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Tips To Posting Deals
Our topic is something that I wanted to talk about where I see people making a lot of errors online. I know everybody is out there making offers on assets. They’re getting stuff in, they’re getting counters back or they’re sending stuff out to get a number back on stuff. They’re looking to raise capital because they may not have enough funds themselves or have enough private investors to make something happen. What I want to talk about are the errors I see people making when they’re posting on Facebook or other places looking for capital partners.
First and foremost, take a little time and work through the deal. Work through the numbers. Make sure the numbers work before you throw something up online. I see people throw some stuff up online and the numbers don’t make any sense. They don’t have the right values. The return on investment is different than the IRR or the interest rate. Somebody posted that the return on investment with a 9% return on investment. That doesn’t make any sense if you’re looking for a joint venture partner when it should’ve been seventeen points. They didn’t have the math right.
Don’t Throw A Map Up Of Assets
Let’s first start with some basics before I go down that path on this episode. First and foremost, if you’re going to post a flyer or make a posting on some social media, make sure you’ve got something that’s going to literally draw people in. Don’t throw a map up of the assets if you’re on four or five. I love that people post they have been making offers on twenty assets or making an offer on 40 and here’s a map. That’s great, but when it comes down to literally talking about the individual deals that you’re working on, a map is ineffective. It’s more theory than it is a nugget of stuff. If you want to deal with investors or raise capital from people, you’ve got to have something solid for them to look at, not theory. Have something solid that they can look at, real numbers, real assets or real addresses.
Quit with the maps when you’re looking for funding on a deal or two and start putting photos of the property up. Take that little extra 5% we talk about, the little extra bit. Pull a street view from a property call. Call a realtor. Ask him to drive by the asset. If you can’t drive out, take a good photo of the property. A photo is better than a street view. A street view is better than a map. A map is better than nothing. What I would do is if you had five all across the area or three or four, take a second and take that map and post little street view photos of the asset. If you’ve got more than one asset you’re working through, take the time to create a different flier for each asset. That’s the first thing. It’s a good photo of the property. You don’t want to see Google Street Maps or stuff like old pictures. If it’s an old photo, you’re not going to be careful about it. What I mean by older is more than a year old. A street view photo is more than a year old.
Do yourself a favor. Don’t cut the house off where only the house shows. You want to have a little bit of sky. You want to have a little bit of yard. If you can show that the neighbor houses aren’t burned out, that’s okay too. Make it a desirable-looking photo. Screenshot it, adjust your street view map, wherever your little guy is that you’re toggling in for a street view of Google Maps. Take the second to do that. Look for other photos. Do a search for images on Google for the property. You’ll often find a previous listing. You’ll often find sometimes previous interior photos of the asset where it was listed for sale or rent at some point. That has helped us dramatically. You may find photos online if it’s a condo and other places. You may even want to jump over and use Bing. Bing often has some nicer-looking, updated photos. Take the time. Find some good photos. Pay a realtor $50 to go drive. It’s worth it to do it to make sure that adds the pop to it. If you could have more than one or two photos, inside photos or links to other things, that helps out dramatically.
Posting Deals: Take the time to find some good photos.
Check Taxes And Rates
Let’s also talk about what you want. You need to know taxes. Obviously checking taxes are paid or up to date. You need to know if it’s a performer or non-performer. What are the payment rates? I would jump on Rentometer and pull a rent rate. That’s important to do that. What you want to do before you post an asset, take the time to pull together a full deal scenario. Here are the rent rates. If you find out it’s a bankruptcy, take a second and jump on PACER and download the bankruptcy file, whether it’s Chapter 7 or Chapter 13. Take the time to download that so you can see if there’s a plan filed and what the payments could be. If the existing principal interest payment is $300 a month but the bankruptcy plan is $800, $500 or $200, there are some big differences in what they’re offering.
Keep The Flyers And PowerPoint Simple
Take the time and let’s keep it simple. If you put more different photos or different segments to the things, it gets confusing. You don’t want your flyer to be too busy. It’s confusing. I like a photo on a white sheet of paper, maybe your logo across the top. That’s about it. Maybe your contact information at the bottom. The fancier this thing is, the more difficult it can be over time. Put the details of the property and you don’t need to create an extra space. 300 square foot, 200 square foot, 1,200 square foot is perfect. You don’t even have three bedrooms, one bath and 200 square foot. Those are simple information pieces that you can put into one little line or two lines. Don’t make it four lines. Don’t fill space just because you need to fill space.
If you’re doing it on a PowerPoint slide, which a lot of people are using, there’s nothing wrong with it at all. PowerPoint slides are a great way to organize, especially if you’re doing a lunch and learn out to your database afterward, keep the font at least 30 points, five or six bullet points. It’s okay to have one or two slides as well. Talk about the existing amount. You may want to throw a total payoff in there. Last payment made is a good point for non-performing notes or contract for deeds. List it if it’s a contract for deed or a first lien, the last payment made, paid amount, and if they’ve made some payments in the last twelve months. Show that it’s owner-occupied, the power’s on. Those are all simple things that you would do. Anyway, you do your due diligence. You might as well provide that a little bit. The last payment made was four months ago, we think it’s our primary strategy to get it re-performing. If it doesn’t re-perform, we know we’re going to foreclose or deed in lieu of some sort of fashion.
The biggest thing is if the interest rate is at 9%, 8% or 7%, share that information. The details of that are not your ROI though. If you’re looking to reinstate, an easy thing to look at roughly will be twelve months P&I divided by a purchase price equals your high-end return on investment for expenses. Make sure you have your numbers accurate. If it’s going to foreclose, talk about foreclosure. It’s worth $50,000, it’s going to take us $4,000 to foreclose, and we’re going to sell it at $85,000. 80% of value leaves a little bit of cushion factor there for repairs or things. Got to pay taxes, taxes owed. If there’s back tax, you want to put that in there.
Keep it simple. Don’t be afraid to put a couple lines down. Keep the nice photo. You can always shrink the photo down a little bit or expand it as you need to. Have on other information. Rent rates, literally, I’ve taken screenshots of the Rentometer and thrown that in there on a page. If you’ve got comps going from a realtor, you could get that box literally if it’s on a PDF or print screen it to a PDF, save that so it shows comps days on market. That’s a powerful thing as well. Never ever say, “Guaranteed rate.” You may want to say an estimated return on investment. Don’t say, “Actual ROI.” Say, “Looking for funding partners, looking for help.” I would not say, “Looking for private investors.” Looking for funding partners is fine, but don’t say guaranteed. Don’t say safe. Those are things you’re never sure. You may want to put a disclosure in real estate at the bottom in fine print or a little dot. Those are some things that help with your flyers.
Posting Deals: Never ever say “guaranteed rate.”
I see people out there putting crappy photos or they put something that is too scrunched in. The property doesn’t look good. They can do a little bit extra 5% on your flyers. If you need to, have somebody look at it before you post it. A lot of people are posting stuff and nobody’s looking at it and there are blatant errors on the postings. Shoot me a message on Facebook, “Can you take a look at this, Scott, before I post it?” “Yes, I’m glad to.” Who wouldn’t be glad to help out? We can save a lot of timeline phase for people if they reach out and say, “Take a look at this for me or somebody else.”
A great website used to help you spice up or help you clean up is Canva. Canva.com is a great website that you can import things in. You can make the fonts look nice. It can help you adjust it. It can help you center the document or the wording. Make it look nice. Take a second or two. I know Laura has been doing this with some of her photos or images, importing in the photo of the property and fading it all the way back, so it’s a background image of the property. We’ve done that in the past and that’s worked out pretty well. It adds a little bit of spice to it. Just share the information on what’s going on in the asset. “This is a non-performer, we can pick it up at $25,000, payments are $485 a month. They’ve made three payments in the last six months. We think it’s going to be a re-performer,” and go from there.
Deals
It’s a great idea to take some sample flyers when you’re out networking, whether it’s to a networking event, a Meetup group, an expo. It’s a very good idea. That gives you a little extra-added credibility as you’re out talking with people, “I’ve got some deals. Here are some of the deals that we’re working on.” One of the things we’ve done in the past is as we’ve gone out and been a vendor or sponsored events, we had flyers with our executive summary on one side and nine pictures of assets we had closed on. That’s another example. Just closed, with the short numbers, worth $50,000 and picked it up at $12,000. Those are some of the things that would be really good to do if you’re doing multiple deals.
A lot of people, they’re not doing deals. They’re not pulling the trigger, which means you’ve got extra added value coming into a situation, coming into an event where you’re doing deals and you’ve got some sample deals that you’ve done. Here’s the type of deals that we’re doing. Here are a couple deals that we’re working on. Those are some things that are extremely helpful to you. Good photos, the clear information outlined on the asset and know your numbers. What’s the wow? Is it that you’re picking the asset up at 50% of value or you pick it up at 40% of value or that it’s a 25% potential ROI? That’s the thing you may want to put it in there. There’s no guaranteed ROI in this business because we know case studies can come and go or deals can have different twists and turns. Potential ROI is a safe thing. There’s no guarantee on return, but potential ROI on some things. Look at what are you offering. Why is it attractive? If it’s below a 20% return and you’re splitting ROI with somebody where they’re getting less than 10% return, that’s not a desirable deal. The better desirable deal would be to foreclose on the asset.
Is it occupied or vacant? How far behind are they? Those are critical keys when you’re looking at an asset. When I see stuff, I’m like, “Does that make sense? It doesn’t make sense.” If it doesn’t make sense, then don’t post it. Kill the deal and move on. Don’t do a skinny deal just to do a deal. I know some people get excited about wanting to pull a trigger before something happens or they have, as we call it, OTSC syndrome. What does that mean? “That’s so cute,” is what OTSC syndrome stands for. Don’t fall in love, “I’m going to do that because it’s such a cute little property or it’s awesome.” Don’t fall for that trick of OTSC syndrome. Work on the numbers, but make sure the numbers make sense.
Share something that’s excitable. If the numbers don’t excite you, it’s not going to excite somebody else. That’s one of the biggest keys I can tell you out there. When you’re posting or marketing, before you post a flyer but it’s not attractive to you, it’s not attractive to somebody else, “Pick up this asset. It’s below 50% of market value or it’s in Florida or it’s in a nice area.” Add a little bam to that, add a little spice to it. It goes a long way in helping you raise capital for things. We don’t want anybody to do something that’s going to shoot them in the foot. We want you to help. We’re always glad to help out. We always want you to succeed. We want you to save your face. I don’t want you to make mistakes that are going to shoot you in the foot. We want to help overcome those and help you get more deals closed, more funding in and more money in your pockets.
Posting Deals: If the numbers don’t excite you, then they’re not going to excite somebody else.
Here’s another little thing when it comes to flyers. There are two sides to the page. A lot of times the other side is one of the least utilized aspects up there. I know it’s harder to do that sometimes when you’re last-minute speaking or last-minute going to an event. If you go to an event, there are two sides to that page. If you’re going to print two different copies of different things, you might want to put them on front and back because FedEx office can do that for you. Print on one side and the other side. That way you’ve got less paper to carry in and you’ve got one flyer covering both things. Paper is heavy. If you’re dragging a box around of flyers, the last thing you want to do is a double flyer. If you can consolidate them into one page, it’s so much easier. It’s easy to put out on your page or literally hand to people out there.
If you’re going to put a flyer, make sure you have your contact information on the bottom somewhere or at the top, somewhere where they can get a hold of you. The last thing you want to do is give a flyer out and not have your contact information. Somebody went and did the trouble of mailing out mailers to IRA investors on some sample deals. They used the sample deals that we’ve provided in a workshop before and they didn’t remove my logo or my contact information. They went and send it out as is. I’m like, “Wow,” because the phone started ringing. People are getting the letters and they’re calling to invest with me, not with the person that mailed them out. Flyer the deal, executive summary, and a vendor list of people that are working with. Those are some sample things. That’s an easy thing. Flyer the deal a little. You can do a half-page executive summary and an image of some of your vendors below. That’s a cool little marketing piece. That’s going to be a very easy one-page, two-page front, and back that you carry with you to events.
If you’re going to be posting something on some social media, ask me to take a look at and make sure you’re not violating anything first. Make sure it’s clean. Make sure it’s not confusing. I know it’s easy to start getting into posting things. It looks fancy, there are all different colors on there, but sometimes if you end up having too much color, too many blocks, too much information gets smashed down, you probably need to remove it or consolidate some of it to make it cleaner. A confused mind is a mind that says no. If your graphics look horrible, if it’s pixelated, take the time. Come back, re-look at them, maybe recalibrate your pixels and recalibrate the photo so it looks clean. The last thing you want to do is send something out that looks like garbage.
Hopefully, this is helpful. If you have a flyer getting ready to post or a deal, feel free to email to Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. Email it to us. Send us a message on Facebook with it attached to me to take a look at it. We’ll try to get to it the earliest we can to help you. I know that many people are like, “I’ve got a flyer, I want to post it,” and you’re often quick on the draw to get it posted without looking at it. Trust me, the last thing you want to do is burn a bridge or post it and looks bad. We all make mistakes. I am not mistake-free. When we make mistakes and post it like, “There’s a spelling error. We forgot the address.” That happens, or our numbers get miscalculated. We’ve done that in a webinar too before. Don’t feel embarrassed about it. The best thing I can tell you is that you learn from your mistakes and you’ll learn more by making more mistakes. The fastest way to find success is the more mistakes you make, the faster you make them, the faster you correct them, and the more you learn from mistakes means the faster and closer you’ll be to success. Go out and make something happen. We look forward to seeing you all at the top.