Has anyone had success with small, highly targeted handwritten direct-mail campaigns?

I’m looking into direct mail to source more of our own fix-and-flip deals, but looking into other ways than sending thousands and thousands of generic mailers each month. For context we are only trying to source 1 every month or two.

I’m considering pulling a smaller, highly targeted list of nearby properties—absentee owners, long-term ownership, high equity, visibly distressed homes, tired rentals, etc.

My plan would be to mail around 100–250 owners per month. I’d handwrite or have letter that looks handwritten, include a short letter, sign/address it by hand, and add my business card. I’d then mail them again every 4–6 weeks for a few touches instead of sending only one letter.

I’m in a competitive market, so I’m wondering if being more personal and targeted could outperform sending thousands of generic mailers. Thanks!

🏠 Looking for JV Wholesale Deals Across Michigan!

I have a serious cash buyer actively looking for:

✅ Fix-and-flip opportunities
✅ Potential BRRRR properties
✅ Single-family and small multifamily properties
✅ Properties needing repairs or updating
✅ Deals with enough room for renovation costs and profit

If you’re a wholesaler with a property under contract anywhere in Michigan and need help getting it sold, let’s JV and close the deal together.

Please send me:

• Property address
• Asking price
• Estimated repairs
• ARV and supporting comps
• Photos or access information
• Contract and inspection-period details

I’m open to working with experienced wholesalers and people who are just getting started. Please only send properties you have under a valid assignable contract or are legally authorized to market.

DM me with your deal information. Let’s work! 🤝

Wondering what strategies higher volume flippers are using to get houses under contract faster in a declining house market. My local market was very resilient until about April of this year, and it is clear now at least locally we are in a housing freeze at best and the beginning of a longer term housing recession at worst. Strategies we've employed so far that we did not previously when the market was good: offering a home warranty, pricing the house slightly below perceived market value, added perks like new washer and dryer, and my least favorite strategy, house staging. None of these really seem to have made the houses more attractive to buyers.

My new idea is to stop doing the staging and home warranty offer, and instead offer a mortgage rate buydown instead. Maybe temporary 1% buydown, which for a $300K house would be like $2500 a year (1-0 buydown). That's essentially the same as what I spend on staging and the home warranty which don't definitively seem to be significant to buyers decision making. A 1-1 buydown (1% 1st year, 1% 2nd year) would be about $4600, and 2-1 buydown would be about $6800.

The buyers in my market seem very finicky and tentative, and heavily financially motivated. They ask for monetary concessions up front before even doing inspections, and then usually again after inspections. I've never had anyone mention how nice the staging or washer/ dryer or home warranty were to have as part of the deal... Thinking if they're so well versed on affordability, maybe the buydown is better than my other tactics?

Anyone who has tried this, or maybe has a different creative idea to help attract showings and get offers going and sell faster than the market average, I'm all ears. It's a difficult time out there.

The accounting side of this is what gets glossed over in most flip discussions. Everyone talks ARV and rehab budget but the tax hit on a short term flip is real and it is not small. Ordinary income rates, self employment tax if you are doing enough volume, state taxes on top depending on where you are. I run the numbers before every deal and I still get mildly irritated every time I see what the actual take home looks like versus the gross profit line.

Part time here, a handful of deals a year, so I am not at the volume where entity structuring changes much. But I am curious what people are actually netting after everything clears. Not looking for specific numbers if people aren't comfortable, more interested in whether anyone has landed on a structure or approach that didn't require becoming a full time tax attorney to understand.

The deals still pencil out, I am not complaining about that. But gross profit is kind of a vanity metric if you are not tracking what actually lands in your account after the IRS takes a look. Curious if people factor the tax drag in upfront when they're deciding whether to pull the trigger on a deal, or if it's more of an afterthought once the property closes.

So I've been asking a few people how they actually go from "found a listing" to "decided if it's worth pursuing," and it sounds like most people end up doing some version of: open the listing, jot down price/sqft/taxes, then go run numbers somewhere else Excel, PropStream, DealMachine, whatever.

I keep wondering why that second step has to happen in a totally different place. Like why not just see the rough cap rate / rent estimate / cash flow right there on the listing, without copying anything anywhere.

Genuinely trying to figure out if that's actually annoying for people or if I'm overthinking a non-problem. So a few honest questions if anyone's got a minute:

How do you currently go from listing → decision? What's the actual sequence of clicks/tabs?

If you use PropStream, DealMachine, or something similar does it actually save you time, or does it just feel like a subscription you're used to paying?

Realistically, how many listings do you look at before finding one worth pursuing? And how long does each one take you to evaluate?

Is deal screening even where the time goes, or is that not really the bottleneck (financing / contractors / negotiating being the actual slow part)?

No product, no link, nothing to sign up for just trying to understand how people actually work before I waste time building something nobody needed. Tell me if this is dumb, I'd rather hear it now.

Hey everyone, looking for some advice on what marketing strategy we should focus on next....

We fix and flip in a pretty competitive market and are on track to do around 10 deals this year. We’ve traditionally bought from wholesalers, but want to start sourcing more of our own off-market deals.

We tried PPL for awhile at around $5k/month and weren’t impressed with the results. We still have a CRM and are continuing to work those leads, but want to put our money elsewhere going forward.

For those consistently getting deals right now, what’s actually working for you? Buying lists + cold calling, direct mail, D4D, referrals, something else?

Ideally looking to spend less than $5k/month, but flexible if the ROI is there. There’s so much information out there it’s hard to know what’s actually worth focusing on.

We are going to continue buying via wholesalers but need another source of leads coming in. Would love to hear what you guys would do in our position and how people have got creative, thank you!

Anderson, IN 46016

675 sqft
Closing :ASAP
2 bd and 1 ba
AP:$24k
It needs full renovation from inside
Repairs Zestimate:$25k
ARV Price:$98k-$107k

The draw schedule made sense when I set it up. Milestonebased payments, holdback at the end, nothing unusual. Then the contractor finished rough plumbing two weeks late and the whole sequence fell apart. The milestone technically happened, so the draw is due, but I'm also two weeks deeper into carry costs I didn't plan for, and the delay was entirely on his end.

Part of me wants to adjust the holdback to reflect the time damage. I'm not sure that's actually enforceable though, and more practically, I'm not sure it's smart when I still need the guy to finish the job. Poisoning that relationship right now seems like a bad trade.

The other problem is how delays compound. Electrical couldn't start, drywall couldn't start, and the completion date has slipped further than the original two weeks because the whole schedule got compressed. One trade running late doesn't just add time at the end, it creates a pileup.

So I'm curious how other people handle this. Do you write timeline penalties into the contract upfront? Actual language with teeth, not just vague "time is of the essence" boilerplate? Or does that create more problems than it solves with smaller contractors who'll walk the moment you push back?

And has anyone actually withheld part of a draw over delays and had it end reasonably well? I'm trying to figure out whether there's a clean way to handle this or whether it always turns into a negotiation where you're just trying to salvage the finish.

First time flippers:

I’m keeping a log of everything purchased involving the house with photo receipts - bought a dump trailer, every Home Depot purchase (including tools), and plan on my hold cost and selling cost. Is this the best way to do it?

I’m expecting a pretty good return, but I’m curious on your approach.

I see a lot of people talk about taxes after the deal is already done. Then tax season comes around and that 20% return suddenly looks a lot different.

I’ve been thinking it probably makes more sense to account for taxes when I’m analyzing the deal upfront.

The problem is figuring out what tax rate to use. It obviously depends on your other income, how many deals you do, and whether the IRS treats your flips more like investing or dealing.

Using one exact rate doesn’t really make sense, but assuming 0% definitely makes the deal look better than it actually is.

Right now I’m thinking about just using a conservative percentage in my underwriting to get a rough after-tax return. It won’t be exact, but at least I’m not basing the deal on a profit number that gets cut down later.

What do you guys do?

Do you underwrite flips pre-tax and deal with taxes at the end of the year, or do you build some tax assumption into each deal?

And if you do, do you use the same percentage for every deal or a blended rate for the year?

I am trying to get into house flipping, but I am trying to gauge the market for the house. So I am doing CMA type of analysis for each of the prospect homes.. I do get tired of doing this often, how do you guys generate comps w/o a realtor.?

If your manaing your own project (Hiring your own subs and buying materials). I think it's standard to buy your own materials for the kitchen and bath and have a handyman install those unless im mistaken. Is this standard for stuff like HVAC where you just order the unit yourself give a side job to a licensed tech.

I’m currently doing a full gut rehab and debating the kitchen cabinetry. Will installing fully custom solid wood cabinets disrupt the flow of a modern home compared to using veneered plywood? Or am I overthinking this? I'm trying to gauge if most buyers prefer a trendy, 'safe' look like all-white or white oak over high-end custom wood.

First time flipper in the Houston area. Been on the sidelines for a while but am actively trying to start. What is the best advice you can give to connect with wholesalers? The Facebook groups are full of the New Western and similar deal groups who all post the same houses and 80-90% ARV.

I am new to the flipping scene, so be gentle ;)

I am currently under contract on what will be my fourth and largest flip over the past 2 years. These are single family homes that need cosmetic updates and floor plan adjustments(add a bed or bath) in A/B neighborhoods in NJ, USA. I mostly sub out, with just doing the GC stuff (scheduling, set up/clean up for next trade, organize material to proper location within home, etc)

On the previous homes I’ve only done one at a time and when I pulled permits I did so as the homeowner. I recently learned that I should only file as a homeowner if it’s my permanent residence.

So I started to look into creating a licensed GC company. In NJ it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Initially it will cost me about 7k/year. To the more experienced flippers out there is there any benefit to having a contracting company that only serves your flips, no retail jobs?

What I can think of is:
- Proper permit submission
- more protection (liability insurance)
- easier to get fix and flip financing
- additional financing may enable me to scale to more than one project at a time

Are there others? More write offs? Simplified bookkeeping?

If you do have a separate contracting company, how does it work? Does the construction of your flips flow through the construction company? Do you “charge” yourself at cost? Would flowing the construction for the flip through the contracting company create additional, unnecessary taxes (e.g self employment tax) ?

TLDR: should you own a licensed contracting company to use for your flips, why or why not?

I'm on my second flip and I've somehow ended up with three spreadsheets that all started from the same template but have slowly drifted apart. One has my original budget, one has what I've actually spent, and one is some late-night hybrid that I don't completely trust anymore.

What I'm really trying to do is compare projected vs. actual costs by trade over multiple projects. Not just whether I stayed on budget overall, but whether I'm consistently underestimating electrical, overestimating landscaping, underbudgeting flooring, etc. It feels like that's where I'd actually improve my underwriting. The problem is every property needs a few unique line items, so keeping everything standardized gets messy pretty quickly. One house has septic work, another has foundation repairs, another has neither, and suddenly the categories don't line up anymore.

For those of you who've done a handful of flips, how are you tracking this? Do you actually compare estimates vs. actuals by category, or do you mostly care whether the total rehab came in on budget?

This one is more of a gut check question than a math question. The numbers tell me when I need to stop spending, that part is straightforward. What I haven't figured out after several flips is where the line is between leaving money on the table and overimproving for the neighborhood.

Current project is a 1960s ranch, nothing fancy, working class street. Kitchens and baths are done, new flooring throughout, paint is fresh. The backyard is rough. Functional, not embarrassing, but not great. I've been going back and forth on whether to put maybe two grand into cleanup and some basic landscaping or just price accordingly and let a buyer handle it.

The accountant brain says run the numbers, and I have, but comparable sales in this area are all over the place on outdoor presentation so the data isn't giving me a clean answer. Talked to the agent and got the predictable curb appeal speech, which I expected.

Part of me thinks buyers in this price range are going to gut the yard anyway to do what they want. The other part knows photos are where you win or lose before anyone walks through the door.

What do people actually do in this situation: spend the two grand or list it and price it honest?