Virginia Beach Keeps Rockin!

HOT AUCTION THIS WEEKEND!!
http://www.postlets.com/res/1207279

Click the link above to check out the the latest '11 Day Sale' open bid sale coming up this weekend. Unfortunately there's a tropical storm rolling over the top of VA Beach today and tomorrow. In fact, I watched the poor guy from weather channel take a beating from the wind & rain while broadcasting live from the pier in VB while I ate breakfast this morning.

At least visitors to the auction will get an idea of how the yard drains water and whether or not the roof leaks!

We've got some blurry photos of the property on www.11daysale.net as well.

Working the VA Pipeline
With my acquisitions manager following up on the leads generated earlier in the year, we are starting to stack up some purchases. Between the two of us we have been able to negotiate:

• one successful quick wholesale deal on a condo in Chesapeake,
  
• get a recently rehabbed property (no repairs necessary!) under contract
• Made a follow up call to one of our previous auction success stories in Portsmouth and got a commitment to hold an 11 Day Sale in October.

Filling the CA Pipeline

One of the challenges of starting from scratch here in CA is building a pipeline of sellers and a list of potential buyers. I am mailing about 2,000 postcards a month and am getting about a 3% response rate so far. I am filling the pipeline with people who are in various states of motivation as far as selling their homes. I have talked to 3 investors that own multiple properties in the area.

• One owns 30 propts and he wants to sell 6 of them in the next year.
  
• Another has 17 properties and is a lot more motivated to sell by the end of the year.
• The third owns two 4-plexes and a single family dwelling (currently in litigation) that I will continue following up with until he "buys or dies"

I also had a conversation with the owner of a free & clear property in Pismo Beach last night that I am going to make an offer on early next week. Funny thing about this guy is he is a Former Insurance Client of mine! Small world. Hopefully he likes me enough to go for my no interest, no payments offer on his place...

Thanks for stopping by!
-Taylor

Maybe it's not that bad after all...

I'm generally not a real political guy. I tend to vote with my wallet... ergo Republican.

I do enjoy it when candidates, pundits & talking heads get their facts wrong & get called on it.

Back to Real Estate this weekend. Lots happening.

Back on my feet & riding...

As you may or not know, I started this little real estate venture as a response to being laid off from my corporate job in the insurance business. I happened to be in Virginia Beach at the time, so as a result, my real estate business was in & around the VA Beach/Tidewater area.

As months went by with no steady source of income, my lovely bride & I decided to put our awesome home (see it at 2904wilcox.blogspot.com) up for sale and keep working the Glass Doctor by day and 11 Day Sale real estate in the afternoon & evenings.

Since our house sold so quickly, (we had an offer in 4 weeks...) we had to make the decision to either stay in VA & rent, or find a job/place to live back in CA where we were both originally from.

It was a tough decision, but we decided to go back to CA.

And now we're here. We are here on the Central Coast of CA in San Luis Obispo County. We happen to be living with family for the near term, but are excited about the next step for our growing business.

You are probably saying to yourself, Taylor, what about your VB operations? Why would you leave something that was just getting going? Why work so hard to just leave it all behind?

Good questions my young reader. Let me fill you in on our growth strategy...

11 Day Sale in VA will continue. I have hired an Acquisitions Manager to continue to buy/sell homes using my contacts in VA Beach. She is fantastic and we just wrapped up her first closing on an 11 Day auction she did while I was in Hawaii last month. A nice little bit of bling to fund our operations on both coasts...

We're also looking at picking up another researcher/11 Day Sale contract employee in Harrisonburg VA. We'll see how it comes along, but things are coming along well with her training and she should be ready to hold her first auction/bid sale by mid September.

11 Day Sale in CA is just picking up speed! I have been fortunate enough to pick up a few night shifts a week at Giuseppe's Restaurant in Pismo Beach, and also have a gig with Advanced Teeth Whitening Systems, selling teeth whitening systems (light machines & supplies) to local Day-spas & up-scale salons. It looks to be a good money maker and the income should take any hint of desperation out of my real estate discussions with sellers. (never be the motivated buyer... ever...)

I have sent out 67 probate mailers to SLO county and as of yesterday have 7 responses so far. I have another set to mail out this weekend for North Santa Barbara County and will keep tabs on responses here in the blog.

Thanks for keeping up with us! Check 11daysale.net to see some of the hot investment properties my manager has stirred up in VA!

Cheers!
Taylor

I'm out there...

Beautiful sunrise today.

Gotta love this place.

Only problem is I'm on the North Shore in summer. Waves are hard to come by....


I just got a link to an interview that Dustin Matthews & I did about a week ago. I used his business credit infusion program and was able to get a solid amount of credit for my operations.

The interview is at http://businesscreditinfusion.com/blog/?p=25

I'm working on a referral link for the program, but if anyone viewing my blog buys the program, let them know I sent you & I'll get the credit.

-Taylor

ps. Geckos outside the house this morning.

Aloha

I am away from real estate for a week. I am in Leia on Oahu for a much needed trip away from it all.

I am a surfer so my first trip was to Sunset Beach yesterday. The waves were tiny, but it was great to be there and see the beach were the best in the world ride every year.

We visited Wiamea Beach today. I did one of the things I've always dreamed about doing when I swam with and got a quick tow from a seaturtle. It was truly an amazing (dare I say spiritual) experience for me.

I faced my fear of heights and I jumped off a 15ft rock into the ocean. Twice!

Surfed outer reef waves yesterday and actually caught a couple of shoulder high thumpers.

And still had time to talk a pending deal through some stumbling blocks and helped everyone get to the signing table (thanks to my acquisitions manager!)

Pearl Harbor tomorrow. It's pouring rain right now and I have nothing but time to relax with the family.

More real estate news next week...

-Taylor
(cliff jumping video of me & my brother in law. I'm the second jumper...)

Education Disguised as Failure

Recently I've been selling (attempting to sell) some of these properties using auctions (technically open-bid sales...). The most recent 2 auctions didn't go as well as I had hoped.

The first was an auction in Portsmouth which was a new area for me, but just over the tracks from Chesapeake, so I felt that I was familiar enough with the area to get the sale made. This was just days after my first 5 figure paycheck sale so I was feeling like I could do no wrong.

Wrong.


After review, I have come to the following conclusions about my errors.

• Bought it too high. I buy these pretty properties on option to purchase contracts so there is very little risk to me financially other than the $10 that I put up for the option fee (should i put down $11 since my company is 11 Dal Sale? T thinks so...) and anything i put into $marketing$ the property. Because of the low risk, I have felt able to offer more for the property. WRONG. I can offer up to .80 on the dollar (most investor offers are .65 or lower), but on this one I was at .90!...
  
• Not enough time to market the property. I generally spend about $600 on mailers to the neighborhood. My biggest paycheck to date came from one of my $1000 postcards and this auction was on short notice. This ties back to the notion that the auction strategy for selling a house creates such a buzz that signs alone can generate enough interest to sell the property. Wrong again. The combination of mail, signs and buyers' list creates the volume of lookers to find a buyer.
  
• Not getting the full story from the seller. I am eager. I want to make money. But at the same time I am also in this business to help people. I genuinely feel like I have something of a calling to use this information and skill in real estate to help people out of their financial troubles. I can't help them if I allow them to skirt the truth by taking their patty-cake answers and not asking the tough questions.
  

I came to this final realization this afternoon when, a month after the auction (failure?), the seller called to say that he was in default on his loan and needed me to come back and do another auction. This time he would take anything above the loan amount of $120k.

It turned out that he was already a month behind on pmts when we talked in May. I JUST DIDN'T ASK THE QUESTION! Now he's in a bad way and is reaching out to me to help. I'm going to do what I can, but with my own relocation on the near horizon, there's only so much I can do...

In one of our phone conversations, Dan Doran told me something that really struck home. He told me to get really good at getting to the heart of the matter with sellers. Get past the monetary reason for selling their home and find the real reason for them to sell in a real estate market like this. "If you don't" he said, "you'll never really to much good for anyone. If you don't dig deep enough you won't have the conviction to really help them, and will just end up wasting their time."

I thought I understood this when he said it. I thought it rang true with me. It still rings true, but I understand the deeper meaning after my conversation with Mr. Seller in Portsmouth. See, if I had asked the hard questions back then and gotten the house sold back in May, he wouldn't be in the bind he's in right now. I could have helped him and not just tried my best but come up short.

I guess you could say I feel educated. But at the seller's expense.

Jerry Maguire: I am out here for you. You don't know what it's like to be ME out here for YOU. It is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about, ok?

Just Help me help you.

Help me,
Help You.

Finally. Money in the Bank...

I knew that it would eventually come together. I just never expected this deal to be the one to crack the shell & let me out.

If you checked my last post about Postlets, you likely clicked on my ad for E. Indian River Rd. I heard about that deal from a friend of mine that is a mortgage broker. The timeline is amazingly short and truly what I originally expected wholesale real estate to be like.

1. Tuesday May 27, got call from my buddy the mortgage guy about a deal that he wanted me to wholesale for him. 2. Went out to property. Took pic's of the outside. Returned to my office (ie. Guest room) and comped the property. It looked like a decent deal, but without interior photos I knew I'd have no chance to get it sold.
2. Wednesday, May 28, Returned to property, talked to seller, got interior photos, banged head on low hanging light in living room and thought to self, "That hurt! I'd better get paid for this one!" Returned to office (Guest room) and put together Postlet, craigslist ad, flyer for REIA and flyer for buyers' list. Emailed everyone. Slept.
3. Thursday, May 29, got calls/emails from interested buyers. Craigslist brought 3, REIA brought 1. Sent them all out to the property.
4. Friday, May 30, sent more buyers to property. Repeat visits from REIA guy and a Craigslist guy.
5. Sunday, June 1, REIA guy wants to make offer. Sent him to my mortgage buddy.
   
6. Monday, June 2..... crickets...
   
7. Tuesday, June 3... still quiet... (by the end of the day I just knew that the deal was dead.)
8. Wednesday, June 4 - the deal is on, closing tomorrow! (at this point I had no idea what I was making, just that I would get paid out at closing.)
9. Thursday, June 5 THE DEAL ACTUALLY CLOSED! Get check tomorrow!
10. Friday, June 6 - Picked up first real estate check!! I went to kinko's & color copied the thing and then immediately went to the bank to deposit in my account.

WOOO HOOO!!!!!

It took 11 days to go from lead to check. Stunning since I have been working on:

• Galt St since February (signed contract on April 7th! and still haven't closed!!),
  
• Jeanne St since October 07, (signed contract on April 12, supposed to close any day now,)
• Norlina Rd since Sept 07, (signed contract with seller March 27th, sold it May 5th, fell out of escrow June 1st, now a dead deal...)

I had come to expect months of waiting for title to clear, buyers to qualify for financing, delays with signatures and working around holidays & mortgage officers' days off...

I guess I'm a real wholesaler now. Quick, easy money right?

Fun, but not easy. Keep rockin! More deals supposed to close this week...

-Taylor