$140K in 3 months wholesaling Jacksonville virtually
A 5% contact rate means 95% of the list never answered. Craig stopped trashing that 95% and started hitting it again in sequence.
About
Craig is a licensed real estate agent who learned the phone cold calling expired listings. After a bad partnership burned him, he restarted solo in January and now wholesales Jacksonville, FL virtually. He runs the whole operation with one cold caller and about $1,000 a month in marketing spend.
Operating market
Jacksonville, FL
Favorite features
The Challenge
Craig got his real estate license and started the way most agents do, cold calling expired listings from PropStream. His first check was $6,500, on a seller he approached with a cash offer and ended up listing. Scaling was messier. He bounced between channels. Two weeks of cold calling on a single line Mojo dialer, then SMS blasts, then $600 into Facebook ads with zero leads. Then a website. He uploaded a list, called through it three times, and threw it away. Nothing got recycled and nothing got tracked.
A partnership made it worse. His partner insisted on a $2 an hour overseas caller whose rural wifi muffled every conversation. Two callers in a row hit a 1% contact rate: 10,000 dials and barely 100 people reached. Craig lost money, wasted two months of data, and stopped marketing. He even tried DataSift once and quit after three days. "I was completely lost," he admits. The data he had bought over the summer sat untouched.
What They Built
Getting the data straight from the county
The pre-filtered PropStream pulls gave way to Duval County records: high equity, absentee, and the utility disconnect list. The disconnect list arrived with tenant names on it, so Craig retraced every address back to the real owner. That one fix turned a throwaway list into his best source.
That's where a lot of my deals came from actually, was the disconnect list.
Cutting the county file down to records that sell
Craig filters out commercial, anything over the $400,000 value range, and anything over 2,500 square feet. What stays: single families, mobile homes, vacant land, and 2 to 4 unit buildings in the zips his buyers want. The trimmed file breaks into buckets and campaigns small enough to track inside DataSift.
Restarting lean with one vetted caller
Back on his own in January, Craig called alone for three weeks, locked the first contract, and got paid. That check hired a cold caller he chose and vetted himself, about $500 a month. Every interested seller comes back to Craig directly: follow up, warm leads, contracts, all of it.
I restarted into the business January 4th and I had a deal locked up January 8th.
Hitting the same records from more than one angle
Cold calling carried 100% of the restart. After the auto lead gen challenge, SMS came back into the flow. Direct mail comes next, aimed at records the phone and the texts never reached. The whole machine, tools and VA included, runs on about $1,000 a month.
Before and After
Before DataSift
- A VA Works Every No-Contact Lead in DataSift
- Daily Follow-Ups Run From the Sift Line Tasks
- Nine Deals Under Contract After the Stacked Niche Switch
- Cold Callers Sent KPIs by Hand Outside the System
- Expensive PPC Spend With No Return
- Follow-Up Leads Vanished Into an Abyss in the Old CRM
- 60,000 Records a Quarter Feeding His Bulk Callers
- Four Contracts Signed in 10 Days
- Three Deals a Week, Two Weeks Running
- First Direct to Seller Push in 30 Years of Business
- A $10,000 Mail Campaign That Produced Nothing
- 15 Years Buying Only From the MLS and Wholesalers
- New lender agreed 12 days after the first collapsed
- $105,696 net profit after closing costs
- Nine properties contracted at $360K, sold at $450K
- Hard money lenders would not lend on rural portfolios
- Local title companies refused assignments and passthroughs
- Seller would only sell one house, priced far over appraisal
- Still Runs on a $500 Monthly Budget
- An $85K Deal Off a 50-Name Stacked List
- 13 Contracts in Six Weeks From 250 Prospects
- About $40K Spread Across Six Months, Still Behind
- Five Contracts in a Row Fell Through
- Shotgun Lists Across Too Many Zip Codes
- One Contract Per 25-35 Leads, Half the Typical Ratio
- Each Caller Brings 16-18 Leads a Week
- 50,000 Free County Records Called on a Four-Month Cycle
- Two Partners Dialing Everything Themselves From 2017 to 2019
- VA Cleaned Every County Download by Hand in Excel
- Another Blanket ListSource Pull Whenever the Pipeline Ran Dry
- Same county-data system expanding into Texas and Miami
- $800K in revenue from six or seven deep-research deals
- About 20 people across data, calling, research, and sales
- PropStream tax delinquent lists arrived after owners had already paid
- Two years hunting a golden list that did not exist
- Bandit signs at intersections, cold calling all day from a coffee shop
- Four deals closed faster than his first three
- 8,200 dials and 25 leads in one November
- Four VAs running one calling and texting protocol
- Generic YouTube advice with no sequence to follow
- Back at a sales job four months after going full time
- Spent $35,000 on marketing with zero return
- About 35 Leads Per Deal Across 347 Total Leads
- $253K In Cash And Equity From One Package Deal
- 40 Properties Wholesaled In Under Four Months
- 12-Hour Days And A 45-Minute Commute
- No Deals Found Through Realtors, MLS, Or Craigslist
- Cold Calling From A Printed Spreadsheet In The Parking Lot
- Pulls Nearly All His Data Straight From the County
- Runs Jacksonville Virtually on $1,000 a Month
- Locked a Contract Four Days After His January Restart
- Scattered Across SMS, Facebook Ads, and a Website
- Partner's $2 an Hour Caller Hit a 1% Contact Rate
- Called Lists Three Times Then Trashed Them
- 50,000 sqft warehouses in negotiation, one to two leads daily
- $59,000 spread on his first big wholesale deal
- Every eviction filed in New Jersey, worked daily
- Old CRM buried callers in highlight and right-click drama
- Phenomenal months, then crickets for months
- Overnight pharmacy shifts, 84 hours in a single week
- Knows the playbook works and is replicating it
- First off-market contract four months after starting
- $250,000 assignment fee on deal one
- Weak cash position after funding ground-up projects
- Questioned whether real estate money was even real
- Two years spending on development deals, not making much back
- $40,000 month tracking with fixed costs
- Five first to market deals since April
- Probate filings pulled daily in multiple counties
- Two mail campaigns, response rates he did not like
- Costs fluctuated month to month with list spend
- Custom Podio build, broad absentee and vacant lists
- Owner buried beside her son after two years unclaimed
- Runs every heir search solo now
- Five heirs found, contacted, and signed across Texas
- Needed a specialist for her first deep heir search
- Paper records only, fathers listed by initials
- Probate leads dead-ended with no findable heirs
- Every No Recycled On A Two-Year Rehash Cycle
- Three VAs Clean Data Before A Single Dial
- Three First To Market Niche Filters Worked Daily
- Loose Onboarding And Under-Corrected Bad Hires
- Team Swung From Large To Small To Solo
- Broad Marketing Across Every Niche At Once
- Mornings and evenings back with his family
- 8 person crew handles whole projects in sets of two
- 40+ properties across three portfolios in about six months
- Afraid to take on payroll and a crew
- The bottleneck on his own projects
- Software job eight to five, real estate five to midnight
- 55% Answer Rate On One-By-One Click To Call
- Free County Data Replaced Every Paid List
- $45K Fee Closed One Week After The Callback
- Podio, Slack, And Multiple VAs, No Traction
- 30,000-Record Lists Dialed Two Or Three Times Through
- At Least $40K Wasted On Lists And VAs
- Four Marketing Attempts on a Couple of Lists
- A Three-Person Team at About $1,800 Cost Per Contract
- Almost Two Years Nomadic Across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
- Behind a Jacksonville Desk 95 Percent of the Time
After DataSift
- Achieved Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Little Data Clarity
- Relied On Google Sheets
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Data Clarity / Organization
- Wholesales, Flips And Does Retail
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Didn't Understand Data Management
- Strong Real Estate Agent
- Wanted To Break Into Wholesaling But Didn't Know How
- Healthy Scale
- Data Driven Decisions
- Consistent Deals
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent
- Little Data Insight
- Unorganized Bulk Marketing
- Strategic Focus on Niches
- Enhanced Lead Flow and Certainty
- Streamlined Marketing Process
- Efficient Use of Data
- Direct Mail & Deep Prospecting
- Broad, Unfocused Strategy
- Inconsistency in Results
- Dependency on Luck
- Marketing Clarity
- 6 Figure Months
- High Deal Volume
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Proper Data Management
- Weak Marketing Flow
- Poor Data Management
- Lack of Focus
- Manual Efforts
- Successful Scale
- Total Data Clarity
- Clear Marketing Approach
- Large Deal Spreads
- Improper Data Management
- Poor Marketing Method
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Clear Data Management
- Clear Data Management
- Successful Scale
- Many ways to close deals
- Large deal spreads
- Poor data management
- Unable to scale properly
- Poor marketing flow
- Smaller Deal Spreads
- Increased Deal Volume
- Platform Utilization
- Realtor Collaboration
- Funding Efforts
- Lots Of Deals
- Data Driven Decisions
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Poor Data Management
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Relied On Bulk Marketing
- Lack of Clarity
- Automated Acquisition
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Data Driven Decisions
- Structured Follow-ups
- Increased Lead Generation
- Achieved Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Manual Acquisition Processes
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Minimal Lead Insights
- Poor Follow Up Flow
- Inconsistent Lead Generation
- Lacked Sales And Marketing Clarity
What changed
The turning point had a dollar figure on it. A $70,000 deal with his Jacksonville buyers came together, and the JV split paid Craig $35,000. "That was just like a complete turning point for me," he says. He messaged Claudio, joined the auto lead gen challenge, and reopened the DataSift free trial he had once quit in three days. Working through Zac's emails, he finally saw the real problem. A 5% contact rate meant 95% of every list he had trashed never even answered. Some sellers sat stacked on seven different lists, still unreached. He stopped buying data and started working what he already owned.
The Results
The restart began January 4th. The first contract locked January 8th, a repeat customer who turned out to own eight properties. That check paid for his cold caller. A $70,000 Jacksonville deal followed with the local dispo partners he had built a relationship with; the JV split put $35,000 in Craig's pocket. Three months of virtual wholesaling totaled $140K.
The before and after is stark. Last year: $600 Facebook tests, trashed lists, a 1% contact rate, and two wasted months. Now: one market, one mastered channel, recycled county data, and $1,000 a month total spend, $500 for the caller and $500 for everything else.
I'm only spending about a thousand dollars a month right now on marketing.
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