The new vending location wanted Peanut M&Ms and Skittles. So I headed to BJs since I needed to get groceries anyway. They had the big bags of Skittles, but not the Peanut M&Ms. I had to buy a box of the big tear&share packs. It was more than double the price of a bag, and it sucked to have to open all those little packets at the new location. And it didn’t even fill up the canister! I need to go to the other BJs tonight. I also need to get a Sam’s club membership in case that happens again. I updated my books for the vending business last night, and noted that I’ve spent almost $500 already. I’m only going to buy two more stands and candy, then that’s it for my out-of-pocket investment. Every future investment will be from revenues only. Once I grow this to the point where I profit $2,000, then I’ll stop reinvesting and just enjoy the profits.

I decided to be a little slick with the REO offers today. I included “and/or assigns” on the contract to see if the agents would say anything. Nothing so far, but I think the banks may catch it in their counter offer. Though I have a feeling that one of them may miss it and accept the contract with that language on it. If so, it’s over for them.

Before I forget, I’m about to evict the tenant from the sub2 property. She didn’t pay her August rent, and she has ignored my calls. I just sent her a “pay or quit” letter. I sent it via regular and certified mail w/return receipt. I’m sure she’ll call me with some excuse about how she was working, or sick, or away on vacation, or her friend’s pet rock died, or whatever. I don’t care, I need to get her out of there and get a new paying tenant quick. As a matter of fact, I’m going to start advertising it tonight. I can’t wait to get rid of her.

Good news: I got two new listings in the pipeline, both from my Facebook friends. Between FB and CL, there’s really no reason why someone can’t make money in real estate these days. I also found an investor-friendly title company that will do back-to-back closings for my shortsale flips. So that is a huge plus for my investing business. Yay!

Bad news: The cash buyer that I thought I had for my shortsale flip has backed out. I kinda had the feeling when, even knowing that the property was being sold as is, he wanted me to provide a roof cert, heater cert, turn on all the utilities for “proper inspection”, “special cleaning” for the bathrooms,  and wanted a home warranty. Yeah right, not gonna happen. I crossed all that stuff out and sent the offer back to his agent, and it died today. I’m confident I’ll find a buyer soon. I will not be anxious

So that’s it for now. I have to get back to marketing from my new favorite toy (my netbook), so I can continue enjoying Food Network. I need ideas for my Girl’s Day at the Beach this weekend. Woohoo!

Bad news: I still haven’t found a buyer for my shortsale flip. I received an offer yesterday, but it’ from an FHA buyer. It’s  good offer, but I need to talk to the agent today to try to figure out a solution. I really need to get this closed like pronto.

Crazy news: I got an email from one of the conveyancer’s in my RE brokerage, saying that “due to a court order”, she and most of the other staff were being let go. This was a surprise to me, since, I was not aware of any legal action going on within the company. Reading that a court is ordering someone in my company to do something raises all the red flags. So I called her, and she says: Oh, didn’t you hear? The partnership is breaking up! (that was verbatim) WTF?!? Didn’t I hear? Like it’s community gossip or something. I’m getting a little nervous, and annoyed since I just received my business card order. When I told my best friend what happened, she said: that’s God pushing you to hurry up and get your broker license already. And she’s 100% right. I need to get off my ass already. Since I have a shiny new netbook I can take anywhere, I no longer have any excuse for not getting the online courses done. God help me.

January 2010: I started the year off with three businesses: real estate (agency/investing), mobile notary public services, and a designer fragrance online store. Then I added a fashion accessories biz.

July 2010: I’ve retired the designer fragrance and fashion accessories businesses. Real estate and vending and now my top priorities, with notary services running a close second.

I’ve gotten on the habit of a regular lead-generation plan for both my real estate and vending business. And now I get so many calls and emails, I don’t have time to return them all. The only time I have to return calls is during my lunchbreak (I still have a J-O-B), and when I get home from work after 5pm. I’d like to call people early in the morning, but I think 8:30am phone calls might be a bit too much. Then again, some might see me as a go-getter. I guess I’ll have to test that theory and see

For real estate, I’ve been marketing heavily to people facing foreclosure, and the response rate has been good. My recent batch of 78 letters yielded 10 phone calls. That’s a 12% response rate, much better than the supposed “average” response rate of 2%. I’m attributing that to the fact that I only use hand-addressed envelopes and stamps for postage. I know it takes longer, but I believe people open it because it looks like it’s coming from someone they know. All the other mailings I’ve done using labels or printed envelopes got me ZERO response. So I’m sticking with what works. The next step to this will be hiring an assistant to do it every week.

For the vending business, I’ve decided to focus on non-profit groups instead of for-profit locations. My hunch is that since they always need money anyway, they’ll like getting a monthly payout from the machine. I did a test by sending emails to some senior centers in my area. Out of 11 emails sent, two responded that they wanted a machine (that’s an 18% response rate, in case you’re wondering). I placed my first machine at a bar, which I’m due to service for the first time this coming week. It’s a double-head, which I’m going to break down to a single. After reading all the discussions on the Vendiscuss forum, I’ve decided to sell gumballs only. They’re the most profitable, and the easiest item to obtain. I’ll check my results after a month, and if it’s not where I want to be, then I’ll consider incorporating candy. My goal is build my passive business stream and keep it as simple as possible.

One thing I like about this process is that I keep coming to the same “realizations” over and over again. Stay consistent with lead generation, and always keep the goal in mind.

This is the second good lead from my letter campaign. Only 44 cents invested to make a few thousand dollars. I’m very excited.

Update on the other deals:

• I called again today to get status on docs for the sub2 I’m working on. They claim my authorization letter expired 90 days from the date it was signed by the borrower. I’ve been dealing with this servicer (Litton Loan Servicing) since April. I love it how they don’t tell you any of those details when you initally send the authorization letter. Now I have to add this to my checklist of initial contact with lenders: verify whether or not authorization expires, and if so, when. Bastards.
• The lender for the duplex shortsale (American Home Mortgage) claims that they received my authorization letter, but they didn’t “see” the borrower’s signature on it. Bullshit. So I have to fax it again. Bastards.

After speaking to a good friend of mine, I’m going to give this landlording business a chance. It is passive income after all, and I don’t really want to give that up. I feel I have a good tenant, so as long as the property is decent, I should be okay. I think my rant yesterday was a result of momentary insanity caused by frustration. So let’s see.

On the vending business front, I’m in the process of signing up with a charity, and then I’m going to hire a locating service to place the machine so I don’t have to pay a commission every month. The service charges only $31 and they offer a money back guarantee with results within a week of ordering. They’ll even relocate for free if I get kicked out within 90 days for any reason.

On the perfume business front, I’m closing my Paypal account. They have instituted a new “policy” where they can hold your funds for whatever amount of time they please. The letter states that it is not because I did anything wrong, but because they want to implement a new policy to “protect” me. I received this information after receiving a new order for almost $100 from a new client through the iOffer.com store. So guess what? I told them, with a selection of choice words, that I don’t need to use their service anymore. So I instructed them to refund the transaction to the buyer and close my account. In the meantime, the buyer paid me via Google Checkout (with NO problems whatsoever, of course), and I’ll be processing the order today. It’s so nice to have a choice with payment processors.

During my Memphis trip, I got the brilliant idea of starting a newsstand business at Greyhound bus stations. Well, they’ve shut me down. I contacted the person in charge, several times, and Greyhound just isn’t interested in having ANY vendors at their bus stations. So while it seemed promising, I’m not going to press the issue. Maybe they’ll change their minds in the future. In the meantime, I need to get crackin’ on other businesses, which leads me to…

I am finally starting a vending business! About two years ago, I’d read an ebook on how to startup a vending business, it had good information on pitfalls to watch out for, how to shop for machines,  etc. But I never followed up.  Then I started looking at starting an ATM business, but that requires way too much capital (more than what I have anyway), and there’s a safety issue with transporting large sums of cash by myself (a big NO-NO). Now that I’m serious about developing a passive income stream, I decided to get on the ball. I reread the book, and decided to start a bulk candy vending business. I found a NEW double-head candy machine on craigslist for $100, but I was able to talk to the seller down to $70. The machine still had the plastic wraps on it. This machine typically sells for about $200 brand new. He’d purchased it almost seven years ago to start a business himself, but never did. I tested the machine with quarters to make sure it worked, and loaded that baby into my car. Now I just need to buy candy at BJs and place it at a location. I made a post on Facebook asking my friends if they or anyone they knew wanted a machine at their place of business, and one of my real estate clients responded that her dad needs one in his detail shop. So I’ll call her today to make the arrangements. I want to have it placed by this weekend. Here’s the pic of the candy machine taken with my Blackberry:

I have two other shortsale deals that are progressing. The big one looks like it may close in the next month or so. The other one (a duplex), is just starting, and I hope to close on that by August.

I’m also going to change real estate brokerages again. This will (hopefully) be my last switch before I finally get my broker’s license. I’m taking one of my broker licensing courses online right now, with about seven classes to go. I’m sooo ready to be a broker already. There’s nothing like having total control over your money.

That’s all the updates I have for now.

Speaking of sub2, I’m going to try being a landlord to see how I like it. While I like investing and being an agent, I still need a source of passive income. And while I try my best to close every deal, I know that I won’t close them all. Being a landlord seems to be the easiest passive income stream to get into right now, so I’m going to try it. I already have a tenant for one property which is a single family home. The other is a duplex, for which each unit should be able to rent for $500/month. The plan with the sub2 properties is to get a loan modification to lower the payment (if necessary), and rent them out.

To summarize: I  have three shortsale properties under contract. I will be purchasing two of them sub2 with the intent of renting them out for passive income. The third will be a shortsale flip for cash profit.

The second blow is the short-sale flip I’ve been working on since February. After months of asking for an interior BPO, and Saxon Mortgage adamantly telling me that I had to do the interior BPO myself because they don’t, I was informed yesterday by a new customer service rep that they actually do interior BPOs “all the time”. This means that I now have to wait another three business days for their BPO vendor to call me to get access to the property. So I wasted another two weeks and hours of my time taking photos and creating a BPO – FOR NOTHING!!! They better hope to God that the value comes in at the purchase price or less, because I’m going to give them even more hell during the negotation. Bastards.

The good news is that I got another shortsale property under contract last night. This is a duplex in West Philly. Now the more I get into this shortsale/wholesaling thing, the more I’m thinking that maybe I should be a landlord after all. I’ve been resisting it, because I’ve seen the problems that my landlord clients have endured. But, I just don’t see any other way to create cashflow without having to own a business. I like wholesaling, and I’ll probably do it forever, but I see now that I really can’t rely on wholesaling for regular income. I have to at least try being a landlord to see if I have the stomach for it.

Speaking of which… I have a renter for a shortsale property that I was going to wholesale. So I’m going to purchase it subject-to instead, and see how I like being a landlord. I’ll get the monthly payments lowered through loan modification, and use the deposits from the renter for the upfront payment to the mortgage company. So the only money I’ll spend will be for the deed and LLC formation. This should be fun, and I’ll do a better job of documenting the process on this blog.

Gotta get back to work now, so thanks for visiting!