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Hi Everyone,
Thought I’d give an update on our activities this week.
On Monday, I had the day off from work so my husband and I took a drive by about 8 properties in the area, mostly REOs, that thought might be good wholesale prospects. We were planning to see one of the HUD ones yesterday, but the broker didn’t get back to me. Lots of good deals there, for sure, just not sure if I can get them cheap enough to wholesale. Oh, and one interesting thing happened. We took a look at this REO that was out in the middle of nowhere…it was 45 minutes away and really rural. Anyway, we finally get there and pull up to the property (funny, we could see all the houses on this street on Google Maps except this one) and it was set very far back and behind a fence and then some shirtless dude (son of the owner) comes up to us, telling us to get off the private property (cue the Deliverance music). He was giving us some song and dance about the property not being for sale, tell the bank it isn’t for sale, blah, blah, blah. Well, we didn’t know if the dude had a gun or whatever, but we got the heck outta there, we didn’t even have a chance to take pictures. So, I emailed the guy at the bank I was working with and told him what happened and never heard from him again. Weird, cuz he had been emailing me all week, asking if I had checked it out yet…he is out of CA so his company hadn’t had a local rep out to see the property yet. As much as we are looking for a hot deal, I’m not going to deal with that much drama.
I also have been doing more to build our Buyers List. I have been also calling other investors’ ads to get them on my list. One guy advertises in our local paper daily looking for multis to buy. We’ve been playing phone tag for over a week, but I want to talk to him soon to find out exactly what he wants and get properties under contract just for him.
Lastly, I had been trying to get my makeshift probate list together…it’s been taking forever. I’d been looking up public records data on-line and then trying to find the Executor/PR and then seeing if there is a property available, also using public on-line data. I also have checked out the Probate Court records, but since that office is 45 minutes away and closes pretty early, I don’t get a chance to get there myself very often. I may outsource going to Probate Court at some point. Anyway, I got a good tip from Shae Bynes from goodfaithinvesting.com. She talked about an inherited property mailing list that she used for marketing (this is the 2nd time in a couple months I’ve heard about this type of list). So, to make a long story short, I bought the inherited property list from a list broker. This list broker supposedly sells only 2-3 people per county, and there is no one else in my county with the list. There are about 250+ names on the list, so I’m going to send out those letters soon. I was going to outsource that to click2mail.com or something like that, but my husband and I are trying to keep costs down so we are printing the letters ourselves and writing and stamping them by hand. (BTW, if you haven’t head Shae’s success story on flipthiswholesaler.net, check it out.)
Happy Investing!
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DRAMA is right!!! There’s never a dull moment in real estate is there?
But I am curious … when you find a property out in the boonies … what’s your strategy? Even if you get a good deal on it, is there a market for you to get your money out of it after the deal is done? Personally I hate filling my car up with gas (mostly cuz it only takes premium and we pay 2x’s the price for gas in Canada than you US peeps pay!) so I wouldn’t even go out somewhere outside of a decent populated market area. But I am wondering how you handle opportunities like that because I know lots of people do.
Hi Julie,
Save the drama for your mama, that’s what I say! 🙂
Anyway, we hadn’t really ventured that far from home, for a rural property like that, before. The only reason we did is because the guy at the bank was quoting an unbelievable price that it would be listed for (like $100k less than other properties in the area). So, we felt it was at least worth the drive to check it out. And it was a nice day for a ride.
As we got closer, though, we noticed it was really, really out in the boonies. My husband used to drive all over New England for his job, and was familiar with the area, but even he was surprised how rural it was. There is nothing in the town at all, most major shopping and stuff was a bit of a drive. Our plan was if it was a good deal to network and find some investors out in that area. On the way, I was looking for “We Buy Houses” signs in the area and also checked out Craigslist for local investors (no luck with that).
We thought if we could get the house cheap enough, we could (hopefully) find an investor to wholesale it to. Plan B would be to fix it and rent it out, if that didn’t work. But, even on the way there, before the drama, we were like, “can we even flip something out here?”
So, that was the strategy, but it was not to be.
Take care,
Steph