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Doug Pretorius (ON)

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Everything posted by Doug Pretorius (ON)

  1. Don't worry about 'blowing it' Justin. There are more sellers where they came from. Remember, your job is to eliminate not to convince. You can't talk a seller into doing something creative, you can only qualify or disqualify them.
  2. David, we had a discussion about this ages ago and came up with and idea you might want to try. Change your signs to read: Vote David "I Buy Houses" Busch Just make the word "vote" and your name REALLY small compared to "I Buy Houses"
  3. I've never worked in an office, so when I was asked to speak at an agency a few years ago, it was kind of cool. There's an energy around you of 'things getting done' that doesn't really exist in your home office. If you did go that route I think it would be very easy to position yourself as the go-to guy for whatever type of deal you want. LP, sub2, wholesale etc. just talk to everyone and make sure they know to contact you when they come across a seller that meets certain criteria. As a fellow agent if you make it clear that you are NOT competing against them, they'd probably warm up to working with you a lot faster than if you approached them from 'outside' as an investor. Of course this all depends on how understanding your broker is! I personally decided against getting my license because of the bureaucracy.
  4. I ran into a realtor at an open house a few years back who was a recent immigrant from China. We got talking and his face dropped and he just shook his head: "I can't believe I came to the 'land of opportunity' and what I found was a place even more communist than what I left behind."
  5. Good to see you, Steve. MC, I heard something about the US government pushing banks to do all the same subprime lending that caused the trouble. Is that true? Here in Canada the government-controlled mortgage insurer did the opposite and drastically increased restrictions on investor loans and refi's in an effort to prevent what happened in the states.
  6. The market here is same-old same-old. We didn't have the huge boom that you guys had in the mid-2000s, so we didn't have a bubble to burst, although prices did slide a little. Now it's continuing up. Average price for a single-family as of May is $333,288 up 6.9% from last year. Average household income is about $90,000.
  7. Kinda seems that way doesn't it. At first I thought it was maybe just certain techniques, like lease options or something that wasn't as popular. But it looks like it's every niche across the board. Nothing has really changed though has it? I mean my local market is business as usual. Finding deals takes about the same amount of effort as it always has. I will say that it's harder to find qualified T/Bs, but certainly not impossible.
  8. A quick perusal of the REI forums and things look pretty blah. Even creonline only has a couple of posts a day, I remember when they had 3 or 4 pages of new threads daily! reiclub is the same. And things are pretty quite around here too. My RTO site is steadily declining in traffic as well. I notice that here in Canada, Kijiji absolutely dominates google's search results for terms related to "rent to own". I don't think I've ever seen things this quiet before.
  9. Used my wife's address and got a 100% response, sweet! I could have sworn I tried other email address before though...oh well, thanks MC
  10. I know quite a few of you do email marketing. Although it's not something I've had much success with I do still send out a few emails to properties I'm interested in. Problem is I don't seem to be getting ANY replies anymore Unfortunately the most popular (by far) place to find FSBOs around here is kijiji which uses their own internal messaging system (instead of an email address that forwards to the advertiser's email like on craigslist). Obviously I can't be sure but I'm suspicious that my messages are being blocked because of replying to so many ads in the past. Anyone else run into this? Any ideas on what I can do? Very few people put alternative contact info (like a phone number) in their ads so if my messages aren't going through there's no way to contact them short of knocking on their door
  11. With that option in place you can also list the property with an agent. I assume at the prices you mentioned this home needs at least some rehab, so look for an agent who has investors in their buyers list in addition to putting it on the MLS.
  12. John, we don't have a health care # we have a health care quota. We're allowed 1 accident or major health issue (heart surgery, cancer etc.) in our lives. Anymore than that and we...well...die. It's terrible. You have no idea what you're in store for as socialized healthcare really takes hold down there. You might find that you even have to start paying more for...oh dear god...gas! Dan, the first thing I would look at is whether or not the basement tenant can RTO the main level, that way they have a huge incentive to work with you and you don't have any do any advertising.
  13. If you decide to pursue it please share the details. I haven't had the greatest success with long-distance deals. Getting them signed up is easy enough and the seller is willing to do the showings, but I always find marketing to be a pain. I've tried it the other way too, looking for houses where I have T/Bs from my site. But the weird thing is my site generates the most T/Bs from towns with hardly any FSBOs
  14. An email is a legally binding contract itself. You don't need signatures or faxes, it's almost 2013!
  15. Erik, you might be able to get the spread you need on a SLO if you get the seller to bump it to 3 years and agree to sell the house to you "for the mortgage balance at closing". That way you benefit as you pay the mortgage down. That's what I did with my one and only SLO and it worked out great, the seller was just happy to get the house off his back.
  16. Dan, I never had anyone (not even the agents) freak when I mailed listed homes. But you're right, finding info about owners in Canada is a nightmare
  17. The shooting might sour things but that price doesn't sound too bad. Your average price is roughly the same as mine (for all residential properties) and the median price for a detached house is more like $370k, so $426k should be a reasonable family home, nothing too crazy. I've never advertised a house outside of it's area. I suppose I could advertise a commuter home in Cambridge to Toronto buyers, but I figure if a Toronto buyer is looking for a commuter home in Cambridge they would look where Cambridge houses are advertised, not where Toronto houses are advertised.
  18. Well done Dan! Where is this second property?
  19. You know me, MC, I can't resist a woman in a parka and snowshoes, and when she stripped down to her flannel PJs...yeeooww!
  20. Loch Doogie. This time I'm resurfacing with partner in crime too. My wife Molly is into REI as well
  21. If I may... Lease w/Option to Buy - Occupant/investor is a tenant who has the option to purchase by a certain date. Lease Purchase - Occupant/investor is a tenant who is obligated to purchase by a certain date. Contract for Deed - Occupant/investor is a buyer but only gets the deed after they pay off their debt to the seller. Subject to - Occupant/investor is a buyer and gets the deed at closing but the loan remains in the seller's name. Owner Financing - Occupant/investor is a buyer and gets the deed at closing. They make repayments to the former owner instead of an institution (eg. bank) Bank Financing - Occupant/investor is a buyer and gets the deed at closing. They make repayments to an institution.
  22. There are a pile of these businesses in my area now. They simply charge the TB a premium price if they want to buy. In most cases they don't even charge a premium rent or anything down. I doubt many of their tenant's ever become home owners through their programs. Unfortunately between these companies and landlords offering 'rent to own' with nothing down and same as rent, there's no money to be made on the sale side of RTOs anymore. The only way to make money is the good old fashioned buying below market, and then you might as well just flip it, unless you want to be a regular landlord.
  23. You might want to look up a guy by the name of Mitch Ribak. He's a broker and wrote a book called 100MPH Marketing for Real Estate (don't have it and therefore can't endorse it). I read a bunch of his commentary somewhere, I think it might have been a blog on activerain. Anyway...he talked quite a bit about the impossibility of motivating most agents to do anything. People either want it or they don't. So he put together a system to support the ones who do and fired everybody else LOL BTW hi everybody, long time no see!
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