Struggling to Get Started

This way to my New Blog

2009-06-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

As i mentioned briefly in my last few posts I have been working on a new blog in order to take advantage of a features not offered by blogger.com. If you are so kind I'd be greatful if you would follow me over to my new location. There is no doubt that I would not have gotten as far as I have without the help of everyone who has read and pushed me.

THANK YOU!

And this way to my new blog...

StrugglingInvestor.com

I will offer on this...

2009-06-11T09:49:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure why exactly I picked this house, but I'm going to be making an offer on the Mt Pleasant property.

As you may recall it's an Estate property (ties in nicely with the whole probate thing I'm going after). Has been on the market for 45 days, not long but they have already dropped the price 30k from the original asking price of 369k. So that is a sign of motivation I would say. The property is a very big lot that a larger house (which tends to be the thing in my town) could be built on.

So those where the reasons. I'm going to go drive by it today on my way home from work and then I've got to sure up what the ARV would be in that area of town. My educated guess would be 360k for a 3/1. So breaking that down into an MAO...

arv(360,000) * .60 - repairs(70,000) - Profit(5,000) = MAO(141,000)

the biggest question that I have no idea about is the repair costs. That really depends on what my buyer wants to do with the house. If they want to knock it down and build a 600k house or if they just want to repair the place and maybe add a bathroom. I guess this is why it's so important to know your buyers.

Anyone have any suggestions on what to do about estimating repair costs? Houses that have had old people living there, in my area, always seem to need the bathrooms and kitchens, flooring and painting completely redone.

So that is where I'm at today. I've got to re look at my goals for this week to make sure I'm on track.

Later

Which House?

2009-06-09T05:20:00.000-07:00

This week is going to be a busy one! My main goal is to pick out 1 or more of these 4 houses to make an offer on. Take a look.

3 Bedrooms
2 Bathrooms
Asking 360k
SOLD AS IS. LARGE HOME. SOLID MASONRY AND FRAME CONSTRUCTED. HW FLOORS. FRESHLY PAINTED THROUGHOUT. OVERSIZED 2 CAR GARAGE. PROPANE GAS FOR COOKING ONLY. GREAT INVESTMENT FOR HANDYMAN. REPLACEMENT WINDOWS THROUGHOUT EXCEPT LR. 1ST FLOOR DEN OR 5TH BEDROOM. DO NOT USE REAR STEPS. ABOVE GROUND OIL TANK. PROPERTY WAS SUBDIVIDED IN 08.

3 Bedrooms
1 Bathrooms
Asking 339K
HOME IS AN ESTATE.SOLD "AS IS"LARGE LOT TO EXPAND OR JUST FIX UP. GREAT TOWN TO LIVE IN.LOW TAXES!!

3 Bedrooms
2 Bathrooms
Asking 399K
CHARMING CUSTOM HOME IN EXCELLENT AREA, CLOSE TO SCHOOLS & TOWN RECREATION. HOME OFFERS 3 BEDROOMS & 2 FULL BATHS

4 Bedrooms
2 Bathrooms
Asking 359k
DELIGHTFUL RANCH LOCATED IN A VERY NICE AREA, HUGE PROPERTY W/ 3 BDRMS, LARGE ATTIC (POS. ADD''L 2 BDRMS) 2 FULLBATHS, DINING RM, HDWD FLRS, LIVING RM, ENCL. PORCH, 2 LARGE GAR, CONV. TO SHOP & HWYS. FURNACE AND WATER HEATER LESS THAN 3 YEARS OLD, LOW TAXES - SALE SUBJECT TO 3RD PARTY APPROVAL

Probates

I also mentioned I had some questions regarding probates. I looked through the probate files and according to preston ely I should be trying to find Real Estate listed in the Assets. Of the 40 files I looked at, not 1 of them had real estate listed and only 4 or 5 had any assets listed at all. 2 had cars and the others mentioned bank accounts. Is this normal? Are there really going to be that few that have any assets not to mention Real Estate? Should I worry about if it lists real estate as an asset?

Goals for week 6/8 to 6/14

2009-06-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

Let's review last weeks goals.

Create Facebook Page - DONE

I managed to pull this feet off. I did catch some flack from my friends because I've told them many times over that I will not ever create a facebook page because I'm not in high school. Well they will soon find out why I created it when it's full of Real Estate Investing stuff. Not sure how it all works just yet but If anyone wants to send me a friend request the email I used is scostell AT yahoo DOT com.
Post Ads on Craigslist Looking for houses - DONE

I did this early last week and got no responses through my squeeze pages and one response through email that was just a spam response. I think I need to put more ads out there. For this coming week I'm going to put up ads on monday, wednesday and friday. We'll see if that helps the responses
Go to Court House on Friday and Find Probate files - DONE

I was really proud of myself for doing this as this is the exact type of thing that I would keep putting off. I just put my head down and went for it. I found the surrogates office no problem and with an example docket number that I pulled from the online search, I ask one of the employees where I could find it. She pulled it out for me and I was then off and running. I've got a few key questions about probate files now that I will post about tomorrow, but I'm ready to go back this friday and pull leads leads and more leads...woohooo!
Find a home to make an offer on, then make an offer. - FAILED

I found a few homes I wanted to do more research on before making an offer, but I didn't get it done. Ii will be making the offer this week. I want to do this badly as I want to find out the process and be ready to go for the next time. Shae I know you are gonna get on me for failing this one...
Redo JerseyRei.com and Rei-Links.com - DONE

This is done, but only sorta. I still need to add alot more information to the sites, but the setups are there and I'm adding new content every day.

This weeks Goals

Make an offer on one of the houses I picked out
Go to the courthouse on Friday and get Leads
Mail letters to Probate Leads
Get my new blog up and running
Post Ads looking for Sellers and Buyers on Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Have a productive week!

What to work on?

2009-06-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading through my daily blogs and came by a post by Scott Carson that listed the 10 traits a successful investor has as opposed to the 10 traits and bad investor has. Have a read...

10 Characteristics That Make Up Good And Bad Investors

The one major characterisic that I must continue to work on is "to talk with other people". I'm a shy and quiet person by nature and it has always bugged me that the simple task of picking up the phone to call anyone, even my friends, is nerve racking.

I fear that I will not have anything to say, not be able to say what I mean (this happens all the time) or just sound stupid. Depending on who I need/want to call one of those is always the reason why I don't dial that number. I've been working on this over the past year and have gotten much better, but still have a long way to go.

For those that have similar problems, I'll share with you what works for me the best. As soon as I think of a person I want to call I just pick up the phone and call. I don't say I'll call them later, tomorrow or whenever. I call them right then and there. If I'm really nervous I just tell me self "Do it!"

Hope that can help someone.

Articles

I'm in the process of reworking my blog and moving over to a WordPress based site. The main reason is that it gives me more flexibility and I can add different pages like an about page or an articles section. This brings me to my question...would anyone like to write an article about some aspect of wholesaling for me to post on the site? It doesn't have to be long, 500 to 1000 words. I can't pay you, but it's always good to help out your fellow investors :) Just thought I'd ask. And you can put a back-link to your blog or website and gain traffic.

I've been trying to write one article a day to try and get about 20 articles before I launch the new site. I'm far from a writer and my sentence structure and grammer is about a 2 on a scale of 10, but if the info is good who cares right??

Goals

My weekly goals for this week are going ok, I've posted my ads on craigslist and placed my squeeze page links in the ads. No responses yet, but I'll keep that up for sure.

I've also identified about 4 houses I want to take a look at and possibly make offers on.

Funny Stuff

I had a dentist appointment scheduled for today. Thought I set it up for 7:00pm but apparently it was 7:00am. Got a call on my way to work asking where I was. I'm sure they weren't happy. I blame my wife...hahahaha...oh crap hope she doesn't read this.

later

2009-06-02T06:11:00.000-07:00

Dave Ramsey
I've finally got'n to the point in the book where it's time to start taking action. My wife and I don't have a lot of debt, we've got student loans, two car payments and a mortgage. We don't carry any credit card debt from month to month so we are ahead of most people who would normally follow The Total Money Makeover program, but I want to get rid of ALL my debt. Dave recommends you list your debts in order from least to most. Then start paying off the lowest amount first. That is our student loan which current sits at about $2500. I'll report back on how this goes on a monthly basis. We should take care of this one quickly.

Probates
I've been trying to think of what types of leads would consistently supply me with deals and I keep coming back to probates. The average age in my farm area is 40 yrs old with a population percentage of 15% over 65 years old. Since most people who live in this area stay here, those people who are 65 bought back in the 60's and 70's and have A LOT of equity. My parents who live in town bought their house back in 1976 for 80k and the home is now worth 550k.

Many of these elderly folks are moving on in one way or another if you know what i mean (trying not to sound harsh)? Elderly people tend not to take care of their houses and thus makes it harder for their heirs to sell the place...enter me. Of the 5 phone calls I've gotten from my mailers, 3 of them have been from estate properties. This should tell me something and is why i've been trying to get to the court house for the probate leads.

Hacked Websites
As I mentioned in my weekly goals post, my two websites got hacked and some how they deleted them entirely. Just a warning for those who use Joomla to build webpages, be careful what extensions/plug-ins you use as some may have security holes that allow a hacker to break into your account. Joomla is a great tool and I will continue to use it, but I'll just be more careful and back everything up.

I've gotten the prelims of my sites back up and running. So take a look and if you have an suggestions drop me a comment.

JerseyRei.com
Rei-Links.com

Figured I'd do something new and list a few good blog posts that I've read in the past few days.

Lots of Investor Updates

Stop Work Order

Blogger tip: create a dropdown menu for your labels

Current Recession in Context

Goals for week 6/1 to 6/7

2009-05-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

As the weather gets warmer so does my will to get this real estate investing career humming. This past week was a short week for me because of Memorial day last weekend so I only set myself 3 goals. While I only officially finished one of them, the other two kinda worked themselves out. Lets take a look...

Create a Buyers Squeeze Page - DONE

My biggest problem here was finding out what to put on it exactly. I posted a few question in the forums I go to and they helped out. Let me quote a response (by Fadi Zeidan) that I thought was most helpful..
Who are your buyers? bad credit looking for owner financing, investors, or good credit average people?

bad credit:
give them this great talk about how your company specializes in finding affordable owner financed homes regardless of credit, the benefits, and how it works (very simple), and with time add testimonials.

Investors:
this is for wholesaling, a simple sign up can do with some sample deals they can find. They would get an email of all available deals as they come in and they can contact you for the one they like.

Good credit:
tough one, what is their inventive to buy from you vs buying from a realtor... Finding greatly discounted properties that need little to no work?

information I would look for:
1. area of town
2. age of home
3. size of home
4. bedrooms/bath/garage
5. condition
6. price range
7. how much down payment they have
8. Employment
9. current income (PITI shouldn't be more than 50% of their monthly income, ideally within 36%. this would prescreen some of them)
10. Contact information
11. How soon do they want to move

For wholesalers of course it is a different story.

Just some ideas

Here is my Buyers Page. I think it stinks but I'm always my worst critic.

Buyers Squeeze Page
Ask my Realtor if my Coastal Funding PreQual is acceptable.

I never did this, but I am going to take Steph and Shae's advice and just use it. Why raise any red flags. I've heard in the business that it's better to ask for forgiveness then for Permission. I don't agree with that completely, but in this instance it is the best tactic for sure.
Figure out how to use the online information I found on Probates at my surrogates website.

Well I don't think I'll be able to find the executors address to mail anything to unless I go to the courthouse. The list gives me up until the prior months probated cases (so aprils) and gives the docket number and the name of the executor, but not much else. So i'll go armed with that info to the courthouse this friday and see what I can dig up.

I hate taking time away from my wife but Friday after I get out of work at noon is the absolute only time I can go. Anyone know if the Morris County courthouse has weekend hours?

This weeks goals

If I get all these done I'll make some great strides! It's a lot to take on but I want to push myself. It does suck that some of it is repeat work

Go to the court house on friday and find the probate files (3 week in a row for this one, COME ONE ALREADY!)
Find a home to make an offer on, then make the offer!
Redo my JerseyRei.com and Rei-Links.com websites because they were HACKED and deleted (If I get a hold of the person who did that I'm gonna most likely go to jail)
Post ads on Craigslist looking for houses
Create a Face Book page (my wife is making fun of me cause I told her I'd NEVER create one of these. Seems so High School!)

What I Learned #1

2009-05-28T05:36:00.000-07:00

From reading other people's blogs, I've found that I get a lot out of reading about what others have learned from past deals. The lead that I talked about in the last few posts fell to the grave. The investor I gave the lead to gave the owners a "fair Cash Offer" that I later found out insulted them. When we tried to call them back they wanted nothing to do with us and thought we were all in cahoots. Any way I did learn some things that I would like to share..

As a newbie investor, just setup an appointment to go see the house whether it's a deal or not.

I say this because it's great practice dealing with people. You can see how their situation affects them personally which is a great learning opportunity. You learn how to deal with them, what you can say to put them at ease and what not to say. I think I did pretty well when I went out to their house. I had them walk me through the place and let them talk. My one problem was that you could tell they were attached to the house, the home they grew up in. They shared a lot of memories with me.
They wanted to sell the place, but you could tell it wasn't going to be easy for them...which probably means they weren't going to "let it go" for cheap. At least not yet.
When Bird Dogging, only deal with 1 or 2 investors.

You don't want to be passing your leads off to different people. Work with one or two people only. This gives you the opportunity to really learn what they are looking for and how they operate. You build trust! When I passed the lead to someone I've never met I had no idea what this guy payed, what he was looking for or how he'd handle the owners. I'll never know what would have happened if I passed the lead to 1 of my 2 trusted partners, but I do know that it is not a deal now!
Be more patient

I was so worried about getting the owners their offer quickly, that I didn't wait long enough for my trusted investors to get back to me. I waited less then 24 hours before I was sending out emails looking for someone else to take the lead. This hurt me I believe.
I can do this!

Even though the deal didn't happen, I've gotten a lot more confidence in myself and my ability to handle new leads that come in. This lead forced me to talk to other investors and learn how some of them take action. All in all I'm taking away very many positives from this "failed" lead.

I hope this post helps out someone who is just starting out!

Later..

Goals for week 5/25 to 6/1

2009-05-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

Last week I did ok on my goals. I set some lofty ones and got a good start on them all but with the holiday weekend I got side track towards the end of the week. So lets do a reviewsky...

Advertise JerseyRei.com on Craigslist 3 times - DONE

This was easy and I finish this up last monday. I didn't get many responses at all, I got one person to sign up for the site, but that was about it. It's going to take some time to get this site going. I've added My Lis Pendens list to the site so people can save some time and pull the list right from my site. I also added a section to list properties.

I tell you...Joomla is a wonderful tool with so many extensions/plugins that you can create any kind of site quickly and easily!

Joomla.com
See if my realtor would accept Coastal Funding prequal - FAILED

This was stupid of me not to get done. I kept putting if off for some reason and then the week was over and I failed to get it done. This will go on this weeks goals for sure.
Create Squeeze Page for Sellers - DONE

I bought a template for a squeeze page and then used Wordpress to create the page. It was very easy and took me about 2 hours.

ScottyBuys.com
Create Squeeze Page for Buyers - FAILED

I know how to set the page up now, but I have no idea what to put on it. It's not like the sellers page, I've got to offer something to the buyers in order to get them to fill out the short form. Maybe a weekly Lis Pending List????
Go to Courthouse on friday to look for probate leads - NO NEED

As I was preparing to go to the courthouse last friday, I was looking for directions on the surrogates webpage and what do you know!!! I found a link that listed all the Estated Properties in Morris County! Are you kidding me, has this been there the entire time? or was it just added???? Either way I was pumped.

This weeks Goals

Ask realtor if I can use Coastal Funding Prequal to make offers
Finish up Buyers Squeeze page
Create process to get Executors' mailing address for Probated Estates (I'll use this one for Steph's Accountability Monday)

Short week so I won't overload myself.

Another Step Closer

2009-05-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

I had a good time spending my memorial weekend with family and friends. Had a bbq to go to each day and got a chance to spend extra time with my wife because she took off work on Sunday and Monday. For those who haven't followed from the beginning, my wife and I work opposite hours so weekends are the only time we really see each other.

On to Rei news....

Saturday I got to meet up with the lead that called my mailers. Went to the house and had them show me around and asked them all about the house and their situation. A nice brother and sister who were in town to clean out the house after their mother had passed away. Here is what I found out...

Estated Property
Was a complete mess, with stuff all over the house.
3 bedrooms and 1 bath
Nothing was owed on the house
The siblings wanted to get rid of it to avoid having to clean it up and do repairs in order to sell it (Motivation baby!)

I told them I'd stick them on the "excelerated" plan to try and get them an offer as quick as possible because the family was in town from out of state to clean out the house and all.

I contacted the Guys at NJQuicksell first, but I didn't hear from them for about a day. They usually respond very quickly, but I later found out they were away for the holiday weekend. So I put the lead out there to my meetup group and passed the contact info along to the first person who responded.

This is risky because I don't really know any of them from adam, and I could be passing the lead to a scum bag who is going to take advantage of me. I needed to move quickly so I took my chances. I probably should have discussed my referral fee before passing the info though. That is up in the air and I don't know what he is going to give me.

Anyhow, the guy went out and looked at the house on Monday and made them a cash offer. We are waiting to hear back from them. The investor also told me that is the exact type of house he looks for.

This is the closest I've come to a pay day so far and it has increased my confidence 10 fold.

I realize I didn't post my goals for the week just yet, I'll do so shortly. The holiday weekend put me off schedule.

House Research and Seller Questions

2009-05-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

I got a call back from the lady who responded to my mailer. I setup an appointment to go see the house on saturday morning. I couldn't get much out of her on the phone. I'm not sure HOW motivated they are as this seems to be the first attempt at selling the home. She said they were going to sign up with a realtor but saw my postcard and wanted to give me a call first. Not screeming motivation to me, but in order to get practice I'm going to meet her and see the house. Which reminds me I've got to do some research on the house before hand. This is what I plan on doing...

Look on Realquest and Zillow to see if I can get a gadge on the house value and the area.
Find the house location on MS Live to see what it looks like from a birdseye view
Look the house up on the county tax records
Locate the mortgage and see if I can figure out how much equity there is.
not sure what else to do...

When I get to the house and talk to the owners I'm going to ask them the following to try and get some info out of them...

In no particular order

What has been updated
How much do they owe
What do they need to sell the house for
Any problems with the house
Is there an oil tank

If anyone has any other questions I should ask drop me a line.

Have a good holiday weekend everyone! happy BBQing

You won't beleive this!

2009-05-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

Everyone better sit down, preferably in a chair that isn't to high off the ground...you ready? I just got a call from one of my mailers! Amazing I know...It's been about a month since my last call.

I didn't get much out of this lady, she is going to have her husband call back later (we'll see). She did say they are trying to sell her mother-in-laws house and that they are in florida and the house is in NJ. If they sound motivated after talking to the husband I'll setup an appointment to go see the house and meet them. If that is the case ANYONE want to come with me and take point so I can see how it's done?

I have been slowly coming around to the mind set of "who cares if I mess up, no skin off my back" I do learn quickly from my mistakes so every call is a learning experience.

Other Things

Over the past two weeks I've been sinking my teeth into online networking and learning how to promote my sites. My main goal is to attract people to my sites and by doing so I might earn a little money on the side with my adsense ads or affiliate links. I'm doing my best to offer good quality content and useful webpages as well. My plan is to have the earnings going to fund my marketing. All my sites are based off of what I've learned in REI so far (Rei-Links.com) and being able to network with others in my area (JerseyRei.com).

If anyone knows much about webpage optimization and SEO shoot me an email and we can discuss strategies.

Squeeze Pages

I've created a rough squeeze page and think its pretty good. I can't take credit for all the content as I have borrowed bits and pieces from other sites. I hope that's ok as I ain't no writer. Take a look at the page...

ScottyBuys.com

..the link is www.nnjhouses.com but I'm thinking of changing that to scottybuys.com soon. Which do you think is better? I think ScottyBuys.com is easier to remember.

That's it for today, I've got a lot more to do this week to get my goals accomplished.

Art of Creative Deal Structuring

2009-05-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post. The other day I listened to a great phone call from Steve Cook that dealt with Creative Deal structuring. if you have a chance down load this and listen...

http://reitips.com/special/deal-structuring/replay/

Goals for 5/18 to 5/24

2009-05-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

This week was a little hectic as I lost a couple days to some family emergencies. So it was good that I only assigned myself 3 goals. I did ok with all things considered but I think I could have done a better job, lets review...

Get pre qualified for a loan. DONE

This I sort of cheated on cause I had a Pre-Qual letter from Coastal Funding already. Like I mentioned in a previous post I had forgotten I had this but will attempt to use it. I still would like to get pre-approved by an actual bank although I have my doubts that I can at the moment, unless I include my wife. Now I've been doing a lot of thinking about Steve Cooks no debt investing and I'd love to try and figure out how best to do that.
Find 2 rehabbers in my area and contact them. DONE

I found one looking through craigslist ads and sent the guy an email just asking if he'd be intrested in any deals I may come across. The other rehabber is the father of a friend of mine. Granted it's a friend who I don't talk to much at all these days because of life, but I emailed his father as well. Maybe I'll get something back maybe not.
Contact the probate at 20 Wilson St. - DONE

Because I'm a little leary of calling up a family who is grieving from the lose of a loved one I decided to send them a letter. I got this letter from Preston Ely and I hand wrote out the envelope. I think this is the best way and is good practice for next week.

This Weeks Goals

Create a Squeeze page for Sellers
Create a Squeeze page for buyers
Go to the courthouse on Friday to look for Probate leads
See if my realtor would accept the Coastal funding PreQual with an offer
Go to the Gym twice this week (I needed a fifth goal)

I sometimes have trouble coming up with goals for myself and thought it might be a good idea to have you guys help me sometimes. Anyone care to suggest some goals for me? Maybe we could help each other out and keep each other motivated?

Have a good week! My summer hours start this week so I work 9 hour days M-Th and get a half day on fridays. Totally makes my weekends better!

Total Money Makeover

2009-05-15T08:15:00.001-07:00

I just got my copy of Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover yesterday in the mail. I'm excited to get into the guts of the book and make some changes to my financial life. Granted my wife and I do a great job of limiting our debt with credit cards (we have none), but even with a decent savings out house mortgage and car payments really keep us having to work our JOBs and be fearful of loosing them. As I'm reading the book I'm sure I'll hit on some topics that I'll post about here so stay tuned!

Steve Cook

Last night Steve Cook had a call about deal structuring that was excellent! He went over different scenarios and explained how he would...

Structure the deal
What he'd sell the property for
What kind of lender he would try and use
How to handle the downpayment
etc...

Steve is also have what seems to be a wonderful bootcamp coming up in june. I'd love to be able to go, but my wife and I already have plans for that weekend. The price for the bootcamp is $1500, soudns like a lot but hey he gives you all his courses for free which you could easily sell for 1500 + the traveling expenses. That is assuming you already have his material because if you don't you should keep them.

Momentum

Outside of the above, what ever momentum I had a few weeks ago has died out completely. I've got to hunt down another investor who is willing to let me try and sell some of his stuff so I can keep myself in the game.

Maybe a little help...here is the post card I've been sending out and getting no responses from. What could I change? let me have it!

Networking Attempt

2009-05-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get the hang of creating webpages pretty quickly using joomla and random templates. Those RocketTheme.com templates are amazing! Anyhow I've always been looking for a forum or group that is really local to the area I'm investing in. The REIA's in my area have investors that are more focused on urban areas such as Newark, Jersey City, Patterson and North Bergan. This doesn't do me very good if I'm looking to network with investors in my area, so i decided instead of me trying to find them let them find me!

With that in mind I created a Forum called...

JerseyRei.com - Northern NJ Investors Forum

I'll be advertising it on craigslist and through my meetup groups to try and attract some members. It only took me about 5 hours to put together so what ever I get out of it will be a bonus.

Pre Qual

Steph's comment on my last post reminded me that I did have a prequal letter from Coastal funding that i got back in October. I'm not sure how I forgot about this, but hopefully I can use it to make offers. Has anyone ran into problems making offers through a realtor with one of these?

Mailers

I've been gotting absoultely NO response from my mailers over the last month. I've been sending out about 100 ever week. That's not a lot but I should be getting 1-3 calls per week but instead...NADA!

I've been following my 7 bucket strategy with repeat mailings and still nothing. Gets a bit frustrating shelling out money for postcards and not even getting tire kickers to call.

Next week my summer hours start at work and I'll be getting a half day on fridays so I'll be headed to the courthouse to try and dig up the Probate files. I've been looking forward to doing this for a few months now. Maybe that is the list that will give me the most response.

I'm never going to give up, so you guys don't have to worry about that. Something will work eventually!

Goals for 5/11 to 5/17

2009-05-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

Review of last weeks goals

* DONE - Find owner of vacant house

I found out the the owner of the vacant house was the owner of a larger lot that included the house next to it. The house wasn't for sale but part of a future investment.

* FAILED - Get Prequalified so I can make offers

I attampted to get prequalified but was declined because of my debt to income ratio. I was attempting to get the prequal myself only, but the debt that my wife and I have together (house and cars) was counted against my salarie only and not my wife's and mine together. I'll have to try and requalify again using my wife as the coborrower.

* FAILED - Call Hard Money Lender

I didn't do this, I emailed a couple but have yet to hear back. This is an on going issue of mine. The issue of Phones and myself. I will be working on this in weeks to come in order to get more comfortable talking on the phone.

* DONE - Sign up for Realtor Pre-Licensing class

Did this early in the week and will start the class July 24th.

* FAILED - Finish Goals by Saturday

If all went smoothly I would have accomplished this but because I didn't call the hard money lender and get rejected for my prequal, I'll say I failed this.

Goals for this week...

Get Prequalified some how

Get Names and contact info for 2 builders in my area

Call owner of 120 Wilson Pl

...I'm knocking the number down to 3 so I can spend more time getting the Prequal.

Night off????

2009-05-08T06:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I was sitting in my condo trying to think of something real estate related to do.....I came up with nothing! I was kind of mad at myself because there were 3 hours right in front of me just waiting to be taken advantage of. I looked at my weekly goals and the only thing I didn't have accomplished was calling a hard money lender. Well it was 8pm so a little late for that. I decided to look up a couple here...

Hard Money Lenders

...and sent off an email to one of them who lends in my area. Wow that took up 10 minutes of my time!!

It was just one of those frustrating, I have no idea what to do now, moments that I'm sure will hit me many more times. I just don't like that feeling of wasting time.

So I fiddled with my webpages a little bit and played with my dog.

But of course now that I'm writing this blog entry I think of the perfect way I could have spent that time...Looking over my short and long term goals. Well I'll keep that in mind for the next time I get lost in what to do.

Random Things

I bought the book Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

I just notified my mortgage broker to go ahead and send in the paper work for my personal refinance. Then I got this explanation (here) that changed my mind. The main reason is I didn't think about

The already lost money from my original loan's closing costs.
Restarting the term all over again.
Losing of 4000 in equity because we were rolling the closing costs into the new loan.

I also just didn't want to get stuck living in my current condo longer then I want to because I had to justify refinancing. That just seems ass-backwords. Am I off base in thinking this? ahh, I keep going back and forth. I've got the rate locked in so I'm just gonna take the weekend to think about it and discuss it. if anyone has any opinions drop me a comment please.

Thanks

Pre-Qualified

2009-05-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today is my day to try and get Pre-Qualified. I talked to the broker that is working with the realtor I just found and I actually got rejected for any kind of mortgage...haha. That is basically because I was trying to pull the mortgage myself (excluding my wife) and making 80k and 800 credit score just wasn't going to cut it with my current bills (even though those bills are shared with my wife). I didn't want them to run my wife's credit before talking to her about it, but the guy was confident we could get something done if I included her. As part of being a good husband I'm not going to make that decision without my better half's say.

As I sat in my cube, after talking with the broker, I got one of those DUUHHH moments. See, I'm currently getting my own mortgage refinanced so why not just ask that guy if I could get a Pre-Qual from him?? he already has all my financial info and my wifes, so no more credit checks. Is that going back on what I said in my last paragraph? I'm not sure.

Twitter

I've gotten my iPhone3g and it's pretty cool so far. I'm going to have to get use to the size of it as it's bigger then my old blackberry pearl. Anyhow, I downloaded a twitter app and plan on tweeting when I do something or get an idea. This will serve as a reminder of what i want to write about in my blog and also give you guys a status on how my goals are going. So feel free to follow my tweets :)

Blank Mind

2009-05-06T06:13:00.000-07:00

I didn't get much done yesterday. I got caught up watching the Yankees and playing with my dog. I knew I shouldn't have turned that TV on, it just saps the willpower right out from underneath you.

I did sign up for the training to get my Realtor License. It will start on July 21st and to through September 24th. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:00 to 9:45pm. I'm looking forward to it, but it reminds me a lot of summer school in college and I hated that! haha

I also worked out some of the kinks on the new format for my blog. I'm liking it for the most part now that I understand how I can manipulate the template a little bit. The new twitter feature is pretty cool, I just have to get into the twitter world. As you can see I've tried some but I can never be consistent. Maybe it will be easier when i get my new Iphone 3g today, I here there is a nice twitter app for it.

I always think of 100 things to talk about on my blog at night, but when I sit down to write something my mind goes blank...figures. I'll write another post when they pop into my head so stay tuned...

Bloggy Award! - Almost Forgot

2009-05-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

The winner of the first ever Bloggy Award for

INFO BLOG Is...

RealEstateBlackbook.com/blog

Was a close Vote.

7 - RealEstateBlackbook.com/blog
6 - Rei Tips
3 - FadiZeidan.com
2 - DavidAlexander.com/blog

The next Award will be for "Best Wholesaler Blog" Voting will begin tonight

Productive Weekend

2009-05-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

I got alot of things done this past weekend. From my last post you can see I finished up all my goals for the week which is good. I finally called two For Rent signs. One I left a message to get back to me, I asked about the rent and size of the place. If the realtor calls me back I will ask if the owner is interested in selling the house or looking to buy more. The number for the other house got me to the voice mail of a lawyer?!? Does anyone know if that means anything significant or not?

Borded up House

I found this borded up house that I took down the address. I put a pen and sticky note pad in my car so I can write down anything I see. The sticky notes help as the paper doesn't slide around when I write with one hand. Anyhow I got home and tried to look up the address on the tax records and the house was not there???? how can that be? I think I'm going to go a leave a bright orange sign on the door or something. Anyone have any ideas as to how this isn't listed in the tax records?

Realtor

I just got a call from the realtor about the "Buyers MLS" account they were setting up for me was ready. I will give it a good run through tonight and report back. Seems interested to say the least. The realtor actually has the service through a brokerage that they work with which I could probably get pre qualified by. Kill two birds with one stone.

New Look to my Blog

I got tired of my blog look so I found this template and wanted to try it out. I really like the top portion with the title and the picture. The width of the blog area might be a little to small though. If anyone has any comments or a feature doesn't work let me know.

Have a good Monday!

A little Renovation...

2009-05-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

...on my blog. Just trying out a new template that seems pretty cool. What do you guys/gals think? I'm liking it so far!

Goals for 5/4 to 5/10

2009-05-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

I did well this week with my goals. finished all 5 of them...

1) Get the numbers for 2 For Rent houses

This wasn't easy as I think I got the only 2 houses that are For Rent in my town. I now remember back a few months a did some research of the percent of rentals in some areas and Hanover came back at less then 1 percent. The couple for rents I've seen in the past seem to have disappeared.

Call 2 Landlords

I called the two numbers, both of them where Weichert listings. I got a voice mail and left a message on one and the other was some lawyers voice mail. I didn't leave a message, should I have?

Finish Reading "The 4 Hour Work Week"

Just finished this up tonight. Great book and it dealt with a lot of what I've been thinking about over the past 6 months. Ideas I picked up from this book are the 80/20 rule (i.e. 80% of the work is done in 20% of the time. This can be applied to everything in life pretty much). The idea is to not worry about the last 20% or eliminate that from your life, thus freeing up a lot of time! I agree with this. Another concept is automation and deligation. READ THE BOOK!

Get all the information for Pre-Licensing course

Did this early in the week and posted about it in a previous post so I won't rehash.

Ask 1 Realtor if i could use their MLS access

I did this but got denied. I asked an appraiser friend of mine, but he just didn't feel comfortable giving out his user name and password. I did however talk to a realtor this weekend who is setting me up with some sort of account for their own personal webpage that will give me access to some buyers site. I will get pretty much the full MLS. Not sure what it's all about just yet but I will report back.

Goals for this week

Sign up for the Realtor Course
Get Pre-qualified so I can make offers
Call Hard Money Lender
Find owner of a vacant house (I will post about this tomorrow)
Finish my goals by Saturday leaving Sunday to plan for the upcoming week

How do those sound??

Have a good week everyone, Monday's are the best!

Driving around in my automobile

2009-05-01T06:21:00.001-07:00

In an attempt to find the "for rent" houses in my area, I drove around my neighborhood on my way home from work yesterday. Unfortunately I couldn't find the houses that I thought were for rent, but I did see a couple of houses that were of some interest. It just hit me, that I should have taken a picture and posted it here. Anyhow, the house looks like it was going to be renovated but they only got as far as tearing off the roof and stripping down the rest of the house to just walls. Their is a big blue tarp covering the house as well. It had a Keller Williams For Sale sign in the front yard. I wrote down the number and I'm going to give them a call to see what is up.

Also I'm not sure if anyone remembers from a post back in the fall, but the house the was vacant (woman died and now the children own it) stills seems to be vacant. It's definitely in the probate process so If I can dig up the number of one of the children I had I'm gonna call them again and see how things are going :)

My Goals for this week are going ok. I've accomplished two of them

Asked a realtor for mls access, but got declined
Got the information for the Pre-Licensing realtor training
Got one For Rent number (need one more)
Have 120 pages left in the "4 hour work week". I'm a slow reader so it's going to be close!
Still need to call 2 Landlords - WHY DO I KEEP PUTTING THIS OFF??????

Craigslist Ads

I've been consistently getting responses from my ads. Probably 2 to 3 people every week. This week I've lined up a couple of Short Sale investors to throw leads at when I get some. Also was looking for a realtor who would submit my offers and got two good candidates that I will set up a meeting with. I also had a Hard Money lendor email me and tell me he has alot of clients who would be interested in deals. The more people you know the better!!

I've found that the simple ads work the best. One or two sentences. everytime I get to wordy I get no responses. Just food for thought to anyone reading this.

Goals Website

Biting off of what Steph is doing on her blog with Accountability Monday, I was thinking that it would be cool to have a website that strickly dealt with Goal setting and accountability. Who likes that idea?

Realtor Pre-Licensing School

2009-04-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

I found a pre-licensing school that holds classes on tuesday and thursdays from 6 to 9:45pm. It runs from July to the end of September. I'm going to sign up for that course, it will cost me $345 which isn't to bad. It is a weichert sponsered training, and if anyone is interested here is the link..

www.schoolsofrealestate.com

I just missed the start of the course going on right now by 2 weeks, which sucks but that's what i get for putting this off.

Not many people voting for Best Rei Info Blog yet...come on and support ReiTips.com or any other info blog you enjoy. Takes only a few seconds.

I also go an email from a hard money lender in response to my ad looking for Short Sale Investors. He wants me to call him, but I'm not sure what I'd say. haha, I hate that feeling!!

Blogger Award: Best Info Blog

2009-04-27T18:01:00.001-07:00

I've setup the voting for the first round of Rei Blogger Awards. You can vote here...

Rei Blogger Award: Best Info Blog

Voting will last until May 3rd. Reward your favorite blog!

This award will go to the best blog that provides Tips, Articles, Resource, tools and anything else an investor would need to know to be a successful investor. To give you an idea, ReiTips.com I call an Info Blog as it's not a journal like my blog is.

If you know of another deserving Info Blog, please leave a post in the message boards on the site and I will ad it.

Today I asked my appraiser friend if I could bum his MLS access off of him, but he declined. He said that he is on it all the time and if someone else tries to log in using his account it would bump him off. No hard feelings :) I'll keep asking anyone I know.

The original realtor that I asked about making offers sent me an email the other day wondering if I've found anyone that will take a copy of a check which will be deposited on the acceptance of an offer. For some reason I took that as a dig, like he didn't beleive I could find someone...I say Ha! I will find someone.

On the Mialer front, I've continued to mail out my mailers religiously on sundays. I'm sending out about 75 each sunday to absentee owners and pre-foreclosures. I know that's not alot but I'm concentrating on a small area. Remember "Hanover Scott"

For all you web developers out there I've come across an incredible tool called Firebug that shows you the CSS on any webpage. It's great to see which Style is overriding another. I've used it extensively to understand the order of CSS's in joomla.

Asta Luego

Goals for 4/27 to 5/3

2009-04-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

Review of last weeks goals

Get a copy of Daily Record and hunt down the legal section to find probates - DONE
Find out when the next Auction is and make plans to attend - DONE
Call 2 For Rent signs that are in front of houses - Failed
Find a Realtor who will allow me to make offers with not putting down 1000 earnest money per offer. Allow copy of check and "money deposited on acceptance of offer" - DONE
Finalize Format and content on REI-Links.com - DONE

#2 I found the auction but can't make it to one because they are on Thursday at 2pm and I'm at work. I will have to take a half day off from work to make it. I will do that after I've accumulated a few more vacation days.

#3 I planned to do this over this past weekend, but I didn't realize how much time my Nieces' Christenings where going to take of my time. So I never got around to getting the numbers of of the for rent sign. Not a good excuse as it would have taken me 5 minutes to drive by the houses. This is a BIG FAIL and a goal I will accomplish this week.

This Weeks Goals

Get the numbers for 2 For Rent Signs
Call 2 Landlords
Finish Reading 4 hour work week
Get all the information for getting my Realtor License
Ask 1 Realtor if I could use their MLS access to do some research

On to another week!

Done, Done, Not done, not done, almost done

2009-04-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

I've managed to get two of my goals done as of this post. I discussed the sheriff sale auctions in a previous post and yesterday I got a hold of the Daily record to hunt down the legal section. I found the section but didn't not find anything about probates or executors being appointed. Does anyone have a copy of one of the legal listings for this? I'd like to just see what it looks and sounds like. Is the best day for these sunday?

I have been working on my website a lot this week in order to get it done. While in the shower the other morning I came up with an idea to hold a REI Bloggy Awards. I'm going to set up voting on rei-links for different categories like "Best Wholesaler Blog" (we know who will win this, but it should be fun anyway). I'll open the voting next sunday. And the winner of each category will get a cool little trophy to stick on their blogs. What do you think? I think it's a good way to bring alot of people closer and get us all reading each other's blogs. The more people you know in the business the better!

I've asked a few more realtors about the Earnest Money deposit and they have come back with the same story. Although one said that at least I can write a check for each offer, but it won't get cashed until the offer is accepted. Only stipulation is that the check would have to be dated the same day as the date on the offer. I think this could work out. If I make multiple offers on the same day I only have to write one check.

My next push is to get MLS access. I need to build some relationships!

Enjoy the beautiful weekend...gonna be 80 on sunday here in Jersey!!

My 5 Affirmations - thanks jerry

2009-04-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

Was reading Jerry's blog and he talked about affirmations. Now i typically find those things a bit out there (no offense to anyone), but I'm about trying different things these days so here are my 5....

Practice, patience and persistence assure my success.
I know that my greatest goals are achievable. I know that my every dream is reachable
My life is a positive reflection of my thoughts
I choose goals that reflect what I want most in my life
I let go and trust

...So it is.

If you want to see where I got those from go over to Jerry's blog and find the link to the page.

I looked into the Sheriff Sales for my county and they are every thursday at 2pm...of course they are when I'm at work!?!?!?! They do list the properties online at...

Morris County Sheriff Sales

I cool thing happened today from my craigslist ads, I got a response from a fellow member of Flippinghomes.com forum. I recognized her name, Terry Harrigan, and she said "Yup" it was her. So I thought that was pretty cool. She responded to my ad about finding short sale investors who'd like the upside down leads that I get. She was looking for the same so I referred her to NJQuicksell.

Have a good rest of the week.

100!!!

2009-04-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Always feels good to accomplish one of your goals, but it feels even better when you've reached a long term goal. It's taken me roughly 8 months but I finally reached my goal of going to see 100 open houses.

More like 250 days...hahaha

My next goal will be to talk to 50 sellers. My count is currently at 3, so i'm gonna have to kick my mailings up a notch.

I bought a list of absentee owners from ListSource.Com for $50, which was about 350 names. I broke that down to 50 names per list and setup my mailings in Click2Mail so I know when to send each block out. Sent out the first 50 yesterday with a new very simple Post Card i setup. Pretty much is a yellow postcard that says.

Scotty Buys Houses

Do you Need to Sell your House?
Doesn't matter the reason call me today

Scott Costello
973-476-0684

I'm going to stick with my montra of keep it simple.

Follow ups....

I didn't have any luck with the recent lead I came upon. They guy never picked up the phone so I just passed all his information on to NJquickSell.com as their wasn't enough room to wholesale the house anyway, it would most likely have to be a shortsale if anything.

As for my trying to line up the buyer with the seller, I haven't heard anything new about it since I directed my buyer to talk with the seller to discuss getting payed. I'll follow up next week.

That is it, well there is probably more but I can't remember at the moment :)

Goals - 4/20 to 4/27

2009-04-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

Review of last weeks goals

Ask my Realtor what I need to make an offer on a house (proof of funds,etc..) - DONE
Email some of the wholesalers I know and see if they are selling any properties - DONE
Get a copy of the Daily Record and hunt down the legal section to find probates - FAILED
Buy the list of out of state owners for Hanover - DONE
Add 10 more Links to Rei-Links.com - DONE
Get Pre Paid cell phone - Looked into this but decided to wait for Google Voice to become available.

Goals for this week

Get a copy of Daily Record and hunt down the legal section to find probates
Find out when the next Auction is and make plans to attend
Call 2 For Rent signs that are in front of houses
Find a Realtor who will allow me to make offers with not putting down 1000 earnest money per offer. Allow copy of check and "money deposited on acceptance of offer"
Finalize Format and content on REI-Links.com

Feeling Dumb

2009-04-17T10:41:00.001-07:00

One of the biggest obstacles I'm finding out now that I'm starting to be involved in the deals is feeling dumb. Nobody likes to feel dumb or feel like they don't have the answers. As a beginner I run into a lot of questions from other investors or even sellers that I can't answer.

The good thing is that I'm of the mind set now that I don't care about that, I know I'm new and have a lot to learn. That uncomfortable feeling though is a hard one to over come and has caused me to not do something in the past. All about stepping outside the box!

Ok, back to the fun stuff...

I was trying hard to stay in the middle of my buyer (lets call him Frank) and the seller of the house in whippany. When it came down to how Frank was going to get paid, I honestly didn't know. I could give him half of what I might get, but Frank was talking about tacking on $10k to the deal and selling it that way to his buyer. That is fine and all, but I told him we would have to assign the contract over to him first and then he could assign it to his end buyer.

I think that is how it would work?

He was throwing some other ideas at me that I didn't understand to well (definitely not enough to try and explain it here, we might have just been he was using terms I wasn't familiar with). At this point I told him he'd have to call my partner to handle how he was going to get paid.

Right there I might have just taken myself out of a paycheck and introduced a possible buyer to a seller and might get end a rounded with the next deal that comes up. But hey I'm trying to learn from all of this, soooo......

Lead

I tried calling that lead back yesterday to find out a few things I forgot to ask him like...

Why he hasn't used a realtor yet?
If he had a second mortgage
If he was behind in payments (I figure he's behind because of the Lis Penden filed against him, but I could be wrong)

...he didn't answer though even though he was expecting a call from me that evening. Oh well, I'll try again.

I will say all of this is kind of fun and exciting!!

I also bought a list of absentee owners from Listsource today. $53

Follow up

2009-04-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

The Call

This guy called 3 times with in a 24 hour period. The first two calls I missed while I was at work on tuesday, but he called again wednesday around lunch so I picked up. I explained what I did and then asked if I could call him back later that night at 7:30. Bill Guerra says this establishes trust because you follow through and now he has confidense in what you say.

The details...

His house is has a ARV of over a million. 6 beds 4.5 baths. He recently lost his job and was on disability and couldn't cover his mortgage. It was built in 1998 and he owes around 1 million on it still. Looks like he refinanced in 2006 to take all the equity. He is definitely motivated but doesn't really have alot of equity, maybe 100k, but that's to tight for a house worth upwords or a million.

I passed it along to the guys at NJQuicksell. They will try a short sell and maybe help the guy with a loan modification.

Buyer for Seller
Jarred got another house in Whippany so I pushed the house onto my buyers list and one of the guys has a guy who is interested. The guy wants to finance though and Jarred is looking to assign the contract. Not sure how this is going to work out, but we'll see.

action

2009-04-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

Just talked to a seller who called me from my mailings and in the process of lining up a buyer (actually a buyers buyer) with a seller.

Things are slowly happening, will expound (ooo big word!) on it tomorrow.

Explained

2009-04-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

I said in last nights post that I would explain how a reached a few of my goals last week. So here it is..

Organizing my mailings

I decided to go back to click2mail as I figured out how to send letters. So I setup a letter template and I'm all set there. As to how I'm going to keep track of when I should mail out what, I came up with a modified bucket strategy. It has to do with the mailing list name.

Each week I upload the new list of leads. I will call this...

1 - LT - 2009 - 04 - 12

What this means is...

1: Mailing number 1
LT: going to mail a Letter
2009-04-12: date I should mail the item.

So after I sent out the Letters, the new list name would be..

2 - PC - 2009 - 04 - 26

2: second mailing
PC: Post Card
2009-04-26: Date I should mail the Post Card

I will continue this every week. And after the 7th Mailing the list will be deleted. Now I can look at the dates and see which items I have to send out and also see what I need to send. Simple!

Unfortunately now I have 1000 envelopes and nothing to put in them...well i'll just have to randomly right letters to people or send out my business cards to people in the area. I'll think of something to use them for.

Moving On

I've already contacted my realtor asking what I would need to submit an offer and he said...

I would need a signed contract, a deposit check of $1000 that will be held in Weicherts Trust Account until closing, and a pre approval notice or proof of funds if you are paying cash or taking a line of credit

I've since asked him if I could send a copy of a check and put into the contract that a check would be deposited upon acceptance of the offer. This way I wouldn't have to outlay thousands of dollars to escrow accounts on offers that probably won't be accepted. He is going to look into it.

This goal setting stuff works!

Goals - Wk 4/13 to 4/19

2009-04-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

Last Weeks Goals

Get organizer that can hold Letter Mailers - Done
Setup Click2Mail to send out postcards to match my mailer schedule - Done
Get More Stamps - Done
Modify Mailer to include info about "Right of First Refusal" - Done
Investigate adding a referral P.S. in my letters and postcards for information about other houses needing to be sold. - Done
Add 20 Links to my REI-Links.com website - Done

I will elaborate on each item tomorrow.

This Weeks Goals

Ask my Realtor what I need to make an offer on a house (proof of funds,etc..)
Email some of the wholesalers I know and see if they are selling any properties
Get a copy of the Daily Record and hunt down the legal section to find probates
Buy the list of out of state owners for Hanover
Add 10 more Links to Rei-Links.com
Get Pre Paid cell phone

Flying by!!

2009-04-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

Where does the week go? it's already Wednesday for crying out loud! Today is the day I review my weekly goals to see if I'm on track. So let's see how I'm doing.

1) Get Organizer that can hold Letter Mailers.

No - I'm going to take a look in Staples tomorrow to see about this.

2) Setup Click2Mail to send out postcards to match my mailer schedule that I outlined in a previous post

No - Did not do this yet

3) Get More Stamps

YES - But going to need more for the next batch. Man this is getting crazy. This might force me to go back to strictly postcards or another click2mail option.

4) Modify Mailer to include info about "Right of First Refusal"

No - This will be done tomorrow

5) Investigate adding a referral P.S. in my letters and postcards for information
about other houses needing to be sold.

No - This will be done tomorrow as well

6) Add 20 Links to my REI-Links.com website

Half Done - should finish this tomorrow as well.

Pre Paid Cell Phone
I've also decided to get a PrePaid cell phone to handle all my calls from the mailers. I keep missing calls or freezing because I don't want to answer the phone at work and have everyone in cube land hear me. God forbid my boss walks in on me while I'm talking business.

I've got a gift card for Best Buy that I will use to by the phone. I'll then record a professional and relevant voice mail message. Also since I know I'll only be getting calls from my marketing, I can call back the numbers that don't leave messages.

DU Refi Plus Mortgage Refinance

Not exactly investing related, but I just found out from talking to my neighbor (who is a broker) that Fannie Mae just instituted the DU Refi Plus which basically says, and I quote

Along with the federal government's Making Home Affordable program, Fannie Mae has introduced "Desktop Underwriter (DU) Refi Plus™", a new program designed to reignite the mortgage industry by streamlining the refinance process for potentially millions of Americans. Fannie Mae has loosened the rules for homeowners seeking lower monthly payments. The less-stringent criteria includes lower acceptable credit scores, reduced income documentation, as well as waiving the requirement for appraisals in certain scenarios. According to Brian Faith, Managing Director of Communications regarding DU Refi Plus™, "Under DU Refi Plus™, the company will be able to identify an existing Fannie Mae loan and review the performance history. This will allow lenders, regardless of the servicer, to enjoy expanded refinancing business opportunities and streamlined processing..."

Also for more information go here...

DuRefiPlus.com

Target Hanover

2009-04-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

As you can see that I've decided to start posting my weekly goals on Sunday nights. These are things I'm going to do as well as my weekly scheduled stuff. They are going to be small items, that I can accomplish relatively easily.

I believe I'm really starting to understand goal setting and how to properly set them up so you succeed. Now lets see if I'm successful.

Goals I set for this past weekend

Review, analyze and Rework my goals some. - CHECK
Post ads on craigslist advertising a new house that Jarred is selling. - FAIL
Create a system to organize my mailings - CHECK
Look at open houses on sunday (only 10 more till 100) - CHECK
rework my post card a little - FAIL
mail out more letters - CHECK

I should have completed all of these things easily but I got caught up working on my webpage a little to much. Time flies when you are developing!!

Open Houses

Went out and looked at 5 more open houses this weekend, that brings me to 95! Only five more.

I've noticed that I've been getting a lot of "You look familiar" comments from the realtors at these open houses. I'll take that as a good sign, but they still don't know my name...I'll have to change that! What did occur to me was something I've heard from Bob Norton everytime I listen to his audios, "Become the export in your area, be know as Pontiac Bob." I want to be know as "Hanover Scott", I want to be the person who other investors come to when they want a house in Hanover.

From my craigslist ads advertising houses in whippany, I've gotten at least a dozen inquiries which tells me there are investors actively looking in my area. This is going to be my focus. Before I was concentrating on a few towns, but i've learned that it was still a little to large of an area for me right now.

Mailers

Instead of hand writing all the addresses on my mailer envelopes, I found a font that looked hand written and just used that and setup a mail merge to print the addresses on the envelopes. Did it in blue as well :)

That's it for today

Goals for Week 4/6 to 4/12

2009-04-05T19:18:00.000-07:00

- Get organizer that can hold Letter Mailers
- Setup Click2Mail to send out postcards to match my mailer schedule that I outlined in a previous post
- Get More Stamps
- Modify Mailer to include info about "Right of First Refusal"
- Investigate adding a referral P.S. in my letters and postcards for information about other houses needing to be sold.
- Add 20 Links to my REI-Links.com website

Weekend Plans

2009-04-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing new over the past two days except for working on my REI Links webpage a little bit. If you have the time go check it out and give me some feedback. It's not nearly done and on only has 3 links so far, but the format is there and you can get a good idea of where i'm going with it.

Rei-Links.com

Weekend Plans

This weekend I'm going to do the following...

Review, analyze and Rework my goals some.
Post ads on craigslist advertising a new house that Jarred is selling
Create a system to organize my mailings (Read Neds comment a few posts down about the 7 bucket method).
Look at open houses on sunday (only 10 more till 100)
rework my post card a little
mail out more letters

I've been brain storming (pun intended cause it is POURING outside right now) lately trying to come up with ways to have passive income coming in and i'm not getting to many ideas. How are some of you getting passive income, outside of rental property? There might not be many ways, but I figured I throw that out there for discussion.

Uuuuu Almost!

2009-04-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had one of the people on my buyers list say he had someone who was "Really Interested" in a house I was shopping for another wholesaler I know. But wouldn't you know it, they just accepted an offer on the house. SO CLOSE! There's another house coming up in whippany that I'm going to pimp to my ever growing buyers list, maybe this time!

The craigslist ads that I've been posting to find buyers has been working pretty good. I just keep it simple and general.

70% of LTV houses in Whippany
Cash buyers prefered
Call or email for more details

I find if I get to wordy I don't get the responses. The best ad so far has been the one where I advertised the House in Whippany for Jarred. Most have been investors that have replied, but a few have been OOs.

I've gotten a total of 8 buyers on my list now. One says he is a cash buyer which is good. I don't know the quality of them, but I guess at this stage I'll get as many buyers as possible and weed out the GOOD ones later.

Got A Call!

Yesterday I got a call from my mailers...YES! Let me first say I really don't want to be taking the calls at work, cause I live in Cube Land and everyone can hear your phone conversations. Not a good idea to be talking about my real estate business at me J.O.B. Getting back to the caller....I haven't gotten a call in a while so I was off my game, he asked me "What kind of foreclosure service I was" and since I wasn't expecting that I said..."Oh I'm not a service, I buy houses, are you interested in selling?" He then mumbled an "Oh, Ok" and then thanked me and hung up.

Now what I should have said was that I offer a few services that could help him out. Then asked if I could call him back later that evening to talk about his options.

One of my weaknesses is I don't think very clearly when put on the spot, at least when I'm nervous. This will get better as I field more calls.

REI-Links.com

I've registered the domain name and have setup the framework for the website. I know what the content is going to be, but I've got to figure out how to categorize the links. Such as flippinghomes.com would be a "Education" and TampaStephs blog would be a "Blog". I will also have "Forums" and "Resources" categories. I'm going to have an "editor's Review and Rating" and also want to setup "User Reviews" as well as "Link Submissions". In the end it shouldn't really be to hard to get content, the hard part is going to be making it simple and usable. I'm thinking Web 2.0!

Have a good hump day

2 years!

2009-03-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was dedicated to my wife as we were celebrating our 2 year anniversary! Yea us! I love my wife and hopefully she'll still love me while I'm trying to make our lives better. hehe

So with the above being said, All I did this past weekend was get more mailers ready to print out. I've got a big batch going out today (when I pick up stamps) on the way home. I've also thought of a plan for sending out mailers, here it is...

1st Mailer: Send out Letter
2nd Mailer: Send postcards (2 weeks later)
3rd Mailer: Send Postcards (1 Month later)
4th Mailer: Send Postcards (2 Months later)
5th Mailer: Send Letter & Business Card (3 Months later)
6th Mailer: Send Postcard (4 Months later)
7th Mailer: Send Postcard (6 Months Later)

I think the above sounds pretty good. Now I just need a good and easy way to track all of this. I could create some simple program to do it but I'm not sure I want to invest the time for that. Then again, a little time invested now will save me a lot of time later on. Does anyone have software that you can set this all up in and it will just spit out letters or postcard reminders with one click of a button?

No Paper Cuts!

2009-03-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you, I don't know how anyone can consistently mail out letters to 100's of people per week unless they have help or some fancy machine that stuffs for you. Because I wanted to have the envelopes hand addressed, I created, addressed, folded, stuffed, sealed and stamped 55 mailers last night. 55 doesn't sound like a lot but it gave me a good feel for how much time it really takes to do it.

I am happy to report though that I didn't get one paper cut! Those frig'n envelopes have sharp edges...There was one close call but with my refined reflexes and callused fingers I managed to avoid injury.

And of course I came up 7 stamps short though, so I'll only be mailing out 48. figures!

Rei-Links.com

I've been think of making a website that would just have Links to REI related websites and resources. It would be broken down by category and also have user reviews of the sites. I think that could be very handy. I was also throwing around an idea of having something like a LinkShare, where people can share their Favorite links with others. Just a few ideas that came to mind in the shower this morning. Comments?

Buyer News

One of the potential buyers I found for the house in Whippany wasn't interested but said to send him anymore leads I might get. The other buyer hasn't gotten back to me after I informed him it wasn't my deal. So maybe he went around me or is just not interested because he was going to find a buyer instead of buying it himself. This was a good experience, just going back and forth with these guys.

Another buyer

2009-03-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Got another potential buyer looking at the house I'm shopping for Jarred the wholesaler. I wasn't sure I should mention up front that I'm not the person who got the house under contract, so I didn't. But the questioning quickly got to the point where I had to let him know I was shopping the deal for another person. He said he may have other buyers who may be interested in it...man where does the chain stop? How would one break down this situation....

Wholesaler -> Me -> "Buyer"(but not really) -> "Buyers" Buyer ->.....

It could go on like that forever. Someone has to be cut out of the deal, yes? What do I offer the person who found the guy who found the buyer when I was suppose to be bringing the wholesaler the buyer? That is one tangled web!!

Nate Andres Teleconference

Great call put on by Nate and Steve last night. It went on for 2 and 1/2 hours and was full of very useful information. He outlined the steps to sell to an owner occupant as well as gave tips on how to market and screen the OOs. If it comes out on an audio that can be bought, it'll be well worth it. I'm hoping I'll get a free copy of it cause I want to hear it again.

Non-Rei Note
I just spend my entire lunch break looking for a car wash near were I work. I was happy to see that my GPS had many car washes listed in the points-of-interest, but to my disgust the first 4 I zeroed in on DID NOT EXIST!! In fact the GPS lead me to houses in residential areas. I'll never get that hour back.

3 weeks in a row

2009-03-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

I was running along good for a two months with getting my pre-foreclosure leads off the public records website until the last 3 weeks. The first Sunday I thought maybe it was a system problem. The second Sunday I figured it was some more maintenance going on with the site. Now for the third Sunday in a row the site was down so I'm going to change my schedule around and adapt.

Monday
9 to 10pm: Respond to Ads on Craigslist or Further my Network by contacting other investors,Realtors or anybody in the business

Tuesday:
9-10pm: Post Ads on Craigslist looking for buyers and sellers

Wednesday:
9-10pm: Organize my time, review my goals and see if i'm still on track

Thursday:
8-10pm: Download Pre-Foreclosure Leads from Public Notices and create mailer letters.

Friday: All About my Wife

Saturday: All About my Wife

Sunday:
1-4pm: View Open Houses
8-9pm: Write address on envelopes and mail out mailers.
10-11pm: Review My goals and set new goals for upcoming week.

I realized I needed wednesday to review my goals again because I was getting off track in the middle of the week. This should help keep me straight.

Buyers

I've got a total of 4 buyers on my buyers list right now. One of the guys on the list is going to look at a house that another wholesaler is trying to sell. maybe he likes the place and is willing to buy it and I get a little "buyers finder fee"? That would be nice.

Open Houses

Went to 5 more on Sunday so that brings my total up to 90! One of them actually had an indoor pool?!?! It wasn't a big house by any standards and definitely did not look like a house that should have an indoor pool. They just dropped that house by 150,000 bucks and it's an estate so I was thinking of offering something real low, but I wanted to do more research on the property first. With out the pool the house isn't any where near the asking price. The other thing I'm thinking about is that it's the Odd ball house on the block and that usually means stay away. What do you think?

Accountability Partner Wanted

2009-03-23T11:15:00.001-07:00

Man what a great 4 day weekend. Outside of the 12 hours of driving I logged (well my wife did at least half) I had a really good weekend. I'm sure I'll forget some stuff to tell you guys, so I'll post again tomorrow with anything I missed.

Steve Cook's Wealth Explosion

Let me first off say I was expecting a lot out of this boot camp. I've heard so many good things about them that how could I not? It was well worth it and I'd do it again and again. I could listen to Steve talk about Real Estate Investing and his Lifaniare vision all day long.

The first day was a run through of how Steve got started and all about what it takes to become an investor. Always worth hearing, even though i've heard it all before from reading his courses and reading his posts online.

The second day was the bomb! We through out situations and discussed them as a group and also came up with some really great ideas for securing a property...Think "First Right of refusal"...and also got a much better understandings about Fractionals (or quarter interests).

Accountability Partner Wanted

I'm looking for someone who wants to team up and become each other's Accountability Partners. I've gotten a few good ideas from the bootcamp and this is one of them. We could set up our daily goals on a site called WetPaint. This way we can hold each other accountable and push each other to achieve our end goals. Great Idea!

Wet Paint

People I Met
I just wanted to give a mention to all the great people I met at the bootcamp.

TampaSteph
Was very excited to meet her, she has been a big inspiration to me and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to chat with her a bit. She left a little early so I didn't get a chance to say so but....Steph, it was great to meet you and one day I'll be in the Flip Vips with you and the others.

Steve Cook
Meeting Steve was like meeting a rock star. But I'm sure he doesn't want to be known like that at all. He is very modest and truly just wants to help make life better for everyone. I can't say enough about him!

Shane
Man, you got a very creative mind. I could see you were thinking the entire time trying to come up with a better way to do anything. Coming up with the "Right of First Refusal" idea was simple yet brilliant. I will definitely be using that. Very nice guy too

Christina
Keep up the fight and there is no doubt you will be a huge success in wholesaling and investing. If you get a chance read her blog about her struggles, it's inspiring.

Christina Eastwood

Mike and his wife from Delaware
You guys are incredibly nice and it was a pleasure to meet both of you! I apologize I never caught Mike's wife's name but hopefully we'll run into each other again as we are only a ferry ride away.

Some other people I met who could not have been nicer...Glenn from Minnesota, Brian Brian, Andrea (thanks for the directions to the mall) and Bob.

As this post is getting really long, I'll save the rest of what I have to say tomorrow.

Seriously...Envelopes Now?

2009-03-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Last week it was stamps, now this week I don't have enough envelopes to send my mailers. I'll be running out of ink or paper next week for sure! Sometimes I don't know where my head is at.

Oh here is a stupid question for anyone reading...Has it been your experience that the length of a pre-foreclosure letter makes a difference? I've got a 3-4 pager and then a simpler one pager (Thanks Jodi). I'm going to rotate using them and see which brings more calls.

I'm also finding I need to get more organized with my mailers and keep better track of when i should send repeat mailings. I've lost track already...ugh!

Another Buyer!!

Got another buyer on my list today from my craigslist postings. I'm going to try and match him up with a wholesaler I've met and see if he has any properties in my area.

Long Drive Tonight
Tonight is going to be my long drive down to Baltimore. Gonna drop my doggy off at a friends and then pick my wife up at work at around 10:30pm and then take off for a 4 hour drive.

If anyone is going, I'll see you there!

P.S. - I forgot to mention in my monday post that I'm up to 85 open houses. 15 more to go! I then have a new goal ready to go after that.

4 hour work week

2009-03-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say that I started reading the 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. Just from the first chapter I can tell he things a lot like me. I've heard this book was great and had actually bought it over the summer but never go around to reading it until now. What the heck was I waiting for??

here is the link to his sight...

4 Hour Work Week

Down again!

2009-03-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Now it's two Sunday's in a row that the public records site has been down. That kind of puts a kink in my routine for sure! Both times it seems to pop back up on monday morning, but seriously I hope that doesn't become the norm!

The letters from last week went out on Friday (finally got stamps) so we will see how these work. I bet they will work better, how could you not read a hand addressed envelope?

Open Houses
Managed to see 6 more this weekend. A couple of times I was shocked when I saw the inside. the outsides looked terrible and the inside was updated, clean, organized. Kind of shocking that the owners didn't fix up the outside some.

One problem I have been having is that most of the realtor's give me that blank stair, or the Nod of Confussion, when I mention short sales or anything to do with investing. What should I tell them? Should I be more general and say "if you come by any Junker type houses give me a call?" I feel like I'm wasting my business cards with these people.

Monday Goals: Reply to Ads on Craigslist to find buyers and other sources for leads

I will be doing this tonight after basketball.

Wealth Explosion Event is THIS WEEK!

I'm very excited that this week is finally here. I've been looking forward to Steve Cook's Wealth Explosion since I signed up over a month ago. Meeting people like TampaSteph, JerryNJ and Steve Cook is going to be great!

My wife I and plan on driving down Wednesday night after she gets out of work at 11pm. Hopefully I won't be wiped out on Thursday.

It's really only wednesday?

2009-03-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Man this week is taking forever! The only good thing is my wife is working 11am to 7pm instead of 3pm to 11pm, so I'll get to see here much more tonight and tomorrow.

I've gotten quite a few responses back from people I've emailed to off of craigslist. I think I've actually added 2 people to my buyers list. I know...I'm shocked too!! Time to start putting together a spreadsheet.

I've yet to send out my letters as I forgot one minor detail when I'm sending out my own mail....STAMPS! I'm gonna stop off on my way home and pick up a bunch.

I've also been getting back a heck of a lot of "Return to Sender" postcards. It's almost like 1/3 of them are being returned. This type of thing always makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. Anyhow I just send these off to the guys at NjQuickSell.com who can track down these leads. One came back as being vacant and it was in my town, so I'm going to go check it out this weekend.

Weekly Schedule Check
Yesterday I posted two ads on craigslist, one for buyers the other for sellers.

Sellers Ad

Are you having trouble selling your home for any of the following reasons...

- Owe more then you can sell it for?
- Needs a lot of work?
- Just don't want to deal with realtors?

You are not alone!

Contact me and I can help. No money needed, we will just talk.

Buyers Ad

Great Investor Property!

Located in very desirable Whippany. Lots of potential!

Great Schools, Low taxes and quiet street.

Send me an email for more information.

Lets see if I get any responses!

....Post Continued

2009-03-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Day lights savings screwed me up a bit looking at open houses. I knew that was going to happen too! One of the open houses was a wholesaler guy's I've met open house. He and his partner were having this one day open house blowout. Apparently they got an agreement with the owner that they would hold this blowout and get as many people in the house as they could and see if they could sell it. If they couldn't no big deal to them as they just had an option on the house. The owner had it listed before and just didn't want to go through that hassle again. Jarred, the wholesaler, is the organizer of the meetup group I attend and I'm going to birddog for him as well. Can't hurt to have more then one person to send possible leads to.

In all I went to 3 more open houses, so that brings my total up to 79.

Hmmm, what else did I do...

Oh yea, I didn't get a chance to send out my new letters on sunday because the public records website was down until this morning. I will send them out tonight or tomorrow, depending if I have enough ink in my printer.

I also found this very good mailer letter that I'm going to try and use this time. I will post it up tomorrow.

Have a good week!

New Goals

2009-03-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

Alright, like I said I was going to take some time on Saturday and develop some new goals. I found that I had the hardest time setting goals for 6 months and beyond. I mean I know I want to become a full service wholesaler and I want to be able to quit my job in 5 years and invest full time, but I don't know what kind of goals I should set for time frames like 3 months or 6 months. I decided to revisit my goals next weekend and see if things become more clear as I think about them all week.

My Goals (Draft #1)

6 Month

Bird dogged 5 deals
Systematized mailers
Hire someone to get leads (probate, divorces and Pre-foreclosures) from court house

Notes: these goals seem to be attainable in a max time frame of 6 months. The last one might not be possible but I'll attempt to get it done.

3 Month

Get Probate Leads from Court House on Fridays when summer hours start

Notes: I'd do this earlier but I must wait for my summer hours to kick in at work. I could hire someone to get these leads but that's not in my budget.

1 Month

Find and talk to 5 active wholesalers in my farm area
Find and contact 5 builders/rehabbers in my farm the area
Call 20 for rent signs and talk to the landlord
Send mailers to absentee owners

1 Week Schedule
Monday
-Email Craigslist ads who deal with Real Estate

Tuesday
-Post Ads on Craigslist for Short Sales
-Post Ads on Craigslist for Foreclosures
-Post Ads on Craigslist looking for buyers
-Post Ads on Craigslist for people who need to sell

Wednesday
-Work on Webpage (break this up into tasks if nothing to do)

Thursday
-Talk to at least one person who is in real estate (email, phone or in person)

Friday

Saturday

Sunday
-Go see Open Houses from 1 to 4
-Get Pre-Foreclosures from Public Records
-Update webpage with new Leads
-Send out mailers

I've got more to report, but i'll do it in another post as I think this one deserves a post to itself.

What Goals?

2009-03-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

This goal stuff is tough! I was reviewing my goals for the last two months and I realized that I didn't really meet any of them. This is terrible and unacceptable! My goals are listed below with a brief explanation..

Goal #1: Locate Local Banks
Not even close, as far as I got with this is searching online for banks with only a few branches in my area or that had the name community in it.

Goal #2: Refer a Short Sale to NjQuickSell
I worked at this by handing out business cards to Realtors and advertising on craigslist (should have been more consistent with that), but got no interest as of yet.

Goal #3: Talk to 10 Sellers
Haven't had 10 people call me yet which is a problem in itself. Hopefully my letters to sellers this weekend will yield more calls so I can actually talk to a seller.

Goal #4: View 50 More Open Houses
I managed to see 26 houses, not good enough.

Goal #5: Create Buyer/Seller Sign up Forms
Not even started!

Reviewing the goals I set for January and February really opened my eyes as to how poorly I budget my time and how I do a lot of "talking" and only a little "action".

One thing I will do more of is reviewing my goals daily. TampaSteph has mentioned she started doing this recently and I have read about countless other successful people who do the same. So why haven't I been doing it already? don't know, but I will do it now.

Also I'm going to start breaking things down into weekly goals and also create a weekly schedule. The only things that I've consistently stuck with and done are those that I setup a time for.

I Go to open houses from 1-4 on Sundays.
I send out Mailers to pre-foreclosures on Sunday's at 8pm.
I read all unread posts on flippinghomes.com forum daily at work

all other things I do are random and unorganized. I will say that my goals have changed some, and have gotten more focused since I set these original goals. That is also a problem because I should have revisited the ones i set and modified them accordingly.

On to a new day

My goal for Saturday (my wife is working so I have the entire evening to myself) is to come up with my goals for the next 6 months, 1 month and create my weekly schedule that will help get me there. I'm then going to upload it into my google calender and have emails sent to my phone to remind me.

Sounds like a plan!

2009-03-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

Craigslist

I got a call from one of the investors I had found on craigslist this morning. Of course I missed the call, but he left a message. He said his name was Jarred and he sounded like the guy who runs the meetups we have which would be cool. I'll have to ask him when I call him back tonight. He wanted to talk to me about bird dogging for him.

Emailing the Investor ads seems to be a good way to network in the area. I've gotten two people to contact me out of the two emailings I've done. I will say I've got to try and keep track of who I emailed because I don't want to be sending the same request to the same person over and over again.

Mailers

I think for my next mailer I'm going to send out a letter. It won't take me to long to put together and I only have 25 or so pre-foreclosures each week. For the second mailings I might continue with the postcards or a follow up letter. I will let you know how it works out.

That's it for today.

Better Response Rate

2009-03-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

I've been sending out postcards for about 3 months now. I would say I've sent out over 500 and my response rate has probably been .8%. They say if you are getting 3% that is good, so I'm 2.2% off of that mark. Here is my post card that I've been sending out...

...Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could improve the message? Also does anyone else have any examples of postcards that have proven to work for them?

Craigslist

I got one response from a wholesaler regarding the emails I sent out last week. He was interested in a birddog, so we are negotiating a fee and I'm trying to get his criteria.

Getting the criteria out of a wholesaler so far has been hard, as they never seem to have a "Set" model that they go after. They seem to take it on a deal by deal basis which makes it tougher for me to pin down exactly what they would like. So I end up sending them everything and anything I come by, which turns them off of me cause I send them junk. Shooting in the dark

Mailers

Sent out 56 postcards yesterday, about half of them were second mailings. I feel a call coming from this batch...and I will pick up!!

Open Houses

Went to 5 before the snow came on sunday. Saw one that I would LOVE to move into but a little to costly for me right now. 76 open houses and counting.

Goals

Over the next couple days I'm going to revisit the goals I set for January and February, see what I accomplished and also create some new goals. I will report back.

Happy Friday!

2009-02-27T06:11:00.001-08:00

The motivation has returned to me! Maybe it's because I've finally got my energy back from the cold I had or maybe it's because everyday that I come into work I hate it more and more. I used to like to program, to create applications but not so much any more. It's a grind that I want to get away from that is for sure.

Any how I figured out a few more waypoints (as steve cook puts it) to help keep me going in the right direction. It's amazing how listening to a speaker or a course or even just reading a quote can get you motivated again and re-point you in the right direction. I get motivated when I listen to Steve Cook's Secret Sauce seminar. If you have trouble staying motivated and on the right path, find that seminar, course, quote or even movie that gets you pumped and use it to your advantage!

CraigsList

I've also been trying to take the advice from you guys who have left me comments. Last night I went onto craigslist and sent out emails to anyone who is in the real estate business. I didn't really know what to say to them, but I came up with some short emails that either ask for leads they might come across (Management companies, Clean out companies, etc..) in exchange for referral fee or sent emails to Investors asking them if they are interested in my bird dog services. I figure it can't hurt and I could possibly make some contacts, who knows but if you don't open the door nothing will get through.

Calls

I have this annoying habit of freezing up when my cell phone rings with a number that is not in my address book. My first thought is..."Is this a person calling about my postcards?" and then I for some unknown and frustrating reason make up an excuse in my head that it's not a good time for me to talk so if they leave a message I will call them back.

This happen to me yesterday. I was driving home from work and my phone started to buzz (I always keep it on vibrate). By the time I looked at who was calling and froze for 5 seconds I missed the call! And no message. Now if I wasn't such a phone wuss I would have just called the number back and said something like..."Hi sorry I just missed your call, my name is Scott how may I help you?"

I want to punch myself in the brain every time that happens because most don't leave a message. I don't get many calls yet, so it's always a shock to see an unknown number on my phone. But seriously, I've got to get over this "Fear" of talking to potential sellers. I've just got to do it a few times and I'm sure that fear will subside some. I'm getting pissed at myself even just thinking about it.

Leads

Now that I've figured out Joomla I want to continue to establish a webpage for capturing leads. I was gonna set this aside but since I'll be doing alot of advertising on craigslist and such I want to have a webpage setup and a form to fill out for people who are interested. This may not be the best way to get leads but it fits into my budget so it will be done.

That's it for this week. Ingrid I sent out the course on wednesday and sent you an email with the "tracking number". Hope you enjoy it, i'll be reading your blog to see how you are progressing.

Resources

2009-02-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

Here is the list of webpages that were submitted during the contest. There are some excellent sites that should be on everyone's read list.

Resources

Flipping Homes
Steve Cook's Webpage. Tons of articles and audios. Just a great place to learn.

Rei Club
Huge resource with tons of articles, links and just about anything you can ever ask for.

Rei Tips
Best place to go to find out about courses and tools to use for your investing career. J.P. also offers TONS of great audio and video chats with the Best GURU's out there. You'd do yourself a diservice by not following this guys site

Peter Conti's Mentor Financial Group
A pretty good E-Book about bird dogging and wholesaling. Requires Name and Email address but worth it

Creative Real Estate Online
Large resource for real estate investing. I've met a lot of people who got started here and who recommend it highly

Teach Me Flipping
Video how to. I haven't seen the video's yet, but I will definitely be doing so to see what this guy has to say.

Homes Value Analyzer
gives me average comps from zillow.com, cyberhomes.com. I haven't used it before, but have seen it mentioned a few times

The Fast Lane to Millions
I've never been to this site before, but it looks fairly active has some articles and links. Take a look and tell me what you think so I can expand these notes

Global St.com - New Jersey
Looks very interesting! Has Real Estate/Investor related news. I'm going to follow it for a little while and see if I like it.

Bank Rate
Figure PITI payments, look at the days par rate, things of that nature

Realtor.comFind listings, search MLS and get limited data. (not the full MLS though so don't use it as a substitute)

Rei TV
New site to me, but it says...We provide free video resources, tips, ideas, and "how-to's" to beginning and experienced investors, as well as live question and answer sessions, advice, and more.

Forums

Flipping Homes Forum
Best Forum on the net. Great people! Great Information

Rei Club Forums
Largest forum on the net for Real Estate Investing. Very active and a lot of knowledgable people. Every type of Real Estate Investing is covered. My Second favorite forum!

Creative Real Estate Online Forums
Another very good Forum community

Blogs

Flip This Wholesaler - Tampa Steph
Read the entire blog! It's the best blog for seeing what it takes to make it in the wholesaling business. Steph is great and she will make you laugh. Read it!

Real Estate Investing Guide: Real Estate Wholesaling and Real Estate Secrets
Eric Medemar's Blog. Knows his stuff and can be found contributing over at ReiClub Forums

Rei Startup
One of the best blogs I've read. Walks you through all his deals and does a wonderful job explaining the ins and outs of investing

Gorman Property Group
Nice journal of his rehab projects. I haven't followed it for very long, but I like what I've seen

New Jersey Real Estate Report
I've been reading this blog for a while. Makes my head spin with all the technical information. If you are a number cruncher and love it, this is the place for NJ investors to go!

E-Books

Real Estate Jobbing - Barry Grimes
A pretty good E-Book about bird dogging and wholesaling. Requires Name and Email address but worth it

Think and Grow Rich
I've downloaded it but have yet to read it. It's been recommended a few times to me so give it a shot. Requires Name and Email

If you know of any other great resources post them in the comments and I will add them to the thread.

ah crap!

2009-02-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

I'm in a rut! Ever now and again I reach a point where I don't know what to do next and I've hit one.

I'm continuing to send out my weekly pre-foreclosure mailings
I'm going to open houses
I'm trying to network (although I could be doing a much better job of it)
I've researched Probates (more about this later)
I've got a list of absentee owners to purchase (more on this later)
I've reworked my postcard a little bit
I've Finished my pre-foreclosure webpage to display the lists
I'm getting no where fast!!

Probates
Unless I take a day off (or a few hours a day) from work I can't go to the court house and get the leads I need to start sending out mailers. I could hire someone to go and do this for me but I don't have the budget for that right now. When summer hits (Memorial day weekend) I will have a half day on fridays that I will take advantage of and then go to the court house. Hopefully by the end of the summer I will have a system down and have some extra money coming in so I can outsource that. Other wise I'm lost here. anyone else have any ideas??

Absentee Owners
I'm trying to stick to a 200 a month budget for marketing and right now if I bought the absentee list from listsource it would put me over my February budget so I have to wait till march. Very frustrating, but have to stay on budget.

This is where I'm stuck! I need more ways to bring leads in, but they must be cheap. Cheap leads me to bandit signs and craigslist type ads. I haven't had much success with craigslist ads in the past but I think that was because either my message wasn't good and/or I wasn't consistent enough. I'm going to give that another try.

Has anyone had success with craigslist ads looking for seller leads? if so what ads did you use? Did you direct them to a webpage to fill out a form or did you just give them your number? There has got to be a technique that helps!

As for bandit signs, I've got my eye on a "We buy Junky Cars" bandit sign that is near my condo. I want to see how long it stays up, so far it's been up about a week. Do you bandit sign users put your cell phone number on the sign? I'm a bit leary of that as I don't want code enforcement to be able to find me that easy. Is that a logical worry??

Ahhhhh I just have to go out and do it, I hate this wading in the waters attitude I get sometimes.

Here's to getting over your fears!

The Winner Is.....

2009-02-20T15:23:00.001-08:00

With the Help of my wife and the Magic Eight Ball, the winner is....

INGRID

Ingrid if you can send me an email here

My Email Addy

With your mailing address I will send out the course next week. If for some reason you don't want the course, let me know and I'll pick someone else.

Thanks to everyone who posted links to resources. I will gather them up over the weekend and present them in a blog post sometime next week. Thanks again and have a good weekend!!!

ReiTips Blog Showcase

2009-02-19T06:42:00.000-08:00

Oh...I forgot to say. One of my goals is to try and get my blog posted on John Paul Mosses' Real Estate Blog Showcase

I filled out the form to apply a couple of weeks ago and nothing so far. I just think it would be cool to be featured on that list with all those other great blogs.

wholly shnikies!

2009-02-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

Last day to throw your hat into the ring to win the copy of "Wholesaling for Quick Cash 2.0" Click the link above to find out more.

Has anyone noticed lately the insane amount of Real Estate Investing Gurus who are pimping their courses?? They each send you 100 emails a day telling you about it. Guys like Than Merrill, Mike Collins, Nathan Big, and many more. Not only do they spam you about their products but they spam you about each other's products. Even if you unsubscribe to the emails you still get them. Send me a couple emails and be done with it!

That was my weekly rant now onto more important things...

Webpage

I've finished the webpage for the pre-foreclosure listings you can go take a look at

NNJHouses.com

For those that are NJ investors all you have to do is sign up (name and email account) to get access to the list. I will be updating the list pretty much every day. If you have any comments feel free to let me know.

Probates
I haven't made much headway yet, I've found the Morris County Surrogates webpage and read as much as I could find there about the process. My next step is to go down to the court house and figure out how to actually pull these leads. With the help of Taylor, who posted this great information on his blog about probates

probate information

I should be well enough equipped to at least get a good list.

Absentee Owners

This list should be a big list. I'm going to jump on List Source and purchase it as I would spend way to much time going through the tax records hunting out owners where the mailing address is different then the property's address.

If any Fellow NJ investor wants to share this list I'd be greatful :)

That's about it for today...have a good one!

cough cough cough

2009-02-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

I've never coughed so much before in my life. Nothing worse then a dry hard cough that makes your head pound and your ribs break. It's finally let up some over the past day or so, but my body is just drained.

Last 3 days

Today, tomorrow and Thursday are the last 3 days before I pick who is going to get a free copy of Steve's Course. I will say it's an amazing course that is worth 10 times more then the 300 bucks it costs. So if you haven't done so already, just follow the easy steps in

This Post: Steve Cook's Wholesaling for Quick Cash 2.0 Giveaway!

First round of second mailers

I remailed postcards to the initial 130 people I had sent cards to back in late december. Now i'm not sure if I waiting to long to 2nd Mail these leads, but we'll see how it goes.

I also sent out a poultry 15 other mailers to the foreclosures that popped up this week in the public records. With the news that Chase and Citibank are suspending foreclosures for the next month or so hitting, this could be the reason for the low numbers lately.

Website
This took a bit of a back seat to my coughing and feeling like crap over the weekend. What time I did spend on it was trying to give a date search to the records. Sounds easy right?? haha nothing is easy! - Those are the words my Dad always preaches and more times then not it holds true.

Open Houses
COUGGGHHHHHHH...Ugh, the energy just wasn't there on sunday..still standing at 71.

I did however go to look at a house on monday that one of the guys at NjQuicksell said they could get under contract. I was curious to see what it looked like so I drove passed it. Was a cute house, like all the others. Wasn't a Shity house by any means. Just an old lady who was ready to move on and her son trying to sell it.

If any one is interested in a 3 bed 1.5 bath house in Budd Lake, NJ About a 1/2 mile from the lake. shoot me an email.

Foreclosure List

2009-02-12T12:35:00.001-08:00

I created the webpage where people can come and get a list of Foreclosures in Morris County NJ. If you want to take a look at it go here

Morris County Foreclosures

I've still got some kinks to work out like making it only viewable for "registered" members. This should be pretty easy as the Joomla interface makes life simple.

If anyone has suggestions feel free to leave a comment.

Drawing

The interest in my Wholesaling for Quick Cash course giveaway seems to be ramping up slowly. I had the most Hits by far on my blog yesterday.

Also I want to thank those that left comments about their favorite resources. Those are all great places to go and once the drawing is over I will compile all the websites and put them in a post here as well as on my NNJHouses.com webpage.

Well that's all I can think of now. I'm catching a cold that came out of no where and I can't think at the moment...ugh

One New Thing a Week

2009-02-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

I would rate my last week of REI as Dull! I didn't get any calls and I didn't really accomplish anything new that would get me closer to my first deal. One thing I've been trying to do since the new year is every week do something I haven't done before that will help me gain in my investment career.

Posting the contest about winning the Steve Cook course was an attempt at that. I'm surprised I haven't had more responses, I'm sure they will come as the deadline approaches. Just in case any one missed my post last Friday about the contest, read this post..

Steve Cook's Wholesaling for Quick Cash 2.0 Giveaway

Remember the deadline is Thursday Feb, 19th.

What I did do

I'm still working on my webpage trying to figure out how to link it to a database so I can have a login page to allow people access to the foreclosure listings. I've pretty much got it figured out I just have to now make it look nice as well as figure out the best way to get the listings into the database.

Mailings

I mailed out 29 foreclosure postcards. All of these leads were gotten from the public records. It's pretty easy to get them and if you do it once a day it's quick and painless. Eventually as my time fills up and I start getting deals I'll hire that job out to someone else.

What I do need to do now is come up with a letter to send out as a second mailing. I have a few example letters that I'll mesh together and come up with something. I'll post it when I figure it all out.

Open Houses

I went to 4 more open houses this weekend, bringing my total to 71. I can't believe I've been to 71 open houses. At this point I wouldn't say I have a great idea of what a house is worth, but I do know if I walk into if it is over priced.

Win a copy of "Wholesaling for quick Cash 2.0"

2009-02-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

As i mentioned in a previous post that I have two copies of Steve Cook's incredible "Wholesaling for quick Cash 2.0" course (I bought one and am getting one for attending his bootcamp next month). So I'm going to give back and give the extra copy to someone who is following my blog.

Ok...So here is what you have to do to have a chance to get the Course.

Sign up to "follow" my blog (you can do this on the top right of the page)
Post a comment under this Post that lists a Webpage for your favorite online, Real Estate Investing Resource. I'm basically looking for links to Free Tutorials/Courses that can help people out. If this works the way I hope, it will turn into a great resource for people to learn investing techniques. If you don't know of a free Tutorial/Course then just post the site that has helped you out the most in your quest to become an investor.

I will randomly select a person on February 20th, 2009 and announce it on my blog. Hopefully this works out smoothly, but if not I appologize.

Thanks for reading along and helping me out!

-Scott Costello

Two Copies Of a Course - Want One??

2009-02-04T06:53:00.000-08:00

Thinking Out Loud

I'm trying to think of ways to get more interest in my blog as well as drum up some buyers for my buyers list. Now the two can be related, that is if I can attract buyers from New Jersey to come see my blog.

Free Course

One way to get more people to my blog is of course to offer something useful to them outside of my daily experiences (which should be enough right? hahaha). Well because I signed up for Steve Cook's Wealth Explosion Event i got a free copy of "Wholesaling for quick cash 2.0". Which is great but I had previously bought that exact same course over the summer so now I have two...Can we say Opportunity Knocking!

So I will be giving away a brand new copy of Steve's Course soon to one of my readers, but I've got to figure out the best way to do it.

Foreclosure Lists

My other idea is to upload the foreclosure lists that I pull off of the public records. Everyone can get this list for free if they want to by just browsing through all the public records and recording the mailing info for foreclosures. But why go through the records if someone has already pulled out all the info needed and put them in a nice table format?

I figure I would post them up on one of my webpages I'm developing or if I can figure out how to do it here I will put it up here as well.

Probates and Divorces

Does anyone know what the process is to get Probate and Divorce Leads? For probates would I need to look at all the wills recently filed? As for Divorces, how do I get that info?

Phones are quiet

2009-02-02T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last week I didn't get one phone call from my mailers, but what can you say when you only send out 24 of them. And this week there were even fewer lis Pendens filed in Morris County, 19 to be exact. So those 19 got postcards and we'll see what happens. It only takes one and because of that I will never give up.

I spent part of this morning trying to match up the Lis Pendens I was getting from NJForeclosures.com to what I could find myself by going into the public notices. My initial finding is that NJForeclosures.com gets them about a week faster then they are posted online. I don't think this matters much when it comes to mailers, so I'm going to cut out NJForeclosures and just build the list myself. It's pretty easy since you can filter out the Lis Pendens.

More Rings Please!!

I'd like to get my phone ringing more, which means I'm going to have to expand my marketing. To go along with my goals (see them on the right), I'm going to look into bandit signs.
Get a dozen or so of them and test out a few areas. This has proven to be the most cost effective way to bring in leads, which matches up nicely with my tight budget.

I also want to find probate leads and mail to them as well. My area has a lot of elderly home owners, making it a good farm area for probates I would suspect.

Open Houses

Managed to go to 5 open houses this weekend, really getting back into the swing of things with that quest. I however forgot my Short Sale business cards at home and didn't realize it until I was at the first house. I'm forgetful like that!

Open House Count: 62

Wealth Explosion Event !

2009-01-30T10:18:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to go to one of Steve Cook's events and I finally pulled the trigger and signed up for the 2009 Wealth Explosion Event. It's down in Baltimore which is pretty close to where my sister-in-law lives which is good because my wife can come along and visit with her sister. Also another added bonus is that there is a Texas de Brazil down there and I could go for some of that!!

Here is the link to the Event if you want to look into it..
Weath Explosion

Also here is the link to Texas de Brazil if you never heard of it...

Texas De Brazil

Webpage

I'm still working on my webpage. I've installed a developing tool called...

Joomla

...To help quickly build the webpage. I can design it myself as I know HTML, some javascipt and ASP.Net but for speed sake I'm going to try Joomla. It's free so why not right? It's just slow going right off the bat because you have to figure out how to use the interface, but I'm getting there.

Marketing

I haven't gotten any call backs from last week's mailing, but I only sent out 24 so not a surprise. If I get 1 call out of 30 mailings that will be considered good, so far I'm not quite on that pace though. Next month I'm going to adjust my postcard a little bit a see what happens.

That's it for today.

Great list

2009-01-29T06:37:00.000-08:00

Great post by Nate-WI over at Flipping Homes about what you can do to drive leads your way...

1. Business cards

2. Magnets on your car or wrapped with vinyl

3. Bandit Signs

4. Calling for rent signs to get possible buyers

5. Knocking on doors for pre-foreclosures

6. Creating a website

7. Daily Craigslist ads - other free website advertising

8. Direct mailers - USPS postcard mailers to target area is usually reasonable

9. Hanging flyers in places (Laundromats, anywhere locally that will let you.)

10. If you are a real estate agent or know one - hand out flyers or knock on the doors of expired listings or houses that have been listed for a while and the owner is motivated (i.e. repairs, estate, etc.)

11. Talk, talk, talk! Just remember to always tell folks what you do; what you're looking for and that you pay referral fees.

12. Calling ads in your local throw away paper. Call fsbo's, for rents, and anything that mentions in need of repairs.

13. Call attorneys that deal with probates, divorce, bankruptcies, etc. See if you can get them to send you leads. Follow up with a nice letter. Perhaps take 'em to lunch. (Get their names for free online or in your local paper.)

14. Place an ad in a nickel& dime paper.

15. Pass out fliers and business cards at your local REIA club.

16. MLS- Networking with Realtors.

17. Use an email signature line appended to your general correspondence, explaining what you do and what you're after.

18. Handwritten, yellow pad letters: "I was passing by your house and I noticed that..."

19. Get your name known to local officials and local bankers.

20. Most importantly……..Take ACTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Long weekend

2009-01-26T06:17:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was a long one! I was almost looking forward to Monday coming. My Sister-in-Law was up for the weekend with her 3 year old and new born baby and was staying with us. That alone isn't that bad as the kids are both pretty good, it only gets interesting when they rile up our dog and then there is barking, screaming, barking, screaming and me having to chase the dog around because he got one of the kids socks or toys. I was mentally prepared for that this weekend, but what I wasn't prepared for is my brother-in-law's wife having their child 2 weeks early and us getting stuck with their 2 year old as well. As cute as she is, she is a little devil and stirs up the 3 year old and the dog. All this started on Thursday night and ended Sunday afternoon around 3pm. With all that said I love them all and would do it again...but not to soon...haha

One question for all the parents out there, how do you hand the chaos all the time? My wife and I can't imagine how we are going to handle it or even if we want to.

I told you all of that as a way of saying I didn't have much time to do Real Estate investing stuff this weekend. But what time I did have I took advantage of...

Call Back...
I called back the guy who responded to my postcard last week. I was nervous but I just forced my fingers to dial the number. I had listened to an audio recording, of Bill Guerra (highly recommended), about screening sellers on the phone for about 2 days straight. So I was prepared.

This guy was a bit of a mess and all disheveled. He wanted more information so I told him,

I buy houses when I can. I pay all cash and can usually close in 7 to 14 days if we can come to an agreement on price that works for both of us.

I then asked if he was interested in selling his house. He said he wasn't, but the way he said it you could tell that he might have to sell in the near future. He was open to having me come out to the house to take a look and give him an offer though.

At this point I took the opportunity to tell him that I will talk with my partner (NjQuickSell) and one of us would call him back and discuss seeing his place as well as a few other options he may have.

All in all it was pretty easy to talk to this seller. As I talk to more sellers I will try to get more information out of them and get more into their house. To follow advice that Steve Cook gives...Learn from each phone call, after the call think about what you said and how you can handle the situation better next time. If you keep doing that you will get better and better!

More Mailers
Keeping up with my Sunday evening ritual, I sent out 25 more postcards. Once I reach about 500 postcards I will analyze my results and see how I can make changes.

I also plan on sending out a yellow letter type mailer as my second contact with these leads. I also want to send a follow up letter to anyone who responds to my postcards, that didn't want to sell at the time, with a "Thankyou/Keep me in mind" letter.

Webpage
I started to modify my webpage again in an effort to make it more up to speed with what I'm trying to accomplish right now. Before I had set it up as more of an official about my business site. When I finish it I will post a link to get any feed back from you guys that you wish to share.

Open Houses
This was unfortunately squashed because of the kids. Count still stands at 57

ahhhh

2009-01-21T11:30:00.001-08:00

ahhhh....a guy just left a message on my cell about one of the postcards I sent out.

Now I've got to psych myself up to call him back...breeeeaaaaattthhhhhheee.....

hahaha

Great Post at Reiclub.com

2009-01-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

hassansr over at Reiclub.com forum post this as part of a log for finding a deal...

In my little corner of the Atlanta market a good number of the middle class home buyers want and can qualify for homes in the $100 - $200k range, which for the most part are your garden variety, modern 3-5 bedroom room homes with 2 -3 baths, less than 1/4 an acre and a two car garage. That being the case I'll target houses in the mid-range of that, about $150k in value after all the repairs are done (ARV). From that amount i want to subtract all my costs to get my desired purchase price, which includes repairs, closing costs, early profits, marketing expenses, holding expenses and or interest.

As I mentioned in the last post, I only want to do cosmetic to moderate repairs on a house, so the max I'll put into repairs is $15K

Closing costs will run me about $1,500

I aways give myself a guaranteed bit of profits early of at least $10k.

Marketing expense is the one item that most investors screw up on (besides repairs). That being the case we have to factor that in as well. When reselling I always plan for the process to take at least 6 months using a combination of ads ($250 a month x 6 = $1,500), signs (15 per week x $4 each sign x 26 weeks = $1,560), direct mail (500 post cards a month to renters x .31 cents per card x 6 months = $930) and a flat fee listing on the realtors' multiple listing service (MLS) at $400. Total cost of six months of marketing to sell a house estimated at $4,390

Misc. expense cause things always pop up that you didn't anticipate

My numbers for a $150k house will look like this:

ARV $150,000
X 60% = 90,000 (search the forum as to why people use 60%-65%)
Less project costs:
Rehab = $15,000
Closing cost = $1,500
Early profit = $10,000
Marketing = $4,390
Misc = $3,000
Total Costs = $33,890
MAX Allowable Offer pay for the house (Gross MAO) = $90,000-$33,890= $56,110

I plan on using a private lender to fund this so I'll have to factor in my interest expense. Lets assume that it'll be 12% annualized based on the 60% of the ARV ($90k x 12% =$10,800). Subtract the interest expense from the MAO to get the net MAO ($56,110-10,800=$45,310).

Again the net MAO is the max I'm willing to pay for the house; that being the case I can't pay the MAO. So I'll multiply the net MAO by 85% to get my starting point for making offers ($45,310 x 85%=$38,514).

BTW, just in case you're wondering, the difference between the 60% of the ARV and the ARV will be used to cover the expenses of closing out the deal once I have found a qualified buyer. Those expenses include realtor expenses (in the case where the BUYER is brought by a realtor), Closing costs and other concessions to the buyer (such as decorator allowances or fixing the stupid stuff their home inspector finds to scare them with). It also includes the cushion that i have for lowering my sales price to account for the fact that some buyers may not qualify for a $150k purchase, but may for lets say a $135k one. Anything left over after all of those costs are covered are considered "gravy" on top of my early profit of $10k that I already took.

Now that I know my numbers, all i need to do now is to go out and find some deals. In todays market it's going to be really hard finding private sellers with that much equity, so I'll have to deal with bank owned properties, HUD and VA homes, probates and other investors. So we'll look at MLS, REO realtor sites, HUD's website, other wholesalers websites and do a little networking.

I'll show how that works tomorrow. In the mean time I got to start working on finding a couple of potential private lenders (cash or credit). Please let me know if anything i mentioned so far was unclear.

If you want to follow the entire post go here...

I am going to buy a house this month, here's how

Corzine Foreclosure Help

2009-01-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

I happened upon an article today stating that NJ Gov Corzine signed a law to benefit homeowners in New Jersey. The law basically says this....

New Jerseyans risking foreclosure now have access to millions of dollars — plus an army of no-charge counselors and lawyers — to help keep their homes.

Governor Corzine said thousands of homeowners can expect relief in loan and lease programs, funded with $40 million from a law he signed Friday. He also launched a first-in-the-country mediation service in which borrowers and negotiators will try to reduce late fees, mortgage rates — even lower monthly payments.

If you want to read the full article click here...

Corzine signs law benefiting homeowners

My take on this is that it won't really do much good, only prolong the agony of the economy as well as just use up more tax payer money. Can you say Bandaid?

On to me now...

Open House Tour

The open house tour opened up it's 2009 campaign with 3 houses. At the first house the realtor was talking to some other people so I told her I'd just walk through myself. As I was looking at the bedrooms, one of the doors was closed so I opened it..as one might do...and to my shocking surprise there was a lady in bed sleeping with a mask on. I never closed a door faster!! whoops

That realtor also gave me a number to a mortgage broker that is suppose to offer really good rates with no points. Since I'm trying to refinance my mortgage I'm going to give her a call. I will post her name and number when I get home tonight for anyone else who wants to see what she is all about (note: this is not a recommendation, but just a passing of information).

At the second house the realtor was very nice and really seemed to know what she was doing. She has been one of the top Realtors in the area the last few years. We talked for about 45 minutes and I gave out my very first "Short Sale" business card to her. I was excited..haha

I think that brings my Open House Count up to 58

Mailers

I also sent out another 37 postcards sunday night. Hopefully I will get some calls with this batch. I realize they are small batches, but every week there will be another 30+ postcards out there with my name and number on them.

Return To Sender

For those that send out Mailers and get "Return to Senders", that can be valuable info for some people. For me I'm sending the addresses to the guys at NJQuicksell. They are skiptracers and can hunt these people down. If the person is hard to find, then competition for their homes will be scarce :)

Nada Else (Spanglish)

phone fixed!

2009-01-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

I think I fixed my phone! There is this standby/mute button on top of my phone that I've never really noticed before. I put the phone into standby mode and then took it out and it magically blasted sound into my ears once again. YES!!

Ok, I promise I won't complain about my phone anymore.

Business Cards

Yesterday I got my Short Sale business cards that I'll be handing out to Realtors at open houses this weekend. They look pretty good and I like the simple look they have. If you have a short sale and don't want to deal with it, call me and I'll do it for you and you will still get paid. Simple, straight forward and easy.

Bandit Signs

I'm trying to figure out where to get my bandit signs from now. I always get stuck trying to find the best deal and that causes me to waste time. So i'm gonna stop looking and decide between one of these 3 options.

BanditSigns.com
SuperCheapSigns.com
buy some corrugated Cardboard and hand right them all out

I'm leaning towards buying them if I can fit them in my 200 per month marketing budget that I setup.

I wanted to put a number to my marketing budget so I can keep track of it better. Over the next few months we will see how far 200 bucks gets me and then I will adjust it. Or I'll just make it work!! haha

anyway, sorry again for the phone rant and have a good weekend!

of course!?!?!

2009-01-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just have to laugh...

the day after my post cards get sent out, my phone decides that it no longer wanted to let me hear anything!! It rings when someone calls, yes, almost as if teasing me...go ahead pick up the phone...it might be a seller...But it does no good, cause I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING!?!?!

When I try and call someone I can't even hear the other phone ring through my phone, it's just silent.

To top it all off this phone is the phone I bought used off of ebay to replace my original phone that felt the wrath of my kitchen floor back in November.

I'd buy a new phone but retail prices for blackberries are 500+. So I have to make it till May when my T-mobile contract ends and I can buy a subsidized phone. This is gonna be fun!

On a brighter note...

I did find out that I can connect a bluetooth earpiece up to my phone and then I can hear. At least I can use my phone now, but it's annoying because I've have to keep something else charged now...grrrrrr

Sorry for the rant and have a good weekend

Goals for the year

2009-01-15T07:02:00.000-08:00

The successful people in this business always say one of the keys is to set goals for yourself. Short term goals, long term goals, goals for the year, month, week, day, etc... As you can see on the right side of my blog I listed 5 or so goals I have for the next two months. I tried to be specific, as it helps to measure progress. If you set a goal of "doing 1 deal by the end of the month" you may get overwhelmed because there are A LOT of small details that go into getting that deal. I say that you should break that "goal" up into smaller parts. What I mean is, what are the steps necessary in order to get 1 deal?

Get a list of 1000 leads
Send out 250 mailers per week for 4 weeks.
Send out Second round of mailers (250 per week for 4 weeks)
Go to Real Estate Meeting on mm/dd/yyyy and pass out a buyer signup form
Call 10 for rent signs and talk with the landlords
Talk with sellers who call and practice with them
Put out 10 bandit signs to test an area
etc...

I would say those goals are much more achievable, and can be done quickly and routinely. And for everyone of these you can check off, you are that much closer to your ultimate goal of a deal!

For me, staying on track is a constant battle. There are so many things that you can do to get that first deal that I end up scattering my efforts all over the place. All this does is cause nothing to get accomplished, but a lot of things started and unfinished. You have to be organized, relentless and always moving forward.

In 2009 I will do that!

Happy Investing!

Sent Postcards, Craigslist Ad and Giants

2009-01-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

Last weekend wasn't as productive as I would like it to have been. The holidays broke me out of my routine of getting things done and now I'm struggling to get the ball rolling again. On Sunday my wife and I had enough of our dog eating all the Christmas tree ornaments so we decided to just take down all the Christmas stuff. Well wouldn't you know it, I lost track of time and it was 2:30 before I knew it! Still some time to view an open house or two right? Wrong because I then made the mistake that doomed my open house day, i turned on the boob tube

and got sucked into the Giants game. What a terrible waste of time that was, let me tell you!!

Being pissed that I wasted the afternoon I was determined to do something related to Real Estate on Sunday. I decided to download the list of foreclosures from...

NjForeclosures.com

...actually when I say download, I mean retype the addresses into excel because it would have cost me an extra $10 to be able to download labels from them. I think not!

I then made some tweaks to my postcard and uploaded everything to click2mail and sent them out. I tried using black and white postcards this time as it was a bit cheaper. In all I sent out only 31 PCs, but I'll be sending more out next Sunday as well. I figure that will be one of my Sunday tasks for now.

I also posted an ad on Craigslist looking for Short Sales that I could pass along to other people. Here is the ad I created...

If you fall into one of the following categories below you must call us.

> Short Sale is taking to long?
> You are losing buyers because they don't want to wait
> You can't get the banks to accept your offers
> You are tired of calling the banks everyday trying to get an answer
> You don't understand short sales
> You have to many short sales and don't have the time
> You would like some one else to deal with the banks while still getting your commission...

If you say yes to any of the above, contact me now! I can help.

Call

Scott Costello
973-476-0684

****If I can't help you, I know someone who can******

What do you think? I'm going to repost it again today and every two days until I get a response or two.

Today my plan is to browse around Realquest and just see what it is all about.

Have a good week!

A few more business cards

2009-01-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

The other day I was thinking that I needed more specific business cards depending on who I was giving the card to. So I went to...

Vista Prints

...and created some simple cards.

I'm going to give this one to realtors, on my open house tour, so they will call me with any Short Sales they have. I can then pass those leads on to my friends at NJQuickSell.Com

This next one I'm going to include in mailings I'm going to send out.

and this last one will be a generic card that I can give out to anyone.

I've only ordered the short sale ones at the moment because I might want to modify the other two slightly in order to get the right message out.

Bring'm!

Still Here

2009-01-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted in about a week, I'm reorganizing my priorities now that the holidays are over. I managed to sell my car, which is good, and now it's time to sell my car computer and to see if I can get any money back from my 100k warranty that was on my car.

As far as investing goes...

I've been getting a good amount of "Return to Sender" from the postcards that I sent out before Christmas. Not sure what to do with those yet, but I'm saving them. Out of the 150 I sent out I'm guess I got back around 15 so far. So 10% with no recipient makes for a bad list in my book, but it's a very short book so if anyone knows better please inform ;)

I signed up for another list service, this time one that specifically gives me lists of foreclosures on a daily basis...

NJForeclosures.com

...They update the site every day with the most recent filings for a given county. You have the option of 1 to All counties and also how many weeks you'd like to signup for. I chose 4 as a test run. It cost $50 for 1 county for 4 weeks. I'll start sending my post cards to these people at the end of the week as the list grows.

That's about it for today, I'm going to restart my open house tour this coming sunday. And this time I'll be asking the listing agents for any Short Sales they have so I can refer them to the guys at NjQuickSell.

Have a good one

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

2008-12-29T07:12:00.000-08:00

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!!

You've got mail

2008-12-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

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

Not alot

2008-12-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

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.

It has been done

2008-12-12T06:03:00.000-08:00

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

oh those holidays

2008-12-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

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

Meet-Up

2008-12-03T05:48:00.000-08:00

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

I need another long weekend

2008-12-01T11:40:00.000-08:00

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!!

100 % Call back rate!

2008-11-24T07:33:00.000-08:00

Well that makes 2 for 2, I got a call from a nice lady over the weekend regarding my letter I sent out to her about the vacant house I found. She is the daughter of the woman who had died and along with her brother have inherited the house. She said that her brother is handling the sale of the house and gave me his name and number. I'm going to attempt to call him tonight after I get home from work.

NJQuickSell

I talked with the guy from NJQuickSell last Thursday and it looks like I'm going to bird dog for them. They understand that I'm just starting out and are willing to help me get my foot into the business. They also understand that in time I'll start wholesaling myself and will no longer be sending them my leads. This could be a big step for me as it will allow me to get experience with talking to sellers and also help me learn the process and see how a lead becomes a deal and the deal turns into a sale. I don't even care if I earn money right now, but they will pay about 10% of the profits if one of my leads becomes a deal.

Open Houses and...

I didn't get a chance to go to open houses this weekend as I had to do some other needed things around the house that were building up. I know I had more to say in this blog entry, but I can't think of anything else at the moment. I'll post when I remember.

have a good short week!

Woof woof

2008-11-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention that on my open house tour I saw my first "We buy houses" sign stuck to a telephone poll. Took me like 5 trips through the intersection before I finally hit a red light so i could see and write down the number. It also had a webpage...

NjQuickSell.Com

...so I looked them up and sent out an email. I said that I saw there sign and was wondering if they were looking for any birddogs. I figured it would be a good way to get "trained".

Well during lunch I had a message on my cell phone (didn't hear/feel the ring) and it was those guys and they sounded very interested in possibly having me for a birddog. I have to call them back, but my cell phone is about dead so I'll have to wait till I get home and can charge it.

Oh the joys of technology. I had a Stephanie Davis (if you read her blog you know she and electronics don't mix well) moment and accidentally flung my blackberry pearl into the air and it crashed onto the tile kitchen floor, breaking the screen. YES!?!?!?!

So now i'm using my old Razr which I hate with a passion and I'm not eligible for an upgrade until march. I'm gonna have to take the abuse from my wife and spend some money on a phone. Maybe I can find a decent one on ebay.

REIA Meeting

I'm not sure if this meeting is any representation of how all the other monthly meetings are, but it was great! Very informative and they have a great philosophy of not having speakers who pitch products. They only have speakers for purely educational reasons. I loved it. Thanks Bruce for recommending it! I'm going to be joining next month.

That's it for today....I'm getting there!

Ring

2008-11-17T10:42:00.000-08:00

As with every weekend, this one went by way to quickly! Here is the round up of what I did..

Mailers to Vacants

SHOCKINGLY, I received a phone call from one of the 2 letters I sent out on Friday. It turned out that the house wasn't vacant, whoops. The 85 year old man who lived in the house called. He was nice, and I apologized for the mistake. He did however confirm that the other house (the one next door) was vacant and gave me the family name to contact. That name was the same name I sent my other letter to, so we'll see what happens. If I don't hear anything in a few weeks I'll send out another letter.

Open Houses

I went to only 5 of them, half of my goal. I didn't have time to plan out my route, so I played the back and forth across town game again. I actually went to 7 open houses but one was a condo. I thought it was a house from the paper, it was selling for 216k and I wanted to go see why it was so cheap. I found out! haha. The other open house was that same house i went to in September where I met the builder and his realtor wife.

Chat with Builder's wife

His wife is really nice and we talked for about 30 minutes about what was going on in and around the town concerning the RE market. She was throwing out some homes in the area that could be in trouble. I knew where two of the homes are, so I'm going to find out the names and send mailers to them and see what happens.

I also found out that the builder and his wife spend the winters in california, so they aren't currently looking for anything new right now. If they come back to NJ for the spring and summer they will be. I gave her a few of my cards and told her if she hears about anything to let me know.

Metro REIA Meeting

The Metro REIA meeting is tonight. It will be the first one from that group that I will be attending. I'm sure it will be good, but I'll let you all know how it goes in my next blog entry.

Open House Count: 55

Sent out Letters

2008-11-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

This week wasn't my most productive weeks. I'm not sure what happened, I just think I didn't prioritize my time to well. Last night I did manage to finalize the letters for the vacant homes, re-found the owner's addresses and dropped the letters off in the mail today. They should be calling me by Tuesday at the latest ready to hand me the keys for cheap!!

I was going to write it out by hand, but then I thought of just getting a script font from online and using that. I'll post the font when I get home. I also fed some regular lined note paper into the print and printed the letter onto that. I then hand wrote the mailing addresses and dropped it into the mail.

Here is the letter that I sent out...

Hi

I’m sorry to contact you like this, but I wasn’t sure how else to reach you. This letter is in regards to the house you may own at 123 Main Pl, in Whippany. I enjoy taking my dog Jack for walks around different neighborhoods and on one of my walks I noticed this house and it appeared to be vacant.

I am looking to purchase a house in the area with in the next two months and would love to be able to talk with you about purchasing the property. I'm not sure if you tried to sell it in the past or the circumstances in which you become responsible for this house, but it must be a burden to maintain it. It's hard enough to keep up with the chores of your own house let alone one you don't live in. My friends have owned second houses down the shore and every other month they are traveling 2+ hours just to check on the pipes in the winter, air the place out or just make sure nothing was stolen. They would much rather be spending time with their family then keeping tabs on their second house.

When a house is vacant, it is very susceptible to looters who can steal the copper wires as well as the furniture and appliances. Worse yet is that the pipes could freeze over the winter and cause thousands of dollars of damage and make the house harder to sell, losing you money. A little know fact is that homeowners' insurance policies typically require that the owner live in the house.

I would like the chance to talk with you about buying this property. If we agree to a fair price, I can purchase your house in as-is condition and in a matter of weeks.

So please contact me as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Scott Costello

Cell: 973-476-0684

Home: 973-206-1430

Email: sjcostello@gmail.com

P.S. I've identified a few other houses I am interested in and expect to hear back from them shortly so my interest in the house is short term

P.P.S Even if you are not interested in selling now, I've included my business card for you to hold on to in case you change your mind.

P.P.P.S If you know of anyone else who needs to sell a house quickly, I will pay a referal fee of $1000 if I buy it.

Expanding Network

2008-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Besides celebrating my birthday this past weekend at the Melting Pot (mmmm goood) I got a few things accomplished.

Open Houses

I took my wife with me this time and went to 6 open houses. Which actually puts me at the half way point to achieving my goal of 100. It sucks that there is only really a 3 hour window (1pm to 4pm) to see open houses. To see more in that time frame I'm going to have to plan my routes out better. When you have to drive back and forth across town it really eats up time. I'm going to try and hit 10 of them next sunday.

Possible New Investor Friends

There was a thread at ReiClub.com about NJ Investors, so I took the opportunity to send a message to a few of the respondents and may have stumbled upon a few investors right in my area. One of the investors, Ryan, runs a great webpage called...

ReiGalaxy

...where you can get all the Lis Pendens listed in the NJ Public records. It is in an easy to search format. His site also allows you to track them and keep tabs on which ones you've mailed to and also allows you to create a mail merge. It's a very clean site and could be of great benefit for an investor as it is all web based. Good Job Ryan.

Another thing that came out of talking with Ryan is that he told me a few of the people from that thread are planning on meeting up sometime in the next week or so. Would be a great opportunity to get to know the area investors for sure. So I'm in if they figure out a time and place.

Vacant House Sales Letter

I got a chance to make a second version of the sales letter that I think is better, but I didn't get a chance to send it out as my wife kept me busy all weekend. Since I only get to see her on weekends, my time is with her first and foremost. So I'll do a quick run through of it tonight and then send them out tomorrow.

Business Cards

I also need to come up with some basic business cards to give to sellers, you know the "I Buy Houses" type cards that are simple and colorful. I want to send them with my letters.

Anyhow, that's it for today. Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Open House Count: 50

Bday

2008-11-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is my Birthday, I will be turning 32!

Vacant House Sales Letter

2008-11-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

I finally got fed up with myself for putting off writing the sales letter to those vacant houses I mentioned a while back that I wrote my first draft last night. Gonna re read it tonight and then send it out on saturday. If it's any good I don't know but at least I'll have sent it out and made first contact. Here is the first draft of the letter...

Hi Owner

I’m sorry to contact you like this, but I wasn’t sure how else to reach you. This letter is in regards to the house you may own at 123 Vacant House Pl, in Whippany. It looks to be vacant and if so I can only imagine it being a drain on your family’s finances.

I am looking to purchase a house in the area with in the next two months and would love to be able to take the burden of a vacant home from you and ease your minds as you are probably wondering how you will sell in such a down market.

I can purchase your house in as is condition and relieve you of your stress in a matter of weeks.

When a house is vacant, it is very susceptible to looters who can steal the copper wires as well as the furniture and appliances. Worse yet is that the pipes could freeze over the winter and cause thousands of dollars of damage and make the house harder to sell, losing you money. A little know fact is that homeowners' insurance policies typically require that the owner live in the house.

Please contact me immediately in order to sell your property at 123 Vacant House Pl before the winter months come.

Once I find a house to buy this opportunity to rid yourself of this financial burden will be gone. Call now.

I don't think it's bad. I will probably have to change the wording around a little bit as it is a bit jumbled.

I tried to..

Act like it was a conversation
Make them feel like I understand what they are going through
Make them think they could get rid of there problem quickly
make them worry about the house and problems a vacant can cause

Did I succeed? who knows

Failed Goal

2008-11-05T06:08:00.000-08:00

As you probably are aware I didn't make any offers before Halloween. I'm pretty pissed about that. I have no excuses, but I will be making those 10 offers by the end of this month.

Talking to People

2008-11-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks I've made a concerted effort to try and talk with people in the Real Estate business instead of just reading posts and material on Investing. In doing so I can feel myself moving to the next step, at least mentally.

Last Friday I stopped by my friend's Parents house to say hello because I haven't seen them in a few months. His mom is an appraiser and runs her own business. What I didn't know is that she is also a broker and would be happy to hold my license (for a fee, but that is only fair) if I were to ever get it. I'm definitely leaning that way because I am already getting impatient with waiting on Realtors to send me listings. To keep myself sane I'm gonna have to be able to do that myself. Mrs Z, also said that I could come by her office anytime I wanted and use the MLS there. YES!

The one thing that does come with talking to people is the ney-saying. I'm learning to block all that out, but I wish my wife wasn't there to hear it sometimes. The last thing I need is for my wife to get REALLY scared about investing.

As for the rest of the weekend goes I didn't get much accomplished because of my brothers Engagement dinner on Saturday and my friends Carl and Tracy's wedding on Sunday. Both were a lot of fun, and it was great to be around family and friends all weekend celebrating. I'm truly happy for both couples!

Those obligations meant I only managed to go to two open houses this weekend, both actually condos. Surprising though there were very few open houses this weekend and none close by.

Rent Control Crap!

The more I learn about the rent control in Morristown, the less I'm wanting to invest there. It really puts a cap on potential earnings for landlords. This is the law in Motown

Morristown has Rent Control. Landlords are not allowed to raise rent
without first contacting the Rent Leveling Office, then on approval giving
tenant 60 days notice.

Barbara "The Realtor"

Barbara sent me four listings last friday that I took a look at this weekend. This was my take on them.

Parsippany Rd Homes (2 for $500k)

I am not a fan of the location. That is a very busy part of Parsippany rd with Rt 10 being right there, the post office and Billy's Red Room. One question I have, and maybe you know, how hard is it to combine two lots? In any event I'll pass on this, as all the homes I've seen that are in similar locations sit on the market for a long time and I can't take that chance right now.

18 Harrison St and 18 Cutler St

These multi's where ok, definately in need of some work which isn't a bad thing. I heard over the weekend that Morristown is rent controlled (surprised I didn't know this before, I guess I just never asked). So I have to do some research on that to see what the extent of the rent control is and how it would affect a future landlord.

Now, for anyone reading this would you make offers on any of these?

I've been Proofed

2008-10-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to report today except I got my Generic Proof of Funds letter from Coastal Funding.

I also got my first legit response from one of my Craigslist Ads, all be it not from my buyers Ad but from my Realtor Ad I posted. Doreen seems a bit to busy to help out so I decided to hunt out some more realtor's to have in my back pocket just in case. Hopefully this one is more responsive.

Another weekend full of someone else's wedding stuff coming up...ugh, so sick of weddings!!

Tuesday Morning Quarterback

2008-10-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

Last weekend went by in a blur! Not to mention I caught a cold and was sniffling, sneezing and coughing all weekend.

I did manage to get some things done amidst my DayQuil/NyQuil malaise I was in.

Money, Money, Money....Potential Money

I contacted Coastal Funding to try and get a generic proof of funds letter. I hear the turn around is about 48 hours, so hopefully I will get it by tomorrow. Doreen sent me the brokers information so I'm going to call him over lunch today and see what he can do for me. I'm also going to contact the broker who's a vendor member of my REIA group to see what programs they have. I still have to find the time to go see the local banks I've found, I wish banks stayed open later!!!

Other Things...

Bruce, the investor I met at the last GSREIA meeting mentioned another REIA group that seems to be less "Pitch" and more "Teach" called the Metro REIA. I did some research and it meets every 3rd monday of the month. I'm gonna go to the November 17th meeting to see how they are.

Metropolitan Real Estate Investors Association

I am also going to go talk with my friends Mom who is an appraiser. Maybe she can help me out with getting MLS access some how. Maybe I can be her "apprentice" :)

I also managed to go to 5 more open houses on Sunday. There was one house that could have some motivation as the kids have all grown and moved out so the parents bought a house down in the Carolinas. The Mrs has already moved down south, while the Husband stayed up north to try and sell the place. Family separation could make for a motivated seller. The house is on a major road which breaks one of my guidelines as being to risky right now for me. I'm seeing way to many houses on major roads just sitting there.

Anyway, have a good week!

OPEN HOUSE COUNT: 42

Baby Steps

2008-10-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday ended up being a fairly productive day in terms of moving forward in my investing career.

Realtor

I called up Doreen and we talked for about 30 minutes. She sounds like she knows somethings about investing, she's done a short sale for a client and has in the past attempted to rehab and flip a condo. Hopefully her experiences will be helpful and not a detriment. She is going to give me the contact information for a mortgage broker that can provide me with a mortgage commitment. Now I'm not exactly sure how much of a commitment I can get, but I guess we'll see.

REIA Meeting

This was a very interesting meeting. As I mentioned in my last entry that there was a guest speaker, Terry Hale, who was going to be pitching his Commercial Real Estate Investing courses and bootcamp. The meeting was PACKED! All of the successful, big time investors where there as well. This guy was very believable and if I wasn't concentrating on wholesaling residential property right now, I'd definitely consider buying his course.

For most of the other "GURUS" that have come and pitched there products at these meetings my BS meter would go crazy, but for this guy it only had a few blips here and there. He sounded legit and I swear i heard his name before while watching the Apprentice a few years ago. I'll have to look that up. Anyhow, he had some good ideas and gave some really good tips on what to look for and how to turn properties into profit by being creative.

Two thumbs up for Terry Hale

Networking

At the meeting last night I met Bruce_NJ, from the flipping_homes forums. He had mentioned he was going to the meeting so we took advantage and met up. He is a real nice guy and knows what he is doing. After the meeting we talked for a bit and he shared some of his experiences with a few of his most recent deals. A good learning experience. I will say, that the more investors I talk to the more I realize they are all just like me, an average person. That thought gives me a lot of confidence in moving forward.

Networking Again

The other day I got a message from another Investor (Paul) through my "The Creative Investor" account, which I had just signed up for a few weeks ago. In the few emails that we've trading back and forth, Paul has already motivated me by asking me pointed questions like...

Are you getting your phone ringing?
Have you made any offers?
What are you doing to move forward?
What is your 90 day plan?

These questions really puts the "Analysis by Paralysis" investor on the spot. Its sort of like when you just graduated college and don't have a job yet and everyone keeps asking you..."So what kind of job did you get?" That question gets very embarrassing to answer after 6 months of "just looking" for a job and it motivates!!

Another tremendous thing that Paul did was he offered to help wean me off my analysis paralysis, he offered to get me a buyer and walk me through any deal I find and need help with. That includes using his contracts, attorneys, and title agencies if needed.

Things are moving forward and I'll be writing about my first successful deal very soon, I can feel it!

Quick Update

2008-10-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

I was suppose to speak with Doreen (Realtor) last night regarding what we could do for each other, but she ended up getting stuck in an appointment till 9:30. I'll be giving her a call sometime before my REIA meeting tonight.

Tonight's REIA general meeting is going to have a guest speaker, Terry Hale "the Commercial Real Estate Expert." Never heard of the guy, but I haven't heard of many of the national gurus. The GSREIA seems to be really pushing this meeting so maybe this will be a good one and I'll learn something.

DAMN IT!!! I just remembered I forgot to bring my business cards so i could hand them out at the meeting tonight. I'd never make it home in time to pick them up. Note to self: Leave a box of business cards in my car.

Later...