REI Marketing Tips

I just realized earlier today that I am basically rebuilding my preforeclosure investing business from scratch, because I’ve moved from Vancouver, BC to Encinitas, CA. (For those of you unfamiliar with Southern California geography, Encinitas is about 25 miles north of San Diego, up the I5).

I arrived here on Tuesday, January 5th, and we met our new landlord at our rental place at 4pm. Needless to say, that day was pretty much shot just moving in our stuff into our new place. We actually didn’t have that much stuff to move in, as we are renting a furnished home until we figure out where we want to live exactly.

The rest of the week was spent getting settled. Getting things like a phone line, internet, and directv set up, buying groceries, learning the neighborhood, finding a new crossfit gym, etc.

One interesting thing that happened was that I was contacted by local investor who had seen a bunch of my videos on YouTube. He wants to “learn the business” from me, so it’s an opportunity for me to find someone to help me increase my lead flow quickly. I’m willing to teach him all that I know about marketing and finding deals, in exchange for him doing the actual work. I have no problem paying him (well) for bringing me deals.

Two important lessons here:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of video marketing. Do you know that YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world (after Google)? That’s right, YouTube gets more searches on a daily basis than either Yahoo or MSN. Amazing, isn’t it? If you need what I feel to be the best primer on YouTube and video marketing, check out YouTubeSecretWeapon. It’s where I learned pretty much all of my video marketing strategies.

2. Pay referrals well. I actually learned this from watching a video from my friend Preston Ely. In this video, he outlines his entire business model. One thing that he said that really resonated with me when I watched it (yes, I watch the videos that I email you about, before I tell you to watch them), is, (and I’m paraphrasing here), “don’t be a chump and offer weak referrals like $500 or $1,000, man up and pay 25% of the profit of each deal”. Now I haven’t met this new person yet (we have a meeting tomorrow for the first time, we’ve only spoken on the phone) but whenever I enter into a partnership, I have a standard speech that I pretty much give everyone: “Both sides need to be EXCITED and MOTIVATED about the partnership. If you ever get to the point where 1 side feels like they’re being screwed (like doing all of the work, or not getting enough of the profits), then the partnership will NEVER work.”

So that was the end of the week.  Nothing crazy, I was mostly focused on enjoying my new home, learning the neighborhood, and spending time with Dreama (my wife) and our children Stella (30 months old) and Sebastian (8 months old) by going for walks, taking them to the beach and the playground.  And of course, being the football junkie that I am, it was wildcard weekend.  Thanks to my DVR I can watch an NFL game much faster and don’t have to dedicate myself to setting aside 3.5 hours to watch a game.  (Side note, if you like to watch TV, and sports, like me, and you don’t have a DVR or a TIVO, you are literally wasting hours of your life each and every week.  Get one now.  Of course, if you don’t watch TV, you can ingnore this advice).

To start out this week I had a a meeting with my realtor.  This was a meeting that got me REALLY excited.  I “met” Brian online (via Craigslist) when I was shopping around for REOs and Short Sales in San Diego back in August, right after Dreama and I got a contract to sell our home.  Brian showed us a bunch of places back in September, including one short sale that we really like, but were outbid on it (someone submitted a higher offer than ours, literally the day before we wrote our offer).

Nonetheless, we kept in touch with Brian, and had our first meeting yesterday.  I was absolutely thrilled when Brian told me that right after we met, he started working with another investor doing “back to back” closings with short sales.  Brian was a realtor who completely “got it”.  I didn’t have to educate him on anything, but rather go an understanding of exactly how his process worked, vs what I had been used to doing in WA (for example, when was he listing the property?  Right away, or after the BPO was completed- if I have just confused you, don’t worry, more on that later).

Brian told me that his biggest challenge is finding more homeowners facing foreclosure, can you believe it!  My specialty.  We’re still working on the fine points of our arrangement, but suffice it to say that I’m working on lead generation and Brian is going to be going out, meeting with the homeowners, getting paperworked signed, listing the properties, meeting with BPO agents, and doing all of the rest of the work!

Yesterday afternoon I added a SaveMeFromForeclosure.com listing in Google local.  If you haven’ seen my free training yet on Google local, head over there right now.  It’s a fast, free and an easy way to quickly get listed on page 1 of Google!  My listing won’t appear yet, because I’ll have to verify it by mail rather than phone, but that task is now done.

Last night, I had a coaching call for our “Foreclosure Masters” coaching club.  (If you want to attend the next one for free, you can sign up here).  Anyway, the topic of “how did you find an investor friendly realtor” come up.  I must admit, it was pretty good luck that Brian really “gets” what we’re doing with back-to-back closings.  So the person asked me where to start looking.  If you’re looking for an investor friendly realtor, I would suggest starting out at your local REIA meeting.  Any agents who are there are going to either be investors themselves, or at least “investor friendly”.

So that’s what I’ve been up to since I have arrived.  I’ve got a lot more stuff planned for this week, and I’ll be sharing and blogging that information as the week progresses, so please check back here often.  As usual, if you have quesitons or comments, please leave them below!

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Great news for real estate investors and anyone who is looking to sell property in the short term:

Senators agreed Wednesday to extend a popular tax credit for first-time home buyers and to offer a reduced credit to some repeat buyers.

The tax credit provides up to $8,000 to first-time home buyers, and Senators agreed to extend the existing tax credit for first-time home buyers while offering a reduced credit of up to $6,500 to repeat buyers who have owned their current homes for at least five years.

The tax credits would be available to home buyers who sign sales agreements by the end of April. They would have until the end of June to close on their new homes, according to a summary of the legislation being circulated among lawmakers. There’s a much longer article about this that you can read by clicking here.

This is a huge advantage for real estate investors looking to sell properties. To leverage this extension, here are some suggestions for what you can do in your marketing:

- Announce to all potential buyers this extension, and let them know how it helps them buy your property!
- Institute a special “first time home buyer credit” of your own, and give first time home buyers a special if they buy your property. Some examples could include:
1. Additional closing cost credits
2. Special Lowes or Home Depot if they buy your property (would you be willing to buy a $500 Lowes gift card if it meant selling a property this weekend?)
3. Free year of service (something like lawn care, pest control, cable, doesn’t matter, get creative!)
- Start marketing on places like Craigslist and other sites letting buyers know that you can help them with an extension of the first time home buyers tax credit.
4. Partner up with a mortgage broker and do a marketing blitz letting prospective homeowners know about this tax credit extension.
5. Partner up with CPAs or even people at H&R Block letting them tell their renters about the benefits of owning a home

The possibilities here are endless for your business. The only question is, what action are you going to take to use this good news to help you sell another property?

Post any comments or ideas here, I (and everyone else) would love to hear them.

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