All Forum Posts by: Phil Z.

Sometimes the 'winning' bidder is really the loser.  Don't pay too much just to 'win' for the day.

From what your telling me .. your clearly pursuing the obvious 'amazing deals' that hit the MLS. Those properties have a hundred showings in a week and more offers than they can handle. In today's hot market, you're swimming with the sharks. You're bidding against people who might want to live there, or who don't know their repair or resale costs as well as you do. If the bank will lend, they will buy.

My suggestion to you, is to seek the less obvious deals.  Look at high DOM listings that are over priced.  Look for signs of motivation.  Network with wholesalers. Network with attorneys. Continue to look at those 'hot deals', but prepare for serious competition and stick to your numbers.

Sounds about right.

Forget about your opinions of where you want to live, and invest based on the numbers.  You might not want to live in a busy city, but there are a lot more tenants there and a lot more properties that you can get at higher cap rates.  I would suggest getting comfortable with your nearest city by driving around the town often.

In regards to Stratford, that is a very busy town in terms of affordable home sales, and while I didn't check the rental market, I would be willing to bet its a great town to invest.  Bridgeport is also a good town for investing, but you need to know your numbers (watch out for high TAXES and Water Costs).  Milford is going to have a lot less rental properties and your going to pay a premium in most areas of the town.

New Haven is my local city and in my opinion the easiest place to find good investment properties.

You didn't mention the hall or outside lights.. I assume those are also on the 1st floor meter?

Does the garage really need electricity (detached?)?

As others suggested, can you lock the basement and use LED bulbs?

In a perfect world you would add a meter and separate the common areas.  But I'm sure you don't want to spend that kind of money.

The second legit option is probably that you must pay the utilities (incl flat rate in rent).

If you want the tenant to pay for common areas you could run into problems with certain renters.

"Utilities (rource)

Your landlord must not interfere with your utilities, including gas, electricity, heat, and hot water. If this happens, call the police. Your landlord could be arrested if the utilities are not turned back on.

Any utilities you pay for must be for your use only. You cannot be required to pay for utilities for common areas or for other tenants."

I am very experienced with PPC, but maybe I didn't elaborate on why I made my comment about not doing PPC.

I didn't mean to never do Pay Per Click, or that it doesn't work.  Pay Per Click can be very lucrative, IF you know what your doing.  But before jumping into Pay Per Click, it is VERY VERY important to know exactly how to use it effectively and efficiently.  It's not like paying for a billboard where you pay and there's nothing else to do .. PPC costs money per CLICK and requires skill and experience to minimize cost and maximize conversions.  At $30-50 per CLICK, the obvious investor keywords are extremely expensive. If you just put up $5000 for the key word 'we buy houses', you'll be out $5000 in 24hrs.  As Jeryll said, you could easily end up targeting investors instead of motivated sellers.  The last thing you want to do is spend your $5000 on 100 clicks from investors looking for 'we buy houses bandit signs' or people looking to sell their home in Alaska.  And yes, those would be CLICKS to your website, not leads.  Depending on the keywords, those 100 clicks may only turn into 0-2 leads depending on the keywords and landingpage's ability to convert traffic to leads.

Just an example of PPC settings .. We Buy Houses, "We Buy Houses", and [We Buy Houses] are all processed by Google Ads very differently.  If you use the wrong ones, your going to get hundreds of clicks from unrelated traffic.

@Jerryll Noorden It's not about hurt feelings, its about forum manors and being professional.  Your comments about my comments were blatantly offensive and are the type of remarks that can start a worthless dispute. I responded in the most non confrontational words that I could think of quickly to avoid a 'come back' or escalating and argument.  There's no need to continue to respond to this.. I know your very passionate about Investing and SEO and maybe your thoughts were coming out a little unfiltered because you have a lot to say.  I get it. I just hope you will reconsider next time before submitting a reply calling my opinion 'terrible'.  I wouldn't do that to you, not in those words. You just state your opinion .. I'll state mine .. and the readers can decide.

Your advice sounds like hype that will cost him his only $5k because he is not trained to properly set-up PPC campaigns.

And don't insult my opinion.

I would strongly suggest holding onto your $5k and do 'Gorilla Marketing' for your 1st deal. You can and will blow through $5k in Google AdWords or a Direct Mail Campaign and get absolutely nothing to show for it ::toilet flush::.  Marketing for motivated sellers can be very very VERY expensive.

- Post on Craigs List

- Drive For Dollars

- Build a Web Site

- Post Signs

.. but to answer your question.  Yes wholesaling works in CT.  I find the easiest deals are in the lowest value neighborhoods.  If you can get a house locked up for $50k, its easy to find an investor with $55k or $60k willing to buy a house vs a deal for $350k looking for a $355k cash buyer.

The more popular key words are also the most expensive.  There are enough clueless AdWords investors out there spending big bucks for the 'we buy houses' key word to make the investment a total loss.  You're likely going to have to use terms a little less obvious and more importantly add all the right NEGATIVE key words to make sure you are not spending money on irrelevant phrases.  To do it right your going to waste some money at the beginning until it's dialed in.  It's not as easy to do right without spending a lot of money, so if your not experienced with Ad Words I would start reading up on it, set a very low budget, check daily, add negative keywords often, and go very very slow.

 Thats about it.  The start price is usually what they think is Super Low, so if your only at $500k, they probably think its worth $700k. Just keep trying, or see if the listing agent has any insight into the banks valuation.

I would not try to wholesale an REO.

Theres really nothing to do but wait to talk to the list agent once they are assigned.