Posted by wpage on October 13, 2003 at 09:39:12:
Stewart You are one smart guy. You may not have any deals under your belt but I can see that it will soon be coming. Smart thinking and a good post for all the newbies starting out. It just shows with a bit of smarts and a bit of work, things will happen. Keep doing exactly what you are doing and you will make a good RE investor in a very short period of time. Congratulations. wpage
what I did this weekend - Posted by Stewart
Posted by Stewart on October 12, 2003 at 23:13:04:
Well, I did a lot of things :)including eating at a new place called Krumbly’s, but that is something else.
No deals under my belt but have taken several steps. Lots of people post here about what they do first so I wanted to share this.
I spent the day Saturday visiting new communites with affordble homes. My critera was anything under $200k and did go down to about $120k, for new homes. Our newspaper has a magazine called Folio which has all the new communities advertised, soley for that purpose, and is great way to see what and where homes are being built. I went with my girlfriend and we went from community to community, six in all. I talked with the sales reps (sometimes they were re agents) and check out whatever models they had open. What I was also able to do was to practice one of my pitches, which was to introduce myself and my business, explain that I am interested in buying homes in this area for investment and asked them to allow me to give them one of my cards. I told them that should someone come along that was interested in their homes, but needed to sell a home they had now to please give me a call, or have them call me. All of them took the cards and a few were very accomondating. One even told me that the couple we passed as we were looking at one community was thinking about just that. They had a home there already (community was only about 1 year old) but wanted to buy a larger home in that same community in the next phase. She said I should go talk to them, but they had already left. Before I left, I left her with another card just in case but also told her of my offer of a referral fee. She also told me a couple of houses were already being rented and what they were renting for. Good info, a bonus. I also made a point of writing down the streets so I could do mailing to those living there now.
Also, at each community I made sure I went away with all the floor plans and pricing. Great for future reference. Found out about association fees, some options costs, when other phases were being built and price increases. Also one benefit was to see what was being built, as far as layouts and options of what people were buying.
Lastly, when talking with someone in the course of my current business Saturday, we talked about my rei business and when he got home he called me about a home that was vacant in his fairly new community. This person bought the model home in 1997 and the vacant home owner was really wanting to sell him home as he had another.
I could write more, but the purpose of this post was just to show some simple steps one could take, and easy ones at that. Go to new communities in you area, walk around the homes, talk to the reps and introduce yourself and ask if there are other investors here already. Get the floor plans, ask some questions about the homes and have some fun doing it. Dream while you are doing it and check out some larger homes for fun also.
Easy, no pain, good practice and you might discover some good farm areas.
My 2 cents 