In this instructional video, seasoned Orange County real‑estate investor Joe Holmes (H&M Realty Group) outlines the five primary lead‑generation methods for real‑estate wholesaling and shares practical, market‑specific advice. He begins with bandit signs, describing optimal placement times, neighborhoods to target (e.g., Anaheim, Santa Ana) and locations to avoid (freeway entrances). He then explains cold calling, emphasizing the importance of up‑to‑date lists (probate, notice‑of‑default, divorce) and the statistical nature of success. Holmes critiques direct‑mail campaigns in high‑competition OC, noting the massive volume some companies use, the cost per piece, and the low response rates typical for individual investors. Door knocking is presented as a direct approach, especially on properties already in default, with a script suggestion. Finally, he discusses creating niche websites to capture buyer and seller leads, providing his own domain examples (fliphomesoc.com, webuyuglyochomes.com) and warning that a site alone won’t generate traffic without advertising. Throughout, he stresses that these five channels should be used together, offers his personal phone number for questions, and promises future videos in the series.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Joe Holmes and I work with H&M Realty Group. I'm a real estate investor. I've been an investor for over 40 years and I'm going to teach you everything hopefully that you need to know about wholesaling. Wholesaling 101 is the topic today and the first thing I want to talk about is lead generation. Okay, the first one is the bandit sign and as you can see over here, that's the bandit sign that we use. You can place the bandit signs pretty much wherever you want. Know this, that anywhere from, I would say, Irvine south, Caltrans is very aggressive. The cities are very aggressive. So if you put your sign up, let's say midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning is when usually my guys are out putting signs. They probably will be taken off by 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning. So we don't concentrate in those areas. We concentrate more into cities like Anaheim, Santa Ana, older, older, more established cities. Try to stay away from the freeway entrances and off-ramps. I know that's a prime target for people, but we try to stay away from that, hoping that our sign is going to last at least 3 or 4 days and hopefully in through the week. I've had people tell me that they put them out on Fridays They come pick them back up on Sundays. Usually the people that are actually cleaning up the areas and taking down these signs, garage sale signs, for sale by owner signs, things like that, working Monday through Friday. But I've also found a case that they're actually working on weekends as well. So I'll leave that up to you where you want to place your signs, but— Lead generation, there's 5 things we're gonna talk about, and that's number 1. Number 2, cold calling. So cold calling is simply just like it sounds. You literally get yourself a list, whether it's a probate list, NOD, which is notice of default list, a recently divorced list, any type of list that you wanna get your hands on, you have access to, definitely. Start calling, and it's, you know, it's just a matter of numbers. You call 100 people, maybe you get 1 deal. You call 1,000 people, you get no deals. So it just really depends on, you know, how good are you at, what kind of list you have. Is it a current list? Is it an old list? It just depends on what kind of list you have that you're going to be calling on. Direct mail seems to be the most popular, but this is something— I'm here in Orange County, California— I do not recommend you do that. There are actually huge companies out there, real estate companies, that do nothing but direct mail. They're mailing out 15,000 to 20,000 pieces of mail a month, okay? And there again, they're doing volume work. And so if they mail out 20,000 and they get 5 or 6 leads, and then they turn those leads into actual sales at the end of the day through their wholesale process, then that makes, you You know, dollars and cents for them. You as an individual, it's going to cost you anywhere between 75 cents and a dollar to mail out a letter. If you're doing it electronically with a company, yes, you can save more money. If you're doing it yourself, up to you. It's your money. You can spend it however you want. I'm just telling you that here in Orange County, it's very, very difficult to get calls back on mail. As you well know, if you live in a home, And you get junk mail, usually you look at it and you throw it right into the trash can. And that's usually what happens with this type of mail as well. But you can try it out. Door knocking is just, again, just like it sounds, knocking on somebody's door. So you get yourself— I usually like to do notice of default knocking. So I'm knocking on somebody's door who I know is already in trouble. So why not go knock on their door? They're not making their payment to the bank, so the bank's filed what's called a notice of default. And it puts everybody in the world on notice that this person's not making their mortgage payment. You go knock on the door, tell them, hey, my name's Joe, I'm a real estate agent, and I'd like to buy your home for cash. That's a great conversation to have at the door. See what kind of reception you get and then go from there. Okay. Websites. You can create some websites. There's a lot of good companies out there. These are my 2 websites. So I track buyers using fliphomesoc.com, and I track sellers using webuyuglyochomes.com. Okay, you can create whatever website you want. Now remember, a website's a website. If you have to advertise it to get people to come to it, it's not a panacea in that once you create a website, everybody in the world is going to know and they're going to come to it. I've got hundreds of buyers right now. I've got hundreds of buyers that are looking for deals, and that's kind of the area of the market that we're in right now. I've got very few sellers, so I'm having to put bandit signs out. I'm having to do cold calling. I'm having to do door knocking. This just is an addition to everything else that you see here. So if you're going to start a wholesaling business, these are the 5 areas that you need to concentrate on. And whether you're working by yourself or with a partner, I'm happy to answer any questions. Please give me a call anytime. My direct number, 949-625-4533. Thank you for joining me today, and I'll continue this series as we go along.
