randian

What's your ballpark marketing budget? On an unrelated note, didn't you like that guy in Dallas who was selling rather a expensive seminar on automating a lease/option business? If so, I'd appreciate the lowdown on it. I don't place much stock in websites to give me real information on the value of something, and more importantly why it's valuable.

Type "mass text messaging" into your search engine. A fair number of companies claiming to offer bulk SMS text messaging pop up.

One big difference between a tenant with right to sublease and a property manager is that the tenant has right of occupancy and the property manager doesn't. An owner usually doesn't have a right of refusal with respect to a subtenant, while an owner can always tell a property manager yay or nay. A tenant takes primary landlord liability with respect to the subtenant, while a manager, being an agent, generally takes no liability for the actions of either the tenant or the owner. Besides, percentage rent is common in commercial deals (retail mostly). Anchor tenants with a lot of leverage often negotiate percentage-only lease deals. If the REC challenges you, they implicitly challenge other percentage rent deals. That's a lot of mighty angry commercial landlords to content with.

You can simplify the liability issue on a SLO by using percentage rent. Instead of a fixed rent you pay, for example, 80 or 90% of income. If there's no incoming rent for a month, 90% of zero is zero. I would add eviction costs to your rent offsets.

RTFM even has its own Wikipedia entry.

Twelve CAs in a month is most impressive. Is that average for your business? How are you deciding between emailing and voice blasting a seller, and how many sellers per voice blast?

You took his course? Did you like it? It had better be solid platinum stuff for the $2995 he charges. I've avoided such expensive courses because I don't think the value is there. For about $500 Pete Fortunato and Jack Miller (recently deceased) were great deals.

David Tilney's? I've taken it, it's pretty good.

So where do you have success?

That's consistently what happens to me. Talk to them, answer some questions, tell them I'm sending an offer, and then they disappear. I can't figure it out, I'm never rude, disrespectful, or vulgar when talking to them. You're sending a short offer on any sort of "Yes I'm interested" or "What's that, tell me more" response, before giving any sort of explanation or conducting negotiations?

On what scale? $100k or $10M?

Down here in FL the cops put "beware of scams" signs on the major roads.

What's the expected call volume from the Post-It Notes and Voice Blasts?

If you use a service like MailChimp or Newsberry you can embed subscribe forms into your blog/website to capture contact information. You might also want to check out Formspring.

You actually use the word "investor" when talking to a seller? I was led to believe that was a sure road to perdition.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but when I give up after a seller is being difficult, it reinforces in their mind that I am in fact a scammer. It's like they've decided "he couldn't handle the tough questions so he must be a fraud".

Every homeowner I've ever talked to wants a non-exclusive deal. Not one failed to hesitate when I said I wanted an exclusive deal. "What if I find a buyer first?"

That's not a lease/option, that's a fully owner financed deal. No way I put down 20% for a mere lease, unless it's prepaid rent.

Probably ~90 of those will have been sent to the bit bucket. I avoid sending more than 20 emails per day to CL.

What homeowner uses language like that? That sounds like realtor-speak to me. You should also remind them that using all-caps is poor email etiquette.

That isn't, strictly speaking, true, although they might throw you out (or worse) after you make your offer. Market rent at $1800 and they owe $300k? Offer them a 10 year sandwich at $1200 for $300k. Lease it as a regular rental for a nice cash flow, sell for a profit when the market turns around.

I don't, because Craigslist gives you anonymized email addresses. There's no way to match up email addresses on future ads because they'll be different. The only thing I pay attention to is the ad style. If it looks like a stealth agent ad I pass. I don't record the URL however.

Lease/options, or David Tilney style sandwich leases?

It is indeed, until PayPal starts reversing charges because the payor complained (PayPal never investigates, they just take their word for it) or stops allowing you to transfer money out of PayPal. I've seen too many horror stories with PayPal to trust them. I tentatively trust Google Payments or Amazon Payments, but if I hear about them pulling the same stunts PayPal does I'm through.

My experience in these matters is that the journalist is looking to write a hit piece about investors. I would reject the invitation.