Every real estate agent has used some form of real estate postcard marketing over the span of their career. Yet many of these agents waste thousands of dollars a year because they don’t make smart decisions about who to send their real estate mailings to and what the mailings should contain. As an agent for the past decade wealth management , I have made a fantastic living by using real estate mailings to generate expired real estate listings. This article will explain how i do it and how you can use real estate postcard marketing to beat your competition and dominate your local market. The best part is, if you use these steps, you’ll save thousands of dollars every year on your mailings and sell more houses than you ever have!
The biggest mistake agents make when starting a marketing campaign is to make their address list far too big. The common thinking among agents is that the more people they mail to, the more business they will receive. While this may be true, few agents know how to mail to a much smaller list and still generate the same amount of business. Over the years, I have steadily reduced my mailing list size while dramatically increasing my revenue. Here are the tricks I use: Just because there are real estate investment strategies, such as flipping homes, that can be implemented quickly (60-90 days), that doesn’t mean that it is easy to find deals, negotiate them and close them in the first month or two after you start your real estate investing career. In my experience, most people need to take a little time to become familiar with the real estate markets in their area, real estate terminology and strategies, and then get started implementing so they can practice finding and negotiating with motivated sellers.
Even with a good deal closed, you might only walk away with $5, 000 or so from a flip. With a subject to or lease option deal, the property may take years to “ripen” in your portfolio before you are able to sell it for a significant profit. The biggest money I’ve seen people make quickly is coming from rehabs and short sale negotiations. Pursuing these types of deals can verge onto a full time job. They do work, and work quickly, but they take a lot of time to implement.
So many times, I have heard students come on coaching calls with me and say, “I just lost my job, so i am really motivated to make this work quickly. ” or “My goal is to flip one house a month every month because I need some cash for start up capital. ” These sentiments are probably being perpetuated by the gurus out there who encourage people to think that real estate investing is a no-capital-required business. Even after you get the formula down, it can take years before a paper-profit becomes cash-in-hand if you own rental property or do lease/options.
The exception proves the rule and I’m sure it’s true that some people during some periods of time are able to make “thousands” quickly, when they need it most. For example, I know folks who get a lot of free deals off of craigslist or calling through the newspaper. However, for the vast majority of real estate investors, some money is required for marketing to find motivated sellers if they want to keep their deal pipeline reasonably full. In addition to marketing to find motivated sellers, deals take money for due diligence, legal fees, inspections, and so forth. If you plan to hold property as a landlord, the costs escalate even more steeply. If i had to put my finger on one major reason for lack of success in this business, besides false expectations, I would list lack of funding right at the top.
There’s a cliche in the real estate guru field that speakers like to joke about. It’s that a lot of students like to say, “Your strategies won’t work where I live. ” Guru’s play it off as a joke, like the person is making an excuse for not getting started in their investing, because they “can’t. “The truth of the matter is, there is a Lot of variation in the performance of real estate markets across the country. In some areas, like the South and Midwest, property values are relatively stable and properties cash flow well. In other areas, Southern California, Florida, and Las vegas come to mind, property values fluctuate wildly and you can make a fortune or lose your shirt on the changing tides of appreciation.
It’s very important to understand real estate market cycles and where your market fits within the current phase of the market. You implement to take strategies that work in your marketplace if you want to be successful locally. Otherwise, you need to do what I’ve done and learn to invest where it makes sense, without being constrained feeling a need to invest where you live. There are pros and cons to each strategy. However, my point is that it’s not right for the gurus to mock people who raise this objection. It’s a valid concern raised by thinking investors, even if it doesn’t help sell the guru’s real estate investing courses.