Thoughts On HomeVestors

Sorry no posts for so long. Life has been pretty busy lately. We went to California Thursday and spent Friday at Disneyland. It was the first visit for my almost 3 year old daughter and she really enjoyed it. Got back into town on Saturday and spent most of Sunday in the hospital emergency room because my wife's back locked up and she can barely move. She's been home in bed all week and I've been taking care of her and my daughter. Needless to say, I'm pretty busy these days.

I thought it was somewhat ironic to have received a mailing from HomeVestors when we got back from California, given what I do. It was obviously a mass mailing and it was asking if I was interested in a CASH OFFER for my home. The letter says they pay most closing costs (I wonder what they don't pay) and they pay cash and can close quick. Basically, they do what I am doing. However, they are a franchise, which means whoever is running the business has to pay a franchise fee to the parent company and likely an ongoing fee which may be a percentage of their profits. This obviously means they have a lot of overhead. I expect the fee is quite large, given the large amount of advertising they do. I have to wonder if it pays off though. I mean, if they sent me a mailing, they are most likely just mailing to all houses in an area, which isn't very targeted. I would think you'd get much higher response rates if you sent mailings to people in foreclosure or somehow otherwise targeted your audience.

With the costly overhead of being a franchise and the not-so-savvy marketing I see, I can't help but think I can give people a better deal for their house than these guys can.