Some Interesting Opinions

A California Deal? The Columbia Lady

I've been mailing to probates, out of town owners (mostly landlords,) and free and clear property owners here in California since Oct 2008. I've had hundreds calls to my info line, had hundreds of conversations on the phone and had 30 meetings with sellers over the last 4 months.

Columbia Lady
One of these is a nice little lady who is 79, living in Orcutt, CA. She has her heart set on a specific price that is actually a little above market value right now.
When I met with her in November, we worked out a plan for me to buy her house on terms, that is, make payments to her over time, that would allow me to pay her the price she wanted for the house. I didn't get her to sign that day because she had to wait and talk to her brother in Columbia. She is moving to Columbia to be with her brother and his daughters so they can take care of her as she gets older. She also wants to die in her home-land. Our initial meeting was on a Wednesday & we agreed to meet up on Monday at her house to sign the papers and get started.

The Friend.
Over the weekend she was able to talk to her brother, but also a couple of friends, people from church and a realtor who told her that she couldn't sell her house like that and they were sure it was a rip-off. When I showed up Monday she had a friend come to the door to basically run interference for her. The deal was on hold.

International Politics.
I called mid December and she still wanted to sell me the house, but the political situation in Columbia was not good and her brother said to wait. She also mentioned that since deciding to sell her house and move away, people from church and the neighborhood were coming around all the time. She never knew she had so many friends!

I called mid January and she was planning on waiting until later in the year...

Houston, We are Go...
Then, out of the blue she called last Wednesday when I was in Orlando at the RoopDoran high equity training seminar and said that she was ready to sell me the house! Great!
The price was good, terms were good and she was ready to move to Columbia. We set a meeting for Tuesday (yesterday,) to meet. Another weekend in between...

Return of The Friend.
She talked to the 'friend' again and when I called yesterday she wanted to wait and meet on Thursday and maybe this 'friend' could come to the meeting too... Sure, I thought, anything to get this deal moving forward again...

So, tomorrow is the day for the next follow up. I doubt the friend will sit down and talk with us anyway. I'm just going to remind her that the plan we put together fixes her problem and let her decide when she wants to move forward. I've already burned up a lot of time on this deal anyway.

What have I learned, you ask? Good question.

• Get them to sign. Even getting an option at full retail would be better than getting nothing signed at all. Get it signed and amend it later.
  
• Tap into the emotions, the non-financial reason for wanting to sell. The only reason I am still talking to her is that she knows I understand her problem and she knows I can fix it. Otherwise, she wouldn't be calling.
  
• Be active enough that each single deal isn't the make-or-break deal. I did this in VA too. I'd get a deal in the hopper and burn it up with laser focus. All my energy and attention was on that deal. Anything to move it forward. Like a kid with a magnifying glass, burning ants on the sidewalk. Ease up a little there Tiger... Remember the 40 other deals on your desk? Work them all and see which one bubbles to the top tomorrow...
  

More deals this week, but pray for this one anyway. Columbia Lady needs me to fix this problem for her. And I could use the money.

Cheers!
Taylor

Looking Back a Little

The Dec 08 CA notice of default report was just released and it made me really mad about the banks that got us into this spot to begin with. If you listen to the media a lot, you might notice that the banks are trying to push the responsibility of this downturn on Fannie/Freddie/congress etc...

As I sat fuming I thought of a youtube video that I saw last year from Mr Mortgage. You might want to check this out. 100%LTV loans, stated income, stated employment with a 680 credit score. Lehman deserved to fold. Rediculously irresponsible programs that got worse/more aggressive each year. Watch the video. It's just rediculous. The Video was recorded in April 08. We're up to 320 lenders that have imploded at this point. Chase Prime being number 315 (I used to have a mortgage with Chase...) check out www.ml-implode.com to see the list of imploded lenders.

Good n Bad

Good news! After a year of reminding people about my website being www.11daysale.net (I'd say .net twice), my dream of commandeering the 11daysale.com domain came to fruition!

Yay! www.11daysale.com is now mine! It was previously occupied by a realtor in Texas who abandoned the domain on 1/1/09. A friend of mine emailed me today and I was able to get my web providor to lock it up and it links to my existing website. YAY!

Bad news? We're still, no, STILL waiting for financing and seller sign-off on the offer we rec'd on 500 B St in Chesapeake, VA. Holy crap! This is taking For-Ev-er... We picked up this option back in October, got an offer for 140k and it fell out of contract when the buyer started making demands for seller concessions... (what part of As-Is sale is hard to understand?) So, after two weeks of breathing easy, thinking it was going to close, we were back into heavy marketing mode.

The entire banking industry collapsed.

We held an open house. Nada.

Dec 13th we held an impromptu 11 Day Sale and got 3 bids. 100k, 98k and 90k. Holy Schmoly. What a difference 6 weeks makes!

Turns out the buyer should have considered those concessions a little harder.

So, we're waiting for the 100,000 dollar man to come up with financing and trying to re-negotiate our option with the seller to create enough room to get paid so we can move on to the next deal.

There will be a next deal. Soon.

Bank execs need your help...

Thanks Kirk! Hilarious clip.

What I've been up to for the last week.

http://www.youtube.com/user/11daysale



I don't sleep much these days, so I have lots of time on my hands. I decided to make a couple of videos to help my staff & future staff do the work that I am now doing.

Use the web- It's easy & free.

Let me know what you think.

-Taylor

New year, new month, etc...

It's goal season. End of a year, all that stuff. I'm pretty well on a track with my goal review from October so I haven't done much in the way of resolutions.

I do need to eat better and continue with my exercise plan this year.

I did make a review of my results from December. I am a big fan of charts and graphs so in Oct, when I realized that I had no idea how many calls were coming in, # of calls out, # of appointments etc, I decided to build myself a real sweet chart to collect all my data.


So...
DECEMBER 2008 DATA

• I sent out 2800 mailers in Dec,
• got 185 inbound calls to my real estate info line.
• I made 107 outbound follow up calls
• and was able to contact 67 sellers.
• Scheduled 17 appointments
• and went on 10.
• Made 11 offers.
• Ended up with 0 contracts
• and made $0 for the month.

I do have a short-sale in the works and 2 offers on a property in VA that we have on option contract, so Jan could be a money month if all goes well.

I had LOTS of people push everything off until after the holidays, so my stack of follow up files is huge. I probably have 60 follow up calls to make this week. Busy, busy...

It was a year ago that I got laid off for hunting for another job and started this whole real estate venture in a real way. It was a heck of a year and I honestly hoped for better, but things being what they are, I feel fortunate to have the 2 part time jobs I've got and this little business to keep me going every day.

Here's to a more lucrative & less hair-raising 2009!

Cheers,
Taylor