I have been writing yellow letters for homes on the sheriff sale list for 4 months now sending consistently 20-30 per week to homes in my county. I am having poor success. Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am starting to get discouraged.
What does your message say? Some things work better than others.
My message is simple
Hi My name is Lee and I want to
BUY
your home 123 Durie Ave
Pleasecall me at 222 222 22222
Thanks
Lee
Hey Newbie, who exactly are you sending these letters or post cards to, Sheriff’s sales? Is that houses that are headed to auction?
It might be too late to buy those houses and the owners were probably already evicted by the banks.
I’ve had my best luck sending to absentee owners. You can buy a list of those from listsource or listgiant.
It’s expensive, 10 to 15 cents per name and you may have to buy a minimum of 5,000 With postage and supplies it can be a ball buster.
I recommend starting off by recruiting bird dogs and the bandit signs and driving the lower income neighborhoods yourself at first.
My first direct mail campaign cost me $4,000, I got one deal that paid $2,000 Luckily I was too dumb to quit and after I learned how to spot a deal and with some negotiation skills my next campaigns were more profitable.
Good luck, and never give up…
rando
I second the absentee owners.
And if you’re getting discouraged, just remember the framework is simple…
a) Fish in the right pond (audience)
b) Fish with the right bait (message)
Don’t get down on yourself for not getting any deals yet. This business takes time. You’ve already shown you have what it takes just by starting. Most people wouldn’t even have enough courage to do that. keep the faith, i mean whats the alternative, quit? there no reward in quitting. But it if continue on you’ll have better chance to achieve your goal
20-30 per week to homes in my county
10- 20 a week is not enough. It’s a numbers game and you should try to send a least 10/ day.
I hand write my envelopes and try to send 20/ day. It’s a lot of work, but worth it.
Persistence pays off, don’t be discouraged. If you work past the point were you want to give up, success is right around the corner
Keep up the hard work!
Most are tax deed list and have a hand full of absentee homes on them.
This is my advice since I have a bit of time. What is a poor response? Are you getting the letters back? No letters back? What envelopes are you using?
My other advice is to reword your letter. In any situation where big government is breathing down there spine you need a call to action.
Dear. Mr.seller
Your home has just been added to the boobadoodle County tax sale list. I can help by putting money in your pocket and selling that house before the government does! Act now or you may lose out and get nothing for yourself.
Your friend,
Damon
I’m about to do a tax sell campaign so I got my juices flowing. I attack it this way most times because there is a bunch of useless properties on there.
Dear. Mr. Seller
You have been added to incognito County tax list. If you don’t pay your taxes the county will sell your property at auction for penny’s on the dollar. Let me pay your tax debt and get that burden off your back by selling your property.
Call me at:555-5555 and ask for Damon
Hurry up or the government may have already sold your property!
I make a offer on all prospects. Sometimes I get told to pound sand but it’s a numbers game.
Who are you mailing to? You can get a few deals doing 20-30 a week, but it has to be an audience that isn’t already getting bombarded by mailings.
It’s the free tax sale list of what ever county he is in. Probably not the easiest list to find sellers.
Just keep at it and a deal will come. Some advice I can offer:
- Increase the number of mailers you are sending out. If you are handwriting these, maybe print the letter and hand address the envelope to save some work/time.
- Evaluate the calls you have gotten so far. Did you find motivation in the people that called you? Go back and look at some of those leads. What could you have done differently? Maybe nothing, maybe something. Make sure you stay in contact with the leads where you want the house and there is motivation to sell.
- If you aren’t getting calls, maybe change your list up or try doing something other than mailing. For example, you can cold call the same list. You can door knock the list also.
- If after 5-6 months and still no deal or good leads, you need to reevaluate what you are doing. Maybe change lists. Maybe increase number of mailers or your efforts to reach the sellers. This is the hard part of marketing though. You don’t want to abandon lists too early but sometimes you need to call it dead. I’ve mailed people for 6 months and got nothing but on the 7th or 10th, they finally call ready to sell. A part of success here is timing also.
That’s a very very small quantity. Hard to imagine getting a deal off 30 letters, let alone 30 leads, depending on your market.
He said a week so we don’t know the true total. Many factors depend on direct mail.
Wholesaling has always been a numbers game, however we have seen significant decline in direct mail response rates over the last 12 months. I would also say the sample size is small. Here in Nashville, it typically takes 1500 letters to find a solid deal.
Dude seriously. I have been preaching about yellow letter for YEARS. They DO NOT WORK!!
Just think about it. You are telling a home owner you want to buy their house in cash. OK so you are selling them the idea that you have money. CASH money…
YET… you can afford to by a printer and decent white paper to reach them. Your first impression is a crappy yellow letter with hand written blood red ink telling them you want to buy their house. What kind of first impression is that?! Not to mention you write them in what looks like blood sending it unsolicited to their house. Creepy much?!
NO Of course they do not work. The only people that tell you that it works are the guru’s that make a commission when you buy them from a company.
Think about this. You as a home owner, getting 2 letters in the mail. One is from a very neat clean printed letter with a company logo, professionally done… and then they see your sloppy yellow letter. SERIOUSLY which one would you call back trying to sell your 230K house?!
Duh!!
You want to see what really works? Go to my blog!
http://www.themightyinvestor.com/2017/11/18/how-to-start-real-estate-investing/
You will thank me for an eternity when you make your first deal in 3 months!!
Hey, there is nothing to discourage just find more information, select correct and genuine audience and send more amount of mails as said 10/day than there is more hope of positive response. Also you can go for more other source of information which you are not using currently.
I never understood the yellow letter concept. I have preached enough how retarded they are and why they don’t work so I will not go over that again.
However,
the message you have on that yellow letter… do a search for yellow letters and look.
very single one says the exact same thing. The seller probably gets a handful of yellow letters all with the exact same text.
Can you not see how ridiculous and spammy that looks?
Do you get spam mail from Pizza hut saying buy one large pizza and get 3 toppings free? Of course, do you get other spam mail like from lawn care companies and what ever else? Sure. Do ANY of them use yellow letters? NO!
WHY do you think that is? Because they make no friggin sense. Stop doing what the masses are doing. This whole “yellow letters are amazing” rumor was started by the companies that sell them. PERIOD. No everyone is just regurgitating this and now everyone considers them as the standard.
Ridiculous!