So I have called every fsbo I can find and they all want above retail price and haven’t found any who NEED to sell (prospects). I got my website set up and an answering service and put an ad on craigslist. NOTHING has happend. The only one who even responded was me just to test it out. I am planning on sending 300-500 yellow letters and paying someone to write them. Maybe out of towners, pre-forclosure and bankruptcy. I can’t afford to spend a lot of money and I want to get a deal done now so I have a reason to keep trying and can afford the phone service and website. How else can I get motivated sellers to my website and call me? Please help. I am getting discouraged quickly.
The real question is do you know what to do and have the ability to actually do something if you do get a prospect?
All the marketing in the world isn’t going to help you one bit if you can’t deliver on your end. Many people start where you are now and get all choked up and don’t even know what to say when someone actually calls.
Yes I know what to say since I have practiced on sooo many unmotivated sellers and I understand my exit strategies and have the proper paperwork to get it done. I just need to know how to market a lot better.
There is a marketing forum on this web site that might be able to help. That being said, repeat, repeat, repeat is the key to marketing. It took me 4 months to find my first deal, 2 months additional months to find my second deal and then 3 YEARS to find my third deal. Sometimes the deals are simply few and far between.
I advertise weekly in the local “Ad-Lines” paper, do extensive driving for dollars, research at the local court house, and deliver flyers to my target areas 3 or 4 times a year.
My area is tough for investing…VERY few deals worth the risk (to me at least).
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
jmd_forest
Don’t give up man…
First of all, YOU are calling THEM, when THEY should be calling YOU. Not to say calling FSBO’s and For Rent’s won’t bring you any deals, but if you can afford it you should really be marketing for deals. The biggest part of the business at this level is marketing. The more phone calls you’re getting from people in response to your marketing efforts, the better. And be consistent! Don’t do like what I did when I was just starting and send out a bunch of letters or put up some signs, sit back and answer a bunch of calls, and then wait days or even weeks before putting any new marketing out there.
What sort of marketing budget are you working with? How much can you afford to put in to your business every week for the next few months?
You’d probably be better off canceling the answering service unless you aren’t able to answer your phone during the day, and put that money towards some direct mail.
And are you posting the ad on Craigslist a few times a week or did you post it once and never again?
I am going through the same scenario as you.
It has been four months and I still haven’t received one call from sellers; however, I do get calls from buyers.
Consistency and patience is key
My mentor says I have to be patient and that real estat investing is a numbers game.
Every month I track how much marketing and prospecting I did. This heps me double or even triple my marketing plan scheme. If I do this consistently I will get at least one deal.
Anyways, keep marketing, calling , seeking. I am sure our deal is right around the corner.
Honestly I posted several ads on craigslist for a few days but didn’t get even 1 call. I am thinking of putting up some hand written yellow we buy houses cash signs. I might be able to squeeze out $50 a week maybe less for marketing. I can’t answer my phone during the day since I work construction (which is very slow). But I would like to spend the $80 somwhere. I feel like it is a waste but then there is the what if someone calls and I can’t get to the phone and lose a deal. I feel darned if I do and darned if I don’t. The gurus say “No money or credit needed”. The credit thing, ok no problem my credit sucks anyway. The money thing they teach is wrong, You DO need money to get a deal. :banghead
Ron Legrand just made it sound so easy from his very expensive courses I bought 2 and a half years ago.
I was thinking about paying friends .50 cents a letter to write and adress it. Does that seem reasonable? I think i’m going to get business cards and put them everywhere and offer $500 referal or finders fee to anyone I can help and write a letter to my friends to let them know what I’m doing and give them a bunch of my cards with the $500 offer as well. I was also thinking about putting a we buy houses ad on bus benches since they can’t be taken down. The only problem is that it costs like $125 a month that I don’t really have.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for the support and please keep any other sugestions coming.
In your position I wouldn’t be paying anyone to write and address letters, I’d be doing it myself! (which is what I’m doing)
For $50/week you should be able to send out around 75 yellow letters per week.
Are you doing short sales or do you know of anyone who you can send short sale referrals to for a fee? If so, search the local public notices for foreclosure auction notices. Send a yellow letter to these people and I bet you’ll get a good response. And how much more motivated could a person be, if the bank is scheduled to auction their house in a few weeks? A short sale will keep them in their house for a little while longer, will save their credit (compared to a foreclosure), and the leads are right here on the internet or in the newspapers!
Go to the fire departments of the towns you’re working in, bring a box of donuts or something and ask if they can tell you where houses with fire damage are. Go to the town hall to the assessors office and ask for information about properties that are behind on their taxes.
The assessors office might be able to help you put together a list of out of state owners who you could market to as well…
Set a goal for yourself to send out no less than 75 letters a week, if you write/address 15 letters a day you’ll have two days off a week, and assuming you only get a 5% response rate (which is kinda low for yellow letters sent to a half decent list), that’ll be 4 calls a week that you’ll be getting, from people who were at least motivated enough to pick up the phone and dial your number rather than just throwing your letter in the trash.
I haven’t had any tremendous response with bandit signs myself, but I’ve got a short sale in the works that I got from one… Assuming everything goes well with it, I’ll be making a little over $7g from it, and considering I spent a little over 200 bucks for 100 bandit signs and I’ve still got about 30 I haven’t put up… not too bad of a return, even though I don’t get many calls from them.
I’m guilty of giving up on craigslist as well, though I know I need to get back on it, but think about this… craigslist is free, even if you don’t get ANY response for 3 or 4 months, but then you get a call from someone who happens to be the perfect motivated seller for you, who happened to see your ad on craigslist, and you make a few grand from it… would 4 months of posting with no response be worth it? I’d think so…
If you google “overnightprints coupon codes” you should be able to get some nice looking business cards for dirt cheap. (I got 250 for free, all I paid was shipping), make them easy to read and easy to understand what you can offer (“SELL YOUR HOUSE FAST” or “BRADEN BUYS HOUSES”, not “B.Man Investments”), and yeah, put them anywhere and everywhere you can. They’re cheap enough, you might as well!
Some good places to put them:
-RedBox (video rental machine things)
-Gas pumps
-Bathroom mirrors or paper towel dispensers in public restrooms
-Anywhere else that lots of people might notice them
:beer
If it was as easy as pay for an answering service, post a couple of ads on craigslist, call a few FSBO’s or For Rent’s, and cash a big check, everyone would be doing this. And it is possible to do this with ZERO money for marketing… What if your friend Lou’s uncles next door neighbor who lives across town from you lost his job a few months back, and finally found a job that’s 3 hours away, and all he has to do is sell his house to get the money for the down payment on a house out there, and he needs this to happen YESTERDAY. Your friend’s uncle tells your friend, who knows that you’re looking to buy a house, you go knock on Lou’s uncles neighbors door and tell him you buy houses, and he agrees to sell it to you for 60% of what it’s really worth, you put it under contract (with a 1 dollar deposit to make the contract binding), put an ad on craigslist for $5k more than what you have it tied up for, a buyer steps in and pays your $5k assignment fee and buys the house… There, you just did a deal with ZERO money out of your own pocket (you found the $1 deposit in the form of 7 dimes, 5 nickels, and 5 pennies under the seat of your car), so it IS possible, though not something I’d bank on…
Thats what I’m talkin bout! Thanks for the Great response! Thats the kind of motivation we all need to keep going, especially me. I really appreciate it. I’m about to get signs and cards made but I don’t know if I should put my number on them or my answering service (which I don’t know how long I will be able to affod) but I can’t always take the calls from people especially with noisy construction in the background. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Change your voicemail message…
Explain a little bit about how you help people (…I can get you cash for your house in as little as 7 days, you don’t have to worry about repairs cleaning up, I can even help you if you don’t have equity or are having a hard time making your monthly mortgage payments).
Hell, you could even just say “Hi, thanks for calling Braden, I can help you solve real estate problems, etc. etc., I work in construction so I can’t always answer my phone but I will call you back as soon as I can…”, might make it less intimidating to them than thinking they’ll be dealing with some big company… you’ll be just a “regular guy” who they might rather deal with!
My personal vote would be to ditch the answering service. Put that money towards marketing. Worst case scenario they don’t leave a message, but you’ve got their number in your phone… call’em back! Sure, some people might not pick up or return your calls, but some people who call you are gonna hang up before they say anything anyway… You’d be better off pumping out as much marketing as you can so that you have a better chance of hitting the guy who NEEDS to sell and will be GLAD that you called him back
I’m in total agreement with Chris!
Let me tell you about my first wholesale deal. After about 4 months of “driving for dollars”, calling “For Rent” signs, (which I would encourage you to still do! This is how I found my cash buyer which bought my first wholesale deal!!), I finally decided to write to a targeted, list. I found mine in my county’s website under dangerous building list. I kid you not, I sent out 10 letters (I only had 10 stamps left, he, he) and as fate would have it, I finally received the first phone call that would change everything! I had found a highly motivated seller that needed to sell the house she inhereted through a divorce PRONTO! She was going into foreclosure, the house was being threaten to be torn down in 30 days if she didn’t repair it, the house needed about 20k in repairs and she didn’t have anywhere to turn…until she received my letter. She said it was “God Sent”! As a matter of fact, after we closed, she wrote me a wonderful testimonial. If you get a chance, check it out through my website below…yes, I’m very proud of it. And this is how I made my first $5k in real estate. I’m sharing this with you not to gloat, but in hopes that it helps you stay motivated and inspired. Don’t give up, your pot of gold might just be a few feet away! Don’t walk away now! Good luck.
This business is driven by advertising… Plain and simple…
Certainly there are better methods than others however pick one that fits you and do it…
When you can switch from sweat marketing to paid marketing and your world will change…
BTW Mary letters should cost you .34 cents each if done yourself…
happy hunting
Michael
If u want mass phn calls, put an “I Buy Houses” ad in the paper, preferably the local area papers or military paper. Craigslist is good too. If worded properly it will get ur phn ringing:
“I Buy Houses, I Pay Cash”
Any condition, any area.
No Equity, No Problem.
Call Braden 555-555-5555."
THis will get your phn ringing. It will also give you choices to pick and choose what you buy. Only issue is that it is kind of like market saturation or a mass mailing. You will get calls from owners of mobile homes, SF homes, landlords, distressed homeowner, and more. There is NOT A REASON why this should not work.
THis is the least expensive form or making the phn ring. Another effective way is postcards, but it is more expensive. however you need to target the proper prospect to make postcards work.
Now, you also need to be able to answer the phn when it rings. Unfortunatley, most of the time motivated sellers WILL NOT leave a msg on a VM or machine. They want a human voice, and NOT an answering service. They will call the next # they find if you are not available. Only you or your associated should be talking to sellers and making appointments.
One last thing. If you have no money to put into a real estate deal, you need to either wholesale the deal or buy it subject to. Neither require your own credit, and in most cases very little $. But you will need a few hundred to get it subject to.
Good thread because I share those same feelings. The difference is that I been at this for over a year and I spoke to over 200 sellers by now , easily. The problem is that none were really motivated or maybe they were a bit but I didn’t handle the call right. I have done a wholesale deal although it was a Realtor who wanted to wholesale a deal and I bough a buyer for a nice check of $3000. Not a ton but it got that monkey of my back and have the check on my wall.
I have also have been blessed because I have a great local mentor who is done real estate for over 2 decades and he does nothing but creative real estate. He talks to me every day and has given me ton of advise and we are trying to do some deals together. I actually have 100 acres tied up under contract and we have an offer that if done right, would make us $30,000. Sounds crazy that I can’t get any motvated house sellers but I end up with a ton of land under contract.
Even with all this , I still get frustrated and have doubts at time. I feel like I am sick of taking calls from a bunch of unmotivated sellers and tired kickers. I also spent many hours building a buyers list but I can’t find them no homes for some reason. Part of this frustration is because I was never a big talker , specially on the phone. Is just a fear and excuse and I keep my mind with inspiration material to change my mind.
This is what I have done as far as marketing :
• Over 500 bandit signs although in the beginning they were not done well
• Hundreds of postcards to preforeclosures and absentee landlords
• Hundreds of yellow letters to expired listings
• Cold calling FSBOs and For Rents (my least favorite)
• Cold calling from Craigslist and newspaper
• Driving around neighborhoods looking for ugly homes (not much luck there)
• Flyers and business cards in parking lots, Laundromats, and other places
As you can see there’s very little that I haven’t done. That’s why I am frustrated with my lack of results. Having said that; I made up my mind to never give up and I keep pushing forward. It also helps to have a mentor who is already doing it to guide me through the rough times. Braden I would do everything possible to find your own investor mentor to take you to another level and keep you inspired.
Here are a few more tips. Buy bandit signs from dirtcheapsigns.com as they are the cheapest I found and trust me , I looked. Get business cards and if you are going to do a postcard campaign, Vistaprints.com seems like the best deal around. Keep working and keep a positive attitude as is needed to fight those demons. You are not alone with it and we will see you at the finish line. Happy house hunting
One more thing Braden,
I agree with Chris in dropping that answering service and just use your phone with a professional message. I put a lot of time into creating some extensions through Ringcentral and I realilied I would get a lot of people not leaving messages. I plan on dropping them as soons as a few bandit signs get taken down with that phone #.
Look up Google Voice as it is free and can be another option. It is not as deep as these other services but it can give you an additional # where you can let it go to voicemail if you are busy. Actually is not totally free as you have to buy an invite and you can get it for cheap on Ebay at less than $5. You can wait for Google to send you that invite but I hear it takes months so you are better of paying a few bucks to some Ebay geeK 
Here is the Classified Ad I use to run… Dont need to anymore…
http://www.michaelquarles.com/classified_ad.jpg
Here is the big Classified Ad I use to run… lol
http://www.michaelquarles.com/newspaper_ad.jpg
I wrote Advertising 101 a couple years ago… A couple things are a little outdated however if anyone would like a copy visit http://www.michaelquarles.com/Advertising101.pdf
Happy Hunting
I don’t know what market you are in, but it’s hard to believe there aren’t quite a few very motivated sellers in your area, even on Craigslist.
Which begs the question - when you get a lead, what are you looking for to determine whether they are a suspect or a prospect?
Also, what kind of deal(s) are you looking for? Wholesale, sub2, option, etc? I ask because certain lists or marketing strategies can target sellers for different kinds of deals.
I’m looking for sub 2/ seller finance. I find out the address of their house and the price they’re asking then check the comps on zillow to see if they’re even in the ball park. Most of the time they are asking above retail and they don’t want to leave the loan in their own name.
Oh and by the way, “AN” ad on Craigslist isn’t nearly enough. I have about a dozen we-buy-houses type ads active on CL at all times, and I may get one inquiry every 3-6 months. And I use attractive direct response marketing HTML ads. As mentioned already, CL is free therefore it’s worth it, however because it’s free everyone uses it which certainly dilutes the response rate.
There’s no reason not to have several ads going on CL all the time. I don’t just use text, I use nice big fonts and we-buy-houses type images linking them to my website. You don’t even need to create your own images, just google “we buy houses” for images and borrow away (non-copywritten images only, of course :biggrin). Link the image to your website or email address and set yourself a reminder to repost them as they expire.
Oh ok…I’d suggest mailing to absentee owners, pre-NODs and landlords.
But as you know you’ll still have to go through many duds to get to a deal. IMO it’s important to make sure you only call back the prospective deals, and simply throw away the duds. I fear you may be speaking to way too many suspects. That was my problem at one time. Your prescreening seems fine, except you should ask THEM what their house would appraise for. Remember, you’re looking for the ones willing to give away equity, so even if their value is off the mark all you need to know upfront is whether they’ll give it to you. That’s a motivated seller. If they have little equity they should be willing to give it all to you, and maybe ask for a little money.
Same for pre-NODs/preforeclosures; ignore the short sale deals (or sell them) since your goal is sub2.