Justin B. McClelland

I’ll start out with the bad news (not really).  I met with the lady who owned the house I checked out a couple of weeks ago to submit my offer and go over my documentation.  I had 7 comps, a CMA, an expense report, and a contract.  Here is the rundown of how the meeting went:

8:55am – I show up to property for 9am meeting
9:08am – Lady arrives and I’m irritated that she’s late. If anyone’s going to be tardy, it’s going to be me! (I have ’some’ nerve)
9:18am – Ten minutes of time wasted with small talk
9:19am – I whip it out (the paperwork that is)
9:20am – I choose to go over the comps of her property first. They were good as-is comps that were in the 55K – 65K range.
9:21am – She frowns at the very first comp and I think she rolled her eyes too
9:21am – I ignore her disgust and continue my spiel
9:23am – I show her the CMA (comparative market analysis) which conveys her house-value as-is should’ve been in the 60K range
9:24am – I go over the expense report with itemized repairs needed for the house
9:25am – She disputes almost every item on the list saying that such items need not be replaced
9:25am – I daydream of pimp-smacking her with one of those Styrofoam “We’re #1” hands that you can purchase at any ballgame
9:26am – I snap out of the daydream and continue on
9:27am – I give her my offer of 47K and I met my goal of keeping a straight-face
9:28am – She is extremely disappointed in the offer
9:29am – She continues to talk and tell why she can’t accept that offer
9:33am – She is talking about the offer amount she was looking for
9:33am – I succeed in not laughing in her face
9:43am – She’s still talking
9:45am – She’s still talking some more, I daydream of winning an Oscar for acting like I’m interested in the conversation
9:50am – She’s still talking and is actually dropping hints that she’s warming up to the offer
9:55am – I tell her to think about it and call me if she changes her mind, we part ways

So, we’ll see if that’s the last of that lady.  She’s a nice lady, don’t get me wrong…but I wouldn’t be surprised if she took 4 bong-hits every morning before getting out of bed.  Anyway, I’ll call her next week and see if she’s warmed up or not.

And now the good news.  I went to my first tax lien sale yesterday and I learned sooo much!  First-off, I don’t know why more people aren’t doing this.  And secondly, I’m definitely going to be there in full force next year!   By the way, I couldn’t get any video footage of the auction, I punked out.  It was so quiet in the auction room (auction was computerized), I didn’t want anyone to hear my Flip camera turn on.  Everyone who has one would know the sound it makes.   The investor who I did some preparation work for allowed me to look over his shoulder while he bid.  He even let me do some bidding!  This guy is a major player in the game.  In the 2.5 hour bidding of over 2,000 properties, I witnessed this guy snatch up over $560K in lien certificates.  I’m going to hang around this guy whenever he’ll let me, I need some of that to rub off!  The speed in which these properties are auctioned at is incredible.  You literally have only 1-5 seconds per property to place your bids.  The auction in Champaign County is computerized.  The county outsources the bidding administration to a company called Rams Auctions and if I’m not mistaken you can do your bidding from home also.  The auction was held at the county building where the Recorder’s office is, the Tax Assessor, the Coroner, everything.  In the bidding room there were tables with laptops setup for each bidder.  Then there was an overhead image projected of all the bidding so that spectators could see what was going down.  To get an idea of how this all worked, check out the video by Rams Auction, but keep in mind they slowed down the examples:

http://www.ramsauctions.com/demo/RAMS%20Tutorial.html

Next year it’s on!  I’m going to be at that tax sale and ready to rumble.  The funny thing is that some of the bidders there barely knew what they were doing!  You should’ve heard the questions asked after the sale was over.  That’s right, I said AFTER the sale.  Questions like, “Now that I’ve spent about $30K in lien certs, what happens next?”  I’m not joking either!

My experience at this sale inspired my most recent BiggerPockets blog post.  There you can read about a few of the strategies and research techniques that I thought of since yesterday.  And that’s just the tip, I have a whole year to think of more!  I cannot be stopped.  You better get-down or lay-down!  Peace Out!

Real Estate Auction, Government, Income tax, Tax

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

Marketing, Real Estate Advertising, Business, Google Docs, Mail, Real Estate, skiptrace, Tax, Vonage