It’s been 5 months since I quit the J-O-B and I’m still breaking some of the habits that I had when I did when I was employed.  The main habit being, not picking up the phone to talk to people (habit was formed by being restricted to actual j-o-b related activities while at work).

So, I was talking to a wholesaler in Saint Louis not too long ago and he was telling me that he usually drives for dollars frequently and when he finds a property that looks distressed or vacant he does a 411 search and gives them a call.  And to perform 411 searches for free he switched wireless carriers (otherwise it’s $1.79 per call…at least it’s that way with Sprint).  He has his phone service through Cricket Wireless just for this free feature.

Just as I was thinking to myself…”I’m going to get me one of those phones…cuz I want to do that too”.  I came to my senses and did Google search for “Free 411″ and I came across the website Free411.com.  I should’ve been using this site MONTHS AGO!  One hour before I decided to make this post, I used the process explained in the video below to add two buyers to my roster and I have two appointments set for them to view a property that I have under contract.  I think Free411.com is the way to go…direct-mail is expensive and far ineffective when compared to this.

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

Back to another week of the grind.  I’m getting a slow start…feeling zapped of energy…can’t focus.  Anywho, I went to the Wendy Patton full-day event on Saturday.  It was pretty good…what I was awake for.  I was that guy that I normally make fun of…like, “look at this lame who can’t stay awake…he’s going to fall out of that chair!”  The truth is, I have a hard time sitting in one place for 8 hours without getting drowsy.  Add to that, the fact that I stayed up all-night working the night before…and you’ve got a tragedy.  But actually, I did pretty good.  Just got drowsy towards the end after the lunch break.

The stuff Wendy went over was pretty cool and fairly simple.  Her rule of thumb is, “if there is equity – Sandwich Option, if there isn’t equity – Wholesale Option”.  Although sandwich lease options are way more lucrative than wholesale lease options, I’m not going to add that to the mix quite yet.  Just going to stick to the wholesale of purchase contracts and lease with option-to-purchase contracts.  There are a ton of people with no equity.

So after the seminar Saturday, I caught-up with my good friend that I’ve known since the 7th grade, he’s in town for a couple weeks.  Anyway, we went out with some other friends from High School….and, let’s just say we went a little too hard in the paint.  To be perfectly honest, that night reminded me of the movie “The Hangover” minus the tiger and the baby.  Ridiculously eventful.  I’m too old to be partying like that.

Anyway, I couldn’t get anything done on Sunday.  Especially granted the fact that I got in at 5am.  So as I lounged on Sunday, I caught up on some episodes of Boondocks online.  And I think I saw what’s now my favorite episode.  For you other fans out there, this episode was the one where Riley started hitting the streets selling candy bars for a charity that didn’t exist so to pocket the money.  Below is my favorite part of that episode.  That show cracks me up.

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

Lately, I’ve been spending more and more time behind this computer.  It’s a necessary evil I guess.  Now that I’ve added Lease/Option Wholesaling to my bag of trix, I’ve been very busy.  I’ve just revised my property blog to work hand in hand with Aweber.  That sounds very simple, but setting up Aweber with WordPress can be very tedious.  Especially when you’re segregating subscribers into multiple lists…pain in the @ss if you ask me.

So it’s 1:26am and I’m at the coffee shop again.  I wish there was another 24 hour spot to go to in St. Louis, because I’d go to it.  When school is back in session, I probably start going to the Washington University library…last I checked that was 24-7.  There are some straight-up weirdo’s that come to this place.  Add that with the fact that this is one of the last cities to ban indoor smoking.  I think I just second-handed the equivalent of a full pack of Marlboro Lights tonight.

I still have more work to do with my Lease/Option situation though.  I’ve got some good leads off of CraigsList.  CraigsList is kind of a big-deal.  As far as generating a continuous stream of leads, CraigsList alone can get you that.  You just have to stay on top of it.  Which is what I’m struggling to do.  I think if I focus on CraigsList and bandit signs for now, I’ll have more than enough leads.  Which brings me to my next update.  Just picked up a new short-sale.  This lady called me from a sign that I posted over 3 months ago.  I need to put some more of them out…damn I hate putting those signs out!  To anyone else who does this, do your legs get sore from hopping in and out of the car 100 times in one night.  Damn near feels like I went to the gym after I put signs out.  Anyway…gotta do it.  You may be wondering, what kind of sign stays posted since Spring, I’ll let you in on that secret soon.  Sign-up for my exclusive content.

Lastly, I just wanted to share my satisfaction with my new 4G air-card that I got for my laptop.  It’s by Clear.

I switched from my Spring 3G/4G aircard about 2 weeks ago after they tried to stick me up.  Apparently there is a 5 gig limit for Sprints aircard and each megabyte afterwards is like 5 cents. Anyway, they think I owe them $1,200!  I’ve already talked them down quite a bit, but this looks like it will take some time to get straightened out.  So I canceled the contract and jumped ship.  With Clear, there is no contract, no limit and it’s all 4G speed.  Haven’t had a problem yet.  The guys at the wireless shop tell me that Sprint actually leases their 4G network from Clear.  That was completely random.  In a nutshell, Clear is the sh!t.

I’m outtie

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

So, I’ve got a couple new houses to find buyers for. One is another wholesaler’s property and the other is a Lease-Option that I’m wholesaling.

I’ve got my big-ass A-frame signs out for the other wholesalers’ property and I even made them directional so that they direct drivers from the main street. My signs have been up for over a week now…I must say that I’m surprised that nobody has taken them down yet. I think that because their so large, it’s almost like it reiterates their legitimacy. Who knows. This deal is priced very competitively, as it’s just under what the REO‘s are going for. I know that the other wholesaler got this through probate…I’ll need to pick his brain a bit to see what exactly he’s doing probate-wise. I actually thought I had this property wrapped up on Sunday as I received a call from a buyer that said, “I want the house, I can pay cash, let’s get it done…I just want to look inside first”. Turns out after looking inside, he didn’t want to perform the work required. I hate when people speak with such certainty when they’re really not certain. That really grinds my gears. LOL…I always wanted to say that.

The lease-option property is actually from an owner that called upon one of my signs and it turns out that after a conflict with a neighbor up the street, her subdivision started to give her a hard time.  They said that she’d have to fix a few items to be in compliance with the covenants.  That wasn’t the big deal.  The big deal was that she was 2 people over the subdivision’s occupancy limit after she took in her late sisters kids.  She wanted to sell, but had no equity, and needed to vacate in 60 days as she’s not going to kick the kids out.  I proposed the lease-purchase solution, and she liked it.  The house is in decent condition, should be very presentable after she paints.  She has a 4/1 with a finished basement and is offering a rent that is $100 less/month than 3/1′s in her area.  By her getting a tenant-buyer, her immediate problem would be solved, as her mortgage would be covered.  And she wouldn’t have to cover her mortgage and her future mortgage or lease at the same time.  Then in 3 years, the tenant-buyer would be able to cash her out by qualifying for a mortgage and buying the property for a price that in todays’ market is about 105% of value.  The best part about this for her is that,  she doesn’t pay me anything.  I’d just take my spread out of the option-consideration that the tenant-buyer presents.

This whole concept of wholesaling lease-options is fairly new to me.  It’s almost like as of 1 month ago, everyone I’ve been talking to has been telling me that this is “where it’s at” right now with this market.  There are a ton of sellers that would be open to this concept.  All of those old leads I had where the seller had no equity to entertain my offer for a regular wholesale…are now good leads again.  Good thing I don’t throw any of my leads away.

I’m kind of feeling my way through this process with this first one.  I’m following the skeleton of the process right now.  After I get some of these under my belt, I’m going to get a hold of Joe McCall’s Wholesaling Lease Option course.  This is the only guy with a course of this kind.  I listened in to his webinar that Steph hosted, the course looks legit.

Welp, that’s it for now.  I’m outtie.

P.S.
It’s 2:27am and I’m at the Coffee shop that I normally frequent this late.  I’m starting to think that some of the homeless in the area come here for the night.  Not saying that’s a bad thing, I’d probably do the same if I was homeless.  Either here or a Super Walmart.  And most homeless don’t have bad appearances like they do in the movies, the only reason I’m sure these folks are homeless is because when I’m here late they’re in a chair sleeping. Anywho, this is just a reminder that no matter how bad you think you’ve got it….somewhere somebody has got it much worse.

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

So I got the EMD money orders in for the HUD properties I have under contract. I just happened to get my rent deposit check in the mail yesterday and thankfully, my Mom covered the rest. The EMD’s were 1K per house…so 2K isn’t that much money by any means, however when your bank accounts are in the minus…it’s a fortune. My Mom has been preaching to me about getting a J-O-B ever since I came back. As much as I reason with her and explain what I’m doing…she’ll never understand…that is until I show her some checks! She didn’t want to loan me the dough and wasn’t going to do so, until asked her if it was cool to borrow her car in the evenings because I was going to sell my car the next day. She hated that idea.

When talking to the HUD broker, he told me that HUD is so backed-up right now, I’ll most likely get 45 days or longer to close. However, I’m just going to pretend I only have 30. It’s a mad-dash at this point. Yesterday, I snapped a gang of pictures and shot some video. I’m putting together the marketing for this stuff RIGHT now. I even found a way to scrape the STL Realtor Association website…so I now have the email address of every Realtor in Saint Louis. I’m not a spammer…but I’ve got to make it happen.

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

Yo! It’s been a lil second since I checked in. I’ve been working non-stop for the last few days. It’s been eat-sleep-work…nothing else. Depressing. But what’s free-time good for with empty pockets? So, I’ve been spitting out offers, talking to other wholesalers, talking to Realtors, talking to sellers. I just noticed that’s way too much talking. But as much as I would love to outsource (talking) stuff right now, there’s not too many people who would rather work for a share of your deal versus an hourly wage …such losers. But I digress. I’ve got short-sales that fell through (more on that later), 2 East STL hood houses to sell, 2 other wholesaler houses to push, and 2 HUD houses I just got approved for (scrambling to scrape up this damn earnest money deposit they want in the form of cashier’s check…like my personal checks ain’t good or something). Some of these short-sale/REO/HUD properties want you to tie up ridiculous amounts of cash…like $3,900 EMD money order for one property…WTF! Anyway, I’ve got to make some supreme sacrifices if I don’t figure something out in the next 12 hours…It’s like the 4th quarter right now and I’m at the 2 minute warning…down by 14 points. Gotta make it happen…stay tuned….

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

You ever have a long list of stuff to do and you know what’s a top priority, however you start with the stuff you feel like doing?  That’s what I face all of the time.  On one hand, at least you’re getting stuff done…but on the other hand, priorities are priorities for a reason.

Anyway, since I’ve been making to do lists every night before sleep, I’ve doubled my production.  Nothing like seeing your list with all check-marks on it, right.  Even though I get my lists accomplished now, I still struggle with doing the stuff I don’t feel like doing at the time I need to do it.  I’m getting better at it though.

Like right now, I’m on my way out the door to get some boxes from Wal-Mart (you know how they stock shelves in the middle of the night).  If I don’t leave to go get them now, I won’t be able to put any signs out this weekend.  Trick off this task and I waste a week of advertising.  Also, as a side note, I’ve got an idea about these signs that I’m not sure has been done before.  I may post about this later.

I made a post to BiggerPockets for the first time in a long time.  The article is about using a software called ShortKeys.  It’s awesome for automating some repetitive keystrokes, check it out.

And my new found recreation is adding to my compilation of hot verses.  I spit hot fire…at least more so than Dylan.  Volume 2 of my mixtape just hit the streets, I got the hood going crazy….I’m so focused…that’s what’s up…real talk….check my swag…I’m so ill….okay, I just ran out of Hip-Hop buzz terms but you get where I’m coming from.

And speaking of the hood…remember when I was venting about some people would claim that Champaign had it’s “rough” areas…and I was like, there’s no such thing in Champaign?  Well anyway, yesterday I went to the hood for real.  A lady called me telling about two properties that she practically wanted to give away.  So I went to check them out…they were in Washington Park, IL….what I learned later to be the worst part of East St. Louis, IL.  I knew it was going to be bad, but damn!  Even my Mom tried to pull rank on me and tell me not to go.  I assured her that I wasn’t going to get shot in the day-time (not that I knew that for sure, it’s just what I told her).  These properties where in bad shape, but for practically free, I may be able to find someone to buy them.  It’s a long-shot though…this neighborhood is that bad.  The owner accepted my verbal offer of $500 each and it would be an option-contract (yes…$500).  Even with this negotiated, I’m not going to put too much time into this.  I’m learning as I go what to put the most effort into…this stuff will just sit on the back burner from the get-go.  And I guess your Mom always knows best…I don’t watch the news (intentionally) but I walked in on this story on the news this morning.  This happened less than 100 yards from the houses I looked at and less than 6 hours after I left from there.  Crazy stuff.

Anywho, on a positive note. Check out this hot flame:

J-Suave Mixtape v2

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

Here we go with volume 5 of this WTF! Wednesday series.  I swear I am running into every possible road block ever conceived in this Real Estate game.  So check this shit out.  I received word last week that the two Champaign properties, which were held-up due to a bankruptcy, were clear to close from my Realtor.  Apparently, bankruptcies take forever and a day to resolve, as these properties were put under contract in February.  So I start making calls and getting things ready for the closing of one of them.

Everything was going smoothly, I went to follow-up with the bank that held the note on the two properties.  The reason being that their original approval letter was vague due to the fact that it didn’t specify what the payoff amount was.  As a matter of fact, I’ll give you exactly what this letter said:

February 18, 2010

To Whom It May Concern:

Please allow this letter to serve as notification of approval for the [Jon and Jane Doe], to sell property located at [1234 Main Street] and [4321 Main Street] both located in Champaign.  Should you have any questions, please contact me at [217-222-2222].

Sincerely,

[Deez Nuts]
Assistant Vice President

So, as you see, this letter is completely vague.  So I made a call to the bank, to request a more specific letter per my lawyers instruction.  See email chain:

—Message Reply—

Justin,

They need to specify the amount of money they agree to receive in exchange for releasing their mortgage on the subject property (i.e., a specific payoff amount).

—Original Message—

[Lawyer],

I guess it’s time to revisit the (vague) bank approval letter.  We spoke months ago about this and you said that once the time came I’d need a more detailed letter.  If you tell me what is specifically needed in the approval letter, I can contact the bank and request what I need.

So I give the bank a call and get connected to the Assistant Vice President that drafted the original letter.  I proceed to request that I need a more specific approval letter.  He then proceeds to tell me that the sellers no longer own the properties and that they deeded them both back to the bank.  And there is no way that he was going to sell for the 30K price I had each under contract for! (and dude kinda copped an attitude)

I was completely baffled by that statement, I thought everything was going smoothly and now this.  First thing I always do in these situations is play “devils advocate”.  So after the phone conversation, I begin to brainstorm how this “deed in lieu” could legally have been done.  These are the points I’m able to come-up with:

• Bankruptcy actions supersede any previous contracts
• Contracts were expired

Those are the only pro-bank arguments that I can think of.  Now onto what matters, the pro-Justin arguments.  Here are my arguments:

• I was able and willing to close (in March) before contracts expired
• I had the required 3rd party bank-approval (in February) before contracts expired
• I made numerous efforts to update contracts with seller (once in April and in May)

As I write this, I’m still waiting to hear back from my lawyer on this issue.  But, the realistic part of my brain is thinking that pro-bank bullet point #1 is what may be true.  Perhaps, bankruptcy actions overrule in this matter.  The emotional side of my brain is thinking “F#&K You, Pay Me” (cool points to who can name the movie with that quote).  But anywho, this is a stellar example of why I must increase my lead quantity and concurrent deals in the works.  When you’re counting on one deal, it’s almost guaranteed to fall through.

Even if there was some illegal foul-up on behalf of the bank or the seller, it would most likely cost more time and money to correct.  And if it involves court-action, I can forget about it.  These aren’t marginal deals, but court costs aren’t feasible.

I’m curious to hear if anyone else has experienced something similar, or if you have any expertise on the matter.  Please provide your input in the comments.

- Justin

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

Almost one week left in the month and I still have my 30-day challenge in my sights.  I’m very close to meeting it, that’s all I’ll say for now.  It seems like I’m a damn magnet for failed closings right now, so I’d rather not type any further in vain.

Anyway, in follow-up to “Accountability Monday”, I’ve accomplished most all of my tasks.  I put in 4 REO offers, I put in approximately 30 offers, I’ve created my outline for my internet marketing endeavors, I created my STL squeeze page (just need to make it pretty and mesh it with Aweber), and I found someone to place my bandit signs for me in Champaign…but after one weekend they quit.  So I’m back to square one with that task.  I’m taking a completely different approach to recruitment this time, I’ll post later about the outcome.  So, in conclusion, I half-ass met my accountability goals to be completely honest.  Perhaps, if I met them all, then that means they aren’t high enough?  Is that just a psychological trick?  Oh well…I’m going to adopt and roll with it.

So for next week, my goals are:

Create a local STL roster of 20 wholesaler/investors

• Find at least 3 good wholesale deals to advertise
• Hire sign distributor for both Champaign and STL
• Kick the ass of the person who flags my CriagsList ads
• Make at least 10 offers each day (REO, MLS, FSBO, etc)

That should keep me more than busy for the next week.

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless

Almost one week down in STL and I’ve got a lot to show for it. I’ve got my CraigsList game on full attack with more ads recruiting property scouts, ads for cash buyers, etc. The post and repost process is almost impossible to keep up with, I can’t wait until I can get the funds for a CL Autoposter.

Let’s see what else is new…well I’ve picked up a new scout out of Cali who is on the ball. Hopefully, he’ll keep up the pace that he has going now so we can get something closed together. Also, my assistant in Champaign is back from her vacation, we just caught up via phone today on some things and she’s ready to get things rolling.

Since my Mom still has dial-up at the house, I had to get an Air-card for the laptop. It’s a helluva lot better than dial-up but the speeds aren’t quite broadband-like. One drawback is that I have issues uploading videos. I made a video covering how I was able to shoot out 49 offers in an automated fashion using MS Excel, MS Word, and Adobe Acrobat. I’ll have to get that thing uploaded next time I’m on a better connection. Maybe this card will be better once Sprint goes to 4G in Saint Louis, for now it’s still 3G. The salesman at the sprint store said the area should be 4G within the next 6 months. And that same salesman had extra disproportionate skinny hands. He was a chubby dude, but his hands were anorexic…the thought of shaking his hand made my skin crawl. Thus, I made sure to make sure my hands were full during the checkout process. Anyway…I digress. I can’t let you all too deep into my mind…then you’ll find out how it works.

So Next Weeks’ Tasks:
1. Going for a 10 offer a day average
2. Get at least 10 REO offers in
3. Get my STL wholesale wordpress site and squeeze page live
4. Find someone to put my bandit signs up and take them down this weekend
5. Create an outline for all of my near future Internet Marketing projects.

That is all.

- Peace

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Real Estate buyers-list, Cricket Wireless