I understand the wholesaling process very well, but since I work a J.O.B. full time (and in an effort to leverage my time) I want to get a bird dog or two out there finding the junkers for me.
For anyone living in the DC metro area that wants to earn an extra $250/week simply riding around in your own car, For anyone out there who has hired bird dogs in the past, please share your experiences…particularly:
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What is the best way to hire a bird dog? Ad in the paper, high schools, forums, etc?
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How much should I pay per lead, and what exactly should I be paying for? I was thinking $5 per junker if he/she provides an address and photo.
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If I should place an ad in the paper, how should it read? And in what type of publication should I place the ad?
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Should I pay a bonus if the deal closes, or is that generally not necessary to get someone to bird-dog? And if so, how much?
I’d appreciate any other relevant info that anyone could provide. I live in the Washington DC metro area. I have set aside an up-front budget of about $800 that I can use to pay the bird dog and for skip tracing.
However, I’m about as serious a newbie as you’ll ever see. I have a website under construction and a phone hotline that I’m setting up tomorrow. I just finished transcribing a 5-page long hotline script. Biz cards arrived yesterday.
My goal is to wholsale at least one junker before I really get into the other modules of creative real estate investing (lease options, subject-to, optioning, etc) so I can have enough money to crank up the marketing that such ventures require, and also if I need a little bit for down payments.
I’ve asked a few questions before on here and have always received great feedback.
I wouldn’t put any ads in the high school unless you want problems with the principal and the parents.
Try advertising in the local paper. $5 per house with picture isn’t much, try offering a bonus if you buy a property (maybe $500).
just my $.02
Paying per lead is tough because it doesn’t encourage the bird dog to make an effort to provide quality leads. Quality leads turn into a purchase, which is why many wholesalers and rehabbers pay bird dogs when a lead turns into a purchase. For example, I could run out tomorrow and find 100 leads for $10 a piece and you’d pay me $1000, or I could find you 20 quality leads and you buy two of those and give me $1000. So that’d be the same cost to you, but you’d have to weed through 80 fewer garbage leads. Make sense?
I am in Loudoun County, very nice area for rehabs and PRE-FORECLOSURES.
Just to give you an idea, there are 2 big investment groups in this area:
ExpressHomeBuyers (They advertise on TV all the time 800-SELL-2-US) and HomeVestors.
ExpressHomeBuyers pays $3000 per home and HomeVestors $1000, so if you want to have a good birddog, I would suggest you pay by transaction. If I were in your shoes, I would try to pay in that range.
You guys are making a lot of sense…thanks for the info. I’m certainly leaning towards paying at least a $1,000 bonus if a lead turns into a deal. Great advice!
