Hi, just curious if anyone has ever struck out as badly as I have on my first two mailings?! lol I mailed 933 postcards in two adjacent counties. I got one phone call the first morning my first mailer hit and then zilch since. I got one phone call on my 2nd mailer and they didn’t leave a message (I have a vm directing them to my website or asking them to leave name/# for a call back). Overall I’ve received only 7 return to sender so it doesn’t seem like I screwed up the mail and I used Seth’s postcard template and only adjusted some of the language so I don’t think it should have been a total dud. Are some counties just completely comatose? One of the counties was basically the best-rated county (by Jaren’s metrics using Fed Data and Best Places) I could afford in my state and has a university, interstate, and a couple decent size towns. The adjacent county was more of a lark (not much pop. growth), but has some tourism draw. Each mailer was split roughly 50/50 between the two counties. Obviously I’m going to move onto another part of the state, but just curious is this is typical for a county to be totally dead? I know direct mail is pretty low response, but even around 1% would be 9-10 calls.
I did make 2 changes between the two mailers, for the first I only mailed out-of-county addresses and for the second only in-county. I also changed the parcel size, on the first mailer the more expensive county was 2-40 ac and the cheaper one 6-60. On the 2nd mailer I just did 5-15 ac.
@maxhouseholder I hear you! Newbie too here, I just identified my “final” 3-4 Counties from where i 'll pick the one to hit and started today my 72 hours trial on DataTree…so that could be me in 10 days and I recognize that my post won’t help a lot.
You can still get responses in the next days or weeks and sure it would have been nice to have more responses just now but, also, it may be the case that 2 Campaigns are not enough to make any assessment, especially if we’re talking about less than 1000 mailers splitted in 2 Counties (as I understand). And did you give a look to the market in those Counties during your search, like sold, active listings, views, saved, days on market., other than the demographic search explained by Jaren?
@arturo The market activity was quite weak compared to Florida, AZ, etc. from Jaren’s examples, however compared to other counties in my state it was about average (still low though). There are maybe a half-dozen counties with all the action in my state, but the average price per acre kind of priced me out from being able to afford more than very small subdivision parcels, maybe 1-2 ac. at a time. I want to target homestead type properties, so at least 3-5 ac. or more and outside of municipal restrictions. So it’s possible I was just not being realistic thinking I could find larger parcels up to 40 ac. willing to sell for well below market. As I analyze more I’m thinking I will try the unincorporated areas in the hotter counties and just stick to smaller size. There is also a group of counties my gut sense and desktop analysis says would be good to mail, but Jaren’s demographic/economic analysis says they’re iffy at best. However, I follow LandFlip, LandWatch, etc. and most of the listings are from these counties so …?
@maxhouseholder, With respect to deals sourced via mailers, I have found my response rate is considerably lower this year.
I have…
begun to use Prycd.com as my primary source of data (via their DataTree api), comps and pricing (with a self check and occasional tweak on the PRYCD comps & pricing - so I “own” the offer prices)
targeted parcels from 5 to 40 acres
sent 12,800 single page blind-offer letters, to eight counties in 13 weeks
Priced at 30 to 35% of market price (per the comps from PRYCD and my self-check)
Got 4 deal with a realized or anticipated (2 not sold actively interest) net profit of $5k, $10k, $20k and $30k - I am buying at about 30 to 35% of what I believe is market and selling at about 70 to 75% of what I believe is market. I’ve used a real estate agent on the sale side for 2 of those four.
Passed on two counter offer responses that would have been “okay” deals and likely netted $10 to $15k each (fairly certain I would not have lost money on them) but I didn’t think I would doubled my money. Had two more counter offers that weren’t unreasonable (more like 70 to 80% of market) that I passed on.
And lots of hate mail / PatLive hate calls
So, lots in this to be disappointed about - I would love to be in the 1 deal per thousand range but it is just not happening for me right now.
But even in the 1+ deal per three thousand pieces of mail sent ballpark, I am making money. My overhead runs between $1 and $2k per month, my mailing (including data, printing & postage) has cost about $0.55 / piece or about $7k. That math is +[$5+$10+$20+$30 mailer deal profit ] less [-$8 (i.e. 2x4mos overhead) - $7 mailer cost = $50k. And, admittedly that $1-2k overhead per month is covering cost of sourcing deals other ways (direct calling, pre-tax sale deed snatching, leads site(s), referrals, etc.]
All this to say, hang in there! This isn’t get rich quick (it’s a long game) and while it is a fairly simple business, it still takes time and work.