From the day I send out my first 1,500 letters, which should be no more than a week…
Who can make more money wholesaling in the next year?
Rando? Or Red Star?
You’re on!
Redstar, I admire your initiative, But the cards are stacked in my favor, with 4 years experience and a healthy marketing budget.
I’ll give you a chance though.
How can we make it an even playing field?
I cud cut off my arms, get a lobotomy, run myself thru a wood chipper, get run over by a rock truck, get abducted by aliens, develop hoof and mouth, get decapitated by foreign terrorists, listen to pep talks from All Ears, and then you might have a slight chance.
My dad might invest in my marketing if it goes well.
How many cards do you send out per month?
Always in the same local counties?
I need to keep better records, I mostly been doing post cards on the bird dog addresses, about 200 a month, and this 2,500 mailing I did a few months ago might have been only the second mailing this year on my absentee lists.
This year I have got deals from multiple sources, the bird dogs, the bandit signs and the direct mail.
I really shud be doing a lot more, I cud be doing the door hangers, putting up more signs, doing more cold calling and on and on.
I’ll be past the 100K income bracket this year, and I shud be satisfied.
Revenue from Writing my book and getting it published and offering to help newbies for 50%, and doing more of the same o, cud up my game next year.
This latest direct mail brought in $38,500 with a 34K profit, I had a month this summer that I made 40K and 28K the month before that, plus a half dozen other deals, why am I not satisfied? cuz having money is like tasting blood to a hungry wolf, he wants more.
If I’m sending out 20,000 letters/month, I might be able to beat that.
I need to get the process down first.
I don’t see how it’s going to be possible to physically inspect every house.
Hi,
Before Redstar put's his foot to far in his mouth to chew that tasty shoe leather you have a few learning curve items to overcome and I am sorry but I am betting on Rando, he's going off in Vegas at 3 to 2 Trillion!
Redstar advertising and marketing is only one piece of your puzzle, you still have to read comps correctly, assess condition correctly, apply a construction remodeling cost to what you assess, calculate carrying and overhead costs, negotiate a price, write a contract, find a buyer, assign the contract and finesse it to close.
If you send out 20,000 letters a month you will waste a boat load of money as you need to get one or two sellers and work them through to completion. Your challenge is huge considering the first one is your first one. I am rooting for you but I am sure not betting on you even if a $1 would make me huge returns.
You have some major challenges, you might give Rando a hard time if you had been growing your wholesaling business a few years and were doing consecutively better year over year!
Rando is good at what he does, he is growing his skills and abilities and the sky’s the limit, but you can hardly start out thinking this is going to be so easy as it’s going to be much harder than you think and your going to need to work long hours and make financial analysis on thousands of property numbers as you go from one property to two or three or four.
If you ended up with 1,000 potential sellers from 20,000 letters you would be hard pressed to analyze 20 in a 12 hour day, and by the time you get 60 or 80 or 100 properties analyzed in a week all the other sellers would have walked away because you can’t give them a response and offer fast enough.
You probable should not send more than 500 letters in a week at first figuring you might get 15 or 20 responses until you learn and develop a process.
Then pick up the number of letters send by a 100 or 200 a week so you don’t get overwhelmed or waste money.
By your self and with no experience you would be lucky to analyze 20 or 25 callers properties a week, that’s why I would not recommend you send more than 500 or 600 a week. Remember it will take you a couple of hours or more to do what I can do with my experience in half an hour.
You are going to need to do most of your assessment by going to these properties initially until you develop your assessment skills well enough to do more by Zillow or Realtor Dot Com’s photo’s.
Good luck,
GR
Redstar, you’re on the right track.
You’re thinking big, and setting a high performance standard for yourself. If you keep at it, you’ll discover in a hurry what you need to do to achieve that level of performance.
You really don’t have much to lose at this point. However, you have a LOT of experience to gain, and you can never over-value experience.
My wholesaler friend in SD is already doing what you say you want to do. He’s managed to delegate his negotiations and preliminary closings to a small team of commissioned associates. I don’t know what he does himself, but he does show up to the office on Mondays and Fridays to do ‘something.’
Meanwhile, keep focused on the results you want, and eventually you’ll get those results.
In reality, you’re not in competition with anyone else. You’re only competing with your last performance. And one objective is to continually do better than you did before. I think you’ve been succeeding already, based on what you’ve said.
That’s great advice to limit the mailing till you get a handle on determining value and doing offers. I may have screwed up big time when I first started. I sent out a mass mailing and was overwhelmed with calls, that sounds great unless you don’t know what your doing. I wasn’t organized, I wasn’t getting back to the callers,. I was missing calls, I wasn’t good at determining FMV and what to offer, luckily I stumbled into my first deal despite my ineptitude. I made $2,000 but spent $4,000
But that gave me some confidence to try again.
Rando - don’t you still use the Zestimate, though? I look forward to my first call.
Javipa - do you have any idea what kind of commission he pays them? Are these licensed real estate professionals? This isn’t exactly work you can delegate to just anyone.
Hi,
Redstar I told you in a previous posting we don't use Zillow's Zestimate, we use the "Yellow Sold Icons" on Zillow to actual see the sold and closed sale prices and the closing date.
Zestimate it’s self is garbage!!!
Redstar you can not manage people or define their roles and responsibilities or know whether they are doing a good or bad job unless you do what you expect someone to do so you understand what each person should be able to accomplish and perform.
GR
I know not to use the Zestimate.
I was asking if that’s what he did because he said it in a previous post.
I don’t know, but probably 20% of every deal they close. None are agents, but he has his license (mostly to gain access to pocket listings and create trust and credibility with those agents). Meantime, all the lead generation is paid for, so it’s just a matter, more or less, of his associates processing those leads to a closing.
It’s a volume operation, with smaller margins. I do know he sifts for the associates who are naturally self-starting, with a lots of energy. He was a professional negotiator before his life in real estate, and so he trains his associates on his closing techniques.
He’s taught me several things over the years, that work especially well on resistant sellers, and has transformed my closing rates.
I can say that there’s about four distinct seller mentalities, or combinations of them, that you find in every negotiation, and once you recognize which ones you’re dealing with, you can learn to play them like a fiddle.
It seems I have a lot to learn. I’m looking forward to my first calls.
I realize I’m not ready to hire associates yet, but for when I am…
I would post a job ad on Craigslist. I hope that would find people who are qualified enough.