What exactly is driving the dollar?
Movement on the dollar is active marketing. It manages your market and identifies features of interest (usually outside the market) that vary depending on whether you are an investor, agent or local business.
You’re out and about traveling neighborhoods, gathering invaluable information in a way that staring at a laptop and poring over disorganized demographics will never reveal. Using good old-fashioned pen and paper to record information works well. And if you are serious, you can use the vehicle for dollars.
Of course, if you want to limit your carbon footprint, there are plenty of people who choose to combine exercise with hyperlocal marketing, exploring their neighborhoods by bike or foot.
Does the dollar ride work?
The short answer is, yes. Driving for dollars means getting out from behind your desk, driving the market, and seeing with your own eyes what potential deals are available. The physical condition of the properties and the visual characteristics of the neighborhood offer information you can’t get from a spreadsheet. When you manage your marketplace, you may see things like:
- Overgrown grass, weeds and degraded landscaping
- Ruined roofs
- Cracked driveways
- A pile of newspapers
- Overloaded mailboxes
Even code enforcement instructions are posted on the door
Driving for dollars, real estate investors are looking for subtle things to help them connect with their residents, such as kids’ yard toys, car decals, camping gear, and even bumper stickers. Anyone can provide pointers on how to get your foot in the door and connect with a resident. So, yes, the dollar-for-dollar ride works when you think it helps you visualize opportunities that you might not necessarily get from public records and owner information records — which can sometimes contain errors.
Mindless traffic in neighborhoods will get you nowhere fast. Worse, the cops might be called if people see the same car driving by, slowing down, and staring. That’s what REsimpli can help you with. REsimpli’s Driving for Dollars app helps you make the most of your time by planning an efficient and effective D4D strategy.
There are many examples of how Discover can help you travel for dollars. Some examples include:
Foreclosure investors – an investor specializing in buying foreclosures can easily determine how many properties in the neighborhood are underwater, foreclosed, or owned free and clear.
Roofs – A roofing contractor looking for roofing suppliers can look at homes with 20+ year old roofs.
Local Fitness Business – A fitness facility marketing manager can discover and connect with homeowners based on their net income and age.
The possibilities are almost endless.
Think about it. You set the parameters based on your customers and then our Discover feature displays them clearly and beautifully on a heat map. It gives you answers to questions you didn’t even know you had. And because REsimpli uses your smartphone’s GPS, the Discover map moves with you as you drive. You can now zoom into the street-level view and filter multiple criteria tabs to quickly identify properties by the color of that tab.
When you see a property that matches your criteria, simply tap it to open and view the property’s full profile. And when you have a property you want to buy, REsimpli can help you make sure you can easily capture all the details you need for easy reference later.
When you’re scouting for neighborhoods, it’s easy to think, “I’m not going to forget this house!” Later, when you forget, you’re thinking, “Damn, I wish I had taken a photo.”
If there’s one big regret we often hear from Driving For Dollars newbies, it’s that they didn’t take a photo. It is recommended to take several photos. You can capture something on the property that catches your attention and triggers your memory to mark itNote it as a possibility later when you are discussing the details of the property.
Fortunately, REsimpli lets you take a photo and add it to your Property Profile while you’re in the profile itself. Now you can use profile photos to help re-qualify a prospect as support within a proposal or evaluation, to show your “proof of interest” directly in a postcard or letter, and more. Rarely, if ever, will you hear a seasoned Driving-for-Dollars pro talk about wishing they didn’t take so many pictures. The more data, the better.
Manage Dollars with REsimpli Add notes and set statuses for a streamlined workflow
While a picture is worth a thousand words, jotting down a few notes about the property and its surroundings is invaluable when your observations are fresh and insightful.
When you get out of Driving For Dollars, you can reload everything you need to remember about every property you’re considering. Adding points from conversations with residents and neighbors can be helpful to you later when you’re working through the qualification or purchase process. And don’t forget to take advantage of your smartphone’s microphone dictation feature to get tons of notes. Rest your fingers! Just call the address and follow it up with detailed notes that you can transcribe later.
Additionally, the status setting feature on the property profile page helps you and/or your teams organize and maintain a seamless workflow. In Set Status, you can let team members know when it’s time to “contact owner,” “research title,” “submission disabled,” and more.
Drive opportunistically and find lost data.
As you become more experienced, driving for dollars often goes from something you don’t do to something that happens when you drive anywhere. REsimpli is your field sales software, ready to capture unexpected opportunities at a moment’s notice. There is always an opportunity to find new customers while driving your route.
Keep an eye out for visual clues about properties that aren’t on your researched list. When you see a property that interests you, simply open the Discover feature, zoom in on your location and select the property to access its property profile.
These properties may not be on your researched list, but you can take the opportunity to take a few photos, add a few quick notes, set a status, and add the property to the list. Or, if you want to strike while the iron is hot, knock on the door. You might get rejected, but in any subsequent direct mail you send to the owner, you can remind them that you stopped by and appreciate their time.
Finally, whether you’re considering properties already on your prospective list or just viewing properties in person, it’s important to compare what you see with the public record information that makes up the bulk of a property’s profile. Public record information may not be current or accurate, which may be an important advantage to you. Learning something about a property that your competitors are missing just by looking up a spreadsheet is one of the amazing ways many of our customers get new business.
Driving with Dollars REsimpli Driving with Dollars is Over – Now What?
Once you’ve managed your marketplace, implement best practices like sorting your original management list into qualified and unqualified lists and use the Set Status feature to determine your next step action. Whether your next step is to send direct mail or try to contact the owner by phone, email or social media, REsimpli has you covered. From within the app, you can send direct mail, print mailing labels, or export to a .csv file for mail merge or CRM import.
Sometimes after consideration and further investigation, the next course of action you find best is to revisit specific properties to knock on the door and leave the door opener. Then use the same process to move properties to a new list or simply review the status you set.
Looking for a specific type of property?
Before you hit the streets, do your research. Get to know the characteristics of properties that are interesting to your business and know your market well. And don’t expect to visit 100 properties in one Driving For Dollars tour. Use the Discover feature and Make a List feature in the web app to save prospective properties that you plan to list. Additionally, divide your list into 30 or fewer property listings that. So you can reasonably travel during the day or in the evening.
You can define specific zones in Map View by using the polygon tool to geofence a specific area that you plan to drive through during an afternoon, evening, or day trip.
For example, you can define a specific area in a neighborhood using the polygon tool and set application criteria to show single-family residences that are owned by an absentee owner, vacant, and vacant, where the owner lives in another country.
Once you’ve created a hyper-targeted mailing list of viewing properties, use the routing feature on the online version of the app to optimize your travel route.
Select the specific properties you want to visit, click “Route” under Marketing Options, and then enter a start and end address. The REsimpli app then produces the most efficient step-by-step Driving For Dollars route for you.
Conclusion
Like any skill, dollar management is something you get better at with experience. While this is a relatively comprehensive overview of how to succeed, the only way to become a Driving For Dollars Pro is to get out there and do it. And if you choose to bike, run or walk your market, may you live to be 100 and die thin… and rich.
Read more: https://ustimemagazine.com/