- Hey everybody how's it going? This is Seth Williams
from the RE Tipster blog. Here I've got Greg Schrader. Greg has been sending me sporadic emails over the past year, two years, is that how long it's been now? - 16 months. - 16 months, just dropping
me a line every now and then letting me know about his successes, some of the great deals he's been doing and it's been a really cool and exciting and just encouraging to
see the progress he's made. So I thought he'd be a really
good guy to sit down with and just kinda chat about
what's been going on, what his experience has been like, some of the things he
has learned along the way and hopefully through this conversation I'll learn something new, and you can learn something new as well. So, Greg how's it going? - It's great Seth, thanks for having me. - Great, awesome. Well just to kind of kick this off, I'll sort of ask the
question I usually ask and that is how did you first
learn about land investing and what made you decide
to give this a shot? - Seth I've always been
interested in real estate. I've sold homes. My first job out of college,
I sold Jim Walter homes, which we build on your lot,
and I always wanted to get into flipping homes or
buying rental property. I knew I wanted to be in real estate. Didn't really know how
I wanted to get there. I was driving through Houston
one day in a neighborhood that probably, not so
good of a neighborhood to buy or to rent in but
maybe owner finance in, and I saw a sign that
said owner financed homes so I go home and I start Googling, maybe I could borrow money, buy this home and sell it owner
financed for more interest and I came across the RE Tipster website, and I don't know how that
brought me to your site but I started reading how
you had took the proceeds from selling land to buy rental property. My wife was actually
out of town at the time, and I read a lot of your blogs
and when she came back in, I said hey I read this pretty
cool thing on the internet. I think we're gonna put a mailer together. What do you think? She said yeah let's try it. - Wow, that is awesome man,
that's so cool to hear. So it was just kinda like a
Google search and you sorta came across my stuff and
started to learn that way. That's awesome. - Never even thought to invest in land. It was just low price of entry, and I said yeah, let's do it. - Yeah, so when you started
that first direct-mail campaign, what was that, was that a scary feeling? Was there a lot of doubt in your mind about what was gonna happen? - No. I knew that I wanted to do
something to generate income away from my nine to five
and my wife's nine to five. And I was willing to lose
a little bit of money. I mean, I priced it
out and clicked a mail, I was doing the larger post parts. I think they were 50 cents a piece, and I told my wife, let's
just get $1,000 together, and if we lose, we lose. Let's just do it. And you know, I had her blessing, and I was okay with
losing, so we went out, and we just did it. - Awesome, and when you
were doing that direct mail, what kind of lists were you using? Where did you get your data from? - I actually went to the courthouse. It was a county over from where we live. $40 for a list. Had a really hard time
opening up that list. I had a lot of 'em with
Microsoft and figured it out. - Yeah, some of those lists
are just awful to figure out, but if you can get there,
it's totally worth it. - That's right. - So what were the results like when you did that first campaign? Did it surprise you in a good or bad way? How did that all turn out? - I was very surprised
at the number of people that checked their mail
and called me back. I mean, I sent 250 letters out, and I've got a 6% return. Now it ended up, one
of those neighborhoods I sent to had high HOA fees, and people were just
giving their property away. - Yeah, I just recently came
across one of those myself. Sometimes that can skew
the results a little bit. (laughter) - I'm goin' through one now. - Sure, yeah that's actually something, I used to just be like
automatically no, forget about it, but I've come across some where the profit potential is huge, So I think sometimes it
can still make sense, but unless it kinda falls into that camp, I'm usually just one to walk away. Is that kinda how you think of it too? - Absolutely. Some of these lake properties have an HOA for 100 bucks a year, and you
get access to the boat dock, that's worth it, or 300 bucks
a year, or 40 bucks a month. I'm gonna have a hard time, I think, selling someone on that. - Yeah, I hear ya'. So let's talk about some
of the deals you've done. Are there any examples you can talk about? Just like purchase price, sale price?
- Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, the first one that I bought, I bought it for, I said
we'd spend a thousand. Well we ended up finding
one, it was on the tax row for 40,000 bucks. We spend 3538, $3,538 on
it using a title company. Sold it for 9500 bucks. - Nice. - So that first deal, I
was super happy with that. And that led into my second deal, I bought for 100 bucks,
which I would have never offered somebody $100 for land
if I didn't read your blog. (laughter) Then I sold it, it ended
up it was flood property, unbuildable, but the neighbor
was happy to buy for $1000. - Nice. - Yeah, and I've got
three more that I want to tell you about cause
they kinda go together. I've got five acres for 50 bucks. - Whoa. - Yeah, it was landlocked, and I ended up selling it for 3000. A guy had specialized in
getting access to landlocked property and real happy to
buy five acres for 3000 bucks. Trying to gain access, I
made a couple phone calls to the surrounding
owners, and I found a guy, he didn't want to sell his
five acres next to mine, and he couldn't tell me how
to get to that five acres, but he had eight point one
acres that he'd sell me for 1000 bucks, 22 residential lots, and I ended up selling
that for oh gosh, $38,233. - Say it again. How much did you pay for that? - I paid $1000. - What, are you serious? That's awesome, wow. - That's my biggest,
that'll never happen again. - So what's the ROI on that? - Oh gosh, I used to have it out. It was honestly the ROI was lower on that than the $50 property that sold for 3000. - That's true, it's a good point. That's actually a great lesson, the whole thing about landlocked property. I mean, I understand why
people get spooked by that because in a sense,
it's unusable cause you can't get to it, sort of, but like you said, I think
as long as you're buying it cheap enough, so that
basically so the numbers can only fall in your
favor on the back side, if I only spend 50 bucks on something, it's kinda hard to lose in that scenario, and you clearly did not lose there. - No, and I was thinking,
I can always put it on Ebay for 100 bucks, and
somebody will bid on it. I'll get my money back. - Yeah, I know, a lot of
the landlocked parcels I've bought have been
like in a similar range, like 150 bucks, something like that. Very very low, and I always
make really good money on it. It sounds like you did too. So that's great to hear. - I've told the guy, I think
I told the guy three times on the phone before we met face to face, I think I told him three times, you do know this is landlocked? And he knew what he was buying. He was happy to do it. - Sweet man, that's great. Any other deals you want to talk about? - Um you know, I bought one, my first, I guess this was kind of a game changer. My first one to buy, but
I had never seen before. Everything before then, I was going out, looking at the property,
spending way too much time pre-qualifying, the first
one I bought site unseen, I bought it for $500. It was in Hill Country,
desirable part of Texas, but Hill Country's kinda tough cause you can't tell how much that hill slopes, and if it's buildable,
but I offered her $500. I actually told her that
she would get a better deal putting it on Craigslist,
and she just really wanted to get rid of that property, and she said if you're
gonna give me 500 bucks, let's do whatever we need to do. I sold it two months later for $8000. - Whoa, man, you're doin'
really good at this. That's awesome. - I've had some pretty good returns. Here lately, I'm spending
a little bit more, so the margins aren't getting as high, but I'm still making the
same amount of profits. - And are these all deals you've
found through direct mail? Have they come in from any other source? - Yes, the only one that
didn't come through direct mail was the one that I paid
1000, sold it for 38,000. I bought it from the guy
that had the property next to a direct mail property. - And are these, have you
been doing mostly postcards? Is that the main way you've
been sending your mail out? - Absolutely, postcards. I went from the large yellow postcard that you talked about on your
website to the 30 cent, save me a stamp white and
black postcard, a small one, and I've gotten, I mean
I've used the same postcard from day one, and it works. - Cool, is that a template
you got from somewhere? Did you make it up? - You know, and Seth,
you're not gonna like it. I looked at your
template, and I made it up as a Word document, but
it's similar to yours. It said notice real big at the top of it and then explained how we close fast, and I want to buy your
property in this county, and I quit putting my phone number on it. I do a Google Voice number that
goes straight to voicemail. And I put my website, so you know, during my nine to five,
getting all these phone calls was overwhelming, and then tried mailer without putting a phone number at all, and the callbacks were
going down because of that, so now I give them a
chance to leave a voicemail or email me, and I'm still
getting the three to 5%. - Sweet, now this question
just popped into my mind, how much would you say
you've spent on education in this whole process? - Zero. - Zero? Okay, zero, so pretty much, - I mean, I guess if I said my time, we can monetize the time, I
mean there's been a lot of time, but most of that I've
done while I was driving or doing something else. It's just listening to podcasts
and learning like that. - Okay, so pretty much
everything that you've learned and implemented has been
from stuff you've heard on podcasts, read on, I guess, my blog, maybe other sources too? - Yes, yes. - That's a big point to emphasize, is I hear from, and I think
it's a fairly common thing, people will buy courses
cause they kinda feel like if they just buy the
course, that's gonna somehow make it all better, make it all work, but it's like kinda the
opposite is the case in your situation. Like, you spent nothing on courses, and you're still doing
really really well at it. It kinda comes down to determination. You kinda saw the value in the strategy, and it's like I'm gonna make this work, and you just did it, right? - That's exactly right. I knew I wanted to make this work. I knew that I wanted to be in
real estate for a long time, and honestly, I just
never had the money to get into buying a house and
the time to flip a house, and I mean, your program,
what you were presenting on your blog, I said
gosh, I could do this. I could do this today. - Yeah, I know, that's
kinda the beauty of it. It's like yeah, you don't need loans. You don't need any of that stuff. It's sort of like pocket change. I don't want to speak too lightly of it cause I know it's a few hundred
or a few thousand dollars, but compared to most other real estate investing opportunities, it's
really not that big of a deal. - No, I mean we haven't borrowed a dime, and honestly that was a
big thing that my wife and I agreed with before we did anything was we will not borrow money,
no matter how good the deal that comes through. We're doing this to get out of
debt, not to get in more debt and it's worked out. - Is your strategy to do seller financing or do rental properties or is there any particular
direction you're goin? - You know, I kicked around
the seller financing, and I'm still somewhat interested in it. Texas has a lot of restrictions
on seller financing unless you do a deed of trust. So it's gonna have to
be the right property where I'd get basically
what I spent on the property as a down payment because I
would have to foreclose them. I know there's a lot of
people doing contract for deed in Texas, but if you
really dig deep into it, and really read up on exemplary contracts, they can almost, they
can take you to court and sue you and get 100% of the money back that they've given you for the property. My big fear is to have 20 properties that I have to pay back all
the money that I've made over the last couple of years. So I know Jack B Chellis says you learn early on, you're a cash
seller or a note seller, and I guess I'm a cash seller. - Yeah, no I hear you. It's seller financing is a whole, I don't want to say it's
a whole different game, but it kinda is. I mean there's a lot you have to learn, and just be ready to sign up for, if you're gonna go down that road. It's, and I have heard that about Texas when I was researching
it about a year ago. Texas is not a land contract state. That's a deed of trust state. So if you ever are
gonna go down that road, like I'd say it's totally
worth paying for an attorney, making sure it's done right,
especially that first time. Once you kinda know the process, then you can determine what
you're comfortable with after that, but I would
not want to screw it up, especially the first time through. - Right. - So how have you been getting
your properties sold to date? - You know, Craigslist is the best tool. I've got two different Craigslist accounts to where I can renew
my ad almost every day. On each of those, I'll
do two or three listings for each property. I use tag words, which help, basically I'll go to
Wikipedia and get anything that has to do with that
county I'm sellin' in, any city name, any school,
anything in the county, in the county around that,
and use it as tag words. I'm drawing a lot of traffic, and the way I know I'm drawing traffic is I added a link to a YouTube
video for every property, and if I'm getting a lot
of hits on that video, it means a lot of people are
looking at my Craigslist ad. - So Craigslist doesn't
allow clickable links, right? So are people like copying that link and pasting it manually? - Yes, I have a note on there. You must copy and paste. - Interesting, cool. It's actually a good idea. I usually include links in mine, but I don't actually say
that, but I probably should, making it more obvious
that you have to do that. Interesting. - Right, I put GPS
coordinates, which a lot people don't know how to use
those, but I've basically, what I'll do is I'll take
any kind of notes on my ad, save it to my notes in my iPhone to where when people text me and ask questions, I can text them back
everything in one text so I don't spend a lot of back and forth, but in that it'll have a
Google link to the property, to each corner of the property. It'll have GPS coordinates to
each corner of the property, and then a video of the property. - Okay, and the video you're doing, is this like a Google Earth video or what does that consist of? - Simple Google Earth video. I've been buying some
properties here lately in the Dallas, Fort Worth area,
and my brother lives there, so he's goin' out to properties and taking a short video for me. We've got an agreement. I pay him what I pay when we go look, and he does a lot better job. - Yeah for sure. That's cool. When you were mentioning
these tag words in Craigslist, help me understand that. Are you just finding certain
keywords and including them somewhere in the body of the ad or is there another place
you're putting them? How does that work? - No, I have the description of the ad, and at the end of it, I
just type keywords colon, and then I have about a
hundred words after that that all have a comma after them. So if somebody's looking, say
I've got a piece of property advertised in Cleveland, Texas, and somebody gets, and
they're looking for a property in Conroe, Texas, well
since that's a tag word, my ad will pop up at the top. You know, I've got this one acre for sale, and oh gosh, that acre's
right next to Cleveland, and it's cheaper, so maybe
we'll go look at that also while we're looking at property. - Wow, okay. And the main idea is that people will be searching for this stuff, right? Is that the main benefit or not? - That's right, and I've also got in there vacant land, I've got prepper, camping, anything fishing, hunting,
so if somebody's looking for a hunting property,
my ad's gonna pop up. Somebody's looking for a
mobile home, my ad will pop up. - Wow, so you could almost
have like a swap file where there's a list of
keywords that always applies, and then maybe a separate
list of like things specific to that area. And you said you just go to
Wikipedia to get those things? - I am, and you're right,
I'll go to an old ad, and I'll keep the keywords
that we'll use for everything, and I go to Wikipedia, and I find keywords for that specific county
that I'm selling in. You know, if that high school
is known for the longhorns, I might put in longhorn football. - Wow, does that take a
lot of time to figure out what words you should be using? Or is it like a couple of minutes? - A couple minutes. I mean, I, you go through
Wikipedia, you type it up. I mean, I can't really copy and paste cause I've gotta put a comma
behind every one of 'em, but no it doesn't take long. - That's a pretty sweet Craigslist hack. I'm gonna try that on my next one. Thanks for sharing that. That's really cool. - No problem, I can send
you a link to one of mine, and let you see what it looks like. - That would be really cool. I'd love to see that. Okay, so other than Craigslist, and other than your
brother in the Dallas area, are there any specific tools or resources you've been finding pretty
helpful in the business? What do you use on a daily basis that you couldn't live without? - Well okay, I've used the Facebook. Mark Widowski's got a
good Facebook chat board. I use that a lot for questions. And from that, we put
together, there's five of us in a group on a private
Facebook messenger thing, and I tell you, we really
help each other out. If I have a question about writing a deed or a scenario that I
haven't experienced before, these guys are super helpful. And we have a conference
call once a month. It's really cool that that has
come out of the other page. And then Texas, I've only
bought in Texas so far, and there's no disclosure of
how much property is sold for, so I use basically Realtor,
Land and Farm, Zillow, Land Watch, about five different. I'll go to like five different websites and see price per acre
before I price a property cause honestly, I want to have
the best price in the county. So seeing what I want to
sell for, and then I'll know that I need to offer less than
that if I want to make money in this county before I send a mailer. And I'm not opposed to paying half, you know I don't have to buy it at 25%. If I know I can double my
money and make good money, I'm okay with that. - Yeah, that's not a bad deal, not at all. So going back to the Facebook group thing, so it sound like you've got
sort of a mastermind thing goin. Is that something that
you guys just sort of made the connection on your
own or did someone put that together for you or
how did that come about? - It was put together, and I
was asking a lot of questions in the main forum, and one of the members actually invited me to join the group, and I'm real glad he did. I mean, it has helped me out a lot. - Yeah, that's, so
there's five of you guys, you said you have a phone
call every week or something? - We do one monthly. - One a month, okay, oh I got you, okay. Yeah that's great man, I'm
really glad to hear that. Yeah mastermind groups,
sometimes are hit or miss, but I mean, if you've got even a couple of the right people in there,
and if the conversation goes in the right direction,
you can learn a ton that you would never pick up on your own. - Absolutely. - Are those people all from Texas or just from all over the place? - No, no, they're all
from, they're actually, they've been through
the land deed program, and I think they all met at bootcamp, but I'm the only one from Texas, and I'm actually the only one
that has a sales background, but those guys are killer. I mean, they've been real successful. - Sweet man. - And if I told you who it was, you'll recognize all the names. - Yeah, probably. There's certain people who
are definitely more active than your average person. I'm sure they would stick out. Any other resources
you want to talk about, or are those kinda the main ones? - Success plant, which
is now landinvestors.com, that's a good one. They've got a good forum there. And that's about it. You know, pricing the
property and asking questions and getting answers to my questions, those are the tools I would
say are really sticking out. - So it sounds like between
the blog, the podcasts, Mark's group, Success Plant
group, you've been able to get a lot of dots connected
along the way, right? That's pretty smart. - Absolutely, oh yeah, but it all started right in your blog and
reading, basically reading everything that you offered on the blog, and then it's all gone from there. I didn't know about Mark
until I started listening to podcasts, and that's
where I found that, and same with the Land Academy. Those guys have been doing this forever, but I didn't hear about that
until just hearing the podcast. - Sure, absolutely. Yeah, podcasts are super
helpful and convenient, so I can see why that
would appeal for sure. So you've been at this,
you said 16 months? - 16 months. - Okay, I gotcha, and how many deals total have you done to date? - Let's see, I've got that, Oh I didn't text that,
but I've done 21 deals, - 21 deals. - And then this year alone, I've done, I did two of them in 2016. I've done 19 since January. - Okay, great. And has it, has there been
any particular challenges with organization or
keeping things straight or having the time to pursue everything? What's been the biggest
challenges or lessons you've learned along the way? - You know, my biggest in the beginning was just letting the
phone take over my day. Like I said, I still work 50
hours a week at a day job, and I had to get that
under control really fast. It was getting to the
point where I was spending too much time after
hours and on the weekend calling people back, and it was, you know I hear a lot
of people say this is a two or three hour a week job. It hasn't been that way for me. I've spent a lot of time doing this job. So I got the phone under
control using the Google Voice and building a website,
and besides that, no. I mean, I keep thinking there's gonna be a piece of property that I'm gonna buy and buy it wrong and lose
a lot of money on it, but knock on wood (knocking),
that hasn't happened yet. - Yeah, yeah man, it sounds
like you're evaluating your offer amounts and
purchasing decisions pretty well before you're closing on deals. Honestly, I would be
surprised if you got hurt, just given that you're really scrutinizing it that carefully. I know people who don't
do it nearly that well, and they still really
don't get hurt either. So I mean, the fact that
you're really looking closely at it, I'm sure it is
gonna help you a lot. - You know, I am spending
a little bit more now, and that makes me a little nervous, but even, I started doing
that three purchases ago, and I'm still getting the phone calls and the callback rate from the ads. I think I'm still buying right. - Yeah, have you had any
properties that just didn't really get much of a response? Like you posted out
there, just nobody called and you kinda got scared? Have you had that yet? - No, I mean, I've had
some that I priced wrong, but I've always reassessed. I mean, I've always changed
the price within a week and started getting the phone calls. I've got two lots right now. I mean, we're down in the
hurricane Harvey area, and I've got two lots that were flooded, and I honestly think that there was a lot, think of the landscape
change in that neighborhood because they're still holding water, and they weren't holding water
when I bought the property. So I've probably, will
end up donating those, or giving them away,
but I don't have a lot, and I bought them for $300 a piece, so it's not, it sucks, but
it's not the end of the world. But if that's all I'm gonna
lose on this, I'll take it. - Yeah, for sure. That donation idea, I mean
it might take a little bit of work to find somebody
who will take 'em, but I'm sure there's a
non-profit out there that would, just take it as a tax
deduction or something. What you're saying about being responsive and being willing to change
the price when you need to, and reposting ads and
all that kind of thing, I think that that's actually really key. The only times that
I've had properties that kinda sat on the market for
longer than nine months, there's something they all had in common, and that was I didn't really
have time to do anything with them in terms of renewing the ads or responding, changing the price, changing the headline,
changing the description. You know, if you're really on it, and willing to push it forward, it's pretty rare that a
property will just get stuck, and even if it does,
it's like just a question of when you can get
around to doing the things you need to do to move it. - That's right. You know, honestly, my turn around time started out at about two months, and then I've sort of been tweaking that, and the last few I've sold a lot lower than I think they were worth, and I've really started
turning these things around. Two of them I've sold
before I even had the deed back in the mail, and I was
(garbled) with the profit. I mean, the last one I was
able to pay off my wife's car, and I made less than it
was worth, but I was happy, happy to have enough
money to pay the car off. - That's a big win, man, for sure. That is kind of a battle,
like a mental battle, almost kinda like trying
to time the stock market. You just never know for
sure if you're getting the best deal you could ever get. You kinda just have to
decide to be content with what really is good money. You kinda have to not overthink
that and overanalyze it. So have there been any other big surprises either good or bad that you've
had about the land business? Has anything just jumped
out to you as like, whoa didn't see that coming? (laughter) - You know, I guess I was
just surprised at the number of people that don't want their land. I've always thought
it'd be so cool to have a piece of property, and
there are a lot of people in this world that end up with
property they never wanted, and they're dyin' for
that letter to come to 'em and just give it away. I mean, and I guess I've
somewhat been surprised at how mad some people get
about getting a postcard. I don't put a post on my postcard, and some people get really angry that I even sent them a postcard at all. - I know. - I think it's funny. I normally record those voicemails, text them to all my friends. (laughter) - Yeah, you really have
to learn to laugh at it. It is kind of weird though, isn't it? How people don't really
see their land as an asset. I mean I think that segment of society is always gonna be out there,
whether the economy's good or bad, it's just weird. It's kinda, I mean, it's
unfortunate for them because they're really missing out, but they're willingly
happy to just give it away. They just kinda see it as a problem, and the beauty is when you realize how to reach those people because that's where opportunity just really opens up. - I'll tell you where
I see the most people that really want to give it away, and I've passed on so many of these, is if it's in a city, and you
can't put a mobile home there. And it's a neighborhood that there's been no homes built in the last 20 years. Do you buy those or do you pass on those? - I mean, that sounds like
the kind of thing I'd pass on. There may be some aspect
of it that would make it worth looking closer at, but just based on what you said there, those are usually pretty low-end, very very
very cheap lots, right? - That's right, I mean,
lots that I could pick up for 100 bucks, 200 bucks, but
I'd have to mow the grass. That's a big fear. You know, they probably
have grass vines on 'em because people haven't mowed the grass, and the city's gone in and mowed it and put a lien against it. - There's actually, the
first couple of deals I ever bought were in an
area kind of like that, not exactly, but kinda. There was no homeowner's association, and grass cutting was not an issue, but it was the kind of thing where there was a subdivision
that nobody was building on, and I actually sold them pretty quick, and I think part of the
issue was it just takes a little bit of effort to
try to make the property look good, and advertise it. Sometimes properties
will move if you just, if somebody's really putting the effort into making it look nice and
really selling the thing. There are times when
you'll find that just like everything in the vicinity is for sale, and none of it's selling. That's the big red flag for me when it's like eh, I'm not
sure I want to mess with this. - Going back to that HOA, I've
got a mailer here recently, I've had 60 calls from
the same neighborhood, and that tells me run,
don't, do not buy anything in that neighborhood if 60 people want to sell their property. - Yeah, yeah, I mean
that's, I would be a little concerned about that. I mean there's probably
something going on there that's gonna make you
say no, I would guess. So for somebody who is
curious about land investing, they're kinda wondering
if it's worth their while, or even somebody who's
kinda gotten started, and they're just like in
their first month or so, would you have any
words of advice for them based on what you've experienced so far? - I'd say for the ones
that are wondering about getting into it, cause
I was guilty about this, for years I wanted to
invest, you've gotta, land investing's the lowest point of entry that I've found so far. Just get the mailer in the mail, and don't put up too much
time into setting up LLC's and websites and extra phone numbers. I've seen a lot of people
doing a whole lot of talking about investing in
land, but they don't get their first mailer in the mail. And I'd say the ones that
are just starting out, don't quit, and don't get upset. If your mailer didn't work,
find out why it didn't work. Ask, find out what you
need to do to tweak it and send it out again. I've seen a lot of people,
they send the offers out, and they get upset. Well they probably didn't offer enough. I'd say don't make an
offer in the beginning. Send postcards, and get
the people to call back, and start having the conversations, and just learn how to talk
to sellers, and it'll happen. It'll come to you. - Yeah I know, it's kinda
like what I always say, you kinda have to pick your battles. Like the postcard approach, it
definitely requires more time to look at stuff, but I mean,
I think your acceptance rate is ultimately higher because
you actually have time to look at the thing and
make, the offer's gonna be low no matter what, but
you can kinda see where they're comin' from, and tweak things if they need to be, and if
you can afford to do that, whereas the blind offers,
you'll save lots of time, but you'll usually
spend a lot more on mail and probably lose deals that you might not have lost otherwise. So it's not like one
way is right or wrong, but you just have to understand, no matter which way you go,
you're giving up something. It's just what you want to give up and what you're okay with. - My opinion is, if they
tell me no on the phone, if they don't hang up,
I can counter offer. If they tell me no with a blind offer, they can throw it in the trash. I never hear from them. - That's a good point. That's a really good point. - You know, that's why I like postcards. I've tried blind offers before, and I've gotten a pretty good return rate, but it ended up that most
people that responded had property that I didn't want to buy. So I went back to the postcards,
and it's worked for me. - Yeah, the thing that
makes me sad is when I hear from people who say you know,
I sent out these 20 postcards and I didn't get any response. I'm like 20? Seriously? Just because it's a numbers game, and you really have to
give something a solid shot before you can make any
actual determination, and it's hard to do that with
hardly even doing anything. - Sure, I mean, in my
opinion, anything less than 500 isn't enough. Just based on, say it's a 2% return rate, which that happens sometimes, and of that 2%, you're
not gonna buy every one. Sometimes you may not buy any of them, so you want as many people to call, I want as many to call
me back as possible. - Yeah, and since you've been
doing this for 16 months now, have you had any instances
where you got a call from somebody on a postcard
you sent them like a year ago? Has that happened to you yet? - No, I'm getting them
from two months ago, but I haven't had, I hear
these stories all the time where they've saved your postcard. Tax season's coming up. I'm expecting maybe I'll start
getting those phone calls, but I haven't yet. - It sounds like you've been
using the delinquent tax list. Do you have a certain
set number of counties that you're just hittin' again and again, or are you still exploring
new counties at this point? - Oh I am, and actually I've shied away from the delinquent tax list, oh gosh, probably six months ago,
and I'm using AgentPro247, and I'll do three counties
at a time sometimes. I've bumped my mailers up from, when I was starting out,
I was doin' 300, 500. Now I'm doin' about 1500 mailers, and I'll do that once or twice a month. It's all been in Texas. I haven't left the state yet. I am sort of buying stuff
that costs a little bit more, so I'm sending it through
the title companies, which gosh, it's a lot easier and takes a lot more of the worry off, but it's expensive too. It's 1200 bucks a close. - Yeah, I know what you mean. It's pros and cons, you know? You just have to decide which costs do you want to pay along the way? - I've learned that the
buyers in these bigger ones, they don't even want to
talk about closing in house. The idea of them sending me a $5,000 check or $10,000 check and not having the deed, it's just off the table. By me telling them hey
there's a title company in your, right down the
road, you can go to, and they'll do all the work for you. They just feel more comfortable with that. - Yeah, sometimes it is a deal breaker in addition to a huge
time suck if you don't use a title company, you know? Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and do what you gotta do. - Yeah, and you're right. They will drag their feet. They make me a little
nervous in the two-week, three-week time it takes to close, but if I'm able to use
the same title company to buy it as I use to sell it, they can normally push it out
pretty fast on the sell side. - Yeah, and not all title
companies are created equal. I know I'm closing a deal
right now with a title company, and the closing agent I'm working with, I don't want to say she's
bad, but she doesn't really know how to handle certain situations. Like there was a time where the seller saw some little line item
in the title commitment, and started freaking out about it, and really the issue just
needed to be explained to her really clearly and carefully, and this title agent didn't
really know how to do that, and the deal almost fell
apart because of that. If I hadn't known about it and jumped in and salvaged it, I could
have lost a $20,000 deal. So it's like, I don't know,
I guess when you're dealing with people, there's always weird things that can come up cause people are imperfect animals for sure. - Yeah, and I had a title
company that almost cost me the big deal I told you, I bought
for 1000, sold for 38,000. I had to use two title companies on that. First title company said that since they couldn't see access from Google Maps, and this was a mile
away from their office. They wouldn't drive out to look at, but since they couldn't
see it from Google Maps, they wouldn't insure it because they said that there was no, they
didn't think there was access. - Oh my goodness. - And I told them, if you
would drive out there, there's clearly access. You can drive onto the property. So I ended up, I lost the buyer. Then I got another buyer, and thank God, and about two weeks
later, and I brought it to another title company,
and it went right through. - Yeah, I actually had
a really similar thing, earlier this year, I'd
never had this before, but the first title company
I called on this deal, they said this looks like,
that purchase price is too low. This is fishy, we're not doing it. I'm just like seriously? Because I'm getting a good deal, you're not willing to close this? And luckily I found somebody
else that was happy to do it, but it was like man, what
is wrong with you people? You've got the signature of the seller, and you're working with
them in the process. It's not like something
underhanded is even gonna happen. (mumbles) - They're supposed to
be neutral and unbiased. They shouldn't, I don't
guess that's really any of their business how
much you bought it for. - Yeah, I mean I think that's
how it's supposed to be, but again some title companies
just don't seem to get it, not on board with that. Cool man, well is there
anything else you want to share or talk about before we wrap this up? - You know, so I guess
there was another one that I want to tell the newbies. It's just set some money aside, and be willing to lose. If you can come up with
500 bucks or 1000 bucks, and don't lose sleep about losing it, I think you'd be a lot
more successful getting, just getting out there and doing it. - I think that's a great point. I mean especially on the first
time through this process, your first direct mail, the first list, the first purchase, first everything. That is like the most valuable
education you'll ever get. That's when it really
sticks, and you really see it for yourself what does and doesn't work. Greg, I really really
appreciate your time. It's been really great to talk to you. I learned a couple new things
too, like I knew I would, and yeah, I wish you all the best, and if you ever learn new things or want to share more insights, it'd be great to talk to you again. - Oh definitely, and thanks for having me. I really appreciate the interview. - Absolutely. Thanks everybody, see ya.
