Today I was quoted in an article published on AOL Real Estate…check it out:

Tempted to Invest in Real Estate? Read This First

Always nice to know that others care what you have to say…

It’s not too surprising…with it being under contract for nearly 6 weeks the first time, the listing has now been active for about two months, which means a lot of buyers aren’t really noticing it (many buyers like to see what’s new on the market, thinking that the stuff that’s been sitting isn’t very good). Additionally, the original offer was for full-price, which was higher than we had ever expected to sell it for. Apparently, we had gotten cocky and thought that we could get another offer at that list price, but we should have known it was unlikely.

So, towards the end of last week, my wife did some serious marketing on the property. She upgraded the staging with some nicer furniture, created a marketing flyer for agents (view here), put together a virtual tour (watch here), and sent an email to about 200 agents that we’ve worked with and shown houses to in the past. Additionally, we offered those agents a $500 bonus if they could bring us an offer quickly.

Over the past four days, we’ve had about a dozen showings (including a couple scheduled for today and tomorrow). Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten any offers yet from those showings, but that is good information. If we get a dozen showings this week with no offers, it most likely means our list price is too high, and will give us further incentive to drop the price again. Even with another price drop, we’ll still likely do well with this house, but not selling it before the tax credit expires next month could severely hurt our chances of getting it sold soon.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress of this one…hopefully we’ll get an offer this week…

Well, we just finalized our new “For Sale” signs as well, and they’ll be heading to the printer later this week. For those who are interested, here’s the final result:

After selecting a winner, we received the card and sign designs, and did a small bit of modification to suit our specific tastes. While the final marketing signs haven’t been created, we just ordered our new business cards.

Here’s mine:

We’re about three-and-a-half days into the contest (halfway through), and as-expected, the designs look great so far.

Check them out:

Lish Properties Biz Cards & Signs Contest

I have a feeling it’s going to be more difficult to pick a winner in this contest than it was in the last one.

And of course, any feedback is greatly appreciated…leave me comments!

After much discussion, debate and feedback from others (thanks everyone!), we finally picked a winner:

We’re not yet sure of the color we’ll go with (we’re considering blue, red or green, as well as the original brown), but we love the mark and the font treatment.

There were so many that we liked, and while we have been able to narrow the 150 entries down to our Top 10 favorites, we now have the daunting task of choosing a winner. I have a feeling my wife and I aren’t going to agree, so we’re soliciting input from family, friends, business associates, and anyone else that might be interested in helping us pick a final winner.

Here are the final 10 entries that we have to choose from (along with the 140+ entries that we’ve already eliminated):

Lish Properties Logo Design Contest

Please feel free to leave me comments with you thoughts on which one we should choose. We’re going to make a final decision by Wednesday, after which we’ll start incorporating the new logo into our marketing materials…

Thanks for any suggestions you might have!

Most calls were from my signs, and many of the callers weren’t clear on the fact that this property should be geared towards an investor who would be able to afford and handle the repairs; in fact, I had more than one person who said, “I’ve been looking for a house I can move into in this price range!” Well, sorry to inform them, but there are no move-in-ready houses in this price range anywhere around here — but I guess people are a bit more optimistic than I had planned for. From now on, I will be a bit more clear in my marketing that the property is geared specifically towards investors and perhaps note that it is a “fixer-upper.”

Regardless, I did get a few calls from serious investors, and a couple of them will be viewing the property over the next couple days. I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to move it for the price I’m asking, but I’ll keep trying.

And, while we were supposed to close on this one tomorrow, not-surprisingly, I got an amendment today from the bank asking that we push the closing to “no later than February 18.” Not a big deal, as it gives me a couple more weeks to find a buyer (or to buy some plywood to board this baby up for the next couple years while I wait for the market to bounce back).

To wholesale, I need to do a lot of marketing. I started by creating a flier. I next linked that flier to my website. And then I placed ads on every major real estate website I could think of, including Craigslist, Backpage.com, RehabAHouse.com, StevesHotList.com, and others. Then I sent email to each of the buyer’s that signed up for my Buyer’s List. Lastly, my wife made 20 signs that my brother has started placing around the city.

Not sure if I’ll get any response to this first wave of marketing, but I figure it’s a start, and I’m curious to see what happens…

That said, I want to start posting ads on some real estate websites, and start putting out signs to market this property to other investors, and it would be very nice to have a list of investors in the area that I could contact directly. The first step to accomplishing building this list was to create a web-based sign-up form so that investors could submit their info to me. Of course, to do that, I needed some sort of reasonable web presence for my business (a random web-page with a sign-up sheet isn’t going to garner much trust).

So, I quickly rebuilt my Lish Properties website from scratch…

Next, I created a web-based form that other investors could fill out and submit to me…

And lastly, I put an ad on Craigslist looking for other investors who might be interested in getting included on my mailing list…

Within about 12 hours, I had 74 people click through to my site, and 8 people sign up for my “Buyer’s List.” Apparently I need to do some optimization to get people to sign up once they get to the sign-up page, but I’m guessing a lot of people were more interested in seeing actual properties for sale than they were to get added to a mailing list. Point noted, and I’ll use that to hopefully improve my sign-up rate. Additionally, I’ll use other marketing tools to drive traffic to this sign-up page, and hopefully build a much larger list.

Tomorrow — once I actually get access to the duplex, as no-one seems to know the lockbox code — my brother and I will start putting up signs advertising the duplex deal, and if I can find a buyer in the next week or two that will allow me my desired profit, I’ll make a quick sale. If I can’t find a buyer at my asking price, I’ll likely board the place up, throw it on the MLS, stick a “For Sale” sign out front, and wait. At some point, either a buyer will come along or the market will improve and I’ll figure out another exit strategy. It may take a year or two or five, but for $22K in this town, I’m sure I’ll make a good profit on this property at some point.