Why send mail to vacant or abandoned houses, isn’t that counterproductive?
Skip trace the owner and find out where they are. Call them if possible.
That would seem a better option. But for new investors like me, can you recommend a service that won’t break the bank.
First, find a friendly Title Company, I use First American, they at first wanted to know who I was and etc. I told them a straight out bold big ass frikin lie. My name is Randoskie I have done several deals thru your Title Company and I will be doing more.
I now have an endless stream of title reports at my command, I can send in 20 addresses or more a day and most times get them back in a few hours. I feel guilty, I’ve never used their title company to run a wholesale deal thru.
Oh and let me tell you about these title reports. Full rundown on the property, tax asses value, year built, owners name and sometimes mailing address, tons of frikin info, and the kicker is, I also get comparables or recently solds, it’s like Christmas.
I’m a bottom feeding wholesaler, I can get down and dirty and eat with the dogs.
That sounds like something that is doable fro me. It’s time to get my first deal done.
?! You were never supposed to send mail to abandoned houses. What the heck?!
You are supposed to find the owner of these houses and send the mail to where they love now!
:deal :flush
:deal :flush
Yep, what Luke said.
- Find Vacant homes
- Send a list of vacant homes to be skip traced
- Get on the phone and call the owners directly
What I’ve done is if I get the mail returned or it’s vacant, I’ll just use white pages or just google their name or use tax records to find where they live now or family members and send to them. If that fails, I’ll knock on neighbors doors and tell them I want to buy that ugly vacant house and fix it up. I’ve gotten a couple deals of that before.
Ok, got it.
Norm,
I’ve been trying to get into direct mail for awhile but I hear it’s expensive.
It’s about as expensive as any other marketing right now.
My main focus is on direct mail, but I’m embarrassed to say how little I do and how little I spend.
I get my reams of white card stock on Amazon and I have office max cut them into postcard sizes for cheap.
I got a nice handwriting font and my sister uses mail merge to import each homeowners name off of my excel sheets.
My recent list cost $380 from Listgiant for 2,500 names of absentee owners. It costs about 40 cents to mail each post card.
I have only got a dozen calls on the first mailing. But slammed 2 deals for 35K in assignment fees. With about 5-6K in expenses for bird dog, 10% for printing, and postage. I believe that leaves some good profit.
So even with my limited brain capacity I believe I can do better and have doubled my mailings from 1-200 a week to 3-400.
The only time I lost money was when I first started and I spent 4 grand mailing to a free list I got. Back then I didnt know a deal from a hole in the ground, but I got one deal, I got a fixer for 10 Grand and sold it for 12K My first wholesale deal. I lost 2 grand but I was enthusiastic. I learned fast, don’t send so many all at once, bcuz I was over run with calls and didnt know wat the heck I was doing.
My favorite lists are out of state owners, next is absentee owners with pre-1970 properties.
It’s scary spending hundreds of dollars a month on this and not knowing if you just wasted your grocery money.
Imagine how exciting it is to get that call from a distressed homeowner about his vacant fixer.
TOTALLY disagree. I am getting about 6 to 8 leads a day. These leads are high quality hot leads, of people begging us to buy their house. All FREE! (other than hosting charges for my website).
I keep telling people about the power of a #1 ranking website. I still do not understand why most investors see a website as a secondary thing. I do not spend cent on marketing and our leads are of highest quality. It is just nuts to me how people neglect this yet they spent a fortune on direct mail marketing.
We do zero marketing, no facebook no craigslist no adworks. I just work on SEO all day long!
That’s your niche and it’s working so good for you. Me trying to figure out SEO would cost twice as much as direct mail. Idk maybe I’m not millennial enough. I mean last time I did SEO I was spamming sites with back links lol.
I learned SEO and t was free.
But I do see your point. it is a lot of work in the beginning, but once mastered, you get free leads for ever. It is not possible for SEO to be more expensive than DM, especially so because SEO leads are Hot leads. DM leads are cold leads.
This is what can happen when your site is running on top of google.
http://www.themightyinvestor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Checks.jpg
We pay ZIP, for marketing and checks keep flowing in. Wholesaling +SEO can be lucrative if done right
That’s awesome man so how does one rank #1 in say a area like Charlotte or Columbia where there is a good amount of competition? I think almost every guru now teaches people to use investor carrot sites that are turn key with seo. I’m not really sure I could overcome those sites being a noob of interest websites.
TO answer The original question about mailing to vacants being counterproductive… make sure you are not mailing the vacant address. You should be mailing to the owners address which is usually a different mailing address. or you may want to skip trace and find a phone number :bobble
I have done the same this for years with direct mail and have had good results I use YELLOW card stock seems to work best.
Have you tried other List Brokers or do you think Listgiant is the best i have not seen them before.
What does your postcard say?
If you do not use investor Carrot, you will start with a disadvantage. They are just better sites when it comes to SEO.
Thanks to the InvestorCarrot site and my creative knowledge of SEO (everyone thinks they are masters at SEO) I took over the market in 3 months.
As for your other question, you can take your market no matter where, or how many competitors you have. The trick is to develop your own SEO techniques and strategies. This because everyone else is doing the SAME damn thing. Be different better unique and you will over take them EASY!