A Day in the Life/Office

Ok, so how about a day in the life? Well here goes for everyone.

Up at 6:45 check email via blackberry by 7:30 in the office by 8 at morning prayer by 8:30, back at the office by 9. Short sales meeting with sales staff. Meet with my buyers about appointments for the day. By 11 looking at a house we got under contract yesterday. Signed a sales contract on a retail sale for 75k (got about 28k in it). Went to lunch with an investor and talked about the biz. Played around on flipitbig.com for a while after lunch. Worked on a contract addendum for a particular deal that we are working. Followed up with one of my buyers after one of his appointments regarding a house that he looked at. Talked to my sales girl about some of her leads with retail buyers that are pre-qualed. Talked to a couple of investors about lines of credit and how to establish them. Met with a private lender regarding transactions coming up. Got earl (the rottie) and packed up the laptop and called it a day (5:15).

Kinda’ normal day. I spend a lot of time on the phone, mostly networking and talking to lenders and investors (8000 minutes/month usually). But I only look at houses that are deals and are under contract after my buyers have completed their part of the deal. I basically manage my system and manage my people at this point. However, I do have bad days and days that I run crazy all day etc. I am sure we all do. But let me give you a day in my franchise/business and what goes on around here all day overall.

We usually start showing up at the office around 9 am as a group. I usually spend a little time with each of my buyers and sellers to see what they have working at the time. My buyers will go over the paperwork and comps for their upcoming appointments for the day. We generally schedule appointments at either 10 or 2. This gives the buyers time to prepare emotionally and with their paperwork etc for the meeting with the sellers. We have 3 buyers and each of them will have 2 appointments on the average each day. My coordinator will pull a comp report on each house that we will look at. On each house she will pull at least 10 comps and then narrow them down to the three closest and in size to the subject property. She then puts each one of them into our proprietary program which includes an estimator program for repairs. Once it is all entered, a packet is produced and given to the buyer on that house. Along with a credibility packet the buyer will take all of this including a laptop to the appointment.

We normally have at least 15 or so line ads in the local paper, or thrifty nickel type of paper. Because of this, the phone rings about 10 or 15 times an hour on average! So needless to say my coordinator is busy every day just with that part and the paperwork for the buyers, but she does a variety of other things as well. She is responsible for our reporting to HVA, as well as the daily managing of the comings and goings of the office. She coordinates between all of the members of our team. This also includes requesting title work and maintaining a file on each property that we have under contract. She will push our deals from a communication standpoint and make sure we are all on the same page. She will make sure that everything is on schedule with rehab jobs as well. Basic tracking of invoices as well as ordering of office supplies and deploying garbage cans etc are covered by her as well.

My buyers of course are the ones who go out to the appointments and meet with the sellers. Their job is to negotiate for the purchase of the houses with them and convey our position as the industry leader to them as well. This gives them confidence in our abilities as professionals and lets them know that we are their best choice in the market for them. They will drive the area that they have the appointment in and look for vacant houses before leaving the area. Once back at the office they will pull the subject information of the vacants and mail them a letter. They will also place door hangers on all of the houses within a couple of streets of there as well. Then do that all over again for the second appointment. Two of my buyers will also sell houses wholesale for me to our investor database, they have a group and list of buyers that are their clients.

Our retail sales person schedules and has appointments with potential buyers where she will pre-qualify them with our FHA lender. Once pre-qualified, she will give them a list of property that they can go and look at, this happens about 3 times a day on average. There is of course a big pile of paperwork that will need to be gathered on the buyer including two years worth of W-2’s, two years of tax returns, verifications of rent, deposit for down payments, and verification for the 3 necessary trade lines as well. Her job is to manage all of the gathering of the info to send to the lender along with the selling of the houses retail. She normally talks to 4-6 potential buyers a day and meets with at least 3.

I have 2 property locators that drive neighborhoods daily looking for houses that are vacant and need work, which we will pull records on and mail to them to attempt to get a lead and set an appointment.

Our construction superintendent oversees the rehab process on our rehab projects. He of course has to procure supplies for the jobs and manage the subs that are on the jobs, which is one of the hardest jobs in the business. We normally work 2-5 rehabs at a time, so all of it is in multiples. He normally is at Home Depot at least 2 times a day, and is at each rehab at least once a day.

Our bookkeeper is responsible for the day to day management of the financial part of our operation including maintaining the daily balances, booking invoices, and HUDs from closings. We also have a CPA that oversees her process and we meet with him monthly to go over our P&L and he lets us know exactly where we are at financially.

We have one full time short sale person along with my wife who oversees the department. She talks to banks every day and usually have at least 4 or 5 hours on the phone daily either talking to banks or holding for banks. She deals with people about to lose their houses and has to maintain a communication level with the sellers to ensure the deal will go well.

My wife’s main job function is to oversee the sales department of the office and make sure that part is moving in the right direction. She oversees the short sale department as well. My goal for her is the same as myself, doe us to work on our business not in it. this gives us the ability to develop our business and take it to the next level.

All of these parts are moving daily in conjunction with each other, sometimes they move well, sometimes not as much, but that is what we do around here.