What is the Secret of Direct Mail for Real Estate?

I get asked this question all the time and the answer requires some
explanation. Direct mail accounts for somewhere between 25% and 55% of all
deals completed in real estate purchases. The wide range is because different
investors prospect differently, and looking at our own results, direct mail only
accounted for 7% of our deals. This is because we don’t do as much direct mail
as other investors.

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Four Critical Aspects of Getting a Homeowner to Say “YES”

While I have been a real estate investor since 1975, I also was the owner of a number of
stock brokerage and financial planning firms. I once had a national training company come
into my office to help my account executives do better when working with clients. After
spending tons of money, and weeks and weeks of my staff’s time, the most important things
we got out of these trainings were eye contact, pacing your speech pattern and persistence.
Eye contact was critical in face-to-face presentations but pacing was essential in every
conversation – on the phone or in person. Persistence and follow-up were critical when the
first two methods failed and is the core of the most successful individuals in any business.

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Keeping Your Real Estate Investors’ Buyers List Alive

I think of Dr. Frankenstein shouting “It’s alive, it’s alive!” as the monster stirred on the
operating table, as the same sort of feeling an investor gets when he uses a dated
mailing list and gets a response. Perhaps it has been months or years since he has
contacted his prospects, but his email list is like a security blanket – sometimes old and
beat-up.

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Attacking the Probate Beneficiaries in Real Estate Investing

Whatever the title may have you thinking, it probably isn’t correct. What I am
about to divulge is a very underhanded tactic that a few unscrupulous investors
have been using to get probate deals. I am exposing their actions so you better
know what to do in your next probate situation.

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The Secrets of Wholesaling Lease Options

In many parts of the country, lease options haven’t worked for years because prices
were too high to cover a mortgage payment and many homeowners refinanced and
cashed out their equity. So the only properties that made sense were those that were
either free and clear of any mortgage or had small enough mortgages that could be
covered by a lease payment.

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Does the Closing Agent Really Matter?

The question I get frequently is “Does the closing agent really matter?” The simple
answer is definitely “Yes!” The closing agent is important for a number of reasons, not
the least of which is you want to make sure he will close the deal for you if you are
selling and that he “gets it right” if you are buying.

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Infinite Returns for Real Estate Investors Using OPMs

I think the biggest misconception about real estate investing is that it requires
money and the more money the better. Actually, if you don’t have any money,
real estate investing more accurately requires the investor to understand the use
of creative financing tactics and how to present these to sellers.

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Subject Line – Part 1 – Grumpy Old Investor Got Dinked

The moral of this story is best said to be “No good deed goes unpunished”. A new
investor called me and said she had a deal with a potential $30K profit. As a realtor she
had worked her way through a short sale and found a cash buyer for a property in a
distressed area. The original loan amount was $149,000 and it had been shorted to
$55,000. She had two hard-money lenders who would finance the deal and since she
had a cash buyer there wouldn’t be any seasoning or markup issues. The closing agent
for the seller’s lender wouldn’t allow a double closing so she had to borrow hard-money
to close the deal because her buyer couldn’t close until two days after the buy side had
closed, so hard-money for a short time was the best answer.

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Some Closing Agents, Lenders and Legislators Blinked!

While we are engaged in trench warfare we sometimes forget the big picture. In this
case, the big picture is that the lenders, REO Asset Managers and realtors have
publically said that essentially investors are full of *$%#*&@# and are their worst
enemies.

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Are the Asset Managers and Loss Mitt Reps Stupid or What?

I get this question all the time – “Are the Asset Managers and Loss Mitigation Reps stupid or
what?” Usually the person telling me that goes on to relate that he/she heard certain lenders
are hiring former restaurant dishwashers for these important positions. I can’t confirm if that’s
true, but there are some really interesting people in positions of authority at local and national
banks.

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