Justin B. McClelland

So this is my last weekend as a resident of Champaign and I’m en route to Saint Louis .  As I pack up the necessities, I am reminded that I keep way too much stuff around that isn’t necessary.  Thank God for CraigsList, as I was able to sell my couch, bed, and desk (never doing U-Haul ever again, plus when I move from STL I’m starting fresh with all new shit).  But during this sale process I practiced my negotiating skills on these buyers.  I emphasized in the CL post that I was a motivated buyer, I had in all caps MUST SELL NOW and etcetera.  But I didn’t list a price anywhere, I just told the people to reply with an offer.  My (queen) bed sold really quick for $60, funny thing is I only paid $100 for it back in college.  A forty dollar 7 year rental sounds pretty good right.  The item I was most surprised about was the couch, which I got $80 for.  The girl that bought it responded to my ad and said she’d pay $125 for it.  I was like WTF (had I listed a price I would’ve priced it at $40)!  So then I said, if she picked it up within a few hours that same day, I’d let it go for $100.  When she arrived we settled at $80.  This whole scenario just reminded me that a product is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.  I wish these real estate property sellers would realize this fact.  Too many people balk at my offers with the response, “You’re offering me less than what I paid for it”.  My mental response is “that is completely irrelevant, so let your house sit on the market for another 200 days, I couldn’t care less”.

So anyway, although I’m leaving town I’ve made some major strides in the last two weeks:

• I’ve found a way to revamp my (efficient) offer making process for MLS offers (video coming soon), although this new method is completely compliant, I’ll probably still piss-off some of the local Realtors but…I don’t really give a shit.
• I’ve also fully launched my Property Scout network, though I need to step-up the promotion of it.  CraigsList, I think may be the only way for recruitment.  However, I’m officially a registered employer via a local temp agency in town.  I think I’m going to see if I can work with them on this.  Perhaps, I should look into Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.  Why not?
• In return for some Mozenda Screen-Scraping, a guy out of the UK hooked me up with some web-hosting and a bomb-ass Real Estate WordPress theme.  The site is www.ChampaignDeals.com check it out and let me know what you think.  I still need to tweak it alot and complete it with some custom content.  But I’m thinking I can throw some wholesale deals on that site, get other local real estate professional to contribute to it…perhaps make it accessible only if one completes a squeeze page…etc.  I’m liking this barter thing…so if anyone else wants to trade services, get @ me.
• I also have a new partner in crime.  About a week ago, a young lady gave me a call out of the blue (why was that color selected for that saying anyway?…but I digress).  She is from Chicago and fairly new to the Champaign area and wants to get into Real Estate Investing.  She was asking me if there were any REI clubs, mentors in the area, etc.  I gave her some contacts of other investors that may want to mentor her, and also told her about my property scout program.  After a few days, we had a few more phone conversations and met in person.  This girl is on point!  I think she’s more of a hustler than me…which is saying a lot, if I don’t say so myself.  So since we’ve decided to team-up, she’s going to take over most of my marketing tasks.  And I’m going to tell her everything I know.  Which is actually a lot, contrary to popular belief, I just have ran into all kinds of bad-luck with closings…but anyway.  She told me that she has read tons of books on investing, as she speed reads (yes…speed reads. If that doesn’t say you’re sharp as a tack, I don’t know what does), but ‘doing’ is the best education of all.  So I think this is the start of something really good.

That about sums up the last 1.5-2 weeks.  Oh, I also have got some Internet Marketing stuff up my sleeve too.  As well as an eBook about the whole DIY yellow letter thing.  I get a lot of questions about this process, still.  In the ebook I’ll go into much further detail.  All of my wholesale flip situations haven’t changed status, still a bunch of BS holding those up.  So anyway, the kid has still been on his grind.  I hope yall didn’t think I gave up.  By the way, I’m bringing accountability-monday back.  I forgot why I stopped anyway…

- Peace Out

Accountability, Business, Internet Marketing Assembly Hall, CareerBuilder, Champaign, CraigsList, property scout, Real Estate, saint louis

This is a post that was inspired by Lawrence Roberts and a long string of blog comments on the BiggerPockets article I wrote back in September 2009.  A lot of people ran into snags when trying this out.  So, in the video below I just give a quick overview of how to create the ‘illusion’ of an embedded YouTube video in Craigslist.  I say illusion, because Craigslist restricts certain HTML tags, one of which is required for YouTube embedding.  So check it:

Entrepreneurship, How To, Internet Marketing BiggerPockets, CraigsList, embed, Facebook, YouTube

Sooo, it’s Tuesday evening and I’ve been working hard the past week to meet my “guaranteed” goal of 40 offers from last weeks’ Accountability Monday.  Let’s just say, I won’t give any more “guarantees”.  That 40 offer business is kicking my ass, I’m not going to lie to you.  That’s a lot!  I don’t give excuses, however I will say that I had some hindrances outside of my control which held me back a bit.

These hindrances were primarily related to only making offers on MLS properties and using an agent.  The agent I was using became reluctant to represent me as a buyer due to my wholesale strategies, he feared that he would become stigmatized due to the low nature of my offers.  Honestly, I can’t blame him and if I was strictly a retail-Realtor, I’d probably feel the same way.  I’m sure black-balling occurs amongst Realtors when one goes against the grain. I actually heard that this happens to Realtors that offer flat-fee MLS listings in town.  But it looks like using an agent isn’t going to be the best route for me and what I’m doing, so from now on I’m going to make offers directly to the listing-Realtor.

I did get in 15 offers over the past week, so I wasn’t a complete failure.  However, I just couldn’t come up with another 35 worth offering on and I was sort of road-blocked by my Realtor.  Now that I’ve cleared that hurdle, this shouldn’t be an issue any longer.  And I literally just came-up with a new idea that will help me dramatically in my quantity of offers.  And that is….drum roll….the submission of offers on expired MLS listings.  I already have it figured out in my head, how I can make this happen with a MS-Word mail-merge and a MS-Excel spreadsheet.  Since the properties aren’t listed, no need for complete contracts, I’ll just send a detailed “Letter of Intent”.  This will save beaucoup time by allowing for some automization.  I’ll hand-address the envelopes, send them off, and it’s a done-deallie.  I should get some interesting results from this approach.  Just the other day I was scouring CraigsList for some old ads to make offers on.  I saw that another local investor picked up a property for 16K when it was listed and expired just a month earlier at 35K.  So the proof is in the puddin’.

So I say all of that to say, “I’m keeping the goal of 40 offers/week”.  No more guarantee’s, no more roadblocks that won’t get demolished in a matter of minutes.  I’m getting to that goal and once I do, I’m going to double it.

On another front, the wholesale deal is back in the ICU.  I informed the heirs that they’re not going to receive any proceeds from this house due to all of the liens that were on it, yesterday.  I have a feeling that they won’t want to sell it now, despite being contractually bound.  The phone conversation didn’t go so well.  However, since the property is in pre-probate and they’re not the owners on title, I’m not certain that they don’t have an “out” of this contract.  I’ve brainstormed for a while and put myself in their shoes, either way they look at it (sell to me, or keep it) there is absolutely no money in this house for them (I may go into details later when the deal is officially closed or dead).  I plan on having a meeting with them as soon as we can schedule one, at that time I’ll make the numbers really clear and at that time they better trash any slick ideas that they’re brewing.

On yet another front, I received a short-sale lead today.  An extremely hot one at that!  Long-story short, this guy is a retiree and is extremely frustrated with being a landlord.  He has a property that he initially put Section-8 tenants in and they “tore it up”.  He then put non-Section-8 tenants in it and they “tore it up” too.  But not only that, they also aren’t making their rent payments and instead of ‘eating’ the mortgage costs for the last 5 months, this landlord is now in pre-foreclosure.  Since he’s a landlord, he knows the rules of the short-sale game, so this should make things easier for me.  We meet this Saturday, I plan on getting the entire short-sale package completed on-the-spot, so hopefully John Michailidis and I can have a go at a JV again.

Damn, this was a long-ass post.

- Peace Out

Marketing, Real Estate CraigsList, John Michailidis, MLS, Short Sale

Over the long Thanksgiving holiday, I didn’t get as much done as I had planned.  I took alot of work home with me to Saint Louis, but most of it stayed in my bag.  I don’t know who I’m fooling when I do that.  Most of my time was spent with the family and catching up with friends.  I’ll admit, I had too much fun, I should’ve got more work done, but I live life to the fullest even with my brokeness…but now I’m back to the grind.

I spoke with the High-Tension line lady today and said that I would like to revisit negotiations about her property.  I communicated that the power lines in her back yard are a hindrance and frowned upon by conventional lenders.  I told her that despite my cash offer, the lending would be an issue when selling to a retail buyer down the road.  Just the simple fact that there are power lines in the backyard drops the value of the property by about 10K.  I was as courteous as I could be on the phone call.  However, when I mentioned the issue, the lady responded that the high-tension lines shouldn’t be an issue and if they are, then “a request could be made to the the power company to move them”. WTF!  I think this lady is trying to play the “naive old lady role”, I’m not buying it.  She’s gotta know that a power company isn’t just going to move a big-ass tower just cuz.  Oh well.  I told her I’d get back to her in 48 hours…I’ll let that one marinate and decide what to do later.  Most likely I’ll pass on it…but this one is sooo close…if I can get her to drop by 10K I’d have three buyers that are ‘really’ interested.

It looks like I’ll have to man-up and take some of my planned outsourcing activities in-house.  I’ve concluded that so far the virtual assistants I’ve screened are either flakes or priced out of my budget ($20 an hour…seriously lady?…how does a VA request this much pay?).  So I’d rather pay top dollar for a great assistant than to pay a little bit for a lame one.

On the way to Saint Louis, I got a damn speeding ticket.  82 in a 65.  Crazy thing is I was keeping up with traffic…ok not really.  Just one of those times that you zone out in thought and next thing you know you’re doing 90.  That’s happened so many times, I’m not too mad about this ticket.  Haven’t had one in over 5 years.  I usually pay a lawyer to do what they do, so I can avoid the points on my driving record.  But, if I can find some estimates on how much my insurance will increase by and add that up to compare against the lawyer fees, I may decide just to take the points.  It’s been so long, I don’t remember how substantial the insurance hike would be.  Anybody out there know?  So I mention all of this because, as I sat there I was thinking about how the ticket & lawyer fees would take away from my damn Marketing Budget.  It seems like every expense nowadays intrudes on my marketing budget.  Need an oil change…marketing budget deduction…need milk…another marketing budget deduction.  Oh well.

So with this marketing budget deduction, I won’t be buying the CL Bot Pro software anytime soon (I may have to wait until a few freelance web project checks come in).

So in the mean-time, the show must go on.  And “Accountability Mondays” are back.  Here is what I’m going to accomplish in the next week.

Tasks:
1. Make at least 10 offers on properties listed on MLS
2. Brush up on REO literature so I can start making REO offers too
3. Distribute my new door hangers with brochures to select Urbana neighborhoods
4. Find more cash-buyers (section 8 landlords, find past cash buyers in MLS, members of Central Illinois Apartment Association)
5. Put something together for a CraigsList nationwide cash-buyer campaign

This is a short list, but it should keep me busy.

- Peace Out

Marketing, Real Estate accountability monday, Central Illinois, CraigsList, Holidays, St. Louis Missouri, Thanksgiving, Traffic ticket

So it’s been over a week and the calls have drastically tapered off.  I had planned to give some exact call counts, but I kind of screwed that up when I was altering the settings for my Vonage account when setting up my Google Voice accounts (the counts got off).  So I’ll approximate.  After 1 week of the letters being in possession of homeowners, I received about 70 calls with about 12 of those being leads.  Out of the 12 leads about:

4 turned out to have their house listed on the MLS
2 I’ve played phone tag with
2 I’ve yet to call
1 Is in Pre-pre-foreclosure*
1 Plans on moving to ATL in February
2 Will most likely sell retail when ready

* The guy who is in pre-pre-foreclosure is disabled and is soon to be receiving disability checks.  He said he just caught his mortgage up from being 4 months late to 1 month late.  He said that he wants to sell because he doesn’t know how long the disability checks will last and needs to downgrade.  I’ll check back in with this guy in a month or so and see where his motivation is.

The guy who wants to move to Atlanta this winter may turn out to be gold as well.  He didn’t seem too motivated when I spoke with him, but this may change.  I’ll also check back in with this guy next month.

One of my letters hit the property of an investor in town that has over 60 properties.  He responded to the letter just to chat for a bit about investing.  We met in person last Friday and he’s looking to divest his portfolio and needs someone (me!) with a creative mind to market them.  He also invests in Tax Lien certificates and needs someone to perform some follow up with the liens that may soon convert to deeds.  So perhaps we can work out something there, we haven’t negotiated any particulars but I expressed my interest and we may meet later this week.

** One quick note about this guy. I don’t think I mentioned in an earlier post that I went to the County Recorders’ office one day and looked through the judgment books.  I wrote down the information of all the purchasers from the previous years’ tax sale (for buyer’s list building purposes).  I then Google’d each person to see what I’d learn (did I ever mention that I love Google, I could almost be a P.I.).  So when I met with this guy, I already knew a little about him.  But then again, I’m pretty sure he Google’d me before he called me because he mentioned my blog.  So that means he may read this…awkward…

Another letter made its’ way to a Real Estate broker who was a former investor and she called to chat about investing, what she’s doing Real Estate wise and her consulting business.  This lady was cool as a fan.  She was very wise and said that I’m free to call her whenever with questions.

So besides the leads there were many positives to overcome the negativity from early last week.  Sometimes I post my frustrations and speak of slacking and what not, but that’s all part of the experience.  The purpose of this blog is to document it all.  So don’t think that I’m going to give up or get depressed by these suckers who waste their time hating.  I would never lie to you and I honestly think half of what people say is funny.  Now the other half can meet me in the octogan…but I digress.  The point is I’m going to blog about it ALL…give it to you straight, no chaser.

Since I’ve launched my Yellow Letter campaign, I’ve also launched some other marketing.  I’ve got a Sunday classified ad that is going to go in the Champaign News-Gazette, the Savoy Star, and Accent.  I’ve also got an ad that is going to run in the American Classifieds.  And my Yellow Pages Ad prints and should be delivered in November.  I’m going to follow-up to my mailing list in about 6 weeks with a postcard.  I’m also thinking about buying a list from YellowLettersComplete.com, perhaps the pre-foreclosure list.  And the Bandit Signs will go in effect again very soon.  I ordered some more.  This time instead of buyers, I’m going to target sellers.  And I’m going to place them out on Friday and pull them on Sunday.  All of the Realtors do this.  I just needed to cross the line so I knew where it was the first time.  I shouldn’t get any heat for this.  If I do, I have an arguable case.  I also am going to ramp-up my CraigsList activity.  So as you can tell, I’m grinding…but still have a ways to go.

Yesterday, there was a Rich Dad Poor Dad seminar in town.  You know the seminar that gets people amped up about Real Estate investing, and claims that they’ll teach all of the ropes for $500 3-day seminar.  Once you get to that seminar you learn that to really learn all of the ropes, you need to pay $30,000.  I mean, I’m not saying this is a bad deal but DAMN!  At least that’s what the attendees usually say as they leave the hotel banquet room.  I’ve been there done that and so I spontaneously thought of a way to capitalize.  I made up some flyers at the last minute that were aimed towards finding someone to birddog/partner with.  The flyer was folded into a 3-part brochure and in a nut-shell it said

Interested in starting out in Real Estate but can’t afford the training? Call Me! I’m a house-flipper that is looking for partners to work with in Champaign-Urbana.  No experience necessary.

I put those flyers on about 40 cars in the parking lot outside of the entrance to the seminar.  I was scared to death, I didn’t want to get caught and fined.  I almost didn’t do it.  But I did it anyway.  It’s time to start making things happen.  I really don’t care anymore about the rules.  I ask myself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”.  And if the answer doesn’t involve an arrest or bodily harm, then I’m doing it.  So anyway, I did all that and didn’t get one stankin call!  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

Welp, that’s all for now.  I need to kick out a BiggerPockets article for tomorrow.  I think I’ll focus on the features and uses of Google Voice for investors.  Writers’ block, here I come! Peace out.

- Justin

Internet Marketing, Marketing, Real Estate, Tutorials CraigsList, Google, Marketing, Real Estate, Real estate broker, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Vonage

8 hours later and I’ve only completed the materials for the car.  DAMN!!! I have definitely got to setup a system to outsource this stuff, if I receive additional requests for this service.  I can’t stand looking at a computer screen this long.  Now, granted I did have to run a 40 minute errand while working on this, but I still should be done by now.

I think I’ll break for the night on this and pick it up tomorrow. For the remainder of the night, I’ll work on something different, like maybe  start on my BiggerPockets.com Thursday guest-blog post.

Here is the video about the car which is to be embeded in a CraigsList Posting:

- Justin

Real Estate BiggerPockets, BMW, CraigsList, Marketing