Thanks

General Real Estate Investing
1

Thanks for your help
M

2

kmabarr,

Who is your market? What exactly are you selling? From your add it still isnt clear what you are trying to achieve?

Are you trying to attract people to call your 800 number who are foreclosing or is it to attract investors.

If the market that you are in is to competitive, maybe you need to look elsewhere. The U.S is a big place with heaps of opportunity. Maybe change your focus to a national perspective as apposed to just Cali. I am sure that you know that heaps of Californians are buying/investing out of state in better/cheaper areas.

Good luck

3

oh ok, so you are basically a wholesaler looking to buy distressed homes and pre foreclosures just like the rest of us.

If the advertising isnt working maybe look at building “relationships” with wholesalers/bird dogs who will bring the homes to you.

are you looking at buying to sell to investors? if so build your network and the houses will come.

Maybe also look at where you are advertising because right now it is obvious that you are not finding your market there.

Do you have any properties at the moment that you are rehabbing etc if so stick up some signs there also.

4

kmabarr,

Find wholesalers and birddogs at your local REIA meetings. I know of a couple great ones by the LA airport (not sure where you are) and you can find several on this site!

Go to your REIA meetings, network with as many people as possible, and collect business cards. Write on the back of the card what area and price range that investor is looking to buy in, and how quickly they can close. This will not only build your list, but let you know when you have a ‘hot one’ who to send it to.

Don’t just go to one meeting. Make yourself a regular there. The more people you can build relationships with, the better. So that takes care of wholesalers…

For birddogs, you can talk to your lawn mainenance service, pizza delivery guys, carpet cleaners, etc. These folks interact with the general public on a daily basis, and are driving around more neighborhoods than you’d be able to cover personally in a day. Tell them exactly what you want and how you’d like the information to be given to you. Offer to pay them for each lead they bring. It’s a little more complicated than that, but I at least wanted you to see that you already know a lot of the folks you’ll need to use as birddogs.

For flipping and assigning contracts, you’ll need to consult a professional (aka an attorney) to make sure you are following the laws in your area. California is a different animal in some respects than the rest of the country regarding deeds, contracts, etc and it would be good for you to know what you can and can’t do.

In order to build your network, you’ll want to get started marketing as soon as possible. Some of this stuff is not as easy as they make it seem on TV and you’ll want to get a running start on it in order to get a steady stream of leads coming in.

Big Cheese

5

Have you driven neighborhoods and looked for target properties? Get friendly with postal carriers, UPS man, pizza delivery boys, carpet cleaners, etc., in your area and let them do some bird-dogging for you. Give them a business card and offer to pay a referral for all closed deals. Try community sites like craigslist.

Then again, if your market is hot, it will be that much harder to find the deals, but they are out there. As another poster mentioned, maybe look in other markets. I am in one a location with one of the highest foreclosure rates (<-- good and bad) so, lots of stuff around.

6

Just a few words of advice on your website…

  1. Although its nice that you have a local and toll-free number on your site, you really need to have a form that prospective sellers can fill out. You ought to make that form very easy to find and very easy to fill out. Place links to the form (along with your phone #'s) in easy to find places.

  2. If you don’t have any properties to sell, then don’t put a link to Available Properties on your site. Take that down until you have something to sell.

  3. Proof-read your site. As it stands right now you have several glaring grammatical and spelling errors. Do you think you would want to do business with someone who doesn’t take the time to pay attention to the details of something as simple as a web site?

  4. Advertise your site or no one will ever find you. You’ll also want to add keywords and descriptions to your web pages so that they can be correctly indexed by search engines.

  5. Actually host the site at the domain you advertise. Right now it appears you are doing a redirect.

There are countless other things you can do, but that short list is the most critical.

HTH,

Paul

7

I am interested in chatting with anyone doing a yellow letter campaign. I am going to try one and need advice.