, so no biggie if they make a mistake. In terms of absolute dollars, some of the deals sound great. But we need those funding partners, since HM won't loan on an 80-82% ARV deal. Yes, ultimately I think flipping is what's I want to do because it's the most fun and challenging. Should I solicit a funding partner on BP for one of these deals?

@James Green you're right. Of course you're right. I just have to psych myself up to talk to these people. I did the same when from being cash buyers, but they already seemed onboard with everything. I'll do it. Just need to have the puke bucket handy. 😝

To everyone else, thanks for the advise. BuggerPockets is great, and I've got some solid info. Time to put it into action. Oh, and let me know if you want to be a funding partner on deals in Aurora that I can tend to daily. There, I said it. 😀

Oh yeah, I'll be using Podio to keep track of all my leads, outbound or inbound. If I get a response from the letters, I'll consider those warm, inbound leads. Also, if I find houses in an area where it doesn't look like many sales have been done, is that a red flag? I'm looking at you, Green Valley Ranch. Apologies if you live there. I know someone who used to rent up there, and they had a nicer house than I had. Neighborhood always seemed fine to me. But lack of sales is disturbing from a wholesaling perspective.

@Jean Bolger Thank you for the advice. I'll certainly work on going to the BP meetups. I do understand the hesitation with the people who are doing it not wanting to work with the people who are "interested." For those people though, I think there are a lot of caveats that hold them back. I know that's the case with me. I am going to just hit it with what I've got. 

To take your advice, my plan, while I'm sure it's going to take at least 6 months to get a deal at this rate in this market, is to mail out at least 100 pieces a month in my county to people who still owe taxes from last year's tax sale list (until this year's becomes available). I'm only going to be searching for SFRs in the county records. I was thinking of only hitting up people who also have prior year liens, but I'm not sure there are enough. I'd be using all the free information I can find to build this list, including whitepages.com for basic skip tracing (to see if the owner address in county records is still valid or find out if they've moved). I think I have what I need.

The reason I'm only doing 100 is I'll be hand-writing and mailing these myself. I'd like to make handwritten template and just write the addresses in after printing off a bunch of copies. My question to you guys is, do you think yellow letters and red ink still work better than just writing with black ink pen on ruled notebook paper? I just have the feeling people have been programmed to automatically ignore these. I know I have, but hey, I'm an investor. Either way I'm planning on hitting up OfficeMax this weekend.

One more question--would it be better to call these leads? Is it a violation of the DNC registry? I think I have found some good openers here on BP, but that particular concern always bothers me. I have yet to hear a definitive answer. 

Good to know I probably won't be going to jail for just trying to do some deals. :-)

Please let me know if this is reasonable, and believe me, if I had the means, I would send out 5,000 direct mailings a month. If you're one of those investors, just know I'm coming for you! Hey, abundance mindset, right?

Thanks all for the info.