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...