Working Smart - I Hope

General Real Estate Investing
1

A few weeks ago I starting placing bandit signs in neighborhoods within about 3 to 4 miles from where I live. Some were pulled, while some are still up. Saturday, I decided to spend less time getting my message to most people that live in this area without having to go into the neighborhoods. I figured everyone has to do grocery shopping once per week. On Saturday late morning, I put two signs near each of the 3 main supermarkets in my town. On Sunday, I drove around and 4 of the 6 signs I put out were still up. That was promising.

Hopefully, I’ll get some calls from the few signs I put up. If I lose all 6 signs over a short period of time, the cost will only be about $18. I have more signs.

2

You would do well placing more signs out there… 50 or so at a minimum. Place them in a 3 - 4 mile radius at stop signs, off ramps, traffic lights… the idea of placing them in the parking lots of big box stores and supermarkets is very good, I just don’t think the volume of signs is enough to make it happen.

3

You can also post on mall’s parking lots, parks and places where there are so many people that are soon to be clients. Good luck! :smile

4

I agree with this advise.

5

Consistency is key. If your signs walk away put them back up ASAP. If you put your signs out on a regular basis your phone will ring.

Another idea is to find the person who puts the signs out for new home builders or for Realtor open house signs and see if he/she will also put yours up at the same time (for “X” $ per sign). A lot of times these people put them up on Friday and take them down on Sundays but it gets done every weekend.

Chris

6

Everyone has given you some great advice. I would suggest that you call the county courthouse or clerks office and find out if there are penalties for posting signs in certain areas of your town.

I remember one night around 12a.m. I put up 25 “I Can Refinance Your Home” signs and by 10am the next day the city of Houston Yard Cutter guys had taken up all of my signs. I’ve even gotten calls from Houston Police Department with warnings of fines up to $125 per sign. And check this out… one time I found one of my signs being used for a “Garage Sell”.

So my point is to make sure you cover your butt by knowing where you can and can’t post signs. Financially, it makes no sense to keep putting up bandit signs if certain parts of town will take them down after your hard work has been done.

Good luck!

7

I quit using bandit signs last year after I got a $500 fine because some vigilante decided to take a photo of me putting out a sign as well as a photo of my license plate (code enforcement tracked the plate and gave my 11 year old son a court summons for me).

Now I primarily use direct mail for reaching out to sellers. I don’t do what most folks are doing like trying to chase after pre-foreclosures, bankruptcies or divorces. I focus on expired listings, free and clear properties, landlords and everyone in a geographic area using post cards and post it notes.

I get the lists of expired listings from MLS, all property owners, plus landlords and free and clear (no loans) properties from realist by doing a general query search as follows:

Land lords - check the field “owner has different tax billing address”

Free and clear - recorded or settlement date from 1960 to 1995 (all of these won’t totally be free and clear, however many of the owners will not have refinanced or gotten credit lines against the properties, cause older folks like me don’t like debt)

Geographic - everyone in the area I like

For all types I select properties with at least 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, built from 1970 thru 1995, with square footage of 1,000 to 2,500 square feet. All of these properties will be in the zip codes or town that I am interested in.

The download will give me the addresses of about 5,000 properties for each type, with the names and tax billing addresses of the owners. Out of that list I remove all bank owned properties (the owner name will say something like “Bank Of America”).

I then take that list and break it up into the sequence that I want to send my mail out in, usually in lots of 1,000 sellers to which I send post cards every other month (about 2,000 each month). From these postcards I expect about 100 calls each month. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, however i get my message direct in the hands of the exact group of people that I want to talk to, not the 200 that waste my time from signs. I am also hitting the same people over and over again, building brand recognition; eventually I get them to respond when they need me.

The cost of sending out 1,000 post cards is just $319, the same cost as printing up about 100 street signs, without the risk of code enforcement rolling up on me (I hate having to keep looking over my shoulder for the ‘man’).

I get much better results from direct mail and don’t have as much waste.

8

I agree with the last posters - be careful with the signs because it might get you into trouble.

It seems you are living in a small place (sorry, if I am wrong) and maybe there are some smaller shops there you can reach a deal with. Maybe they would allow (for a small sum or percentage or something) put a a4 print paper at the bottom of every shopping basket. If you have a printer at home, printing them will cost you close to nothing but people will surely see it.

9

hassansr,

do you send these via usps.com? and is your process automated? any details you could provide would be great.

ryan

10

There is a little work that you have to do. You have to go to usps.com and create a free account, then download the post office’s post card template (word doc), customize the text to reflect your marketing message and them upload it back to usps.com. You’ll also have to upload an excel file with the names and addresses of the recipients of the cards. Once those two items have been uploaded to usps.com, you’ll need to do a mail merge to insert the names on each card, and then send them off. If you were to create a mailing today (tuesday) they should all be printed and mailed out by friday.

The post cards and mailing list stay on usps, so once you have created the mailing you can easily repeat it without having to upload info again (unless something changes). So that part is automated.

11

Funny, i just replied to a thread similar to this…