Last month, I wrote about finding vacant properties. We have proven to ourselves that we can find around 150 of them each week during a six-hour, house-hunting trip. This post is about how we are doing it. Also included is how we do what we do – for the purpose of running our investment business – from start to finish.
Step 1 is to develop the map.
- Go to www.city-data.com, type in one of the municipalities of interest; i.e., city, township, village, etc.
- This website contains a lot of good information.
- Scroll down to find the pink map. This gives us the boundaries of that municipality.
- Print it out. Keep is as a “master map.”
- Manually, break that map into sections, the number of which would vary based on the size of the municipality. (So far, ours have been around 10/municipality.) Take one or two of the sections – the areas – which we think we can cover within a six-hour period.
- Go to https://maps.google.com/ and type in the same municipality name and the state.
- Zoom into that “area” until you can read each individual street name.
- Print out the section maps, always keeping in mind about the streets that act as the boundaries of the area.
- Often, we end up having to cut and paste sections – so that we can see a bigger picture (map) of how they all fit together within certain street boundaries.
- Come to think of it, it may be much easier to buy an existing map with street names – if we can find one for a reasonable price. Then again, once created, these maps are re-usable so long as we choose to enjoy our weekly hunt.
- In addition, if and when we decide to delegate this fun task in favor of more profitable activities, we know our maps and boundaries inside and out.
Step 2 is to organize the trip.
- This is to systematically comb through every street in the most time-effective manner.
- When the trip is completed, we record the date in that section(s) of the “master map” (see Step #1, paragraph 1, third bullet).
- The reason is that we want to repeat the same areas but no sooner than every six months.
Step 3 is to find the owners of the vacant properties.
- Upon return, a list of 150 owners is created by looking up information in the Public Records Data within our Multiple Listing Service.
- My pace is about 50 owners/hour. (I am licensed in order to help with our investments.)
- I look forward to the day when this task, too, can be delegated to an assistant.
Step 4 is to prepare our direct-mail marketing campaign.
- Our method to reach out to every owner on the list is to handwrite a simple letter to him/her, including our phone number. Handwriting may sound time-consuming and old fashioned but it’s all about getting people to read it and give us a call.
- Starting this month, we began delegating this task to an assistant.
- Like clockwork, we mail out 150 letters every week.
- Incidentally, we also buy other types of lists from another vendor as a backup to vacant-property lists that we create ourselves. It is to ensure that we can keep the marketing campaign going at a steady pace even when we are unable to go looking for vacant properties – for whatever reason.
Step 5 is to take the calls.
- The initial calls are handled by live operators who ask some basic questions on our behalf.
- We used to do this task ourselves, too; again, very time consuming.
- Then we personally call back those who are serious about selling their properties.
Step 6 is to analyze and structure the deals.
- This is where we are getting the most benefit from working with a mentor. I don’t know how else we can succeed investing in real estate, particularly in this volatile environment, without having an experienced mentor – who is currently doing deals profitably – on our side.
- One caveat: Not all coaches/mentors are worth their salt. We work only with those who are recommended by the best of the best in the industry.
Step 7 is to close on the deals and get paid!
- We were expecting this to happen by no later than June this year but, of course, it didn’t.
- If you are following my blog posts, in July 2013, you read about the laws that killed our business.
- Then again, speed bumps are expected in anything worth achieving.
- The final victory will be extra sweet, knowing that the knowledge gained through these speed bumps are what makes us good investors for the long haul.
Happy investing!
