Hello again fellow investor!
Doug Smith here. I recently had a chance to sit down with myHouseDeals.com member Jeff Sampson and 
hear first-hand how he profits from the properties on this site. Afterwards, I had the interview transcribed, and that transcription is below. There’s a lot that new and experienced investors alike can learn from his comments. So grab your pen and get ready to take notes! Our conversation follows…
Doug: All right I have Jeff Sampson here with me right now. Jeff is out of Dallas and has been a member of myhousedeals.com for 3 weeks. So he’s still within his free trial, and during that time he has put a property from this website under contract that he will be closing on next week. It will allow him to make up to $125,000 in profits based on a current calculation. And if a few things go wrong he will make close to $80,000 to $85,000. That would be more of a worse case scenario. Jeff, the people listening right now are wondering what has allowed you to so quickly come in and find such a good deal. What process did you go through to find it?
Jeff: I’ve been doing this for little under a year and I’ve really tried to focus in on one particular part of town, which has just given me the knowledge to know what the property values are in this particular area and to be able to react pretty quickly when I do see something out there on the market that I like.
With this particular one I’m very familiar with the part of town that this property was in and was just able to identify that there was a good opportunity for me to do some improvement on the property and put it back on the market and make some money.
Doug: Okay thanks Jeff. When you log into the members area of myhousedeals.com do you screen for properties both in the motivated sellers section and also the wholesale deals section or do you just focus on one of them?
Jeff: I look at both of them. It really just depends on what in particular that I’m looking for at the time. I do have a couple of rental properties and it appears to me that again as you say I’ve only had limited experience with website at this point. But thus far, the motivated sellers it looks like there’s some pretty good opportunities with some people who are really trying to get out of properties that they have that are in decent shape. I have actually made a number of phone calls and looked at a couple of properties off the motivated seller’s side. Really what I tend to focus on there is looking at the rental properties deals.
Then the wholesale deals really for me is more for a remodel and an opportunity to improve the property and put it back on the market.
Doug: Is that because you’re seeing that the properties in the wholesale section are needing far more repairs?
Jeff: Not always but it seems to be a trend thus far at least in the area that I’m looking for and the part of town that I’m looking for.
Doug: Okay, you’ve made it clear that your strategy is to only look for deals in a certain part of town. Would you suggest other investors do this as well so they can get a better feel for the values in that area?
Jeff: It’s worked for me. I know that other investors that I’ve talked to that seem to be focused on a much larger area, there’s even people who focus in multiple cities. I think, for me, its just because I am somewhat new to it, my strategy was just to get very familiar with something so that to minimize my mistakes and not get involved in something that I had a perceived value associated with a property and then only to find out when you go to put it back on the market, in fact, it wasn’t worth what you thought it might be.
For me, I like to get as familiar as I can with the property value. And I’ve found that in the areas that I look in there are some nuances about particular streets that have issues associated with them that affect the property value. And because I’ve been able to focus on that I’ve been able to pick up on a lot of that. So when I see a property come up and you look at it by zip code or you look at a particular grid on the map it looks like this is a great property as you’re analyzing it from a dollars per square foot standpoint and then you realize you know what street this is on and now I know why its such a great deal. Not quite as good of a deal that I thought it was.
Doug: I see. How many properties would you say that you had either analyzed on your computer or looked at before you found this one property on myhousedeals.com?
Jeff: On average I would say I probably look at 100 to 150 properties to every one that I make a phone call on and I probably make a phone call on 5 or 6 before I’ll actually go out and see one.
Doug: So by looking at 100 to 150, are you pulling comps on each property or just in your particular area?
Jeff: Both and in most cases if they’re in the area then I’ve already got a real good idea on what the comps come out at. A lot of it is looking at the dollars per square foot on a particular property. I’ll go on to the county website and try to get a feel for the property, look at the taxes, look at the square footage and find out if they’re reporting the square footage that was original to the house or if there’s been a garage conversion or what have you to try to make sure that I’m getting a good assessment of what it is that I’m looking at.
Again, I feel that I’m relatively new to this and learning stuff every day. So I certainly wish I was more efficient but you get a little bit better at it the more you do it.
Doug: You seem to be doing just fine, so don’t worry about that. How have you built up your education over the last year so that you can actually go out there and buy this property, which you mentioned is your 4th?
THERE’S MUCH MORE! CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS INTERVIEW
exciting and productive 2009! And as I always do near the beginning of each year, I created a list of personal and business goals for myself. I considered keeping this list all to myself, but I’ve come to realize that someone who makes his or her goals public is MUCH more likely to achieve them. And I’m determined to achieve my goals, so I’ve listed them below for you and the rest of the world to see!