1st Call....I think...

Posted On 7:12 AM by Scott Costello | 0 comments

Hope everyone had a good Christmas break! As you can probably guess I didn't do any Real Estate stuff over the long weekend, I just enjoyed being with my family and friends.

I got a strange voice mail last weekend from a lady who wanted to know what "This Thing" was about. I can only assume that she was talking about a postcard that I had sent out. I have to cross check her name with the names on my list. Then I'm going to call her this week and see what she meant by "This Thing". I thought that was kind of funny though.

Tomorrow I am going to be meeting with Scott and Tom from NJQuicksell to go over some of their techniques as well as some of the strategies they are trying to implement. This should be very helpful as I start getting calls from my postcards.

On a personal note, but also real estate related, My wife and I are going to refinance our mortgage to try and take advantage of these LOW rates. We've only owned our condo for a year, but if we can drop our rate by over a point it will knock off about 250 bucks a month from our mortgage payments!!

Woohoo!!
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You've got mail

Posted On 8:54 AM by Scott Costello | 0 comments

Well I took a few days to put together a marketing postcard. It wasn't to hard as I hunted the internet to find examples. I made some adjustments to the post card to make sure it targeted Foreclosures and then mailed it out through click2mail!!

Took me a little while to get everything correct and to upload my lead list of addresses, but once my account was setup it was easy. I wanted to my first mailer to be simple, so hopefully I managed to do just that.

With out any further todo, here it is....




Total cost was about $65 including color and postage for 150 postcards. Not terrible!

Have a good weekend folks
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Not alot

Posted On 7:37 AM by Scott Costello | 0 comments

Not a lot going on but the guys from NJQuicksell are looking into short sales and asked me if I know any realtors who have leads. So I contacted the two realtors i've been working with and they both seem interested. I mean what Realtor wouldn't want to hand over their Short Sale leads to investors who are willing to do all the work, buy the property and then pay the agent their commission. Sounds like easy money for the RA!

If I can line these people up and they get some good leads out of it I could get some cash coming my way. Good learning experience non the less.


Other things

I created an account at...

Click2Mail

...and once I figure it out I'm going to be mailing out some postcards to the list of foreclosures I got form Listsource.

and one last thing...

Christmas is coming!!! I love Christmas and everything about it. Everytime I stand infront of our tree I can't help be feel like a 5 year old again.

Oh and one more thing...

I'm trying to sell my Scion tC

Craigslist ad

so if you know anyone who wants a really great car, shoot me an email.
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It has been done

Posted On 6:03 AM by Scott Costello | 0 comments

Just wanted to let everyone know that I bought a list of about 150 names from listsource. Cost me $70, it could have been cheaper but I wanted to see some additional information about each lead. We will see if I actually need that extra info and I will adjust my future purchases.

I have no idea how good the list is, but I'm going to prepare a letter this weekend and then send out my first mailings. If anyone has any suggestions about what I should say in the mailings, feel free to drop me an email or post a comment.

Also thanks everyone who pushed me to buy the list, it turns out I didn't need a hard push but just a little nudge. Thanks again.

Have a good weekend everyone

ListSource.com
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oh those holidays

Posted On 8:38 AM by Scott Costello | 3 comments

I've been chugging along in my quest to be become a real estate investor for over a year now and I'm finally picking up steam and then the holiday's hit!?!?

Open Houses

I haven't been able to go to any open houses the past 3 weeks. I've had a few chores I've been putting off that needed to get done. I was building book shelves for our office and needed to have them done by our holiday party last weekend. That took up a couple of Sundays. I've also been trying to sell my car and needed to take out the car computer I had installed and put back the old head unit. This killed another Sunday.

You may ask how come I didn't do any of these things on Saturday? Well as I've probably mentioned in the past, Friday Nights and Saturdays are devoted to spending time with my wife. We work opposite hours and those are the only times we get to spend together so I won't give that up for anything. If my wife is reading this...I love you honey :)


I need some help
I need someone(s) to hound me until I get a list of leads and start sending out mailers. This is getting ridiculous, I can't decide on how I'm going to get them. The stupid part is I know it doesn't matter, but for some reason I'm being cheap and don't want to pay a lot to get these leads. ahhhh what the heck is holding me back???? So please, someone start sending me emails once a day until I get through this stupid road block.


That's all I have for now...ugh
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Meet-Up

Posted On 5:48 AM by Scott Costello | 0 comments

I went to the meetup meeting last night and although it was a small group, there were only 6 people, it was great. All of us can definitely benefit greatly from a group like this. The guy who organized it, Jarred, and the others are all nice people and willing to help and learn from each other. The good part is that I finally met some other investors who actually/will do business mainly in Morris County. I'm really glad I went.

One of the members of the group, Dave, handed out some short sales he was trying to sell. I figured I could advertise those and try to find some buyers. This can help build my buyers list and also if I find a buyer, put a little dough in my pocket!!


Bill Guerra

One of the guys from NJQuickSell forwarded me an E-Book written by Bill Guerra that deals with how to talk with potential sellers. He's got a great philosophy and demeanor to his strategies and I highly recommend if you have the opportunity to buy his ebook.

How to talk to Real Estate Sellers
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I need another long weekend

Posted On 11:40 AM by Scott Costello | 0 comments

But this time I don't want to have a holiday attached to it! Man its rough getting anything done around the holidays. I had to finish up the book shelves I'm building for the office and I also spent a lot of my free time doing AutoCadd for my brother in order to try and get a project out today. I enjoy building the bookshelves (I'm making them myself from planks of wood) very much! On the other hand I'm not a big fan of doing the AutoCadd work for my brother, but it does bring in some extra money.

Onto Real Estate related matters....

Those guys from njquicksell are really nice guys! They send me free material to study like Bill Guerra's stuff and are very willing to help me as I'm helping them. I'm looking forward to working with them. They are both part time investors, who just so happen to be programmers just like myself. Now that I've got my foot in the door, I've got to work even harder to prove myself. I've got to really get out there and get past any mental blocks that are holding me back.

Meetup.com

I might have mentioned in a previous post (i'm to lazy to look back right now) about a site called...

meetup.com

...that helps organize groups of people with common interests. I found one that's fairly local that some Investors started, so I'm gonna go try it out Tuesday night. You really have to meet people in the business, you can't do it all by yourself or it can become over whelming.

On that note, I'm off to do some work at my JOB.

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving and stayed out of the stores. Shop online people!!
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