In the second vlog episode, Danny talks about working the system to better run his real estate investing system. Don’t forget, these episodes are all available on the Flipping Junkie YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/FlippingJunkie
Knowing how to run a business and making it successful has to do with how you work the system and react to things in a professional way. Danny talks about the ‘homework’ (because you never stop learning, even when you’re done with school) that he and his team have: reading.
The book Work the System, by Sam Carpenter, talks about how to manage a business with an emotionally detached point of view. Which really isn’t heartless, it’s objective for running a business efficiently. One of the best quotes that has helped Danny run his business is about looking at the work from above. The analogy goes something like this:
There are a lot of workers cutting down trees in a forest. They’re working really hard all day for weeks, and then the leader climbs up on of the trees to see their progress and finds out that they’ve been working in the wrong forest all this time. Danny keeps this in mind when working on his business instead of in it.
You can find the book at: http://www.workthesystem.com/get-the-book-free/
Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to the FlippingJunkie Youtube channel: http://youtube.com/flippingjunkie
Danny has decided to start sharing the day-to-day inner workings of his businesses vlog (video log) style. Yes, the videos recorded for these shows is available on the FlippingJunkie YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/FlippingJunkie
These will be quick episodes sharing stories of the days happenings and what it looks like for him and his team as they achieve their goals.
He (this seems awkward as I’m writing this in the third person… anyway) wanted to have a platform to share all the epiphanies, struggles and wins experienced as each week goes by. A video log seemed the best way to do so. Each episode will be included as audio on the podcast.
It’s going to be awesome sharing each day in the life of a real estate investor with the vlog and podcast.
In the inaugural edition of the Flipping Junkie Day In The Life vlog series, Danny talks about his breakfast meeting with his dad and brother. As a real estate investor himself, Danny’s dad shared some stories of already installed flooring being stolen and Danny shared that the furniture, rugs, pictures and knick knacks from a fully staged house were stolen.
This first episode gives us a glimpse of what to look forward in the coming episodes.
Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to the FlippingJunkie Youtube channel: http://youtube.com/flippingjunkie
I’ve been hearing more and more investors talk about how they buy houses using online auctions like auction.com. I’ve been fascinated by the strategy and was glad to get Paul Lizell on the show.
He’s buying 8 to 15 houses a month that he buys from online real estate auctions….all over the country. How cool is that?
Paul started in Real estate in 1999, became a full time investor in the fall of 2004. He had a background in commercial business loan underwriting and 4 years as a business development officer. He’s been a licensed Realtor since 2006. As a national real estate wholesaler, he does 6-12 fix and flips per year and owner finances 10 properties per year, mostly to investors.
You’d think that the ratio of houses to bid on to the number of deals he gets would be pretty crazy but he actually does pretty well. He’s got online real estate auction thing figured out to where he bids on about 150 properties and ends up with between and 8 to 15 per month. That’s awesome!
His favorite auction websites are:
auction.com
xome.com
hudsonandmarshall.com
realtybid.com
hubzu.com
He mentioned that hubzu is nice because you can get away with small earnest money deposits than the typical $2,500 the other auction sites require.
When looking for properties to bid on, he focuses on the smaller markets and targets in on the houses that have been listed for a long time. The houses that are for sale for over 180 days or more are the ones that he puts bids in on.
During the episode he also gave several reasons why he prefers to close each of the deals at the title company of his choosing rather than the one preferred by the bank that owns the auction property. The main reason was their hidden title company fees and lack of control over what is going on with the deal.
He was also kind enough to share with us his technique to get Realtors to tell us their BPO (which most don’t want to give out). He does this by not asking for a BPO but by asking, “what would you list it at for a 30 day quick sale?”
Brilliant!
Be aware that when buying auction houses online and then trying to wholesale them, you will not be able to assign them. You will need to double-close…yet another reason to have a title company you know that can close the deals.
John Martinez, founder of Midwest Revenue Group, LLC (www.midwestrev.com) is a sales development expert and a highly sought after consultant who brings humor, insight and real-world advice to his audiences. His practical, street-smart approach to selling has helped hundreds of investors, sales organizations, call centers, business owners, and independent professionals increase their revenue with more control, greater confidence and less effort.
Today I wanted to talk about how to handle negotiations with sellers so that we get the price we want and they feel good about the whole process.
This is an aspect of buying directly from motivated sellers that keeps a lot of people on the sidelines.
John shares with us today several tips for working with motivated sellers so that they feel good about the process and everyone gets what they want.
John’s first tip involves empathy. You’ve got to have empathy for each and every seller and what they are going through. Period.
Don’t hide what you’re feeling and how you feel about their situation. Let them know that what they are going through is not easy and that you know it must be hard.
John’s second tip is to make use of price anchoring. You’ve got to reset whatever initial price the seller is expecting to get so that your offer doesn’t hit them like a huge punch to the gut. One way to do this is to share recent comps for nearby houses that have sold for low amounts.
As you negotiate price, continuously lower the increment that you come up in your offer. This will signal to the seller that you are nearing your max. He also advises that you end with an odd number as your final as it appears to be your highest calculated offer. Great tip!
If your max offer doesn’t do the trick, make non-financial concessions. Offer to allow them to leave stuff they don’t want behind.
I asked John about common objections from sellers and how to handle them. I absolutely love the approach he offered.
He doesn’t feel like there is ever any canned objection/counter that will work. It’s always more of a situation by situation ordeal. His approach is to find out the real reason for why they are selling and have them hash out what objections or problems they have with doing so.
Then, understand that you can never overcome sellers’ objections. They must overcome their own objections. You can aid this by asking them questions that plays their objection against what they are trying to accomplish. In this way, they will see that accomplishing the sale of the house and resolving the situation is much bigger than the smaller problem of the objection.
Bill Allen has been flipping for over 3 years now and has done an incredible amount of growing in that short amount of time. He’s a full-time flight instructor for the Navy and has managed to grow a house flipping business from himself to a team running like a well-oiled machine.
I highly respect Bill and how he thinks. He’s the type of guy that loves to think through all types of situations and coming up with solutions. I think we’re wired the same.
In this episode, Bill shares with us how he got started. We then go into how he analyzes deals. His method of analysis is very similar to mine.
He uses the 70% rule of deal analysis for a quick idea of whether a deal is feasible or not and then goes into more detail.
A very important thing he mentioned was that the 70% rule works well for houses in the over $100k to about $180k range but not so much for anything outside of that. I tend to agree.
His quick method for repair cost estimation is to use $20 per soft of the house and then add costs for major items on top of that. Now, if a house needs major repair, this number will be low. This is more for typical updating, not relocating walls and re-sheetrocking, etc.
Bill became a father again recently. His son, James was born with a heart defect. Though he’s been through a lot, James is doing well.
You can read the story here on Bill’s blog: http://blackjackre.com/james/
Bill is an awesome father and person as he decided to set up donation page for the Children’s Heart Foundation and has pledged to match all donations.
This is incredible and I highly encourage everyone to make a donation. There’s nothing more important than our kids and I can’t think of a better cause.
Please pledge a donation here: Bill’s Children’s Heart Foundation Donation Page: http://www.childrensheartfoundation.org/donate-now
Please be sure to leave a mention of your donation on Bill’s Facebook page so that he can match your donation: http://facebook.com/blackjackestate
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/59
Happy New Year! 2017. Hustle
Goals. Have you set them? Go back and listen to:
Episode 18: [Foundation] 5 Steps To Setting and Actually Achieving Goals w/Marcus Maloney
Where the podcast is going
Finishing up series on investing
Mindset and foundation to get you prepared to be a real estate investor.
Team Building
Funding
Marketing - 19 episodes - You need leads!
Coming up…
Deal Analysis
Estimating Repairs
Making offers
Follow up
Rehabbing
Selling houses
Wholesaling houses
Share more of the day to day. My friend Erik always complains that I never talk about what I’m doing. Everything is top secret and it drives him nuts.
What’s happening in 2017 - bringing the hustle back
House Flipping Business Goals
Real Estate Investor Software Business
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/58
Register for the SEO and Content Marketing Webinar at http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
This is the final of four episodes where Danny Johnson of Flipping Junkie and LeadPropeller discuss generating motivated seller leads online for real estate investors.
In this episode the focus is mainly on search engine optimization and using content marketing to rank your site. We’re covering white hat versus black hat SEO, on-page and off-page SEO and all about content marketing in this episode.
Find out why Danny chose not to build LeadPropeller real estate investor websites on Wordpress and why you should care.
Discover these 4 Steps to Creating a Great Blog Post
Be sure to sign up for the webinar being held on December 13th at 7:00 pm CST by visiting http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/57
Register for the Online Lead Generation for Real Estate Investors Webinar at http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
This is the third of four episodes where Danny Johnson of Flipping Junkie and LeadPropeller discuss generating motivated seller leads online for real estate investors.
In this episode the focus is mainly on pay per click. We’re covering using Google Adwords as a real estate investor to generate awesome motivated seller leads…even within a week of setting up a new website.
Today, we’re talking about PPC (which stands for Pay Per Click) and generating leads the first week of having your website live.
Pay per click, not paperclip, is where you post ads online and pay for each click on those ads. The main services for pay per click are Google’s Adwords and Bing Ads.
This is the absolute best way to start generating leads for your website immediately. With adwords and bing ads, you pay money to have your ads displayed in the search results. Based on several factors that we’ll cover shortly, you can have your ads displayed above ALL organic search results. Basically at the top of the page for the best keywords out there.
Think about how awesome that is! You can beat websites that have been online for years, your first week getting leads online. Of course, you will have to pay for those leads, but these tend to be some of the best motivated seller leads available.
This is because these motivated sellers are seeking you out. They are ready to sell and are looking for a buyer.
Be sure to listen to next week’s podcast where Danny will share with you how to rank your site faster and higher using SEO (search engine optimization) and content marketing for real estate investors.
Be sure to sign up for the webinar being held on November 15th at 7:00 pm CST by visiting http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/56
Register for the Online Lead Generation for Real Estate Investors Webinar at http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
This is the second of four episodes where Danny Johnson of Flipping Junkie and LeadPropeller discuss generating motivated seller leads online for real estate investors.
In this episode the focus is mainly on generating traffic to your website. So, let’s get going and talk about how to promote your website to start generating leads right away without waiting for your site to rank at the top of the search engines...which can take up to a year with diligent effort. We’ll talk about that and SEO a lot more in a couple weeks on the 4th podcast episode in this subseries.
Don’t Expect: ‘Build it and they will come’
The internet isn’t the field of dreams.
Just building a website doesn’t do anything for you unless people know about it. They either find out about it through promotion: which is what we are talking about today or through finding it online themselves: which is what we are covering in the next 2 episodes.
The biggest mistake real estate investors make with a website is getting a website and then doing nothing to promote it.
Promotion does require some work, but the results can land you great deals that generate tens of thousands of dollars.
Whenever I hear someone say, “I haven’t received a single lead from my website”, it’s almost always because they never promoted it or didn’t promote it long enough. It’s the equivalent of complaining you didn’t get a deal from your direct mail campaign after you send out 500 postcards one time.
You Need a Plan
Just as you plan your direct mail with who you are mailing, when and how often and which letters, you need to have a plan to constantly promote your website. You wouldn’t print 1,000 letters and never mail them, so don’t build a website and not promote it.
The ideas I give you today will allow you to create your website promotion plan.
Be sure to listen to next week’s podcast where Danny will share with you how to generate the best motivated seller leads using pay per click (adwords) marketing.
Be sure to sign up for the webinar being held on November 15th at 7:00 pm CST by visiting http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/55
Register for the Online Lead Generation for Real Estate Investors Webinar at http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
This is the first of three episodes where Danny Johnson of Flipping Junkie and LeadPropeller discuss generating motivated seller leads online for real estate investors.
In this episode the focus is mainly on what makes a high-converting website. Danny covers all of the details to make sure you build credibility, how forms should be structured, what questions should be asked, how to eliminate competition.
Be sure to listen to next weeks podcast where Danny will share with you how to promote your website to start generating leads even before it ranks in the search engines. It’s going to be awesome.
Be sure to sign up for the webinar being held on November 15th at 7:00 pm CST by visiting http://leadpropeller.com/webinar
Ask your questions about online lead generation at https://facebook.com/flippingjunkie
This episode is short and sweet just covering what's coming up on the next episodes of the podcast. We'll be talking about online lead generation and how it is the top lead and deal generating marketing we are doing. If you have questions about online lead generation that you want answered, please visit https://facebook.com/flippingjunkie and ask there. I'll do my best to answer all questions in the coming episodes.
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/53
Brett Snodgrass is an awesome real estate investor in Indianapolis, IN. He’s been a full time real estate wholesaler for about 10 years now, and it has been an incredible business that God has used to provide for him and his family. He’s a simple guy, He loves taking his little beater-boat out on the lake, spending time with his wife and kids and enjoying the relationships he has around him.
Today, Brett shared with us his direct mail strategy where he sends out over 20,000 pieces per month and landing roughly 10 deals.
What I enjoyed was the discussion on getting leads from HUD. HUD stands for Housing and Urban Development and they are responsible for selling off FHA foreclosures.
HUD sells there homes auction style through the HUD Home Store (hudhomestore.com). You can bid on these houses and land some awesome deals.
Brett shares with us his exact system for making offers on these HUD houses. I especially like how he describes his filtering process to make sure that he’s not wasting his time. This is information that took him months to determine and we get to listen in and save all that time and effort.
Brett knows how to buy houses from HUD, HUD foreclosures. His system for buying they HUD homes is awesome, from offering 25% of list price and just fishing for counters to knowing when they are more likely to accept an offer, it’s all here in this episode.
Learn how to buy houses from HUD with this episode where I interview Brett Snodgrass.
Show notes at http://flippingjunkie.com/52
We’ve all heard those Jeff Foxworthy jokes about how you might be a redneck if you…
For example:
What might make you a real estate investor…
We as real estate investors have our own quirks and situations that make us who we are. These are the things that create a special bond between us.
If you find yourself nodding and laughing at the following truisms, well…you just might be a real estate investor.
I’m afraid I haven’t found a cure for it so you’re tough out of luck.
You might be a real estate investor if…
Listen to the podcast for more…
Justin Williams has been a full-time investor for over 9 years. He’s flipped over 500 houses. He considers himself a house flipping machinist. What he means by that is that he is all about building systems so that he could scale quickly and do more with his time.
Show notes can be found at http://flippingjunkie.com/51
In today’s episode, we talk about what amounts to a paradigm shift for most investors. There are three steps to revolutionize your house flipping business:
1. Generating leads on a regular basis
2. Converting those leads
3. Increasing profit
Justin’s whole approach is to focus on those three points, nail down the processes and then scale it. It’s really that simple. Maybe not easy to do, but simple.
Justin has done this with his own business and helped many other investors do the same. Trying to figure it all out yourself would not be the best use of your time.
The best use of your time is learning from someone with the experience and ability to teach you every step of the way.
Justin has just opened the doors to his House Flipping Formula program. You can get access to it here: http://houseflippingformula.com/danny
Rod Khleif is a passionate real estate investor who has personally owned and managed over 2000 apartments and homes. As an entrepreneur, Rod has built several multi-million dollar businesses. As a community philanthropist, Rod’s work has benefited more than 45,000 underprivileged children and families.
Rod discusses culling a list to make it more accurate and actual outbound calling which he’s done successfully. He speaks to knocking on doors which he did in Denver to buy some of the 500 houses he owned there on a buy and hold strategy. He’s found if you’re willing to do what others aren’t you’ll be successful and he happily talks about all of that in today’s episode of the Flipping Junkie Podcast.
Rod has bought hundreds of houses by door knocking on houses that were facing foreclosure. Here’s what he did:
He would get the pre-foreclosure list (sometimes referred to as the Notice of Default or NOD list) and then design a route to go to the houses.
He focused on going in the evening after 5:15 when people were more likely to be at home. If they were not home, he would leave his card (that said something along the lines of ‘Foreclosure Assistance Specialist’). He would then try again on Saturday.
Persistence. That’s what lands deals. Huge deals. He was doing what most investors still won’t do to this day!
When the homeowner is home, you must genuinely care about helping them. If you only care about making a buck, go and chase bank-owned MLS properties….door knocking is not for you. Homeowners will smell a shark a mile away.
Ask them questions to guide them through the conversation. You’ll need to build rapport so that they’ll talk openly with you so that you can offer up solutions to their foreclosure.
Rod liked to ask them what options they’ve already considered. This is a good way to get the conversation going.
Rod makes sure to verify the accuracy of his mailing lists and will look for phone numbers of the owners. This is also something most real estate investors do not do. If you are serious about real estate investing, finding the owners, finding their phone numbers and calling them can net you big deals.
You can find out what service he uses to verify the accuracy of his lists and find phone numbers by visiting the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/50
Over 6 years of developing and building a owner finance real estate investment company. Starting from scratch he has figured out the best way to create and sell real estate notes. He currently "flips” 75+ houses and notes a year and are shooting for 100. He’s been in real estate for over 15 years and have done a little bit of every kind of investing. His passion is in the creation of real estate notes because it affects the most people. You are helping the seller by buying their house. Then the neighborhood by rehabbing it. The buyer by offering owner finance and the investor by creating a good quality real estate note.
Erik was on episode 27 where we talked about Finding and Working with the “Right” Contractors
Erik is on track to do 100 deals this year. Obviously, to do a 100 deals in a year, you’ve got to be good at marketing for motivated seller leads. While Erik does do direct mail to find motivated sellers, he also uses other methods.
Today we talk about those other methods. We focus today’s episode on using bandit signs. Disclaimer: Check with your local city offices to make sure it’s legal for you to put signs out. They are illegal in a lot of places.
He shares a great tip on getting 4x8 sheets of corrugated plastic that he cuts down into bandit signs that have odd shapes. These signs grab much more attention than printed signs. He then writes on them with giant markers.
This is the way to go to get maximum benefit out of bandit signs.
The next thing we talk about is using newspaper ads to generate motivated seller leads. While print newspapers are dying and don’t get the readership they used to, you can still get ads displayed in them and online as most have a website now.
The great thing about online newspaper classifieds is that you can now have your ad show to visitors that might not even go into the classified section of the newspaper. There are a lot of possibilities here and not a lot of competition.
We also talk about using Facebook to target the exact demographics of people investors normally buy from. This varies greatly by area and also by investor, so it’s more up to you to determine which demographics you should target.
Facebook is just another medium to have your message displayed in front of people that might need your services. Why not take advantage of the power of Facebook ads to generate motivated sellers leads for your real estate investing business?
Don was on episode 36. Be sure to visit the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/36 to download his Joint Venture Agreement.
Don Costa, is a married father of 3 kids. He has been in the real estate business for over 10 years. He started Knocking on doors and wholesaling properties, and then quickly moved to flipping houses. Currently his office is on track to do a 100 flips this year.
Don is a networking machine! He is on track to do more than 20 flips this year solely from his networking efforts. Crazy!
Networking as a real estate investor is one of the cheapest ways to generate leads and deals and is probably the least utilized method of all.
Don mentions that he feels networking to be the best way to use Other People’s Marketing. Many investors use Other People’s Money, but few use Other People’s Marketing.
He calls all the marketing from other investors in his area and quickly asks if the investor is a wholesaler or a cash buyer.
His conversation is then guided by whichever the investor mentions they are.
If they are a cash buyer, Don wants to find out if they’d be interested in lending on a deal or joint venturing and splitting profits.
If they are a real estate wholesaler, he wants to know how many deals they’ve done. If they haven’t done many deals, he invites them to his offer and provides coaching. This is awesome because he is building a relationship with a new wholesaler that could bring him deals for years to come.
He even offers to do deal analysis for wholesalers so they know they already have a buyer at a given price. This takes almost all the risk out of the deal for them…which is invaluable when you are new to this business.
In this episode, we do a little role playing to see exactly what Don says when he calls real estate investors. The insights are incredible.
Listen to the episode to get the tips that have helped Don Costa to generate over 20 flip deals this year alone.
Get show notes at http://flippingjunkie.com/47
Jim has been a real estate investor in Northern Illinois since 2007, He is also a licensed real estate agent (IL) and has been since 2005. He started out as an aggressive new agent helping investors buy and sell their rehab properties. Then he quickly realized he was on the wrong side of that transaction and that is when he decided to become a real estate investor myself. These days his primary focus as an investor is residential redevelopment (aka rehabbing). He primarily works in Chicago and its NW suburbs and had used his local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to get 75% of his rehab deals over the last 8 years. Since he got into the real estate business he has been involved in over 450 transactions.His company does 8-10 rehabs at any one time. Though Jim is an active investor he spends as much of his time as possible with his 4 year old twins, Liam & Claire, and his awesome wife who stays home with them. He told us "Everything changed when I had kids. Suddenly I looked at everything differently and literally changed almost everything in my life. I got healthy, quit drinking, lost 50lbs and have never looked back. Life is much more enjoyable on this side of your health".
Jim’s secret to getting great deals on the MLS starts with planting the right seeds with the real estate agents involved. Effective communication is absolutely necessary.
You have to convince the listing agent so that they will convince the seller that your offer is worth considering and ultimately worth accepting.
Jim has bought tons of houses where his offer wasn’t the highest but he convinced the agents that his was the best offer. To make his offers more appealing he does the following:
1. Waives the inspection
2. Informs the agent that other investors and potential buyers include inspections because they will likely renegotiate after the inspection.
3. If not a bank-owned property, he tells the listing agent to inform the seller that, when he through fixing up the house, most of his houses are sold to young families.
4. He puts up a strong earnest money deposit (around $5,000 for a house with an ARV between $400k and $500k).
5. He puts in for a 2 week closing.
Agents hardly ever know what a seller is going to be willing to take for their house. They all have assumptions and we know what assumptions do…
So, don’t ever rely on a listing agent telling you their client will never entertain a low offer. This is crap. They are obligated to submit all offers, so go ahead and submit yours and try to convince the agent of the real benefits of your offer (not just price).
Jim also mentioned that 90% of his MLS deals required follow up. He usually does this using hotsheets to automatically check for status changes for the listings.
If you want to win even more deals, it’s best to have a system in place to remind you to follow up just before typical price changes. There’s no way to guarantee when there will be a price change but you can set up reminders for yourself for each property very easily in REImobile so that you can set it and forget it.
The criteria for properties he makes offers on are usually based on location but also the presence of one of the following keywords:
estate sale, REO, bank-owned, motivated, needs work, original owner, handyman special, as-is, fixer
As a Wholesaler with just over 3 years of experience, Tom has had explosive growth. As head “Rhino” of the most successful Tribe of Wholesalers on the planet he has had the fortune of meeting true Go Givers and being a part of some of the best real estate deals in the industry.
When he’s not writing, podcasting or creating courses that force others to succeed, you’ll find him spending time with his wife and 4 children or vacationing in favorite spots like Key Largo, Hilton Head, Charleston and Savanah.
Currently he is writing his first book, working title “Wholesaling Real Estate Like A Rhino, A No BS No Fluff Step-By-Step Blueprint To Wholesale A House Right Now” is slated for release this fall.
In this episode, Tom shares his top 8 direct mail lists for motivated sellers as a real estate investor.
The best direct mail lists are:
1. Tax Delinquent List - criteria: 2 years behind, are still the homeowner
2. Code Violation List - no criteria
3. Equity List - Absentee Owner, Owner Occupied and Global (all) - criteria: over 45 years old owner, last sale date between 1990 and 3 years ago.
4. Inheritance List - USLeadList
5. Evictions - no criteria
6. Yard Sale/Garage Sale List - tenants sell before they move
7. Probate - Recommends getting course from Rick Ginn
8. Arrest Record List - list of people recently arrested
Tom shares lots of pearls of wisdom in this episode that pertain to investing in general. One of these nuggets is from Jack Bosch. He says that you will get 5 no’s before you get a yes when asking people at your local government offices for each of these lists.
The first, second, third, fourth, and even fifth person you talk will tell you the list doesn’t exist or that they cannot give it to you. The sixth person will say, ‘Here ya go!”
Tom also shares a great tip from his friend, Mark Evans: ‘Data not Drama’ He is referring to keeping track of your mailing campaigns and the results you are getting.
We make this super easy in REImobile with our Direct Mail Module. Check it out here: http://reimobile.com
Tom also talks about how ‘Money is in the Database’. You have to keep track of your leads and follow up! …this is also exactly the reason why we developed REImobile…
I’m telling you, you’ve got to check out the system.
Husband. Father to His Two Year old Son, Nolan!
He’s a graduate of Ball State University living with my beautiful and super supportive wife in Indianapolis, Indiana. Prior to becoming a real estate professional he worked as Healthcare Technology Education Consultant at Indiana University Health. He’s also a successful poker player with a few TV final tables…which I found super interesting.
He’s spent the past several years learning all that he could about real estate and applying it so that he could provide enough income to support his family.
The education has paid off and he’s now a full-time real estate investor in Indianapolis.
Ben started by following my Flipping Junkie blog and went on to take my wholesaling training course FreedomByFlipping (http://freedombyflipping.com).
He’s grown his business and has staff helping him already. During this episode, Ben shares how he doesn’t focus at all on what his letters say as he simply outsources them to Jerry Puckett who handles the list and mailing them for Ben.
During the conversation we make special note of the importance of credibility when marketing to motivated sellers through direct mail.
Ben mentions how important it is to be a member of the chamber of commerce, better business bureau and have other professional credibility and endorsements.
Testimonials are huge. Ben advises to get and show testimonials whenever possible.
He always has motivated sellers tell him they called him because of the testimonials and reviews they saw.
Doug was born in Colorado Springs, CO and raised in Carlsbad New Mexico. After high school he ventured west to the sunny coast of Southern California. It was there he met his beautiful bride Andrea, who happens to share his entrepreneurial spirit!
As newlyweds, they ventured back to Colorado and started Mountain High Concessions, a Kettle Corn vender for special events and sporting/concert venues. Mountain High Concessions became the first Kettle popcorn vender for the Denver Broncos at Mile High Stadium. They were itching to get back to So Cal and they sold the concessions company and got started in Real Estate!
16 years and 3 kids later, they are the proud owners of one of Southern California's largest wholesale real estate purchasing companies! They operate the business together along with our incredible team! Over the past decade he has worked as a California Certified Residential Appraiser from 2003-2010. Since 2008, he and Andrea have purchased and sold over 250 properties in Southern California and manage their in-house rental property portfolio.
In this episode, Doug shares with us how he started by sending out about 1,000 postcards each month that had the ‘Urgent Notice’ message on them to absentee owners. His response rate then was about 2% to 4%…which is incredible!
Too bad everyone else started doing it and now the response rates are much, much lower. Typical investor response rates on direct mail is around .5% (half a percent).
Doug is now mailing around 20,000 pieces PER MONTH! He’s definitely dialed in his message and list in order to be comfortable mailing that much.
Instead of post cards, Doug now mails letters that are more professional. They have his business name and logo on them. He also includes a picture of himself and his family.
I think this is where direct mail for real estate investors is headed. Too many people are mailing yellow letters that come across as “iffy”. If you get a letter in the mail from a complete stranger that says they want to buy your house and to call them…and that’s all…your BS meter is probably being pegged.
Doug uses propertyradar.com for his lists. They are only available for west coast states. He used to get his lists from listsource.com (where most investors still get their lists).
His criteria for his absentee owners list is:
House older than 20 years
Bought 4+ years ago
With more than 60% equity
Less than 3,000 sqft
Many investors have trouble figuring out what benefits to motivated sellers to list in their letters. Here are some we discussed in this episode:
We buy As-Is. Make no repairs.
Fast Cash so you can Sell Quickly
Sell without dealing with Tenants or Family Members
Pay No Commissions
Skip the Hassles
Have Confidence the Deal with Close
To come up with your own benefits, just put yourself in the shoes of motivated sellers. Consider why you would seller to investor rather than the conventional way of listing with a Realtor.
Be sure to check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/44 to download your free guide from Doug entitled, ’11 Tips to Working Successfully with your Spouse’
Danny Johnson is the host of the Flipping Junkie podcast and today he shares with us incredible tips for driving for dollars in a world where technology has made things so much easier.
In this episode, we discuss:
What driving for dollars is
When to drive for dollars
Where to drive for dollars
How to drive for dollars
What to do after you get the addresses
Common questions about driving for dollars
How to outsource driving for dollars
Check out the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/43 to download a pdf of all the points talked about in this episode so that you have a roadmap for driving for dollars more efficiently.
Justin Colby is the Co-Founder and President of The Science of Flipping, Omni Investment Group and Phoenix Wealth Builders. The Science of Flipping is a free Podcast on itunes, Omni and PWB are both professional real estate investment companies specializing in purchase, rehab, and flipping of distressed property in the Metro Phoenix Area.
In this episode, Justin shares his story of getting started and struggling through 9 months to get his first deal. He simply didn’t have any money to get started and had to door knock and do things that cost very little.
In starting out this way, Justin was forced to learn the most efficient ways to get deals. This continued as he began using direct mail to generate motivated seller leads.
He shares with us that he had just sent out 47,000 direct mail pieces. So he’s grown over the years but knows what it takes to get started with very little money.
An important fact that he shares is that most direct mail response rates are below 1%. This fact tends to be ignored by most investors just starting out with direct mail to motivated sellers.
They might send out 500 mail pieces and only get 3 calls. This is very disheartening if you aren’t prepared for it. This is the reason we figure more than 80 to 90% of investors discontinue or change their list after only mailing one time!
When starting to send direct mail, you want to send as many as you can afford to send at least 6 times. You’ve got to mail the same mailing list your postcards and/or letters at least 6 times. The reason is that studies have shown that, for direct mail in general, 80% of sales happen after 6 touches.
Don’t be the guy that mails once and quits. Also, don’t be the guy that mails 5 times and quits. They’re almost equivalent.
The guy/gal that mails 6 or 7 times will generate a very disproportionate amount of motivated sellers leads.
Regarding whether to use postcards or letters and first class versus bulk rate or metered, it all boils down to which will be cheaper so that you can mail more pieces. When on a budget, you should always defer to what will allow you to send more.
In this episode, Justin also shares with us what he says in his postcards and letters. This is super valuable information.
We also talk about the A/B test he performed that cost him $15,000 and didn’t show any measurable difference.
Listen to the show to find out what the test was so that you can benefit from his big expense and save some money for yourself.
Joe McCall has been investing since 2006 and has an excellent podcast called the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast that he does with Alex Joungblood. He’s doing deals in multiple markets across the us while traveling for months at a time in Europe and traveling the us in an RV. He’s been teaching and coaching investing since 2011.
In this episode, Joe goes into incredible detail on how he set up and runs his direct mail marketing for motivated sellers leads.
We talk about the lists that he targets and how to get them.
He even shares when he sends postcards and when he sends letters.
A funny story during the interview was when Joe realized that he had been sending a postcard for years that he got from FlippingJunkie.com and didn’t put two and two together until that moment.
Bonus: get that postcard here http://flippingjunkie.com/41
Joe focuses on absentee owner mailings using postcards. When there is a lot of competition, he focuses on high equity owner occupied houses.
He gets his list from Listsource.com using the following criteria:
Bought at least 10 years ago
At least 40% equity
At least 3 bedroom house
Owner at least 55 years old
Specific zip codes with lots of rehab activity
One way Joe finds the most sought after areas is Trulia heat maps. He targets a county and the heat map shows cheap, median and expensive houses. There is even a table of data that can be sorted to show the most popular areas.
During the conversation we shared some numbers for the typical marketing spend per deal for investors. The numbers vary between $1,000 and $3,000 per deal and go as high as $5,000 per deal for some very competitive areas.
Mailing intervals for probates should be about once per week for the first 6 weeks or so. Mailing intervals for other lists usually are spread out from 30 to 90 days in between mailings.
One recurring theme throughout the episode was the discussion of how most investors fail to answer their phones. If there is one thing you can do to eliminate 75% or more of your competition, it’s answering your phone or calling back a seller IMMEDIATELY. Take that to the bank.
Nick Baldo started investing in real estate in 2011 with a focus on flipping houses in the Buffalo, NY area. He has since expanded his business to focus on value-added rental investments. Nick created and manages the real estate educational site, Income Digs to help aspiring real estate investors get started. He has a focus on leveraging technology to create an investment business that is both efficient and scalable.
Overview of Strategy:
11 Actionable Tips for getting yourself out there and finding deals
“Bonus” - Even if it’s not a deal you find, a solid consolation prize is finding a private lender
Visit the show notes page at http://flippingjunkie.com/40 to download Nick's 10 Tangible Tips to Find More Solid Rehab Deals