Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Yesterday was my second Columbus day in America. It creates always a peculiar feeling being Italian and participating in a holiday where such a great number of people celebrate another Italian for having discovered such a great continent. I also have the intention of bringing something new and important in this country and therefore I have decided to set October the 12^th as a benchmark date for my activities in the future.

Yesterday it was indeed a very important one because I have brought to the next stage a relationship that I have been cultivating since February of this year and that has required lot of patience and nurturing to foster and to bring to its current strength, but that has tremendous potential for the future. They say that the bamboo tree takes 2, 3, 4 years to fully develop its roots: it only grows a few inches, but then it can shoot up 47 inches in just one day, and they develop to their full height (up to 250 feet) in just 3 months.

It all began with an event about Internet Marketing and how to build a joint venture here in Tampa. I had been in the US for approximately six months and I had already met several types of gurus and investors, but no real match for me.

Me and Mark on stage at his latest event in Atlanta, September 2009.

I had a clear idea on how my business was going to develop, but nobody I had found was patient enough to wait for it to unfold fully and to find common activities to share in the meantime. They all wanted the bamboo now, without waiting for it to grow. Everybody was kind of looking for business opportunities right here, for the low hanging fruit. No commitment, no depth of relationships.

The event was organized by Dan Stojadinovic another European from Serbia who has built a very strong presence in Internet Marketing and real estate investing. Dan always invites several speakers to his events and makes sure that they deliver solid content. He is also a very strong promoter of the idea of joint venture so I was sure that I was going to meet somebody special at this particular event, and I did.

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I am returning from Atlanta, it has been an intense three days at the bootcamp organized by Sam Bell and Mark Jackson about investing on bank owned properties. I have learned many things that will help me improve my performances and that have made me even more familiar with the American culture and its way of doing business. I have also been fortunate to contribute my own experience with the European culture and its very peculiar way of developing relationships. Even today, as was leaving the hotel, several people approached me thanking for my presentation. Always glad to help.

Mark jackson on the stage with his byke: he rode over 1700 miles in 3 months.

But today was Sunday and the opening morning speech was done by Mark himself who gave a very motivational insight on how life can be changed by just cleaning up the bad habits that you have inside yourself.

I find it quite amazing that it kind of plays right in the hand of my previous post (Kill The Victim That Is in You) that I had written just before entering the conference room. So I want to echo it and give Mark’s view of business and life, as he has been able to acquired from years of teaching and coaching people on the very things he was himself doing.

Francesco, Sam, Me, Dutch and Mark during the event in Atlanta.

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Only three months have passed since me and my partner Daniele Bogiatto from Italy held out first presentation on how to network with international investors in Atlanta. The presentation is part of a major event (bootcamp) organized by my friends Mark Jackson and Sam Bell 3^rd on the subject of real estate investing with bank owned property and that will take place at the Sheraton Gateway Atlanta Airport starting from tomorrow (Friday) and going all the way to Sunday.

The Sheraton Gateway - courtesy of http://www.starwoodhotels.com

The event includes all the information you will ever need to select, acquire and wholesale an REO (Real Estate Owned – which is just another name for repossessed house). My contribution is to bring the European networking style that allows you to build solid business relationships so that you don’t have to go and look for new customers every time, but you can have investors with whom you do repeated deals.

A section  of the presentation held in Atlanta at the previous event by me and my partner Daniele Bogiatto. Slow down in order to accomplish more in relationships.

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Bank owned properties can be bought for as little as 15% and then she wholesales them to other investors who rehab them and rent them for cash flow or sell them to retail buyers getting a nice profit themselves. In this type of activity it is crucial to buy low enough and that you check upfront how easy it will be to resell the property.

Working as a wholesaler includes selling more and more times to the same buyers and therefore one must make sure that he provides deal that make money also for the next investor stepping into the deal and that the second investor is able to get them sold fast enough.

The general rule is to NEVER offer more than 82% of the asking price, no matter how low it already is, and rather try to close deals that are in the 15 – to 25% range of current market value, if you plan to wholesale the deal, even to overseas buyers.

Sandra Negron has been operating so far on the Florida market, which is pretty rich of bank owned properties anyway, but now is ready to move also to other states using the system learned from Mark Jackson and Sam Bell on their Virtual REO course.

She is one of the top students of Mark and Sam and she has been invited to the special investing cruise to the Bahamas where she has refined her skills in virtual investing to the point of being able to locale properties and evaluate them directly on the ship and then make offers.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. This interview was done for the benefit of my Italian investors who will be using and following VREO. IF you want to know more about the system and its application to international sales, subscribe to this site!

Here we are with another of the top student of the Virtual REO program created by Mark Jackson and Sam Bell. She is from Texas and she has just left a cruise ship where, while sailing between Miami and Nassau in the Bahamas, she has learned how to select bank owned properties from the Web, how to make offers on them and how to automate her business once she will be back home.

She has been a part of a lot of mastermind groups and she says that this was exceptional. So much clarity on the thing that she has been learning that she is just ready to go and become the best REO investor in her area. It was the best ever experience for her.

Virtual REO is a method for locating the best bank owned properties on any market, to evaluate them a compared to their market and to make offers that will produce the lowest possible acquisition costs, while have the maximum upside potential in selling. The whole process can be done from a computer via the web and, as demonstrated in the cruise, anyone can perform the selection, the evaluation and even the first steps of negotiation while being on the sea, far from the location where the property is.

I am personally studying the system right now, so to make it available to Italian investors who want to operate in the US, and I find it very easy to understand also thanks to the availability of 16 video lessons that show every aspect of it in a simple and direct way. And Mark Jackson and Sam Bell are simply the best: very easy to deal with, very responsive, very, very competent in their field.

Roberto Mazzoni