I thought everyone already knew about this tool, but I guess not…there are only a handful of products that I fully endorse…and this is one of them.  Bandit signs are one of the most effective ways of generating leads in any business.  Real Estate is no exception.

Use the Sign Stapler, you can post your signs to any telephone pole in seconds.  No ladders, no nails, no hammers.  Most folks put signs in the ground with steaks.  That’s a great option too, however you can expect at least 25% of your signs to be in various dumpsters within 48 hours.  When you post your signs to telephone poles, while not as conspicuous as those in the ground, they’ll stay posted about 15x longer.  It’s a trade-off…so it’s best to use a combination of both in-ground and on-pole.

I have one of these things and it’s pretty awesome.  Check out this demo I put together for yall:

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Okay, this whole consistent blogging thing isn’t working out.  Clearly, I was supposed to keep with the “Accountability Tuesday” theme as of last week.  It’s of course now Wednesday.  So anyway, new rules.  Once a week, I’ll just have an “Accountability Day”.  How about that.

So, I’ve technically accomplished my 40-offer-a-week goal, but I haven’t.  90% of the issue was getting my system setup, and now that I do, I’m waiting on my lawyer to get my custom Option-Contract back to me.  It sucks to be stuck at idle…so I’m moving on.

New Weekly Goals:
1. Make at least one MLS offer each day, direct to listing agent
2. Deliver at least 50 brochures to houses in Urbana
3. Post 5 flyers

That’s it for now, I’m kinda stuck at the moment, to be honest.  My cash-flow is non-existent right now and I have no funds to do any extra advertising (direct mail, newspaper, etc).  So I’m sticking with multiple offers and the advertising materials that I already have for now.

- Peace Out

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I’ve started receiving responses from the Capstone Condo owner direct-mail campaign.  These letters went out last Tuesday so it’s still a bit early yet to tabulate all of the results.  Using this yellow-letter method, I was hoping to get a higher than normal (3-4%) response rate.  Yellow-letters typically get a 10-15% response rate.  I’ve only received 4 responses thus far, so that’s about 2% of a response rate since approximately 200 pieces were sent out.  And all 4 of those responses are owners from Illinois.  I need for some of those Cali buyers to give me a call!

Here is the letter that I sent.  I used the same process that I wrote in detail about a few months ago.

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This weekend I feel like I got alot done, but as always there is so much left to accomplish.  I tracked down 162 landlords and mailed them the letter that I mentioned a couple of days ago.  Hand-addressing all of those letters was not the best use of my time, but I am so strapped for cash right now, I had no choice.  I think all of those letters took about a combined 6 hours to complete.  I got those dropped those letters in the mail today, so I figure that I should get some calls beginning Tuesday or Wednesday.  I project that I’ll get about 10 serious cash-buyers from the deal.  That would make the effort worth it, at the least.

I also spent today posting some brochures to houses via door-hanger sleeves.  I put out 200 brochures and it didn’t take me as long as I had thought it would.  I spent about 3 hours on the job.  It wasn’t that bad.  I took my IPOD with me and kept a fairly brisk pace, wasn’t as torturous as I had presumed.  I only canvased one street in Urbana, IL and I found a few things interesting.  One was that there seemed to be many home owners that have “save my pets in case of emergency” stickers on their doors. I found this strange for some reason.    The other interesting observation was that many houses had “No Soliciting” stickers on their doors also.  I guess Urbana gets hit hard with soliciting, I’ve never noticed “No Soliciting” notices on Champaign houses.  And by the way, I should mention that the only reason I focused on Urbana, IL houses is because door-to-door advertising is legal there and not in Champaign.  Strange…I know.  But, I’m staying within the lines on this although I get many advertisements on my door in Champaign.  I’m not saying any names….Domino’s….Chinese Restaurants….AT&T….okay so I did.

As far as flyers go, I had 40 printed out and ready to post.  But of the places that I was planning to post, they didn’t have bulletin boards! WTF! I was only able to get 2 flyers posted.  One to a coffee shop and the other to a sandwich shop.  Walmart and the local grocery stores had no bulletin boards.  I need some ideas on this one.  Where do yall think I can post some flyers…I have 38 more of these things I need to get out.

- Justin

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Another Friday evening. So much to do, that won’t all get done.  This weekend is going to be pretty hectic.  I’ve got alot of RE work to do.  On a tangent note, why is it so hard to blog everyday?  I’ve been aiming to do so, but it doesn’t get done.  Then when I do post, I have so much new news that is backlogged, it doesn’t all get told because who feels like writing a novel each blog post?  Anyway, I digress.

I’ve revamped my advertising plan.  I know that the Newspapers don’t work for me.  After about one month, I had received all kinds of calls but they were for properties way out in Lynchville, Illinois (that’s meant as a joke, but did you know Lynchville is a city in Maine, Virginia, and Tennessee? Me neither. Either way, you won’t see me there).  My focus is on the college town of Champaign-Urbana, IL.  I don’t have the time or interest to learn about all of these little surrounding cities that don’t even have a Walmart (a good measure of city size BTW).

Nixing the Newspaper ads will free-up about $200 monthly in ad expenses.  So remember the door-hanger brochure idea I spoke about while back?  The brochures are being printed right now and I also got my friend to hook-up a flyer design.  The brochures will go into plastic bag door-hangers and be put on doors of houses within targeted neighborhoods, while the flyer will be printed in 11×17 size and put in grocery stores and laundromats and such.

I’ve also got another idea.  And I think it’s DOPE!  So check this out…as a resident of the Mid-West the winters can be brutal.  It’s not that cold yet, but once January and February rolls around it will be an every-morning task of warming up the car for 10 minutes and scraping the ice off of the windshield.  And I mean everyday.  So since that is a part of the morning routine for most (who don’t have a garage at least), I’m thinking of getting some promotional “We Buy Houses” Ice scrapers.  BAHM!  How you like that!  Genius right?  If these free ice-scrapers are distributed to select homeowners and are quality enough for them to actually use, they will read my advertisement every morning.  And probably every evening in the parking lot at work before heading home.  The beauty is that I can get some decent ones for like a dollar each, which isn’t bad.  I’m a marketing machine baybeh!  I’m going to let this idea marinate and I may just get some custom scrapers to ad to my marketing mix.

I’m a bit cocky to be as broke as I am right?  WRONG!  My vision is clear “I can see it NOW” and pretty soon my bank account will grow into the ego.  It’s all coming together, slowly but surely.

- Peace Out

P.S.
I forgot I was supposed to bring back accountability Mondays.  I’m going to get back on it next week.  Despite the fact that none of my blogger friends do it anymore.  What’s up with that anyway?!  You all know who you are.  That’s OK! (said in Al Pacino – Scarface voice) I’m going to bring it back anyway.  Bring it back like fannypacks

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It’s almost time to start my accountability posts again.  I said that I wouldn’t do so until I got my direct mail campaign launched.  As soon as I find one, preferably two, good phone receptionists and create a script for them, and create a lead sheet for them to complete, I’ll be good to go.  From the naked eye, it looks like I’m procrastinating on this marketing launch but I’m really not.  One of my freelance checks just came in, so now I have the capital to fund the postage for all 900 pieces of mail and it should also cover some of the labor paychecks.  I just need to make sure that I’m utilizing technology to work most efficiently to my advantage.  I think I’ll check into using Google docs for my assistants.  That way, I think I can share a document so that it is writable among multiple users.  They can enter in leads that way.  Or maybe I’ll just create a simple orphan webpage for them to use that has a form for them to submit the information.  I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with this yet.  I need to decide immediately!  Time to get going!

Also, I just reminded myself by typing that first paragraph that I need to get some of my other marketing up and going to.  I was holding off on some things due to the fact that I’d need a phone receptionist (I never want anyone to call and reach a machine, there’s a good chance they won’t leave a message).  And I didn’t want to get a phone receptionist until there was a justifiable amount of incoming calls.  The direct mail campaign alone justifys the phone receptionist and the additional advertising responses will be covered.  The other marketing includes; what I’ve included here in this document that was created back on June 17th of this year.  So that I have somewhat of a strategic approach for my advertisement tracking, I will purchase some virtual numbers through Vonage.  I already have a Vonage account that I use for my office business line.  With additional virtual numbers assigned to specific advertisement mediums, I will be able to track who responded to what and what generates a better response rate and etcetera.

Today, I just mailed out 6 letters to properties located outside of SW Champaign that I found when “biking for dollars“.  One of the properties that I found (the one that looked abandoned) is tax delinquent.  I found this out after running a search on it at the County Assessor website.  When I was at the property, I spoke to the neighbor’s about it.  They said that the guy hasn’t lived there for at least two years and they don’t know where he’s gone.  The bad thing is that the mailing address for the property is the same as the physical address.  So unless his mail is forwarded somewhere, the piece of mail I sent isn’t going to get to him.  I’ll wait a week or two and then get a Skip-Trace on the guy.  By the way, is there anyone reading this that knows of a good Skip-Trace software?  I know I can hire someone to Skip-Trace, but I’d rather do this myself if I can find a comprehensive and affordable software to work with.  Also, while I’m thinking about it who knows of where Divorce data is stored per county?  I’m looking for names and dates of divorce cases, I know this has got to be public somewhere on the web, suggestions?

And speaking of tax delinquency, the Champaign tax sale is coming up at the end of October.  I failed to do so last year, but this year I’m going to go and round up some property buyers.  I did some research today at the County Clerks office on the tax lien sales of 2008.  I looked in this big-ass book called the “judgement book”, it was basically a ledger that showed the property address, the property owner, the date they did/didn’t pay their real estate taxes, and if they didn’t WHO did.  That lame office closes at 4:30pm every weekday and I got off of work at 4 so I didn’t have much time, but I was able to record a few names of individuals and companies.  I don’t have any contact information on them but I plan to do some digging (you’d be surprised what I can find about any one person on the internet, maybe I should become a Skip-Tracer).  I bet some of them will be good wholesale buyer candidates.

Also, I’m currently doing some research regarding municipal code violators.  Specific municipal codes that are violated would indicate to me that the property owner may be in distress.  Like say, if a fallen tree laid unattended for too long (maybe can’t afford removal and perhaps the mortgage too…pre-foreclosure), or if a property’s grass and shrubs are overgrown (maybe the property is vacant…absentee landlord, probate, etc.).

Got some other stuff going on, but I need to get back to work so I’ll report more later.

- Justin

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I indeed decided to place an advertisement in the 2009/2010 Yellow Pages.  Although I believe print advertising is a dying medium, I’m following my gut on this one.  Deep-down, I really believe that the homeowner who is at risk of being foreclosed on may turn to the Yellow Pages to find who to call.  This would be especially true, if that homeowner is older and is more used to using a print directory vs. the internet.  The older homeowner will most likely have more equity in their house; see how this makes sense in my head?  You should.  And the main incentive is that my ad will be the only one in the Real Estate section about foreclosure prevention…boo-yhaw!

And I just thought about this, but it’s too late now.  I should’ve used an exclusive phone number and had it forwarded to my main phone number, just for advertisement tracking purposes.  It’s too late now, so I’ll just have to ask every caller how they heard about me. The 2″ Yellow Page ad cost me $60 monthly, so $720 for the year.  You should see a blog from me within the next year about how a Yellow Page lead generated “X” ROI.  Everyone told me not to place an ad in the Yellow Pages, all I heard were naysayers.  But when folks turn right, I go left.  You’ll see how this turns out…oh yeah…you’ll see…

- Justin

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