If you set up a voicemail leaving details about a house instead of taking every call yourself wouldn't that free up a little time?
Yes, that will certainly free up a little time, but it will also increase the time it takes to find a tenant. Tenants are fickle. If they get voicemail or a recording, they will usually hang up and just move on to the next phone number. In really hot rental markets, it wouldn’t matter that you missed a bunch of potential tenants. In a more normal or difficult rental market, it could be quite serious. The same is true of people calling to sell you their house. When someone is desperate to sell, they want to sell NOW. They don’t want to get a recorded message.
I’m in business. I am not lazy. Part of running a business is answering the phone. I receive an average of 30-40 calls per day and my goal is to be efficient. In almost all cases, I can give the caller the info they need in less than 1 minute and be off the phone. So, on average, I spend about 40 minutes on the phone. The majority of tenant applicants call from 8am to about 9pm, which is a time period of 13 hours. If I followed the guru nonsense advice, I could hire someone to answer those calls. If I paid them $10 per hour, that would be $130 per day or $4,030 per month (plus all the other expenses associated with employees). So, that 40 minutes I spend on the phone makes me $4,030 per month. Do you really suggest that I hire someone to answer the phone and lose $4,030 per month?
I understand there are a lot of people who will have you believe you can get rich quick or have [b]1min riches [/b] but there is some valuble info out there also.
OUCH! Now that hurts! To set the record straight, the “1 Minute” part of the title is meant to be a sarcasm of all the ridiculous guru promises of instant riches without work. Another good example of the nonsense is an infomercial I just saw. The “guru” was asked by a student how much work it would take to do his system. His answer - 10 minute a day! RIDICULOUS!
I was thinking this morning about becoming a guru of an entirely new system to instant riches. This system would get newbies to attend a 3-day bootcamp at which we would introduce people that had gotten rich with my “system”, although never really telling how they did it. None of these people had to work even 1 minute to become rich. At the end of the 3-day bootcamp (which was really a 3-day commercial), I would promise to give the student the “SECRET” to getting rich instantly without ANY work at the platinum level “Inner Circle” training, which cost only $19,999. At the $19,999 training, I would finally give the big secret away - BUY LOTTERY TICKETS! What do you think? The next bootcamp is right around the corner!
MI-Newbie,
I’m simply trying to make a point - that many of the gurus are selling a dream that doesn’t exist. You WILL NOT get rich with real estate investing (or anything else) unless you are willing to work hard. I would challenge you to watch several infomercials this weekend. All of them are hyping instant riches without work - which is pure nonsense. I don’t know anything about Kris Kirchner or Louis Brown and I can’t comment on their courses. However, I do KNOW that there is no autopilot and that you won’t get rich without a LOT of work.
You made the right choice by joining REIClub. You won’t get a bunch of guru nonsense on here - just the opinions of real people who are out there actually doing it.
Good Luck,
Mike