Welcome to the latest LeadPropeller Flight Debrief! In this month’s debrief, we’ll be highlighting the success of South Tampa Teardowns, and it’s founder Robert Wilson. As an active real estate agent who markets like a real estate investor, South Tampa Teardowns is a successful business that only keeps growing!
Agent Skill, Investor Marketing
For 12 years, Robert Wilson worked as a real estate agent who did business with builders, real estate investors, and home buyers and sellers. After all that time gaining experience in the real estate market, Robert decided to add the kinds of marketing strategies that investors use to grow his business.
For 3 years Robert has been running South Tampa Teardowns, working with a range of clients from land buyers, builders, motivated sellers, and other active real estate investors. With his hard work and “never stop” attitude, Robert closed 35 deals last year, and placed 45 – 50 lots from owners to builders, and picked up nice commissions along the way.
Working With Builders
South Tampa Teardowns’ success comes primarily from Robert’s connection with builders. His land buying business in Tampa, FL buys land and sells to builders on their buyers list. Along with selling the land to builders, South Tampa Teardowns gets commission rates for the lots and properties that are found and sold. What a great business plan! Wholesaling lots to house builders creates a constant income for Robert to continue marketing like a real estate investor.
Although Robert started off by using direct mail as his main source of marketing, he has added online marketing strategies, such as managed PPC and SEO, to find motivated sellers. From there, Robert uses his connections with local builder buyers and pitches the lots to them. His general price range for lots is $100k – $300k, and with a steady stream of leads, Robert always has inventory to sell.
In fact, when asked about where he’s been getting the best leads for his business, Robert said:
I’ve definitely been getting better quality clients from my website. We just bought a lot worth $300k, and I’ll earn over 35k in commissions over the initial purchase and final sale of the home. And that lead came from my website! It’s been working much faster than direct mail.
With a focus on 10 – 15 quality builders and growing in the buyers list, South Tampa Teardowns continues to expand and reach out to more and more clients. By selling to a range of buyers, and being an active member of the real estate community, Robert’s company has built relationships with builders on both ends of the business. Talk about building a portfolio!
South Tampa Teardowns’ Marketing Success
As we already know, marketing is one of the most important things a real estate investor can do for their business. If you don’t get your business’s name out there, then you’re not going to be bringing in leads. Robert knows this, which is why South Tampa Teardowns uses a mixture of marketing strategies to reach as many buyers and sellers as possible!
“All of my online marketing and direct mail is to find sellers…I network to get builder buyers and rehab partners,” Robert explains. “I am a real estate agent who markets like a real estate investor…I guess you could call me an investor because I invest in marketing to generate real estate commission revenue.”
From the start, Robert has been using direct mail to get in front of his clients, which continued to generate leads for his business. His leads increased when he added online marketing strategies to South Tampa Teardowns; strategies like managed PPC and content marketing.
Speaking of content marketing, Robert has been great about documenting with video content! His business’s websites feature his amazing videos that Robert is sure to feature on his business social media accounts as well.
From his YouTube channel to his business’s FaceBook, Robert has been putting his videos out there to be easily consumed by his clients. After all, we already talked about how great videos are for business conversions.
Speaking of converting, Robert got a great conversion on his website from a client finding his business on YouTube! After watching his videos, this client went to his website where they left information for Robert to contact them with. All in all, the YouTube video cost nothing to produce and led to a deal where Robert earned over $10,000 in commission. So, basically an infinite rate of return!
The Early Deals…
Anyone who’s been doing real estate investing for a while is sure to have come across a house in probate. So when a house under probate came in, Robert took on this deal so that he could focus on helping the family in need. This probate, however, had a very challenging problem attached to it.
The original homeowner left the house to 5 people, 2 of which passed away as well, leaving the house to additional people. Robert needed to be patient with this property because of the insane amount of people who were attached to it. With the help of his title company, real estate attorneys, and well capitalized buyers, South Tampa Teardowns tracked down 13 people total who were all attached to the house. It turns out there were 3 probates total on this property.
In addition to legal fees beginning to take a toll on everyone involved, the family in the house was stuck with an $8,000 mortgage that they were having difficulties paying for. The family was getting bullied into signing off on the lot for less than it was worth until Robert came in and intervened.
After stepping in to help these clients, Robert bought their house for a fair price and worked out a deal with them. The family was able to keep the house without losing value, all thanks to South Tampa Teardowns!
The buyer Robert was working with was able to provide the family with $2,500 to help them with the financial issues that were starting to build up. As it goes with families, there was some drama surrounding the house and, with 3 probates involved, the money from Robert’s investor was a huge help!
Eventually all of the legalities were figured out and South Tampa Teardowns was able to close the deal for a profit.
What Does the Future Have for South Tampa Teardowns?
Like we mentioned before, Robert has a lot of pending deals lined up for the rest of 2017. He has over 28 lots closed and pending for the year. South Tampa Teardowns expects to generate total commissions that will double, if not triple, making it the best year of business to date!
When we asked if Robert had any advice for real estate investors, he said:
Stay persistent, and be patient. And always keep contacts with real estate attorneys who are willing to get the work done. In the end, it’s all about helping families.
What great advice. Persistence and patience are key when it comes to difficult properties, especially when it comes to legal issues.
How inspiring, Robert! It just goes to show that you don’t need to only fix and flip houses to be a success in real estate. South Tampa Teardowns is getting work done by focusing on lot buying and selling, while still marketing like an investor. We can’t wait to see how much your business continues to grow! Until then, Robert Wilson – over and out.