No Matter How You Do It, Track Your Marketing

Category: Finance, Real Estate.

I ve been trying to put this together for a little while from my own experience, from others I ve talked to, and from the One- on- One students I ve worked with. I just put them down as I came across them.

They re in no particular order. Remember, these are my own opinion, so take them as such. 1) Not knowing your market, and how to market to it. For instance, in working with students from fast- selling markets like California, we ve found that bandit signs are effective. How you effectively market to your area depends on the type of market you re in, including how seasonal your market is. In slower markets like Denver, direct mail works very well also. In colder climates, direct mail works well in the wintertime when houses sell slowly, and bandit signs are more effective in the summer months. Additionally, think about your season.

However, summer is the, in Arizona slow time, and in the winter houses sell faster. 2) Not knowing if your marketing is effective, i. e. not tracking your marketing. If you have no idea how well or how badly a marketing campaign is working, how do you know where to spend most of your money? This is critical, and plays closely into number 1 above. No matter how you do it, track your marketing. Many students I talk to have a shotgun approach to marketing. Keep weekly statistics, and keep them over time. 3) Not writing out your marketing plan. They mail out 100 postcards to out of town owners this week, a couple hundred letters to foreclosures next week, and then put up a few bandit signs.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Then they get busy, and forget about the marketing they d planned. Okay, but it really, old tired cliche does hold true. Oh man, I ve NEVER done this, and had the tenant immediately stop paying rent, while renting out one of the rooms to a friend while collecting money from them which they never paid to me, and I had to evict them, and had a house vacant for two months and lost lots of money! @#($&Y% Okay, this was one of my bigger blunders, and I definitely learned my lesson. Write down your marketing plan, post it somewhere you can see it, and look at it daily so you know what you re supposed to do that day. 4) Allowing a tenant/ buyer to move in without an option deposit. Always, always get an, always option deposit on a lease/ option, or a security deposit on a rental. The reason I let the person above move in without an option deposit was she was a single mom, who had been through the mill, just getting back, abusive marriage on her feet, "I promise your kindness won t go unrewarded Mr.

Then if the tenant defaults at least you have something to cover the vacancy. 5) Being" nice" to tenant/ buyers. Landlord" , etc. Sometimes I work with tenants if they have a good track record, but only for a short while. I bought the sob story, and paid for it. In this business, we have to sometimes be more harsh than we want, but if you bend too much, it ll only make your life more difficult. This one s pretty understandable.

Itinerant tenants will suck all your money and time. 6) Being scared. This is new territory for most people. There s one way, and only one way, to overcome this. I ve talked to people who were high powered folks in their field, and are nervous talking to sellers or meeting with sellers for the first time. Just get out there and do it. 7) Not signing up deals because you re not sure how you re going to fill them, or they don t fit your strategy. My advice is just sign it up.

I talk to many students that because they don t know what to do with a property, or how to sign it up, just pass it by. If you do it wrong, there are lots of outs in the agreements, and you can always renegotiate with the sellers. Marketing hard one week, then doing nothing for two or three weeks is one example. If it doesn t fit your perfect strategy, flip it to someone who wants it. 8) Being inconsistent. Making one tenant pay on the 1st, and another on the 6th is another( and a possible legal liability) . So it s pretty difficult to have a routine to follow.

Real Estate investing is a very new thing for most people, and working for yourself is also pretty new. My advice is systematize your business as soon as possible so that you can hand over the mundane chores to someone else, and you can concentrate on what s important. Many students spend lots and lots of time analyzing their market, setting up their office just so, writing articles about mistakes they ve made, etc. Watch what you do each week, and try to consistently do those things which make you money. 9) Procrastinating. Another word for procrastination is- FEAR. I coach students to set aside enough cash to pay for two month s rent on every property.

Like I said earlier, the only way around fear is to just get out there and do it. 10) Not setting aside reserves for unexpected expenses. However, after you ve saved about 5 properties worth, you re probably okay. Either way, you need to have something in the bank because unexpected expenses definitely do happen- and if they don t, you ve saved for that trip to Thailand! 11) Not setting up third party notification for water& HOA bills. But you have to be the judge of how much you want to have in reserve. Boy, have I learned my lesson here. I used to let tenants pay their own HOA bills, and I didn t have any kind of notification set up that let me know when there were problems. The problem with water& HOA is the governing body can slap a lien on your house if the tenant isn t paying the bill.

Suddenly, I d get notification from the HOA s lawyers that there was a lien on the house. I now pay the HOA bills myself, and the tenants reimburse me. Same thing with the water bill. I still get the same rent, but add the HOA on top of it. Also remember if you don t use my rental agreement that you make sure the HOA fees can be added to the rent, and they can be evicted for non- payment. My thought is, they re the owners( or future owners) of the house, they get all the benefits of the HOA, so that should be separate from the rent, and paid by them. If you re using my forms, it s already in there.

The nice thing about water is, if it doesn t get paid, it gets shut off. Same thing with water, but I have the tenants pay. So the tenants generally have incentive to pay. If a tenant gets behind on this bill, make sure you keep checking with the water company, and make them pay it. But I still want to know if the bill isn t being paid. Set up third- party notification for the water bill, and monitor it.

One last one- Here s the biggest mistake of ANY I ve ever heard: Not pursuing your dreams! This certainly isn t all the mistakes I ve heard or made, but it s a good start. Whether it s through real estate, Day Trading stocks, or MLM, or that franchise, don t let fear stop you. Financial freedom is one of the first steps to the life you really want to live. Do whatever you have to live life in the juiciest, best way you possibly can.