Lately it’s been bird dogs to locate vacant houses, then yellow letters to the owners of record. Getting plenty of leads of course, and I got a couple of deals under contract. You guys have made me realize that somewhere along the line I totally forgot about good ol fashioned We Buy Houses bandit signs.
Hey are you guys going with that standard preprinted We Buy Houses/phone number message or something more creative? Also have you tried the “handwritten” signs to pull sellers? They work like gangbusters to pull buyers but I’ve been curious as to whether they’d work better than printed signs to pull sellers. Logic tells me it wouldn’t because a seller would perhaps rather deal with a professional-looking company rather than someone who seems to can’t afford a printed sign and therefore may be too broke to buy their house lol. But I could be wrong.
So what do you say to the bird dogs to have them find the leads for you? How have you been finding the bird dogs? Bandit signs have been good for me, but I’m always looking for low cost/high yield ways of getting leads and deals.
I use the standard “we buy houses, no commissions or fees”. And yes, I use the handmade signs for the buyers. I agree it works quite well.
Curious, how many homemade signs do you put up NSU for a house that you have for sale?
A few years ago just as an experiment I tried the non-handwritten signs for about 4 months and it sucked so I dropped it.
Lately for the first time my handwritten signs haven’t been getting close to the call volume as in previous months or years. So I’ve been doing more. I typically will buy a big marker and pastel colored bristol boards (at DollarStore), regular cardboard boxes (as the backing for my sign, and clear tape over top to protect it from rain. This way it is highly visable to drivers.
To find the bird dogs I posted the following ad on CL under labor gigs:
House Scout Needed
Flexible part time hours. Must
have web access, transportation, and
digital camera.
Visit http://www.MAKEMONEYHUNTINGHOUSES.COM for details!
The website linked to a simple form I built which looks something like this: http://www.househunterswanted.info/birddog_signup.php I’ve since taken my site down because I found a guy who actually is hungry to make money. It surprised me how many people responded but did precisely, absolutely nothing. No wonder so many people are broke.
Anyway, I pay my guy $5 per vacant house he sends me as long as they meet my criteria. Once I get the leads that’s where my work begins. Most vacants in my area are bank owned or in some level of foreclosure, but some are just vacant abandoned houses. Some are even free & clear.
I usually throw up 25-50 handwritten bandit signs per house for sale. I use “cheap house $100k cash only” message for junkers and “rent to own 3 bd 2 ba” message for lease options.
Thanks for the tip on the handmade seller signs. Will certainly try that. Just FYI most sign shops will reproduce your handwritten sign and mass produce them. That’s what I do. I write my message on a sheet of copy paper using a magic marker, scan it, and send it to them. I usually buy from supercheapsigns.com.
Same experience here as NSU - we’ve got a similar site for attracting property scouts/bird dog that usually leads to 1 or 2 that actually bring us consistent leads. But we still run the ad on CL occasionally since it doesn’t cost anything and people end up self selecting themselves out. It’s not our best source of leads, but it adds to our long list of vacant/uglies that we mail to consistently.
For us Direct Mail to AO’s is #1, but also the most expensive (that we use anyway), signs probably #2, vacants/uglies that we or others find #3, website/craigslist #4 - probates and flyers after that…
I would say social networking works the best! It is only because one can reach bundle of people in a few seconds. Social networking is even making it possible to reach different geographical locations easily which in turn helps in communicating directly with different people. This helps in growing the business!
I think it might be obvious what I think the best marketing is. However the worst is the one not done. Doesnt really matter as long as it works for you. I have a friend doing doorhangers, I have had friends brag about bandit signs. As for social networking facebook just beat out google so go figure.
Maybe I misunderstood something. Some dude asked for the most effective marketing. I have yet to hear anyone of the yellow letter people or direct mail people or the social networking people explain to us bandit signers HOW it is the most effective. To me, most effective means it strikes the balance between low cost and high yield (deals signed up). I’m SOO sick and tired of hearing for example people touting social marketing. Is it cost effective? Sure. Does it potential reach a huge audience? You bet. BUT do you sign more deals than the other methods? Nope. Probably in last place. And after all, this business is all about deals signed up. That’s how the money is potentially made, isn’t it? Sometimes when people reply to these questions, they treat their chosen method more as a popularity contest rather than answering the initial question. The original poster wanted to know the most effective. Something tells me he asked because he wants to cut to the chase and sign deals like crazy. How is him Yellow lettering like mad gonna get him there without a significant cost? Is that therefore effective?
Good point! I’ll bite…the effectiveness of any marketing all boils down to response rates. However, all types of other variables can swing the response rate wildly in one direction or the other (list quality, bandit sign placement, etc). Conversion rate is also key, but that ultimately boils down to how good the investor is at presenting the solutions. Then of course we have the investors who only know one exit strategy (usually wholesaling) and end up wasting a ton of great leads because they are junker junkies with blinders on. All these things factor in.
Overall though the absolute most effective marketing techniques that gets the most bang for the buck is PROBABLY self-written yellow letters. Why? Because your only MONETARY costs are:
postage
a box of plain invitation envelopes from Staples
a yellow legal pad
a red ink pen
You’re looking at a total monetary cost of less than 50c per letter (much less if you can get metered postage on a live stamp via bulk mailing discounts). Your response rate will be somewhere around 11-15% maybe even higher, which far and away eclipses any other marketing technique. As far as lists, well you could simply mail to expired listings which is a totally free list (assuming you can get it from a Realtor friend).
The problem of course is the time it takes to write these letters yourself. If your time is limited this is where yellow letters get much more expensive. If you get a mail house to do them you’re gonna pay upwards of $1.69 per letter which may or may not include a list. But for someone who can spare 30 mins a day you could easily write 10 letters a day. That’s 300 letters a month, which should pull 33 calls at a cost of less than $150. Say it costs $150 and half are junk/half are prospects, well that’s 16.5 actual house sellers calling you every month.
150 / 33 = $4.54 per lead
150 / 16.5 = $9.09 per prospect
Now it all boils down to how good the investor is at converting those leads into deals.
You’re right in that there are variables that go into marketing that increase or decrease its effectiveness. For example, what I do with my bandit signs is recycle them meaning put them up on Friday, take them down Sunday night. Because of this method, I get call volume I want in the target area I want and I pay once. Now, I buy usually about 500 signs at a time. I haven’t seen my sign guy in about 2 1/2 years because of this recycling method for my ‘we buy houses’ signs. This ‘recycling’ method cannot be done with other marketing with this kind of success is what I would argue. The only time I lose signs is because in some area where there aren’t poles for my signs to go on I have to stick it into the ground. Also because of the fact I do like 50 signs in my target areas (so if I have 5 target cities or towns thats 50 times 5) I get high quality and high volume leads in areas I want. A weekends means no sign police for me. Recycling keeps my cost way down and signed deals up. With ANY method you use, the deals signed up with be effected by the investor pitching it. So why not use a method that has the lowest cost? I mean, when I first started out I couldn’t pitch a Sub2 if my life depended on it, but I knew to shut up, listen, ask questions. And although I fumbled like crazy, I signed up those deals. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that in the eyes of the home owner, I was one of a few guys putting out signs in their neighborhood so I was a rarity. Whereas if I was on the net, that same homeowner would see many many investors and could pick and choose among them. Good luck signing deals like that. So I think a rookie stands a better chance signing deals even if they are week with signs than with any other method. Lets not forget, the seller’s situation is the number 1 key to quality deals, no necessarily the invesetor’s presentation. For example, if someone is being forclosed on, they see your sign, they want a solution. Ifyou fumble, its part of learning anyway, but from a homeowners standpoint they won’t care. So I’d say to rookies to not get caught up too much on your presentation because you WILL make lots of mistakes. Go out and take your licks because you’ll still sign up deals and before you know it you’ll kick butt. Lastly I highly recommend the getting books on negotiating. Study the art of negotiating. Most people mistakenly see negotiating with sellers as a fight when its not.
With my ‘recycling’ approach with bandit signs, even if you get $1/sign (my pricing is better because I buy in bulk), my cost per deal crushes the competition. Not to mention the call quality and volume is WAY higher. I was chatting back and forth with someone (who shall remain nameless) about 6 months ago and he mentioned that he was getting an overall response rate of 1% with Yellow Letters. He was proud of it. I couldn’t stop laughing. This is one of the guru guys whose teaching I actually respect, but I just didn’t respect this response rate to his marketing. I’ve chosen to do what most won’t and turn it into my benefit with is get up and do signs. But truthfully I respect anyone who goes out and do any kind of marketing. All marketing is pretty hard work to get calls if you ask me.
Chunk your sign recycling method is without a doubt the cheapest marketing method bar none! Honestly until you mentioned it I never thought about actually recycling bandit signs in that manner…essentially once the signs are purchased your only cost is paying a guy to put em up and take em back down. I will implement this strategy myself.
Here is what I do. When I get my signs from my sign guy, I poke a couple of holes around the center. The 2 holes are about 2 or 3 inches apart. I go to the Dollarstore and buy galvanized steel wire for $1.00 which comes in a 50 meter spool. That 50 meter spool serves about 50 signs. I take my wire cutter, then take about a meter of galvanized wire, cut the wire, then feed both ends in each of the holes. The reason why I’m telling you this is because when you put the signs up, this flexible galvanized wire allows you to put the sign where you want on the pole, and when you tie it (which is really easy, just use garden gloves), it maintains its fixed tightness. Then when you go to take them down on Sunday nights it very easily comes down, all you need to do is reverse the way in which you tied it on Friday night. Myself and my guys have it down to an art nowadays and can put up or take down signs in like 15 seconds. Trust me, we time it. Another quick tip to prevent pedestrians or crabby realtors from possibly taking down the signs (which costs money), I get a plastic milk crate which serves as kind of a ladder, and make sure I get it 1.5 to 2 meters off the ground on the pole. Lastly, I do all my prep with the signs and galvized wire through them during the week, so that by the weekend they are ready to do. I have my guys do this nowadays, but you know what I mean. Once you do this prep work and put the signs up, get ready for truely good leads and call volume.
Absolutely GREAT ideas Chunk. I know exactly what you’re referring to when you say poking 2 holes around the center…I poke the same holes but used cable ties to hold the sign around the posts, but of course I was leaving them there and they’d last from a few days to a few weeks before the city removed them. It’s a better move to get them up on friday using the steel wire and back down on Sunday. Makes sense to me.
$1.50/sign to put up, $1.50/sign to take down. I use highschool guys to do it. They have to do a minimum 50 signs. I’ve strategically put it together so that my ‘routes’ are in the same zip code as where they live. This way they are close by, and they don’t have to travel a lot outside of their area wasting gas. I’ve tried the dollar/sign, but upping it has retained more ppl for me personally.
Gotcha. Do you have them sign any sort of independent contractor agreement or some type of waiver that exempts you from responsibility if they get pulled over or God forbid hurt or whatever?
Yes I do. My accountant metioned that I should do that. She also mentioned in addition to what you said, to also include simple wording that says that they are responsible to their own tax returns yadda yadda.
Stretching a bit aren’t we? No one’s going to jail over a bandit sign. Worst case you might get hit with a small ordinance fee, which if you’re actually doing deals is a pittance…cost of doing biz. I’ve put up literally thousands of bandit signs and haven’t received as much as one call.
You won’t go to jail for speeding neither(unless your driving drunk). So you’re going to tell people to speed now?
I’ve know people to get fined as much as $1,000 for bandit signs. And I also know that a majority of people who never gotten one response from a bandit sign at all.
Bandit signs are taught by guru’s who don’t know jack shit.
Mr investor is one of those unlucky guys who has fear about signs and then goes out and does less effective marketing. Whatever, its all good. I’ve been in business long enough to know what areas I can get away with doing bandit signs, and which ones I can’t. Never been fined. I’ve received 2 calls from code enforcement guys over the years ONLY because some signs were left lingering past the weekend. When they call, I act like I am sorry, tell me where the signs are and I’ll have my guys pick it up immediately. You code guys are the best etc. So two calls in years and thousands of signs! Of couse it is wise to know you sign ordinances for your local area. But honestly, its a waste because every area I’ve ever known has laws against it. It is trial and error and knowing your areas like I do. Mr investor obviously isn’t a fan of bandit signs. Truthfully I’m not trying to convert him anyway! I again go back to the original question which was ‘most effective marketing’. I wish this guy would keep his eye on the ball rather than prematurely respond. He obviously is happy with 1% response rates. Way to go. Keep up the good work!