Blog Move! Please change your RSS feeds :-)

As I’ve learned more and more about the power of WordPress, I have decided to move my blog from WordPress.com to my webhost (HostGator…they are great!).

By making this move I will be able to take advantage of all of the great WordPress plug-ins out there and also have more control and flexibility with my blog.

For those who already come to this site using www.goodfaithinvesting.com, no need to change anything. You can keep that URL bookmarked.

However, for those who either come to the site using goodfaithinvesting.wordpress.com OR have a RSS feed, you’ll need to update your subscription to www.goodfaithinvesting.com. No additional updates will be made to this WordPress hosted blog.

For those who are considering making the switch for your own blog…transferring was fairly painless.  The images moved over perfectly and the only thing that took time was organizing my posts better with the tags and categories.  If you have questions about this, let me know and perhaps I can help.

At some point I’ll change the design to a better looking template but for now I just wanted to get it moved. Thanks!

Tonight’s seller lead calls

So I just finished a round of follow up calls to sellers who left information on my voicemail.  Mixed results as one would expect.  All were pretty friendly, but one was actually funny.  They have a property in Pembroke Pines that they are looking to sell…they were unable to sell it in 2007 when they had to move to Orlando and they’ve had a renter in it for the past couple years.  The husband wanted to sell but said “You know, people want you to give their house for nothing. I’m not willing to do that.”  I said I understood and asked him how much he wanted (note that recent comps range from $118-160K and they owe ~$70K).  He told me  probably $270K but that I needed to call his wife in an hour when she got back from work. So I called back and she says she doesn’t know exactly how much she wants and asks me what the recent sales have been in the area. When I tell her she was shocked.  She said she will hold onto it until she can get at least $290K.  I told her thank you and good night. LOL!  Some folks down here haven’t come to the realization that the market is NOT the same…it was a bubble…and it has popped.

Ok, so there was one promising call.  A woman who has no mortgage on the home because it was inherited from her mother when she died 3 years ago.  She lives in South Florida but she has no interest in being landlord and says maintaining her own house is enough.  She has tenants in the property (family members) and says that they’d love to stay there but also know that they may have to leave when she sells the house.  They have no lease…they just pay her monthly informally.  Anyway, I’m going to work the numbers, discuss/strategize with my mentor, and give her a call back on Monday.

The calls can go long if you don’t keep them under control. People loooove to talk.  But I tried to keep all calls 10 minutes or less. The longest call was with the promising property mentioned above.

This should NOT be you!

Here’s a quick tip:

When talking to a seller on the phone you really want to be enthusiastic and engaging (ask lots of questions, be agreeable, and listen actively).  What really helps you do this is walking around while you’re talking.  I found that when I was sitting down with my seller lead sheet I had little energy and too many distractions on the computer screen.  But when I stood up, walked around, gestured, etc. I had a lot more energy and the conversations flowed much more smoothly.

I will make the remaining phone calls tomorrow morning and then no more business for the day because my hubby & I will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary – yeah!  Happy Anniversary boo!

Phone a ringin’ and buyer leads a comin’…and accountability

I love days like today…don’t you love days when you can start to see fruit from your labor?  That’s what today has been for me.

I have a few hot buyer leads that came through in the past few days (thanks Craiglist!) and I have 10+ voicemails sitting in my email box that I haven’t listened to yet that are calling from my absentee owner postcard mailing.  I always look to see the size of the sound file so I know whether its a hang up or a message…most of the files are big so that means people left messages – yeah!  I figured I better write my blog post before I get busy taking notes from the phone calls.  I have all calls going directly to voicemail and they listen to a relatively long message from me and are encouraged to leave some details (name, phone #, address for property, and any other details they wish to share).  I look forward to talking to the sellers.  It’s not so bad when they are responding to you vs. you cold calling them!

I also have a possible deal in the works with one of my buyers…it will be awesome if (when – positive thinking) it works out   I’m feeling like a wholesale deal is right around the corner for me.  I can see it.

On a completely unrelated note, I spent a few minutes checking out my blog stats and found a few interesting things:

The top search keywords that lead people to this blog are all about accountability:  accountability, accountability pictures, accountability images, picture of accountability, accountability partner, and accountability photos.

I thought that was really interesting!  Well, I’m glad people are finding me from such positive words!

Just for fun, here is a sampling of some of the other interesting search keywords: faith adventures, faith investing…and my favorites…people drowning with money around them (huh?) and bad piggy bank (LOL!).

Ok its going to be a late night (again) so I better hop to it.  More to come!  Send lots of positive vibes my way please, ok?

Back to business!

Well I’m back from my Atlanta vacation and back to the grind!  I have a lot of plans for the week:

• customize our new website to attract private money lenders and get the game plan for private money hunt together with my hubby (this conversation is like 3 weeks overdue now…unreal)
• find deals to present to our 2 active buyers (we have a new buyer lead from NY who has plenty of cash and wants to buy multiple properties in South Florida this year – we got this lead from our neighbor who is a realtor)
• build our local buyer’s list via Facebook (goal is to have at least 25 in our group this week and at least 100 in the next 3 weeks…but I think we can blow that goal out of the water) and Twitter (this has been a little slower as I trying to focus on local real estate investors only and finding their profiles has been a manual process…if anyone has suggestions other than Twellow.com to find the local investors on Twitter, please let me know! Seems the Twitter auto marketing tools allow you to find either people with certain key words in their profile OR people in a certain location/zip code…I need something that will find people who are both)
• meet in person with an active local investor and set up next week’s meeting (part of my weekly networking goals)
• if I’m REALLY on point, I’ll get a couple articles done this week too.  Trying to do 3 a week, but I’ve been averaging 1 or 2.

Nothin’ to it but to do it, my friends!

By the way….I wanted to congratulate Steph Davis (whom I affectionately refer to as the REO wholesaling extraordinaire millionaire) on her blog re-launch.  It looks awesome and is complete with a new newsletter, videos, transactional funding (coming soon), and more.  You go girl!  If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check it out at flipthiswholesaler.net.   You’ll be as impressed as I am

Using Social Networking to Grow your Real Estate Investing Business

Happy Friday folks!

I’m off for a fun day with my daughters and nieces, but wanted to share my second featured guest article with all of you.   It provides 10 quick tips for how you can use social networking websites to grow your real estate investing business….for free!  I probably could have done 20 tips, but the article would be too long and complicated so 10 is a good start    Maybe I’ll do a part 2 at another time.

Anyway, hope you enjoy! You can check it out on Scott Costello’s StrugglingInvestor.com blog.