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.

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.

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!

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!!!

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

1. Sign up to "follow" my blog (you can do this on the top right of the page)
   
   
2. 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

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?

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