Doug Pretorius (ON)

We found them by calling FSBOs with the magic script, Erik.

Ms Smith, It was a pleasure talking to you yesterday and we have taken a long hard look at your property on [address]. It looks pretty good, and yes, we're interested. We think it's got real potential and believe it would probably work out well for us. We're looking to take on something like this right now, and you'll find our offer attached to this email. We've done our homework on the current rental market and have determined that we can give you a monthly cheque of precisely [rent]. We guarantee in our offer to pay our rent to you even if our tenant/buyer doesn't pay us. We also guarantee to take care of the day-to-day maintenance and repairs up to $200. Over the proposed 36 month period of our agreement you will collect a total of [rent + offer price - credits] which, if we're not mistaken, is actually more than your asking price, and far more than if you sold your property through an agent. On that note we are not real estate agents and we charge you no commissions or fees of any kind so you don't have to worry about any deductions at closing. We would be interested in taking possession of the property on or before [Possession Date] and we can begin marketing it to our tenant/buyers immediately. I look forward to meeting you at your property to confirm that it's exactly what we're looking for and to get our agreement finalized. If you would like to arrange a time that's convenient for you or even if you just have a question or two about our offer please get in touch with me: Doug @ 519-572-3585 Sincerely, Doug Pretorius & Associates

It truly is stunning how quickly these threads veer off into the gutter! One minute Steve is thanking everyone for helping him launch his investment career, and the next people are getting their fat folds fondled (say that 10 times fast)

Just thought I'd add. From my understanding of his website, Joe McCall is promoting cooperative assignments by another name 'lease option wholesaling'. He also advocates the 'option to lease option' method so that you are assigning your contract with the buyer back to the seller. I remember Adam King doing something like that, not sure why. It always seemed like an unnecessary complication to me, but hey, whatever works.

Can't argue with you, Steve. I have definitely come around with the whole email marketing thing. I just wish there were more sellers doing it in my area. I couldn't possibly do even 1 deal a month from just emailing.

Speaking of retirement and cleavage, MC, is it true that you're promoting your mentor program with a free graduation lap dance from one of the ol' gals in your community?

Eeeewwwww! Why did you have to ruin it for me, MC? Why? WHY?!?

Wooooow....look at that froth!

Now you see why I'm setting up a telemarketing sweatshop in my basement. You'd be amazed how hard some sellers find it to say no to 5 year olds. There are some realtors around here that have already perfected the system. They have sellers running all the ads, doing all the showings, writing up the contracts, and sending the agent their cut. And they even recommend these agents as the greatest thing ever to their friends: "I only had to pay this guy $1,500 for me to sell my own house, what a steal!" I get a lot of sympathy deals... Either that or they jump on it because they think I'm adding zeros to their asking price.

John, to get those 100 seller calls you would have sent out somewhere around 10k brochures though, right? I'm doing the sorting by phone instead of by mail. So our numbers are about the same.

lomax, what do your conversion ratios look like? i.e. how many calls/emails do you send to get how many positive replies to put out how many offers to get how many accepted? You need to know what those ratios are so that you can track the effect of changes to your prospecting or marketing. I've been a bit negligent in my record-keeping lately but over the years I've averaged about 1 contract for every 100 contacts, and it breaks down something like this: 100 calls/emails --> 30 'yeses' to rent to own --> 5-10 offers --> 1 signed deal. The reason there's a drop of 20-25 from the "yes I'll rent to own" category is because of a few things, one of those being that they don't want an investor involved. It's not that saying "I'm an investor" is going to make it OK with them. It's a qualifier. It's a way of eliminating those who wont' work with you so you don't waste your time.

MC, I'm guessing lomax signed up 2 properties owned by the same person. lomax, if you're running into the: "Whaddya mean ya ain't gonna live here urselves?" objection, I feel your pain. That has long been the bane of my real estate existence. As I have discovered this is ridiculously easy to dispatch with a simple upfront: "I'm an investor." There you go...if they're still talking to you after you say that, you won't have ANY issues with subletting or assigning or doing a naked chicken dance in their livingroom at 3am (OK maybe not that last part).

Ahh MC to the rescue. I never would have expected someone to take this whole Naked Investor thing so literally.

You'll have to update this to 2011 technology but here goes:1. All calls go to a voicemail describing the property and terms. 2. Message directs them to drive by the property and pick up an application. 3. Application gets faxed to you. 4. You then call the approved applicants and give them the lockbox number so they can go show the property to themselves. 5. Finally they come to you with the move in funds, sign the contract and get the keys. Is that the same guy from Ottawa or some such that MC told me about?

Don't mean to be mean but, John, if you plan on starring on those sites I don't think you're going to get much traffic (where's a barfing smiley when you need one?) Clearly you never read about Joe Kaiser's Bingo, Bango, Bongo Tenant Acquisition System it's pretty slick. I can give you a summary if you like...

I just signed up for this so I haven't had much time to play around with it but it looks promising. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps you keep all of your contacts (sellers, tenant/buyers, investors etc.) organized and helps you coordinate your follow ups and that sort of thing. KarmaCRM has a forever free plan for 2 users (so you can have your VA add new contacts) unfortunately it's only good for up to 300 contacts, still that's not a bad start and upgrading to 5,000 contacts is only $19/month. It also integrates with MailChimp and Constant Contact for your mailing list needs.

I totally understand your reasoning, MC, and agree with it in principle...keep things simple. But what ended up happening, and maybe this is just some weird anomaly in my area, is many sellers would say: "From what I understand about rent to own is that part of the rent goes toward buying the house. But you haven't mentioned anything about that...what's the catch?" Yeah I'm NOT kidding, some folks thought I was trying to pull a fast one because I wasn't asking for a rent credit! This happened enough times that I decided to make rent credits a standard feature, but one that I would be willing to negotiate away if they're totally against it. So far so good.

That would probably be my next step. Although I haven't had much success with the 'find a house you like and I'll negotiate it' angle in the past. Another possibility might be to advertise to landlords that I've got tenants who are willing to sign a long-term lease if they'd consider selling. Even if I pick up a small referral fee it might be worth an email or phone call or two. Yup the socialists are here too. I think they're mostly busy getting naked in make-shift igloos in the parks chanting something about being taken for all they're worth at some seminar held by a 'Mike' and 'John' down in Texas...you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? I could have sworn there were one or two Brazilian bikini models in the crowd...

Just wanted to share this. Unless the seller has no equity...don't be afraid to ask for rent credits. After you've negotiated the lowest rent you can, go ahead and ask for rent credits too, it can't hurt. I've done this in my last 4 negotiations and had no problem getting 25% of the rent toward the purchase price.

OK...so that was a complete waste of time. All of their replies were along the lines of: "We don't do that", "My clients need an outright sale", "I'm a socialist humanitarian realtor, I don't want to make any money, unless it comes from a government hand-out". Not exactly unexpected, but hey, I had to give it a try I've got 20 families begging me to find them a rent to own home in that city.

Occasionally I have the opportunity to sign up a deal where I have no ready t/bs and I'd rather not try to market it from scratch. I'm just curious if anyone here has tried assigning a lease option deal to another investor? Any issues?

Aha I knew there was an old thread about MailChimp not allowing real estate-related emailing...anyway, thought I'd mention that it looks like they've dropped that restriction. I don't see real estate or investing mentioned anywhere in their TOS now. They do mention credit repair and mortgages and/or loans, but that's it. As a bonus they've also upped their free service to 2,000 subscribers, with a max of 12,000 emails per month.

It just hit me that you said she's doing the showing and marketing of your properties. So she's not just showing it to your t/bs, she's finding the t/bs for you too. Sweet!

Nice one Tim. Now if we could just get an agent to call the sellers and sign up the deals for us too...

I can't believe I still have this! Here's the ad I ran on kijiji in the marketing/sales jobs section. In my area kijiji doesn't charge anything for these ads. As you can see I was looking for someone to qualify sellers for me. I got quite a few replies and ended up with 1 couple who did make some calls but nothing worked out so they gave up This could easily be tweaked for whatever job you're looking to fill. Hot Real Estate Company Needs YOU! Here's your chance to work for the hottest real estate investment company in the area! HomesEveryday.com specializes in buying residential property. We help sellers who need to move quickly and we help buyers get into the home of their dreams. Job Description: LEAD QUALIFIER. Your job will be to call potential home sellers and, by asking them a short series of qualifying questions, determine their level of interest in our services. No "selling" or sales experience required. No real estate experience required. You can work from home and set your own hours between 8am and 9pm any day of the week. Requirements: * Clear and easily understood voice. * Telephone and internet access. * Self-starter, organized, energetic, and responsible. Compensation: $500 for each and every deal you bring in.