Archive for the ‘ Marketing ’ Category

How to Get Started Using Social Media to Market Your Real Estate Investing Business

Last night we had a great time presenting to the Renegade Detroit Real Estate Investor Club.  Our topic included a discussion on how we got started in real estate investing and how we started leveraging social media in our real estate investing business.  We have been using this blog along with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TubeMogul, BiggerPockets, and many other social media platforms over the past 4 months in an effort to create relationships with many individuals. 

The good news is our efforts are paying off tremendously.  It’s almost amazing to us how many connections we have made with great individuals.  This has helped our real estate investing business in so many ways, and I can honestly say that engulfing ourselves in the social media scene has been the single biggest reason why we have been successful over the last four months.

As promised in our discussion last night, we have put together 12 simple steps that you can take to get started promoting your business with social media.  You don’t have to do all of these, but the more you do, the more you will get back…

So here goes…

  1. Signup for Facebook & Twitter - This is the single biggest thing you can and should do.  Everyone, and I do mean everyone is on Facebook and Twitter, and this represents an excellent opportunity for you to connect with all kinds of people.  So go there now and signup…
  2. Read Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk – This is the book that really showed us how to get involved with social media.  Gary lays out exactly how to get started in the social media scene to promote your business.  We followed his model and it has worked great!
  3. Start a Blog - As Gary tells, your blog is the center of your social media universe.  It is where you really brand yourself and/or your business and provide great content for your followers.  Just go to WordPress.com and signup.  It’s really easy, and literally within minutes of signing up you can have your first blog post published.
  4. Choose a Domain Name – We chose DriveToFreedom.com as our domain name mainly because most of our video blogs would be shot on the road, and our ultimate goal was (and still is) financial freedom.  Put some thought into your name and heck, you can even use your own name to create your personal brand.  When you figure it out, go to GoDaddy.com and register your domain…it’ll cost you about $10…
  5. Signup on Other Social Media Sites – Here’s our favorites 
  6. Create a Facebook Business Page - On Facebook you should really have two areas where you work – your personal profile and your business page.  To create a business page click on the “Home” button at the top of the Facebook page, and then on the lefts side of the screen you can click the link labeled “Ads and Pages” (you may have to click the “more” link to see it).  Once you click on this link you will then have to click on the “Pages” link on the left side of the screen.  From here you can click the “Create Page” button and follow the instructions.  One note, when you get 25 people to like your page you can go to www.facebook.com/username and create a vanity name.  For instance, our business pages are www.facebook.com/MichiganTurnkey and www.facebook.com/KTProp.
  7. Join Other Facebook Business Pages – Once you get your own page setup, start checking out other business pages relevant to your topic.  This is a great way to make connections and start interacting with other businesses.
  8. Link Your Blog to Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media Sites - Most social media sites give you the option to automatically share content on the other social media sites.  For instance,  you can set up your blog to automatically send all of your posts to Facebook and Twitter when you post.  Or you can have your Facebook posts automatically post on twitter and your blog.  There are many different ways you can set this up, but you should sit down and map things out before you do it.  However I will caution that you should only go one way with the links.  For instance you don’t want to have your Facebook posts automatically post to Twitter and also have your Twitter posts automatically post to Facebook…this can create a loop and your posts will show up multiple times on both sites.
  9. Start Posting Blog Content – When you start posting content you need to keep a few things in mind. 
    • Be Consistent – keep your content on a schedule whether it’s daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly
    • Before you start posting, brainstorm at least 15 topics that you can post about.  If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas for posts start looking at other blogs to get ideas
    • Keep in mind that what you put out there is a permanent record of your thoughts and ideas
  10. Start Leaving Comments on Other Blogs – One of the best ways to make great connections is by following other blogs.  When you leave a comment on a blog your reply along with your name and website are etched in stone.  Therefore it is key to focus on providing insightful responses, because there is a good chance that if someone sees your response and they like it, they will check out your blog.
  11. Get Involved in the Conversation – No matter what platform you are on you need to get involved in the conversation.  You should always be sincere with your comments, and make the effort to really think about what you are saying.  Remember you words will be etched in stone and you normally cannot take them back, so don’t goof.
  12. JUST HAVE FUN!!! – Remember, these sights are SOCIAL media sites.  Don’t be boring and don’t be afraid to have fun.  People want to see your personality, so don’t be afraid to let yourself shine.

So that’s it, there are of course hundreds of other tips we could talk about, but this list should get you off and running.  For any questions you have, go ahead and catch up with us on Facebook and we’ll be happy to discuss how you’re using social media to promote your business.  Hopefully you can teach us a few tricks too!

2010
11/03
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Bandit Signs to Generate Seller Leads in Pontiac, MI

 

As we discussed in our previous post Real Estate Investing in Pontiac, MI we talked about some of the marketing techniques we are going to use to generate seller leads on properties in Pontiac.  Today we spent a good amount of time putting up bandit signs, 16 in total, and we wanted to share how we did that.

Location

In our post Getting to Know the Pontiac Real Estate Market we showed you how we were able to research which areas of Pontiac, MI that we are going to target to invest in.  We have established many “Green Zones” in Pontiac and these are of course the areas that we will be targeting with the bandit signs. 

For today, we have targeted two specific neighborhoods, each of which is about 0.25 square miles in area.  To cover these areas, we have placed 8 bandit signs in each neighborhood.

To keep track of where we have placed our signs, we are plotting them in Google Earth as shown in the picture below.  This will allow us to track where we have the signs, and also give us an idea about how long the signs stay up. 

Bandit Sign Locations

In our post Bandit Signs Creat Leads, we talked about looking for tall grass, busy corners and telephone poles.  In previous campaigns, we have placed signs on the ground using sign holders at busy corners.  Using this technique, our experience has been that the signs stay up for about a week.  This is okay to generate a maximum amount of exposure when trying to sell a property, however, in this instance we are marketing to homeowners in specific neighborhoods, so we are going to place the signs right in the neighborhood.  Because we are doing this, it is very difficult to find locations where we can put signs in the ground, so we have decided to put the signs on telephone poles. 

Installation

To install the signs, we have come up with a tool that will allow us to quickly install the signs on a telephone pole, and they will be installed at a height out of reach of someone standing on the ground.  As the video shows, the tool consists of a hammer stapler that is duct taped to a piece of electrical conduit.  The video shows we had a difficult time installing the sign, but this was the first go at it.  Once I had the technique down, it was actually quite simple, and the tool did a great job.

Testing & Tracking

As the video shows, we are trying out two different signs with the following messages:

We Buy Houses
Any Condition
Anywhere
248-812-9348
We Want Your
Pontiac House
-Call Us-
248-812-9713

You’ll also notice that we have two different phone numbers.  These phone numbers were generated using Google Voice.  If you have not used Google Voice before, it is a great service and you should really check it out.  It provides you with a phone number along with a voicemail service and it is completely free.  The nice thing is that when someone calls your Google voice number, you can have the call routed to any phone that you specify.  We have each of these numbers routed to our cell phones, so they will ring when someone calls.  One drawback of Google Voice is that you can only route one Google Voice number to your cell phone.  We have discussed a way around this by routing additional Google Voice numbers to prepaid cell phones.  We haven’t tried this yet, but we plan to in the future.

Using Google Voice with this system is a great option for a few reasons.

  1. We can set up a custom voicemail greeting that will simply ask them for their name, phone number, address of the property and their asking price.  This is a great way for us to screen the callers and put some information together on each property before we act on the lead.
  2. Using the different phone numbers will allow us to easily track how many responses we get from the two different sets of signs.
  3. Using Google Voice numbers allows us to keep our mobile phone numbers private
  4. These are bandit signs, and using Google Voice to screen the calls will prevent any run-ins with the city.

So, with any luck these signs will generate quite a few leads for us.  We will keep you posted… 

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2010
10/25
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Tools to Use In Your Real Estate Investing Business

Mark Ijlal is a real estate investor in Michigan that has been writing his blog Michigan Foreclosure Report by Mark Ijlal for quite some time.  Personally, I have found his articles to be spot on and straight to the point.  Mark has an excellent ability to relate real estate investing to many facets of life and really drives his points home with his unique writing style.  In his latest blog post, Mark provided a great list of Tools He Cannot Live Without in his real estate investing business.  As I expected this was an excellent article listing several useful tools Mark uses.  I have used many of these tools myself, and I’m sure I will look at using some of the others in the very near future.  It was really a great article, and I wanted to post a comment to Mark’s blog, but unfortunately Mark does not accept comments on his blog.  So instead, to followup on Mark’s blog post I decided to offer additional tools that I cannot live without in my real estate investing business.  Here’s my list…

GADGETS

Mark mentioned that he uses a Kodak Zi8 flip camera to shoot videos of houses to make video tours.  I have this same exact model and it really is a great little camera.  It takes video in high definition, takes still photos, and to download them it actually has a USB port that flips out and you just plug it into your computer.  This feature is nice because you never have to worry about losing the cord.  In fact it’s so easy to use, I found my 4-year-old daughter making her own videos one day.  So go out and get yourself one of these cameras, it’s a great little tool. 

In addition to a flip camera, I would recommend the following gadgets that I cannot live without:

  • Laptop Computer – I will never buy another desktop computer again.  To me they are dinosaurs of the computer age.  A laptop is so much more practical to use for the simple fact that you can take it anywhere.  I use my laptop with every aspect of my business and would not be a real estate investor without it.
  • Smart Phone – Next to my laptop, my Blackberry is the gadget I use the most.  I’m really not sure how I was able to manage things for so  long without it.  The ability to have access to your email, outlook calendar, phone, and internet all in one handheld device is great. 
  • GPS Unit – We bought a Garmin earlier in the spring because we were driving down to Florida for vacation.  It certainly came in handy during that trip, but I thought it would not be very useful after that.  I was dead wrong.  We use the GPS unit everytime we go and look at a house.  You just get in the car and go…no looking up maps or directions on the internet…just get in the car and go.  We’ve used it so much that we just purchased a 2nd GPS unit, a Garmin 295W.  This one is a little more sophisticated as it has the ability to access the internet and also take pictures.  The camera feature is particularly useful because it actually “Geotags” the photos with the location of where the picture was taken.  This is extremetly useful when you combine this technology with Google Earth software.
  • MP3 Player – Most people use MP3 players to listen to music, but I use it for education.  My drive to work each day takes about an hour, and I have listened to countless audiobooks using my MP3 player during my commute back and forth to work.  This has proven to be a very effectient use of what would otherwise have been wasted time.

SOFTWARE

Mark mentioned that he cannto live without Quickbooks to keep track of his finances.  I currently use Quicken, but as Mark said, your CPA uses Quickbooks and that is exactly who told me I need to switch over.  I think I’m going to ride out the rest of the year with Quicken and then startup in the new year with QuickBooks at the beginning of the new year.  In addition to QuickBooks, here are few pieces of software that have been invaluable to me.

  • Google Earth - This is a free application offered by Google, and quite frankly it’s one of the coolest pieces of software I think I’ve seen.  If you want to check out mount everest, you just type it in, and the globe spins taking you to Mount Everest.  So you can have fun with the software, but you can also use it in your real estate investing business.  The nice thing about Google Earth is it allows you to plot locations on the map, create notes, etc.  Kelly and I have used it extensively to map out the areas we are investing in, and it provides a great way to help understand the market.
  • PDFEdit995 – I’m sure everyone has opened a PDF file before.  The nice thing about PDF files is that they cannot be changed, and when writing contracts or official documents they work out very nicely because you know that nothing can be changed on the doucment after you sign it.  The person you send it to can only open it and print it.  If they want to make changes to the contract, then they will have to write them in, and you will know exactly what was changed.
  • Microsoft Office - Excel, Word, & Powerpoint are a must to have, and I think this goes without saying.  Being an engineer, I’m a little partial to Excel because I think you can pretty much do anything in Excel.  We have used it to create a template property analyzer that contains all the sheets we need to fully analyze a property and write a contract.  In fact, it automatically populates the contract for us once we fill in the owner’s name, address, etc.  The sheet includes a market analysis form, a cashflow analysis form, a repair estimate form, a rehab analysis form, a loan amoritzation calculation form, and the purchase agreement.  We systematically fill out each page, and they are all linked which creates a complete analysis for the property.  When submitting an offer on any property I’m confident of the numbers because I know they were calculated correctly.

WEBSITES

Mark mentioned several websites in his post – some I’ve used and some I haven’t but probably will very shortly.   Below are some additional websites that have proven to be extremely useful for us.

  • BatchGeo.com - This is a really cool website to use if you have multiple properties that you want to go and look at.  You just create a list of the addresses in Excel of the properties you want to map, and then you just copy and paste this list into BatchGeo.com.  Hit submit, and BatchGeo maps each of the properties.  This makes it really easy to figure out which property you should see first, second, third, etc.  In addition to this, BatchGeo has a feature that allows you to download a “.kml” file which you can read into Google Earth.  This makes mapping multiple properties in Google Earth very easy.  Check out our post Getting to Know the Pontiac Real Estate Market to see how we’ve used BatchGeo.com in conjunction with Google Earth.
  • WordPress.com – Of course this is the platform we use to host our blog.  We actually started out on Tumblr.com but found that WordPress has many more useful features to it, so we moved over to WordPress.  This blog has aided us in so many ways, and I would encourage everyone to try blogging in their real estate investing business.
  • TubeMogul.com – TubeMogul is a website that allows you to upload videso to multiple different websites simultaneously.  When people think of web videos, most think of YouTube, but there are actually many more video hosting sites out there.  Sending your videos to multiple sites increases the exposure level, and TubeMogul makes it very efficient to do this.
  • Facebook.com – Everyone knows about Facebook, and if you’re not using it in your real esate investing business, you really should.  The possibilities are truly endless.  Check out our post Use Facebook to Promote Your Real Estate Business to see how we are using Facebook.
  • RealInvestorWebsite.com – This website really caters to real estate investors, and it is the hub of all our website activities.  They have many templates setup that are geared towards setting up websites for real estate investors.  Their web interface is really easy to use, and if you don’t know how to do something they have a great video resource library showing you exactly how to do everything on the site.  The nice thing is that they will host up to 10 different websites for you for one low fee of $27 per month.  I know 10 sites sounds like a lot, but when you have a main site, several squeeze pages, and a couple sites dedicated to particular houses you’re trying to sell, you’ll find yourself wishing you had more sites available.

OTHER BUSINESS ESSENTIALS

Mark mentioned how to setup an LLC, and the forms you might want to have ready at a moment’s notice.  In addition to these things, you should really think about the following things:

  • PO Box – A PO Box is very handy for keeping security in your business dealings.  You don’t want everyone under the sun to know where you live, and a PO box is a very handy tool to help you accomplish this.
  • Separate Bank Account – As your CPA will tell you, you need to keep all of your financials separate in your business dealings.  Therefore it is imperative to obtain a separate bank account.  Follow Mark’s suggestions on setting up an LLC (or another entity) and obtain a Federal EIN number, and you’ll be all set to go to the bank to get a bank account.

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2010
10/04
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Deal Analysis
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Getting to Know the Pontiac Real Estate Market

Last week we told you about our plans for Real Estate Investing in Pontiac, and over the weekend we spent a good amount of time getting to know this market.  So, how did we do that?   Well, quite frankly we got in the car and we started driving around, and boy were we surprised!  For those of you that know Michigan, and particularly Pontiac, please put an image in your head of what the average house in Pontiac looks like.  I pictured seeing neighborhoods filled with run-down homes, with boarded up or broken windows, and lots of overgrown weeds and tall grass.  Houses like this:

Well we did find houses like that, and in fact that picture was one of the houses we saw.  But like I said we were surprised…we were surprised because we also found houses like this:

In fact, we saw whole neighborhoods filled with houses like this.  Now, I’m not going to sugarcoat things.  We did find areas of Pontiac that were exactly what we expected, but the big takeaway was that there really are some great areas of Pontiac to invest in. 

So, having all this first hand knowledge is great, but it’s really easy to forget the areas we drove around in, so we spent a lot of time documenting the various areas we drove through.  Here’s how we did it:

  • We systematically drove through neighborhoods covering many parts of Pontiac.
  • As we drove around, we noted all of the vacant properties and the homes that were for sale.  For each of these homes we took the address, phone number (if listed), recorded comments about the house, and took a photograph.
  • After we got home, we put organized all of this information into a spreadsheet

So, this was helpful, but it still didn’t give us a clear indication of where the good areas of Pontiac were.  We essentially had a list of properties and comments about them, but it was hard to really put it all together.  So how could we make better use of this information to make it immediately clear where the good areas of Pontiac were?

Well, the answer was to put the information on a map.  Now, we had approximately 75 different properties that we documented, so it was going to be pretty tedious to map each of them, and I figured there had to be a web application out there that would map multiple properties at once.  Well, as it turns out there is.  I found a great little website called BatchGeo.com.  This website allows you to take your list of addresses, copy them into the website, and it maps them all at once.  And, as if that wasn’t helpful enough, you can also add categories of information (i.e. our comments about the houses) that will show up on the map when you click on each map points.  So, after using this site, we ended up with a map that looked like this:

This worked out perfect great!  We now have a map that we can really start to analyze.  But it got even better when I noticed something.  See that little button that says “Google Earth KML”.  If you click this button it allows you to save a file of the plotted addresses that is readable by Google Earth.  If you haven’t heard of Google Earth, click on the link and download the software.  It’s free, and I think it’s one of the coolest pieces of software that Google has put out. 

So I saved the file, and then loaded it into Google Earth and it worked!  All the addresses were plotted perfectly in Google Earth.  This was a big step forward because now we have a map that we can continually update as we learn more and more about the Pontiac market.  The other great thing is that Google Earth has lots of cool features that allow you to customize your maps.  So, to help us visualize where the good areas were, we started to look at our notes about each property on the map, and we were able to see the patterns of where the good areas were.  So using Google Earth we started to draw red, yellow and green zones on the map using the “Polygon” feature.  This feature allows you to outline areas, and you can color-code these areas with a transparent color.  So here is what our current map looks like with all of the zones we have researched: 

Note: the actual map has the zones color coded red / yellow / green to indicated the bad / questionable / good areas of Pontiac.

This was an excellent exercise for us because in a relatively short amount of time, we were able to learn a great deal about the Pontiac market.  Plus, we now have a great tool that we can use anytime we come across a new property.  We can just map the property in Google Earth, and we’ll know immediately whether we want to consider investing in the property.

So stay tuned…more to come on Pontiac investing…

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2010
09/23
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Real Estate Investing in Pontiac, MI

Hello, welcome back.  Today, as the title indicates, we’re going to talk about real estate investing in Pontiac, Michigan.  When Kelly and I first got started, we probably would have told you that there was no way we would ever want to invest in Pontiac because let’s just say it’s not the best area of Oakland County.  And, in fact, many people we have talked to have tried to shy us away from investing in Pontiac.

However, our experience to date with Pontiac has been pretty positive.  As you may know from this blog, the latest property we bought was in Pontiac, and we think it is an excellent investment property.  The price of the property was very low ($21 per square foot) but the rent we collect is very similar to what we would collect if the same sized home was in a different area.  These two factors make the return on our investment very high.

So, if your main goal is cashflow, it absolutely makes sense to look at investing in Pontiac.  There are many great deals, and because the prices are so low, you can generate a lot of cashflow by purchasing properties in Pontiac.

Unfortunately, our main goal right now isn’t to generate cashflow but rather we are trying to build capital by buying and sellering properties we invest in.  This means that we really need to be buying for a low price and selling for a higher price, and until now, we really haven’t figured out how you could do this in Pontiac.

About 2 weeks ago, we were approached by an out-of-state investor and they were really interested in the investment activities we had in Pontiac.  We had a brief telephone conversation and they mentioned that their company’s main focus was to produce “Turnkey Rental Properties” that they could sell to their buyer list.  This week we set up a conference call with them, and discussed in more detail exactly what they’re doing, and how we could help.  Essentially, the way they work involves the following steps:

  1. Purchase the property at a discount
  2. Rehab the property
  3. Put a tenant into the property
  4. Sell property with tenant / property management in place

This company has been very successful at doing this.  In fact they have been so successful that they are approaching investors like us to help them find more properties.  So for now, we are going to be acting as a bird dog for them to send them properties and collect a finder fee for any properties that they end up purchasing.  So using what we have learned to date about marketing for properties, we are going to set up the following marketing plan to find properties in Pontiac:

  1. Use bandit signs in the areas of Pontiac that we are targeting
  2. Use yellow letter campaigns to target specific properties
  3. Post online classified ads indicating that we are looking for properties in Pontiac
  4. Search online classified ads for properties in Pontiac that meet our criteria
  5. Generate website leads by setting up squeeze pages
  6. Hand out business cards in and around the areas of Pontiac we are targeting
  7. We’re going to drive the neighborhoods looking for properties
  8. Network with real estate professionals that are focused on Pontiac

We think this is a comprehensive marketing plan, and as you can see, we will be using many of the things we have talked about in our blog before.  This will be a great way for us to continue to apply the things that we know work, and in the process we will be learning a new investing technique from a well established company.  Eventually, I think we are going to try out a few turnkey properties for ourselves because, just like the Lydia property, the numbers just make sense.

So, stay tuned, we will definitely have more discussion on this topic…

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2010
09/17
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Day 50 – Use Business Cards to Market Your Business

Today is Day 50 in our drive for $60,000 in 60 days through real estate investing.  This past Saturday we were out looking at  a property in Highland.  The seller had contacted us by phone a couple of days before and we were able to setup the showing on the property.  Going in, we wanted to figure out how they had gotten our number because we use this information to see which marketing techniques are working.  We were pleasantly surprised to find out that they got our number through one of our business cards.  We had left a business card at a gas pump in the local area, and they found it!  What was even better about this was that it was actually the seller’s sister that found the card and passed it along.

So, this is just one example showing the power of business cards.  They are cheap and easy hand out.  The trick is making sure you do hand them out on a regular basis.  I have to admit this is one thing we are not the best at doing, but we are going to make a conscious effort moving forward to hand out more business cards, and below are a few guidelines we’re using in our business card marketing…

What Should Your Card Say

So what do you put on your business card?  This sounds like a pretty silly question, but you would be surprised at some of the business cards out there.  You should really give your business cards what I call ”the ground test”.  If someone were to pick your card up off the ground and you weren’t around, would they know what you do and how to contact you?  It’s really that simple.  For us, we list the following information on our cards:

  • Slogan “We Buy Houses”
  • Company Name
  • Our Name
  • Phone Number
  • Email Address
  • Website

Make It A Goal to Hand Out Cards

First we’re going to simply start out small.  We’re going to start out by trying to hand out 5 business cards every day.  If Kelly and I both do this, we will hand out 10 cards per day, 70 a week and 280 every month.  That’s quite a few business cards if we can just concentrate on getting 5 out each day.

Where To Leave Them?

In short, you should leave them everywhere and with everyone!  Think about everywhere you go every day and it really starts to become obvious that there are more places you can leave your business cards in addition to handing them out to people.  Below we have a list of places that might work better than others. 

  • Gas Pumps
  • ATM Machines
  • Party Stores – Ask to leave some on the counter
  • Restaurants – Leave them with the tip
  • bulletin boards – these are everywhere (restaurants, grocery stores, department stores, post office, etc.)
  • Restrooms – leave them on the counter
  • Magazine racks – We like to leave them with the home catalogs that a lot of restaurants have
  • In magazines in waiting rooms – Been to the doctor or the dentist lately?
  • At the post office or bank on the counter
  • Obviously hand them out to everyone you know and everyone you meet

If you have additional suggestions, please leave a comment on creative ways you’ve used to hand out your business cards.

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2010
08/16
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Day 47 – Follow Up With Your Sales Leads

Today is Day 47 in our drive for $60,000 in 60 days through real estate investing.  As you can see from our video, today we are going to talk about following up with your sales leads.  When you get a lead for a potential buyer on one of your properties, it is imperative to followup with them in a timely manner.  This could mean the difference between making a sale or not…it is really that important.  It is easy to do, you just need to stay organized and keep up on making your phone calls.

Use A System

If your marketing is working, you’re going to receive several calls a day and if you cannot keep all of the leads organized, you are not going to be able to follow-up with them in a timely manner.  Or, worse yet, you may have the wrong information about the buyer when you do follow-up with them.  The system we use is really quite simple, and it works very well for us.

When we receive a call from a potential buyer they are obviously looking for information on the property and may even want to schedule a showing.  During this initial call we answer all their questions and do our best job to highlight all of the strong points about the property.  In addition to telling them about the property we try to get the following information from them:

  • First Name
  • Phone Number
  • A Time to Call Them Back
  • Their Interest Level

After you get off the phone it is imperative to record this information so you will have it at your fingertips when you call them back.  Personally, I find it easiest to use my Blackberry for this, and I just save their contact information in my phone using the following format: 

  1. I will list whether they are a buyer or seller first.  This makes it very easy for me to find my full list of buyers or sellers in my phone listed under “B” or “S”
  2. Next I will list their first name
  3. Next i will list the street name of the property they are listed in
  4. Next I will list the date of the call
  5. Next I will list a shorthand code for what I need to do next.  For example cb818 would mean that I need to call them back on August 18th.
  6. Finally I will list their interest level on a scale of 1-10 (10 being very interested)

So here is an example of the entry in my blackberry for the caller I spoke to in the video:

Buyer Stefan Cherry 813 cb816 10 

This entry means this contact is a buyer named Stefan, they are  interested in the property on Cherry, I last spoke to them on 8/13, I need to call them back on 8/16 and their interest level is a 10.  This makes it really easy to scroll through the contacts in my phone to find who I need to call back and have great information right at my fingertips.  I don’t have to have a notebook or access a computer to get the information about the buyer.  If I have additional details that I need to remember about them I will add those details to the notes area in my blackberry under their contact name.

The key to all of this is keeping up on your follow-ups.  Usually I will give them about 3 days before I call them back.  This will allow them time to look up the information on the internet, drive by the property and talk it over with anyone they need to speak to.

Proof Positive

Here’s an example of how this process has worked for us.  We’re meeting with a buyer tomorrow for the property in Highland that is really interested.  I called them back about a week after I first spoke with them and I was able to get them to go out and look at the property after our second conversation.  After they looked at the property, they seem really interested and we are meeting tomorrow to discuss how they can finance the property.  I’m pretty sure that if I had not called them back the second time that they probably would not have pursued the property.  So this really does work.

So keep up on your follow-ups…it could mean the difference between selling and not selling your property!

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2010
08/13
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CATEGORY
Marketing
Networkding
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Day 35 – Drive Leads to Your Website Using Videos

Today is Day 35 in our drive for $60,000 in 60 days by investing in real estate.  Today we are going to talk more about online marketing and specifically how we are going to use video submission sites to generate buyer and seller leads.  This requires a bit of work up front, but the good thing is that once it is in place, you can essentially forget about it, and your videos can generate traffic to your site even years later.  I’ll mention that we haven’t actually done this yet, but below is what we plan to do…

Start With Keywords

The first thing we are going to do is generate our list of keywords.  What we’re going to do is get a list of 100 keywords for buyers and 100 keywords for sellers.  To find our keywords, we are going to use the Google Keyword Tool.  This tool allows you to search for different keyword terms, and it generates a list of similar keywords that you should consider.  It is very useful because for the various keywords listed it gives you an idea of their popularity because it tells you how many people search that keyword every month.  So, we can search for broad terms like “Sell Home” or “Buy a House” to generate a very good list of keywords for buyers and sellers. 

For the keywords we select, we are going to look for terms that have between 1,000 and 50,000 searches per month.  We don’t want to look at search terms more popular than this because the more popular a search term is, the more difficult it will be to show up on the first page of a Google search.  So, we will go for some of the less popular keywords because this will give us a greater chance of showing up at the top of the Google search.

Once we have our keywords selected, we are going to organize them into five different categories.

Create Videos

Now, that we have our keywords, we are going to create a series of videos.  We have grouped our keywords into 5 different categories, so we are going to create one video for each category.  So, we will have a total of 10 videos (5 for buyers and 5 for sellers).

When we create our videos, we will have essentially the same message outline:

  1. Introduce who we are
  2. Tell them how we can help them
  3. Tell them the advantage to working with us
  4. Provide them with our contact information (Phone Number, Email, Website)
  5. Thank them for viewing

This is a fairly broad outline, and you can see that we can tailor our message to our keywords when we talk to them about how we can help them, and the advantage to working with us.  For example, if one of our buyer keyword categories is “Buying Foreclosures” then we will talk about how we can help someone buy foreclosures and how it can be to their advantage to work with us.

Once we have our videos recorded, we will edit them to add transitions and include text displaying our company name, phone number and website.  Below is a sample of two videos we recorded today.  The first is for sellers, and the second is for buyers.

Submit The Videos to The Internet

Once we have our videos created we need to submit them to the internet.  Now, there is a really cool video submission website called Tubemogul.com.  This site allows you to upload your video one time, and then they will syndicate your video to a number of online video hosting sites like Youtube, Daily Motion, etc.  You will have to create accounts on each of the various video websites that you want Tubemogul to submit your videos to, and this can take some time, but it is well worth the effort.  So go through and create accounts on all the various video hosting websites.

Once you have all your accounts setup, you are ready to submit your videos to Tubemogul.  When you upload your video through Tubemogul they will give you the ability to tag your video with keywords.  Be sure to tag your videos with the keywords you have researched.  Since we started with 100 keywords and we put all of these into 5 categories, we should have about 20 keywords for each video.  After you have uploaded your video, Tubemogul will ask you which sites you want to syndicate your video to.  It goes without saying that you should syndicate to every single one of them.  You want to get your content out in as many places on the web as possible.

So this is our plan.  We let you know in the next couple days our progress on this task and what kind of response we are getting…

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2010
08/01
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Marketing
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Day 20 – Marketing Our 2nd Property

]

Today is day 20 in our drive to $60,000 in 60 days.  We just got our second property under contract yesterday.  It is a duplex located at 2080 Commonwealth, Auburn Hills, MI 48326.  Today, we’re putting out all of our marketing campaigns for this property.  These are the same campaigns that we talked about in Day 10.  It’s getting to do this each time because we have templates for everything now.  So in summary, we have done the following:

  • Created a website for the property www.2080Commonwealth.com
  • Sent out emails to our buyer list (now up to 65)
  • Created an ad on Vflyer.com and submitted it to all the online classifieds
  • Put up signs around the property
  • Put listings out on Facebook, Twitter, BiggerPockets
  • Called several people from our buyer list

So, we’ll see how it goes with this property.  For your benefits, here are the selling points for this property:

  • Each unit in the duplex was refurbished in 2010
  • Each unit is occupied with tenants earning $1410 in rental income per month
  • The cashflow on the property is $371/mo!!!
  • The property is located within minutes of Oakland University, I-75 & M-59
  • Offered for $82,000

Again, full details are located at www.2080Commonwealth.com.  We’ll keep you posted of our progress on this property…

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2010
07/17
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Deals We're Doing
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Day 19 – The Anatomy of A Deal – Part 1 Finding Properties & Qualifying Sellers

]

Today is day 19 in our drive to $60,000 in 60 days.  We just got our second property under contract today, we’re really excited about that.  You’ll be seeing a lot more activity from us marketing this property, but we will have more details on that in the very near future.

Today we are going to start a series of articles that we’re calling The Anatomy of A Deal.  Essentially we’re going to break down each step in the process to show you exactly how we are progressing through a deal, the things we’re looking for, and how we avoid pitfalls by fully analyzing the numbers.  Today in Part 1, we’re going to talk about Finding Properties and Qualifying Sellers.

Finding Properties

In previous blog posts we have talked quite a bit about all of the marketing we are doing.  So rather than regurgitate this information, please check out these articles.

Utilizing just a few of the methods we talk about will generate you all the leads you can handle in the near term.  At least that’s what we’re finding :)

Qualifying Sellers

Okay, so you’ve got things in place, you’re doing the marketing, and you’re starting to get calls and emails.  How do you qualify whether the deal is worth looking at or not?  Well, it’s really pretty simple once you break it down.

When we talk to a seller, whether it’s over the phone or on email, we’re looking for 3 things initially.

  • The property’s value in a fully repaired condition
  • What repairs are necessary, and how much this might cost
  • How much is owed on the property (mortgage)

With these three things we can begin to determine which direction we are going to head with the deal. 

Now, when you get on the phone with a seller, you can’t just blurt these questions out and expect them to answer you.  You need to build a rapport with the seller, and the easiest way to do this is just have a conversation with them.

Let me say that again…JUST HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH THEM.

Usually I try to let them do most of the talking because more times than not, with the right probing questions, the seller will tell you this information without even asking.  For instance, the first thing I say to a seller is “Can you tell me about the property?”

They will then describe the property in all its detail and I just start taking notes.  I’m not really concerned with how many beds/baths/square feet there are because I can find that information out easily online.  What I am doing here is building rapport.

The conversation will continue, and I might say something like, “Wow, this sounds like a great house, can I ask why you are moving?”  This is a great probing question because they will give you an insight into their motivation level.  For instance, they might tell you, “well I just got divorced and I just need to sell the property” , or “my husband got transferred and he’s already in Colorada…we just need to get the house sold”.

So, this is how these conversations normally go.  You’re looking for the value, the repairs and mortgage balance in the process.

Now why do we need these three things?  Well, here’s what we do with these numbers while we are on the phone:

  1. Take the value and multiply by 60%. 
  2. From this number, subtract the estimated repairs. 
  3. Compare this number with the mortgage balance.
  • If this number is significantly higher than the mortgage balance there is a lot of equity in the property, and we would look to purchase the property for cash to wholesale or rehab it.
  • If this number is close to the mortgage balance, we would look at doing a lease option
  • If this number is greater than the mortgage balance, then the property is “upside down” and we would pursue a short sale

You see, knowing this little bit of information will drive the rest of the conversation. 

Determine The Seller’s Motivation

Throughout the rest of the conversation with the seller, we will be trying to find out their motivation for selling.  This will be very important to how we will setup our offer if it comes to that point.  You want to ask probing questions to find out why they are moving, or what they will do with the money from the sale. 

We will also want to find out their willingness to work with us on financing or how open they are to creative financing.  We might ask them if they are willing to pursue a short sale, or a lease option.  Or we might ask them, “If I were able to pay cash for the property and close within 10 days, how much would you sell for?”  Or, we might ask, “if I could pay you your full asking price, would you be willing to allow me access to the property to make the repairs, and we can close in 6 months”.

And that’s how it goes.  After our conversation, we will assess the deal based on the information we have been provided and decide to do nothing, or investigate the property further.  If we decide to investigate further, we will move onto the next step in the process – Analyze The Numbers which will be the topic for Part 2.

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2010
07/16
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Deal Analysis
Financial Education
Marketing
regular
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