Home Base

What it is

Home base is a website, a local phone number, and a local address. That’s it. You need to set up a home base so people know you’re legit. This is what gains trust. Sellers need to know that you’re not just another fly-by-night operation — you’re a local, real person that somebody can trust. Local address, not a PO box.

It’s your credibility. When you send out postcards and letters, those people are going to get your mail and Google you before they pick up the phone. If they Google you and get nothing, or they call and hit a voicemail that says “the person you are trying to reach,” they move on. You just paid for a piece of mail that delivered zero trust.

Why it matters

This is step two in how I’d do direct-to-seller marketing if I were starting over. Step one is define your buy box and pick your neighborhoods. Step two is home base. Step three is outbound marketing — postcards or cold calling to the people on your list.

The reason I put home base before outbound is that outbound without home base is a leaky pipeline. The list can be perfect, the letter can be great, but if the seller can’t verify you’re real in 30 seconds on their phone, the whole pipeline leaks at the follow-up stage.

Local is important specifically because there are a lot of out-of-staters trying to buy houses in markets they’ve never set foot in. Sellers know this and it decays trust right from the start. If your home base shows a local address and a local phone number, you’re signaling that you’re actually there, that you know the neighborhood, that you’re not a national operation mailing from three states away.

How it shows up

What you need is a basic website and a local phone number. It goes a long way. Keep it simple — who you are in one sentence, a photo that doesn’t look like stock art, a phone number, a form. The phone number is a local cell or a cheap VoIP line with the right area code. The address is whatever gets you mail: a UPS Store box, a coworking drop, a shared-office suite. Sellers rarely show up at the address. They just need to see one exists.

One thing I always say: you need to invest in your backyard. I believe you need to be there to manage the crap that’s going to go on on these job sites. Out-of-state investing is for when you get rich. In your first year, you want to take out any risk possible, and being local is part of that. If you’re presenting yourself as a local investor, you should actually be a local investor.

The website is one page. The point isn’t to be a marketing agency — the point is to pass the 30-second sniff test when a motivated seller Googles your name.

Related

direct mail, list building, buy box, skip tracing, imby, solo house flipper