Creative Career Experience Spin

The joys of the job-hunt.

Welcome to my "Adventures in creative career experience spin."

As mentioned previously, I am searching for a flexible, lucrative, enjoyable job where I have some time on the road during the day to talk to sellers in between office visits. Not too much to ask right?

Who doesn't want that job though?... I've become aware that there are a lot of people in the state of Utah that will do these types of jobs for about 20k less than anywhere else in the country. Looking for a territory manager or field sales rep? Go to Utah! Thousands of former missionaries all looking for the "main job" with flexibility etc... so they can do their real estate/multi-level marketing gig on the side... (or, watch the kids while the little lady heads out to sell Mary Kay or Pampered Chef!). It all makes it tough for someone from outside the area (who is used to making more $$) to accept a job there.

Obviously I have expanded my search outside the UT zip codes. As much fun as it would be to be around all my friends from college and back in the day and do some real estate deals together, I am afraid I'd starve to death trying to live on the "main job" salary there until RE took off. (sorry Mike.)

We'll see how things progress after the holiday job search slump (all but one decent job lead shriveled up as the holidays/end of the year approached.)

Hey Taylor! You Said This Blog Was Supposed to Be About Real Estate...
Real Estate? My probate researcher took the entire month of December off (and has yet to return my calls. I may be replacing her efforts here soon...) And my foreclosure researcher took the last 2 weeks of Dec off. So my RE efforts have pretty much come to a screeching halt at this point.

PROBATE UPDATE:
If you're keeping track, we're up to 14 responses to my last probate mailing! That's an amazing 18% response rate from direct mail! (Industry standard is 1.5-2% for targeted mailings, .5% for general bulk flyers/postcards etc...) I have made 2 verbal offers that I follow up with on a regular basis. I haven't bought any houses from probate yet, but those letters sure get the phone ringing and I have been able to hone my phone skills with sellers.

HOT NEW IDEA DEPT:
I've got an idea for collecting the FC info for current and future researchers. In a nutshell: I'm tired of gathering/scanning/comp-ing/ typing all the FC info for Virginia Beach in to my custom spreadsheet every day (every other day...) Truthfully, it got real old, real fast. Instead of hiring an assistant to do the grunt-work(which just pushes the busy-work off onto someone else,) I'm looking at a website with specific passwords for my researchers. We'll talk more about that once we run it for a couple of weeks. Needless to say, I'm excited to have that 45 minutes of my day back... We're talking 4 hour workweek/lifestyle design stuff here guys! I love these ideas...

And while I don't have the luxury of taking the entire month or even the last half of December off, I am looking down the barrel of a sweet 4-day weekend coming up and hopefully a lot of time with the kids playing Guitar Hero and Tennis on the Wii!

Be safe this New Year's Weekend!

Cheers,
Taylor

Hey Taylor! Where's My List?

My last couple of jobs were so flexible I actually forgot how restricting it is to have an office job. I'm in that freakin' chair from 8:30-5 every day, on the phone calling people that don't want to be bothered (by me or any other salesperson) or be bothered with the product I'm peddling (commercial insurance.) It's mind-numbing work, but, I am the dad and that's what dad's do. Like my little one says as he wanders through the house while I'm gone all day "daddy work!" At least I have a nice place to come home to every day. My little oasis... But I digress...

With the day hours taken up by J.O.B. and Daddy-time from 6-9, that leaves the night hours from 9-midnight for real estate. So this evening I am back to pulling my own foreclosure info out of the paper for my researcher(s).

You may ask yourself, "Self, why would he pull his own numbers? Why not have the researchers do that? Isn't that something that a true real estate investor wouldn't deign to do him/herself?" Well, that's a very good series of questions my young learner... come here, sit down and listen to heytaylor and I'll tell you a story...

Back when I was a young foreclosure door-knocker, my mentor had an assistant who would gather the FC info out of the public notice section of the local newspaper every day. She would input the data into an excel sheet and fold/mail his "WE BUY HOUSES" flyers and then she would email me the excel list of all the foreclosures for the entire Hampton Roads area. (That's something like 7 counties.)

The info was not sorted or grouped in any way, just the raw data. So, being the go-getter, can-do kind of guy I am, I filtered out the Virginia Beach leads by zip and sorted them by auction date and started knocking doors. There were lots of names and I couldn't keep up with the entire city so I focussed on 2 zip codes. Eventually I figured out what to say by trial and error and started actually getting to the point where people were responding to me in a positive way! As each "deal" developed I'd call my mentor and run the numbers by him... Sorry Taylor, there's just not a deal there... I heard that phrase over and over, and eventually I gave up on FC's and moved on. Because of the workload and little success I burned out after a few months at the door.

I have since clued in to the concept of only chasing those leads that have a real potential to be a deal in the first place. (brilliant!)

In fact, I am setting up my entire operation on that premise...
Better yet - My Credo...

Only chase the deals.
Leave the "not deals" alone...

Of course I built a spreadsheet. First, the basic info about the foreclosure: (name, address, loan initialization date, initial loan amount, auction date) and then added a few key pieces of info:

1. Comp (usually realquest.com, sometimes zillow)
2. Tax Assessor amount (good to use as indication that comp may be way off.)
3. Formula calculating the % of equity based on the loan in FC vs the comp#.

My lovely bride and I used this formula to mail to FC's, but our numbers were too few to get a large enough group to see success. There's too much competition in mailing. Ergo - The Researcher!

As we have discussed before, there are very few people who have the guts to go knock doors. Plus, even if someone else has researchers going out, my researcher has all the info he/she needs to chase only potential deals! Other door-knockers are likely to be out there banging on every door in FC! My guys will be only chasing DEALS. And, more importantly, they are relying on me to get that info to them!(which creates more loyalty.)

It is extra work on my part, but I feel like my researchers will be better informed, better motivated and not add to the aggregate of wasted time in the world... (as always, I'm doing my small part for humanity!)

So I gather the info. As soon as we pop one of these deals I'm going to hire a stay-at-home mom from church to take care of it for me, but for now it's me.

They say that when you're in charge, "the buck stops here" or "the buck stops with you."

Well, I say that there is no buck.

And it all stops here anyway.

Welcome to entrepreneur-hood.

Leave a comment- let me know you were here.

A Couple More Calls

I 2 more calls last week from my probate mailing. One has a house that is 'pretty much ready to sell' that he would knock down from full retail for the amount of the remaining repairs. (no thanks.)

The other called to thank me for mailing the letter, but that the estate is going to hold on to the property and rent it out. It was a very nice call.

I'm not expecting anything more from that mailing and my researcher has taken the month of December off (she's a full time realtor, remember?) so my flow of leads has dried up.

My FC researcher is chomping at the bit for more leads and I'll be up late tonight putting together his lead sheet. I need to find a couple more guys like him and I'd be in the real estate business within a couple of months!

And the Phone Keeps Ringing...

I got 3 more calls from probates today. I went to see one of the properties on my lunch break.

First Call: The Car Lot House... (Right next door to a used car lot)
Built 1959, another 1300 sq ft 3/1 brick rambler in a decent rental neighborhood. Comps at 200-207k, tax assessor 187k. They had just paid taxes (due on the 14th,) so they knew about the assessed amount and when I broke out the big question...

"If we could close by next Friday, what is the best you could do on the price?"
they came back with the obvious response,
"I'd like to get 187k for it." FULL RETAIL!? WHAT?
No fanfare, no reasoning for the price or calculation of profit, just a wish thrown into the air like a feather, floating ever downward...

I looked at her for a moment to be sure she wasn't kidding and thought to myself, "self, here we go again..."

It was another case of Full Retail Minus Repairs; until it came time for me to leave.

Just for giggles, I helped them work out the numbers:
187k
-11k (6%for realtor commissions if they were to sell on their own. I always take out of my #'s)
-40k (my estimate of what it would cost THEM to have the house ready to sell for RETAIL.)
-Holding costs/loan costs (since they wanted an all-cash offer)
-Little bit of profit,
And the best I'd be able to offer would be $110-120k. (I softened the delivery a bit by throwing the 120k in there, but we both know that I'd be pushing the seams a bit to try and wholesale this thing at 115k.)

(work the numbers on your own, 200k x.70, minus 25k repairs and you're at the same number. The way I used just works better when they're working the price down with you...)

The two sisters huffed, puffed and shuffled their feet. No buying signs at all. I just shut up and stood there for a good 30 seconds, waiting for a response. None came. So I closed my notebook, offered my card and said that my verbal offer would stand for 30 days, "call me if you'd like me to write up something more... official." And I started walking to the car.

Both of the women looked at each other quickly and the executor said, "well, you might as well write up your best offer so I can hold on to it." Since she didn't have a fax number, she asked that I mail it to her home. Hmm... Sounds like an investor price-comparison project in the works here...

Since I haven't had anyone show even the slightest twinge of interest in any of my crazy offers, I wasn't ready for this one so I said that I'd pull together the numbers and get an offer in the mail in the morning. I figured that I'd have time to get with my mentor and get his opinion on how to handle this latest twist... I forgot to call him on the way home (2 job interviews during my commute,) but will get with him over lunch tomorrow. I'll keep you abreast of the developments.

The other two calls were regarding the same probate case. It turns out that unknown to the other, they both called me to find out what property was in the estate. Since I only have my researcher pull the info from the first page of the probate, I don't have any idea the address or any other property info until the heirs call me and let me know what they're interested in selling. This was another twist for me... (two in a day!)

We got it all figured out in the end. The eccentric uncle who passed away didn't keep very good records and they thought there might have been more than the two undeveloped parcels of land (near the oceanfront in VB) in the estate. I wasn't able to help them and have no idea how to buy/wholesale expensive, undeveloped, near-to-the-oceanfront land, I wished them each well and went back to calling for insurance quotes...

So what is that now, 5 calls from 80 probate files? That's a 6% response rate! Normal direct mail rates are between 1 and 2% and with my own experience, foreclosure mailing response rates are even worse than that. As soon as I buy one of these I'm going to be a believer. At least it gets the phone ringing.

And now a word from our sponsor...

C'mon people!
Let's get desperate out there!
Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

Full Retail Minus Repairs

I mailed 114 probate letters on Wednesday last week which represents about 80 decedents. I got a call from a guy on Friday (happy birthday...) that went exactly as I had planned.
Check this out...

When I came home from the post office Wednesday night after dropping off my latest batch of probate mailers I told my lovely bride, "someone from this batch is going to call me and say 'I want you to buy my house." " I just knew that someone from this batch was going to call.
So, I wasn't surprised when my cell phone rang Friday night, on the way home from job #1, I took the call and he said, "hello Scott, My name is *Bill* and I want you to buy my house." Just like that. I actually chuckled a little bit and then went into my 'find out if they're motivated' script.

The discussion went well and he pushed off any discussion of price with the comment, "we'll talk about that when you come out tomorrow." No problem, I thought, the loan is low enough that I could take it over and get this guy out of trouble and still have enough room to make a little bit of money.

Here's the details: Built 1959, 1539 sq ft brick rambler, 3BR/2Bth with a new comp roof and new AC unit. Owner estimated that it would take $25k to fix it up and get it looking 'perfect'. Bathrooms needed work and the kitchen floor needed to be redone. It comped at $355k on realquest.com and the assessor's website had it at $307k. The loan on the place is down to $145k so I thought we'd have some room to talk about it...

Next morning I brought my brand-spankin' new foreclosure researcher with me to look at the property. The co-executor/sister was there and it turned out that they now wanted to get what they could sell it for on the market minus repairs. When *Bill* and I had talked the night before, he spoke of 'getting rid of this thing' and 'I'm too old to tackle all the work that needs to be done here...
"What do you think it would sell for if it were fixed up?" I asked the sister kindly.
"Oh, about $365,000," she said. I let out a "ha!" before I could stop myself.
Next I asked how they came up with that amount.
"Oh, from looking around the neighborhood at other houses around."
Market research I thought... what a novel concept.

"If we don't get the price we need to, we can wait this market out. If worse gets to worse, we can just rent it for more than the mortgage payment. Hmmm, the motivation level must have dropped overnight..."

So, in the end, they were looking for $365 minus the $25k in estimated repairs which brought us to a grand total bargain price of $340k. My max offer was in the 180k range and that was going a little light on the repairs (my estimate was a little closer to 35k.) So, in the end I wished them luck and went on my merry way, having looked at house number 19 in my quest for investment properties. They say that you need to look at 100 properties before you buy your first. I've seen the outside of that many, but have only had 19 face-t0-face mtgs with sellers. Many more to come.

My birthday was awesome. Great times with my kids, a great night out to dinner with friends and a couple of great birthday gifts to boot. Thanks everybody.

On the Foreclosure front, my researcher/doorknocker signed his IC contract on Saturday and was supposed to go out knocking doors this morning. He's an IC, so I have no control over whether or not he goes out, but I should hear from him soon and I'll let you know how he's doing.

Best of luck out there!
-Taylor

Whew!

Well, that was close...

You'll notice that my blog shut down for a few days until I could get an invite list going.

As you know, I am a little bored with my current job and as much as I love my boss for helping me out in my time of need, I struggle sometimes with some of the more boring aspects of commercial insurance sales...

And, I have found something of a voice to the world with this blog. Ergo- a chance to spout on about my excitement for real estate investing...

Mix the two above and you get... a few more hours at work online typing about your blog/real estate than your boss would like. After reviewing my internet usage and comparing that with the company internet policy, my manager gave me a chance to redeem myself by NOT using the internet for personal use at work.

Since he had a list of the websites I had visited over the last 2 months working there, and knowing his distaste for my pursuit of real estate as a second stream of income, my obvious fear was that he would find this blog and realize where my true passion lies.

So... until things cool off at work (or until I find a new job,) this blog will be *invite only.*

If you have someone that expresses an interest in my blog, just send their address to me at:
olasmuchos@gmail.com or heytaylor30@hotmail.com and I'll get them invited.

I really do love everyone's visits to the blog, so keep coming by and leaving your comments.

That's it for now. Cross your fingers...

Some Good RE Resources

I am a total junkie for free RE info. I have stumbled onto a few great resources out there that I thought you might want to check out.

http://www.reiclub.com/freebies.php Reiclub.com is a great place for free articles and audio downloads. They even have an automatic podcast update feature that will download their latest interview as a podcast! Amazing. Lots of great info here.

One of the national speakers at our REIA meeting this year was Larry Goins. He's got a great system called the Ultimate Buying/Selling Machine. My mentor bought the package when Larry came to Virginia Beach to speak and I got a chance to borrow it and listen. It was good stuff, but I didn't want to drop the $$ on it until I had a chance to make some money first. If you're interested in his program, click here.

One of the other things Larry does is interview other RE speakers. He has a series called 'Brain Pick a Pro' that he does on a regular basis. The replay audios are available at http://www.larrygoins.com/brainpickapro.asp I was inspired by the Dan Doran interview to set up my researcher program and the Alan Cowgill interview totally blew my mind (private money etc...) I just right-click the audio, save to my Real Estate Folder on my hard-drive and then burn the audio to CD for the drive to/from work.

Another of my inspirations is the original season of Flip This House on A&E. I love to hear the theme music and the opening line "Hi, My name is Richard Davis and I buy and sell real estate..." Well, it turns out that Richard Davis and A&E are in a court battle around the show and rights etc... I have had a good time checking the site http://www.flipthislawsuit.com/. It is run by a recent law school grad and is very informative. Check it out. You can get the dirt on Montelongo (who set off my lovely bride's BS meter the first time he was on the screen,) as well as the low down on the law suit. Good dirt.

Another great free resource site is Real Estate Investing Brain. It is run by a really nice guy in Oregon. His name is Jared I think. Again, tons of info and free resources. I love the free contracts and forms. He has a good blog too. RSS that baby today...

I also like magazines... The one that I subscribe Personal Real Estate Investor Mag. I found my first copy of Personal Real Estate Investor Mag at Borders and loved it from day 1. Great stuff.

And last, but not least, the one that got it all started for me... Steve Cook's flippinghomes.com. Great community, awesome boards, good solid products. Get on the email list for their Saturday audio sessions. I can't send enough blessings to Steve & JP. Great stuff guys.

My First Researcher

I am pretty excited about my latest development. If you read my probate post below (set aside 30 mins...) you know that I have someone else pulling my probates for 'free' each week. She is usually pretty reliable, but missed last week and is running late this week. Get what you pay for I guess.

Anyway, I met with the guy that in all likelyhood is going to be my first foreclosure researcher. He is an ambitious guy, wants to learn the RE business and has another job where he works 3 10hr days and has the rest of the time off. Plenty of time to knock doors for FC's. And he speaks SPANISH! A very handy guy to have around.

I gave him my 'training' audios and we planned to get together in a couple of days to see if it is something that he wants to move forward with. When I left our meeting last night, he was saying that he wanted to get going on Friday. Great!

So I am putting together his leave-behind flyers and need to get some admin stuff figured out, but we are moving forward a little at a time here... Good timing too, because from what I understand, most foreclosure investors make their money from Oct-April each year with the winter months being the best time to pick up properties. We'll see.

As you know, I started my little RE experience knocking doors and had to make it all up as I went along. I have been collecting info since then and feel like I have enough good info that I can get my guy off to a good start.

Cross your fingers!

So Far, So Good

Admittedly, I may have gotten a little carried away on the probate post. My lovely wife mentioned that she thought about posting a little "we need to talk" comment since the actual post time was during my 1st job working hours. Well, I stole a little time from the man, but most of the post was developed at home & I banged out the body during my lunch break. No harm, no foul.

I am in full swing developing my network & getting my little venture off the ground. I attended the TRIG Christmas event on Saturday night and was able to have some good conversations with other investors and talked wholesaling with the local homevestors franchisee. A good time... (although I didn't win any of the doorprizes...)

As previously mentioned, I am working FT at an office-type job so I have little time to get out and pound the street for RE opportunities. I have decided to pretend that this really is a business venture and act accordingly. I have one researcher worked out to collect my probates each week (free! Yay!) and I interviewed my first researcher for pre-foreclosure and think he is going to work out well. I have a couple of audios for him to listen to and plan to go knocking doors with him for a few hours on Saturday to be sure he's up to the task. I still need to work up my leave-behind flyer with customized testimonials. I am going to get on the phone tonight and call a couple of people that I was able to help get out of Foreclosure back in the spring and see if they'd write up a testimonial for me. Hopefully they'll do it.

Since I'll need more than one researcher, I'm going to see if my current guy has anyone that he could refer me to and then post a listing on Craigslist for some more willing door-knocking souls to get the leads going in Chesapeake and Norfolk. I'm also looking for a probate researcher in Chesapeake, but expect that I would have to pay him/her so I'm holding off on that until I have a deal finished and some $$ to pay them with.

I also got a bird-dogging system over the weekend and since that's basically what I'm doing these days, I'm excited to see what he says. If you're interested in checking it out for yourself, check out the blog at www.unemployedinvestor.com and check out his product at www.investorslunch.com.


Seems like a good product. I'll review it in a future post...

The Probate Hookup

"So, are you guys like Pedro's cousins with all the sweet hookups?"

"Simon."
-Napoleon Dynamite

I have had a few people ask about my probate process. And in the spirit of the sweet hookup I'm going to go into detail...
If you make a ton of cash, you can send my referral fee to my paypal account -heytaylor30@hotmail.com-. Now go make some money!

First off, big thanks to Preston Ely for his probate course. He gave it out as a bonus along with a teleconference put on by flippinghomes.com and it was exactly what I needed at the time. I understand that he is developing a probate specific course & I will link that when it comes out...

Intro:
My first foray into real estate was by knocking doors of people in foreclosure. Foreclosures (FC) are tough. There is a ton of competition, even thousands of other investors trying to get a hold of people in pre-foreclosure(PFC).

People in foreclosure get:

• mail(letters/postcards/post-it notes/fake "while you were out" phone message slips/pens...),
  
• phone calls,
  
• investors calling their neighbors & relatives,
• investors knocking on their doors
  
• investors door-knocking their neighbors (& possibly relatives,)
  
• fake UPS deliveries, (this is a good one - Brilliant!)
  
• business cards jammed into the door & stuffed in the mailbox,
  
• annoying I buy houses signs posted around the corner,
• etc...
  

People in PFC are good at throwing away mail (ergo the pending FC?) and avoiding/denying, so you end up being:

• one of the many investors, that are
  
• trying to contact someone that doesn't want to be contacted and
  
• who is good at avoiding you.
  

An uphill battle for sure... (That doesn't mean that I don't pursue FC's, I just think that it is a tough market to start your RE experience with.)

On the other hand...
Probate heirs are regular people.

• They open their mail.
  
• They will call if they need your service.
  
• They will answer the phone if you call.
  
• They will return phone messages.
  
• They don't get letters from many investors and
  
• They tend to be very, very nice, (even grateful for the contact.)

You don't need to knock on their door, call their neighbors or bombard them with repeat mailings. A one-time mailing is all I send. (I am planning a 6-month follow up letter, but that is still in the works & will be a future topic...) In short, probates are an easy way to get your feet wet in real estate & get comfortable talking to sellers. And a great way to get/keep the phone ringing as you expand into other marketing/seller avenues.

Probate: A Primer
Probate is the process of settling financial affairs when someone passes away. It is a judicial process handled by the courts and the files are public information. People can use living trusts to avoid probate and keep their financial information private, but most don't and the estate ends up going through the probate office. Many people actually die intestate and the courts have to decide who gets what... messy stuff. (Come to think of it, I need to get a will going... So do you, right?)

The Courthouse: It All Starts Here
My most recent job was pretty flexible and it allowed me to go to the courthouse and collect my probate info each week on my own. The Monday after my flippinghomes.com probate teleconference I beat a path to the courthouse to try out my new skills. Being the MBA-spreadsheet building knucklehead that I am, I tried out a ton of different ways of collecting and processing the info (designing different info collection sheets, tracking the files by hand and then via excel spreadsheet, mail-merge tweaking, etc...) until I had it down to a pretty efficient system.

One of the barriers to entry in probates is the fact that the info you need is only in the file.

• Obituaries are published in the paper,
• some counties have basic info online,
  
• but the list of heirs and whether or not the estate has property is only in the file. Someone has to open it and get the info.
• This actually keeps competition low.
  

Many (dare I say most?) RE investors are lazy, buying into the 'work from home in your underwear' mantra. (by the way, what is so great about working from home in your underwear? PUT ON SOME PANTS!! Again, I digress..)

My first trip to the courthouse I was a little unsure of what to expect. There is no reason to worry. As it turned out, I had no competition in my county! None! The ladies in the probate office were very nice and said that there used to be a couple of people that would come into the office to pull files, but they didn't come around anymore. In the 3 months that I collected my own probates I only ran into another person collecting info; one time, one person. It turned out that she was forwarding the info to a guy that runs estate auctions out of Florida. No competition for the real estate.

Since my aim (and yours too) should be to get 3 counties going at a time, once you get the procedure for your own county, it is likely that you'll find similar in adjacent counties as well. Do your best to systemize the process so you can get others gathering the info for you. Make it easy for them and they'll keep working for you for a long time. (Who doesn't love an easy job?)

The Probate office in my county is at the courthouse and is staffed with 2 very nice ladies. The files are numbered (2007-xxx) and start at 1 at the beginning of each year.
I was only looking for files that have property in the estate, so I asked one of the girls if there were any easy ways to do a quick check for real property in the file.

It turns out that there is a $1 transfer tax charged if there is real estate transferring in the estate. No tax, no real estate. They also note the amount of the property in the column next to the fee on the opening page. So all I need to do is flip open the file, scan the first page for the transfer tax, check the amount of property and then start filling out one of my info sheets. Easy, peesy, Japanesey...

**Look/ask for shortcuts like this. A couple of Starbucks gift-cards go a long way.

The File:
The file contains the decedent's will and any addendums. Initially I would read through the wills to see if the property was listed specifically and see who the heirs for the property were.

• A note about reading the will: I thought it would be a little creepy to read someone else's will, but most times it was quite touching to read the comments in the will. You can tell how much people care about leaving a legacy and helping out the heirs. It is a surprisingly emotional thing and not impersonal as you might think.
  

It didn't take me long to realize that I didn't need to read the will. All I needed was the info of:

• Whether or not there was RE in the estate
• The names/addresses of heirs
• Name/address of the attorney (if there was one.)
  
• The date of death (so as to not send my letter too soon.)
  

The reason you don't need to read the will is that the county requires that all heirs be contacted/notified so that they have a chance to make any claims against the estate. The list of heirs includes the assigned executor (with phone #) as well as the mailing addresses for all heirs concerned. Occasionally the estate will use an attorney & my form includes a spot to collect that info as well. I also have a letter that I send to attorneys. No responses yet... but I still send the letter.

The File Part II: Schedule of Assets:
One thing I learned is that within 4 months after the decedent passes away, the estate executor is required to file a schedule of assets with the court. They have to list the bank account and retirement account balances, cars, other items of value including real estate. So in the beginning I started going through files that were at least 4 months old so I would have the specific address of any real estate and the amount that the executor assigned to the property.

It turned out that this was just extra information and by waiting to contact the heirs after 4 months I missed out on a number of chances to buy property. Good info if you happen to get it, but not vital.

I got a call from one of the executors thanking me for mailing my letter, but he had just signed the documents with another investor & sold the house. He actually said "too bad I didn't get your letter sooner, he got a really good deal on the house..." I hung up the phone and thought, "CRAP!!! What an idiot I am!"

• The only thing that matters is that the letter gets in the hands of the decision maker when they have decided to sell. Sooner is better. Don't wait for info about the address or value of the property. If they want to sell, they'll call & tell you about it.
  

Lesson learned. I changed my approach. Instead of collecting the info months after the fact, I started collecting info from the prior 4 weeks. The file notes the date of death, and I didn't want to mail too soon after the passing, so I decided on 4weeks. Figure out what you're comfortable with and mail as soon as you like.

The Letter:
I encourage you to write your own letter. I think that one of the keys to working with probates is your philosophy of helpfulness and being genuine.

You will want to have some key components in your letter:

• Address the heir,
  
• express condolences on the loss of their loved one (I insert the name of the decedent - totally your choice)
  
• Then you will need to address the fact that you understand that there was property in the estate and you're interested in buying it if they want to sell.
  
• Note some of the challenges of trying to sell real estate (cleaning up the property, expenses of taxes & upkeep, expenses of real estate commissions etc).
  
• Don't forget to encourage them to hold onto your letter in case they decide to sell in the future and
  
• wrap it all up with a nice, heart-felt best wishes of sign-off.
• Sign the letter in colored ink to make it stand out from the black printed letter.
  

My initial letter included the address of the property listed in the probate file. I thought it might be better received if I showed the executor that I had done my homework. I learned through a few conversations with heirs that when someone owns property in an estate, they often own multiple properties and likely in different city/counties... **So my idea of having a specific address in the letter actually limited my potential responses from heirs.** Whoops.

I got a couple of calls that went like this... "I have your letter here and 123 Elm St. wasn't my mom's house, but we do have her house in "random city" that we are thinking about selling. Would you be interested in that?" Holdonaminuteletmethinkaboutit, YES!

Lesson learned. I have modified my letter and have removed any specifics about location of any property. It mainly says, "I understand that there was property in the estate and if you are interested in selling I would be interested in discussing it with you..."

The number of response calls has gone up and as an example, I even had a guy with a property in FL ask me if I was interested in it. (I referred it to an online associate of mine "Tampa Steph"whom I also met online at flippinghomes.com.) And if it goes anywhere I'm getting a referral $$. Nice.

Be Flexible & Look to Remove Bottlenecks (Including Yourself)
At this point, things were going along fine. I was going to the probate office twice a week to gather the probates on my lunch-hour and then entering the info into my spreadsheet in the evening. Once a week I would mail-merge the list and sign/fold/stuff/stamp/mail the letters.

Like clockwork, the phone would start ringing a few days later and I would talk to the heirs. Cool. Met some nice people and looked at a bunch of houses. So far so good.

Then came the layoff. And the new job. 8:30-5, M-F. At the office. Probate office hours... 8:30-4:30 M-F. The courthouse was across town, 20 min drive...

I couldn't collect my own info anymore. I contemplated placing an ad on craigslist for a real-estate researcher, but I didn't have the $ to pay anyone. Quandary... It turned out that I was the bottleneck. I am the limiting factor and when I couldn't get the info, my little venture came to a screeching halt.

The Solution: Coop-a-tition:
I was discussing this situation with a fellow member of TRIG who is also a Realtor. She was interested in getting the list of probates to mail for possible listings. Since I only mail once and then basically never use the list again I suggested that we split the cost of a researcher and share the info.

She did one better and offered to gather the info for me if I would train her on the process and share the names with her.
We worked out a deal where she goes to the probate office once a week and collects the recent probates and then leaves the info sheets for me at the front desk at her real estate office.
I grab the envelope on my way home from work and enter the info in excel.
I print my letters and my lovely bride stuffs the envelopes.
The letters do their thing for a month and then I email the spreadsheet to my Realtor connection for her to do her mailing.
She is competition, but I like to think of it as coop-a-tition. (phrase from JP Moses, flippinghomes.com) which is a mash-up of cooperation and competition. We compete and yet we work together. Can't we all get along? As it turns out, Yes...

Now Go Do It
The point is, you can get this thing going for free (other than some sweat equity on your part if you insist on pulling the files yourself or entering the info & stuffing envelopes.) If you feel like you have to do it yourself first (you don't,) take a few hours on an afternoon and go by the probate office in your county.
Get the low-down on the process, look at some files, get some info sheets filled out and get your brain around the process. Find someone to do the work and get it going man! You can do this!

I'd love to hear what you think & if you have any suggestions. Leave a comment.

Much love.
-Taylor

Motivation and A Low Information Diet

I went to my local REIA last Tuesday night. It was a very uplifting meeting and I had the chance to meet a number of other new investors and some money people (lenders mostly.)

I also learned about a new association here in VA called the Foreclosure Prevention Council. The idea is to provide investor training and encourage ethical FC investing in VA in a effort to become something of a self-governing group rather than having legislation forced upon the industry. I like the idea and plan on attending the initial meeting next week. Here's the link. I'll let you know...

The main platform speaker last night was Tony Horner. Tony was a former railroad worker who has really grown into one of the more successful RE investors in the area. It was really inspiring for me to see a guy with so little formal education and coming from such a humble background make it in the RE game. I really enjoyed his talk and appreciate how approachable he was.

I also met Lonnie Scruggs who is a 30 yr RE veteran who gives speeches at RE conventions across the country. We had a chance to chat about the industry and the value of the connections made when attending local and national group meetings. Lonnie is a mobile home investor guy, which is not my thing, but I appreciate where he's coming from. Can't knock his success, that's for sure.

I've been reading up on how to network with attorneys and am putting together my unique value proposition. I am going to contact estate and probate attorneys in the area in conjunction with my probate mailing program and see if I can get some contracts going that way.

One of the things that has come up in conversation with various people is the question of how I find time to do all the things I have going.
First answer is that I am committed to creating the life I've always wanted and will do what it takes to get there. (And I tend to be a little bit of an insomniac when big projects/things are on the line.)
The second is an idea for creating useful time that I got from reading Timothy Ferriss' book 'The Four Hour Workweek' called a media fast. He actually has a section of the book dedicated to developing a low information diet. The concept changed my whole approach to info/news. Basically, you skip the local/national news for 21 days and use the time/energy to forward your projects.

I have been doing it for the last 4 weeks now and have to report that my mood is better and I have a lot more time to work on my RE project. I totally abstained from all news for 21 days, but am now back to scanning the WS Journal in the morning for Insurance and RE related news. Try it, you'll like it!

Endless Optimism... With a Little Pharma Help

I love this stuff...

The Humor, not the Juice.

Good times.

A Tale of How This Real Estate Biz Got Started

Ok, now that we're past the formalities of me getting some of my creative muse out, let's talk Turkey... Real Estate turkey.

After I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad in 1998 I knew that I would eventually get into the real estate business. A number of the insurance guys I knew were also real estate investors and it seemed like a good fit to mix both avenues to make money & keep things interesting.

In 2006 I moved to VA from CA after finishing my MBA. I thought my job was cool and liked the area (12 mins from from the beach!) But within 3 months the regional officer got laid off, I thought that there would never be a better time to get something on the back burner. I looked at teaching part-time for the local Jr College, but my schedule for work involved so much overnight travel that I couldn't make the commitment. So I started combing the internet for real estate investing & flipping homes ( and watching every home flipper show on cable that I could get.) I stumbled upon the chat board at the best website for real estate investors, www.flippinghomes.com and was able to learn and make acquaintances without spending tons of money on courses. I read and listened to audio downloads and filled my drive time with Real Estate education.

In Jan 2007, my direct supervisor got laid off and I had another shiver go through me and knew somewhere inside that my time with the company was limited. (I had no idea how limited...)

I knew that one of the agents in my territory was an active investor and we struck up something of a partnership with me knocking doors on the foreclosure leads that he was mailing every week.

I knocked doors for about 3 months in the evening after work and was able to help a good number of people, but we didn't end up buying any properties. There were just too many people that were right up against the loan to value on their homes...

I eventually decided to quit door-knocking and decided to join my mentor in the direct mail business. I/we mailed to foreclosures in the area and had a decent number of responses, but again it seemed that the 'up to my neck in debt/no equity' deals were the only people calling us. I tried phoning forclosures, but calling people that didn't want to be called was worse than trying to find people that didn't want to be found. I was searching for something else - my real estate 'thing.'

I listened to one of flippinghomes.com's saturday workshops on probates and decided to add probates (inherited property) to my list of mailings and saw the number of response calls go way up. And, as foreclosure responses tailed off, my probates continued to respond at about the same rate... ergo- drop the FC, keep the probate.

Late summer '07 I got laid off as the company merged the VA & Mid-Atlantic territories and I became redundant. I was encouraged to 'return to the field' (sales,) which is corporate speak for 'get out.' I found a job pretty quickly, but continued to work on my little real estate investing machine in the evenings and weekends.

That's where I'm at today. I have partnered with a local friend of mine that is a Realtor who goes to the probate office each week and collects the new probates (for free!). I enter the info into a spreadsheet and mail my letters. After 30 days I send her the list of names and she can mail to them as often as she likes at that point. It's a great little partnership since my new job isn't as flexible and I can't get to the probate office myself.

I mailed 90 probates last week and have another 30 going out this week. I generally get 5-6 calls per hundred letters and I have one offer out there (not returning my calls,) which is likely a dead deal...

I'm working on a business plan and adding more to the business, but need to get some of the kinks worked out of my organization and call tracking system. I'm using a paper system right now (post-it notes & 4x6 cards) and it's failing me. In order to grow, I'll need to replace that with something more predictable. I'm looking online for some free resources and also have some software that I have used in insurance for tracking clients/prospects that would work well too. I'm open to suggestions...

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

I had a strange premonition today that I am on the eve of something big. I'm putting it down here to make it permanent and we can all see in the future what the feeling was all about, but it was a really cool de ja vu kind of thing. I was at the courthouse gathering info for another of my probate mailings and had the feeling. We'll see what it was all about, but it was cool. Hopefully you've felt it before too.

When I got back to the office I checked my email and got a blog-link of Steve Jobs' Commencement speech at Stanford 2005 titled 'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish'. I found it surprisingly soothing that someone so ridiculously successful had something of a rocky beginning. It's a great vid clip and you can click here to watch it by clicking above. For the entire transcript etc, check out the link on my blog in the links/blogs section.

Between my RE connection and myself, we were able to get 26 new probate records and when added to the 10 that I have from last week, I am looking at over 100 more letters to go out tomorrow. I also sent out 18 attorney letters this morning and 90 or so probate letters on Tuesday.

If my numbers hold true, my phone should start ringing around Friday this week and I should get 8-9 interested calls.

I'm also thinking about getting back into pre-foreclosures by door-knocking since it is dark in the evening again. We'll go over that in another post.

Learning & Earning!
Taylor out

Cold Cereal is my Comfort Food

My delightful wife and the boys were all down and I couldn't sleep.

You've been there too I'm sure. Money, job and dreams (ie. real estate plans) were all rolling through my head & I had too much nervous energy to even lay down.

Raisin Bran Crunch to the rescue! Ahhh...

It is kind of healthy what with all the bran and raisins and all, but it is more about the crunch and the endorphin push of eating my favorite comfort food. Honey nut Cheerios is also a favorite (lowers cholesterol, no?), but since the baby doesn't like them I have no excuse to keep them in stock in the pantry. I actually stay away from the sweet cereals as they seem to incite nightmares once I head off to bed. No, it's healthy mid-night eatin' at it's finest.

A bowl of cereal, the remote and a couple of episodes of Property Ladder or Flip That House and I'll be ready to drift off to nighty night land.

Oh, you have to check out the show Flipping Out on Bravo. It's Awesome TV. The gays, quirky assistants (with rankings for assistant #1, 2, 3), and Jeff, the nutty property investor. Love that show. Forget Survivor or The Simple Life, this is my kind of reality TV.



So, a virtual spoon clank salute to you my cereal insomniacs! I'll be working on probate mailers for the next couple of nights so look for updates on how that goes...

Cheers!
Taylor out.

It's All Scripted

I'm focussed on scripts today.

Real estate speaker and NLP disciple Bill Twyford came to our REIA group meeting last month and my head has been spinning ever since. I didn't pay the $900 for his CD's/workbooks/Boot Camp, but there was something he said that got me thinking that I haven't been able to shake...

His whole premise is that we all use scripts in all of our communication; from our dialog with the kids to conversations with customers at work. We all use various combinations of scripts that have either worked well for us in the past or that we use, but don't realize how they impact the people we talk with.

I have spent the last 3 weeks taking time to focus on my own scripts while phoning for prospects at work or herding the kids off to bath and bed and I was surprised that I use the same script at nearly the same time of day (in the case of putting the kids in the tub)! I was stunned!

The second part of Bill's premise is if we are hoping to develop the skills necessary to discuss real estate with sellers & potential buyers, we should take the time to craft what it is that we want to say and practice like a true professional would. You're a professional - act like it. Stop practicing during the game!

Up to this point, my thought was that when someone called in response to a mailer or leave-behind I would use each call to 'get better each time.' That was actually part of my business plan, to get better as I went along... Seems ridiculous now that I think about it. While I knew the value of learning a script when prospecting for insurance, I somehow missed the connection between what I'm trying to do with real estate and my prior learning. Duh.

So I have spent considerable time/effort searching my resources for little bits and phrases that I want to use to develop into my very own script and then memorize it. That way I will be able to at least start each conversation the way I want to and should have the right stuff to bring back any wandering conversation. That way, when I am discussing someone's foreclosure situation, I'll be paying attention to what they are saying rather than trying to think of what my best thing to say should be.

It really is an interesting idea that I am looking at in all areas of my life. I've started asking myself the question "where did I pick up that little bit of script from?" when I find myself speaking on autopilot. You should try it.

I think it was W. Shakespeare that is credited with the whole 'all the world's a stage, and we are but merely players...' thing.

Seems to me that he was on to something...