I contacted one of the Real Estate agents I met on my open house tour and asked him if he was interested in working with a beginner investor. He said he has worked with many investors before and would be happy to talk with me and share his experiences (not sure if this means good or bad).

I'm going to try and setup an appointment to talk with him on sunday. I'm going to follow Steve Cook's advice and go about it the following way...

First I'm going to ask him about his experiences with the other investors. What types of deals he found for them. I'll then ask some follow up questions so I can gauge his knowledge of investing.

Second I'll explain to him how we can work together. That I'd like to get weekly listings of expireds, foreclosures and handyman specials. That I'll need him to submit my offers (but I will see if I can fill out the forms and just give them to him to submit, saving him extra work). I will also tell him that once in a while I'll need him to run some comps and show me a house, but this won't happen to often.

Third I'll get into the amount of offers I'll be making (hopefully) and that they will be very low offers. I expect to get most of them rejected, but am confident a few will be accepted.

If he asks me about signing a "exclusivity agreement" I will decline and tell him I have no problems giving him the commision on all properties I get through him, but if someone else brings me the property it wouldn't be fair to cut them out of the deal.

So how does all that sound? Leave me some feedback if you have other ideas.

There are what I believe to be 2 vacant houses right next to each other in Whippany. I can't be certain, but the places just don't seem lived in. I looked up the owners on the tax records...

County Tax Records

I then used the names from the tax records and looked up the Mortgages, deeds, etc. on the Public Records site

Public Records

This is what I found

House #1
The tax records showed that one of the properties is actually split up into 2 lots. So that is interesting to know. The owner's address is listed as the houses address so I'm not sure what this means. Maybe the person passed away.

The public records didn't show to much of anything that wasn't expected. I did however see stuck to the front door a sign about not lighting any matches or having an open flame because gas was in use. Not sure what that all means.

House #2
The tax records showed the house's owner has a different address from the actual home so this may have been an inherited property. There was a sale in 2002 that says "SALE BETWEEN IMMEDIATE FAMILY ESTATE" so that is telling.

The public records shows that the 2002 selling was a deed transfer of ownership to three separate people living at different addresses in NJ, most likely children.

If in fact these people are holding on to the house and nobody is living there for sure there would be some motivation to sell the house. So I'll send out a mailer to them.



I also want to check to see what kind of liens are on these two houses. I think I can get that on the public records site as well. I'll report back if I do.


On another note, I went to three more open houses.

Open House Count: 33

New Goal: Make my first 10 offer by October 31st!

Hold me to it guys!

I swear I posted this before, but when I came back to look at my blog it wasn't here. So....

Here is the ad I posted on craigslist as I promised I would in my last entry...

I know what it's like looking for investment houses, it can be very frustrating to say the least. It takes a lot of effort and time to effectively locate properties that will meet our strict criteria over and over again.

If you want to concentrate on your rehab or your rental property without having to worry about locating your next project, send me an email. I will do all the heavy searching and hand you ready made leads. All you have to do is send me an email with what you are looking for...

What part of Morris County are you interested in?
Do you handle short sales?
How quickly can you close?
Are you looking for rentals or rehabs?
Single Family Homes or Multi-plexes?

Contact me ASAP as I can only handle so many buyers.

I may already have located the property that meets your criteria. Contact me Now!

Tell me what you think...

Business Cards

My business cards came yesterday and overall I'm fairly happy with them. Actually having them in my hand apparently turned on the "smart switch" in my head and I realized a few things I should have done differently. Instead of putting "Company Manager" I should have put "Wholesaler". Also I should have been consistent with the word "Home" and "House", use one or the other not both. The quality of the cards are ok, nothing spectacular but should do the trick for now.

Demographic Research

Reading the book "Ultimate Marketing Plan" spurred me to do a little research on my local Demographics. I used this site

Morris County Demographics

and i found out that the median age for Hanover and Morris Plains is 40, while for Morristown it is 36. Which makes sense if you know the two areas. Also I found that roughly only 1% of the houses in Hanover and Morris Plains are rentals, while in Morristown it is about 60%. One problem about rentals in Morristown is that they are all Rent Controlled. Not sure if that is a huge hindrance for an investor, but I will find out. If anyone has any input/experience with rent control please let me know.

Local Investor Hunt

I'm trying to locate other Investors who invest in Hanover, Morris Plains, Morristown and any of the surrounding areas. I want to get an idea of how they are doing it. I've posted a message on the forums I frequent and have found some helpful people who invest in Sussex, Essex, Union and Summerset counties. I thank these people for extending their help and support and I will be using there expertise in the future.

Outside of that one Builder i met on my open house tour, I haven't had any luck. So i'm going to post an add on craigslist to see if I can lore some of these people out. Wish me luck.

Till next time...

The next question I'd like to answer is who should I market to? I've been getting some good advice from the forums, such as...

• Centers of Influence (lawyers, Real Estate Agents, Brokers, Bankers...)
  
• Landlords
  
• Expired Listings
  

On my trip to virginia I started reading a pretty good book by Dan Kennedy called "Ultimate Marketing Plan." It has already given me some ideas on how to market. It's a really good book and I recommend it. You can get it from amazon for 10 bucks...

Ultimate Marketing Plan

I'll put together a rough idea of what I want to do and then post it here. It's pretty amazing stuff, but at the same time you have a lot of "DUH" moments. For instance, Demographics, you should focus in on those categories of people that are going to be most interested in your product/service. Don't market to people who are making payments on time and have good credit. You need to find those that are going to NEED to sell.

I'm only about 50 pages into this book, but my mind is definitely burning the midnight oil trying to come up with my marketing strategy now. If nothing else this book has gotten me to start thinking correctly.

Unfortunately I bought the book for $25 at Barnes and Noble!! I always forget they are expensive.

Later

My wife's sister had a baby girl this past wednesday, 6lbs 9ounces and a head full of hair! So my wife and I are going to drive down to Northern Virginia and meet Maggie for the first time. I'm excited to see her, but 5 hour car rides aren't my idea of fun. It's all about family though!

It's to bad my sister-in-law couldn't wait a week to have her baby or it would have put me in a perfect spot to go to Steve Cook's bootcamp.

Haha, I was just thinking about that conversation with my wife....

Me: Hey hun, go ahead to the hospital without me I've got other plans.

Wifey: excuse me? what other plans?

Me: Well I paid 1200 bucks to go to a real estate bootcamp, i figured you could see the baby and I could improve our future...

Wifey: ****I'm gonna kill you look*****

Me: So what time do we leave to see the baby? :)

That would be a long 5 hour drive back to Jersey for sure. Anyhow this means I'm not gonna get much done this weekend, so I'll just get a book on marketing and read it on the way down. My favorite Marketing guy has a list of recommended readings here...

Recommeneded resources

Have a good weekend all!