@Jerryll Noorden
At the risk of finding out what an idiot I am, here I go...........
I think the word "wholesale" is the issue here. I know Jerryll isn't talking about wholesaling when he actually is buying the property, so I'm not sure why the word is so offensive. If I'm reading it right, Chris Ransom is actually talking about the other side of it, as in people wasting his time bringing deals that couldn't be profitable. I'm sure 75% of the people who are cold calling me couldn't tell me WHAT they are. I will tell you I think they are mostly broke fools who've been separated from their money by snake oil salesmen who've told them easy money stories and sold them lists of "motivated sellers". I'm a big fan of Jerryll on this forum just because I hope some of these wannabes are reading his posts and deciding not to max out their credit card buying a list with my name on it!
For anyone who might be reading this and thinking about buying a list with one of my property addresses on it:
My daughter is not a motivated seller. She doesn't own any real estate, she just happens to be on the same phone plan as me, which I can only assume is how she got tied to that property.
My wife is not a motivated seller. Her name is not even on the deed, partially because our schedules were very different at the time when I bought the property at auction and had to return paperwork in a hurry, but mostly she didn't want her fingerprints on my trainwreck. (Not motivated to buy OR sell!)
I'M NOT a motivated seller either! I bought the property from a motivated seller called IndyMac Bank. Google might remember who they were, if you're interested. I can't imagine that anybody who was buying property in one of the hardest hit cities, in one of the worst markets in my memory, would be considered a motivated seller. I could have sold it at anytime in the last 10 years for a profit, no assistance required!
That one bothers me the most. I paid cash, not knowing when I'd make money on it. Nobody bothered me for about the first four years, then, just when values started increasing, it seemed like the whole state of Arizona wanted it for half of what it was worth. I asked a few of them where they were in 2009, when they could have bought all they wanted for half of what they were offering me. Never got a straight answer. In fact, I only got what seemed like straight answers from one caller in all that time. Every other cold caller seemed clueless, like the dog who caught the bus, no idea what to say if you get them off script. I no longer have voicemail on my phone and don't answer calls from AZ that aren't in my contacts already. The texts don't bother me as much. I used to have a list and I'd add each text to the end of the list and send it back. My list got to 80ish texts and it wouldn't send anymore, so then I made another list that got almost as long before I lost interest and stopped sending them back.
Another one that I get a kick out of is a friend of mine who gets calls and texts wanting to buy his house. The "house" they refer to is 20 acres of swamp land in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin with no building on it. The guy wouldn't sell his hunting land for anything unless you had more acreage with more deer and closer to his home. Not ANY kind of seller, let alone motivated!
Once in awhile I answer my phone and if there's anyone on the other end, (that's less than half the time) they're clueless, many seem to be employees in a call center, some so new to the english language that I'd have a hard time understanding them if I wasn't more familiar with their script than they are. Sometimes I answer "can I buy your house?" Then they go into their pitch and I say "I asked you first!" I get the feeling most of them don't have a house to sell me. One time my phone rang during a commercial in the middle of Jeopardy and I answered. When the guy told me which property he was interested in, I said "you call me in the middle of Jeopardy and expect me to give you a deal on a house? Who do you think you are?!" His script didn't have an answer for that one! I do make a point of telling people I wouldn't sell to a cold caller no matter how desperate I got.
Jerryll, I don't care what anyone else says about you, you're doing the Lord's work if you can reach more than one person at a time and convince them to stop wasting money on bogus lists!