Learn To Be Rich

I got a call from a particularly feisty real estate investor late last week that I just have to share with all the real estate agents and brokers that work with us on the AnalyzedDeals.com network of Real Estate Resources websites.

This investor was asking me to recommend an agent to him to help him buy investment property. His attitude though was particularly interesting to me. He had basically said to me with the real estate market so tough why is it that real estate agents are not calling him back or showing him deals? He believed that since the number of transactions in many markets are way down (especially with the crazy financial markets the last couple weeks), that agents would be more than happy to help him buy property and yet they have not been helpful.

What he is referring to is that many agents do NOT call people back. Many agents, when they get an e-mail inquiry with a telephone number, actually e-mail the client back instead of calling. Many agents believe that the best way to sell houses is to set someone up on an e-mail to blast with the lastest listing from their MLS system.

How do I know this? Because I am an investor buyer too and I’ve had lots of agents do it to me. In fact, I sent out an e-mail to exactly 1,345 real estate agents and brokers telling them that I wanted to buy for my personal portfolio almost a month ago on September 11, 2008. Want to guess how many calls I received? A measly 11 calls from agents the day I sent the e-mail. Yes, that is 11 calls to me from contacting 1,345 agents.

So, I do understand the investor that was calling me (despite him being exceptionally feisty) and his frustration. I had a similar, but very different, experience earlier this year when I was considering selling one of a dozen investment properties that I had in a particular city. I used the web form on the websites of ONE agent in that city for EACH property I had (12 different agents in total) as if I was a seller. Do you want to know how many people actually contacted me back? One. And they called me, left a message. I called them back and they never returned my call.

So, are you going to be one the hundreds of agents that do not follow up with investors or are you going to be one of the very few that actually call investors back? It is up to you.

If you want to work with my investors, you can submit your deals and we will get them out to our investors and refer them to work with you… only if you’re committed to following up.

Until my next post,

James

Our main deal researcher for our real estate websites just requested payment for the week and I just paid her.

When I did that, I logged into her account to see what the page looked like for the deals she has been submitting and it was showing a relatively cluttered mess, so I just made some minor enhancements to researcher deals page.

If you login to your account on Analyzed Deals and select the Show Deals page, you will see a very similar page to the one above, except instead of showing you payment status, it will show you the last modified date and time.

Researchers, unlike real estate agents and brokers that receive commissions from sold houses, are paid a fee per deal they find and submit that we analyze and then send out to the investor group.

I like to use one or two researchers so that they can get a feel for what makes a deal and what is not a deal as we give them feedback. It is a very low paying–copy and paste data into our website job from various data sources.

If you want to see a video of me actually doing a deal, you can see that here:

The interface has changed a bit since we made the video (hopefully we’ve added things you’ll find useful as an agent/broker submitting deals) , but the video should give you a good idea of what our researchers do each week.

Until my next post,

James

One of the benefits of having well over 100 real estate deals cross your desk (or e-mail) each week is that I get to see some pretty interesting stuff.

Today is one of those days.

Tammy just came into my office and showed me what is essentially a free house. Now, don’t get me wrong… this may be in a pretty rough neighborhood… I don’t know and I am not from Cleveland so I could not tell you, but she just pointed out a house that is selling for $3,000, but they are willing to give you $2,500 toward closing costs AND $500 selling broker bonus. That’s what they are selling the house for!

In any event, I figured I would share that with you.

If you want to see our analysis of that deal, check out Cleveland Fixer Upper Deal Analyzed.

Until my next post,

James