How Do I Find And Buy Off Market Properties?

How Do I Find And Buy Off Market Properties?

Joe: Hey, it’s Joe Crump. This question is, “Hey, Joe, how do I find and buy off market properties?” We all know that it’s pretty easy to find properties on the MLS, the Multiple Listing Service. If the market is in a place where you can do that. In 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, we were able to go into the MLS and put in our criteria of the type of property that we’re looking for in the areas that we wanted and the day that they came on the market they would spit them out at us and they’d say, here’s a property that fits those criteria. We’d look at it, we’d make an offer on it. Usually at the beginning of that process we’d get every one that we made an offer on and often we would offer something close to that price because the price that they were asking was substantially below market value.

Joe: As time passed and more people started to realize, hey, there’s a lot of good deals on the market right now, maybe I should get into that, we started getting one in three deals. And that happened for a few years. We’d get one in three, one in four, that we made offers on and we’d be offering full price. We wouldn’t typically offer much more than full price. But we’d offer full price or if we thought that the deal made sense, sometimes we would offer a little bit less.

Joe: But, after a while, as the market started to get a little bit better, it was harder and harder. So, when those properties came on the market, which were fewer and farther between, more people were making offers on them. So, now it was one in eight, one in nine, one in ten that we’d make offers on that we’d get, even though we were offering full price and doing it the day it came on the market, because the second day typically what they do is send us back a note saying send us your highest and best offer. We’ve got several offers on this property. And of course, the listing agent wants to sell it to their person most of the time because those were just good deals. So, we didn’t get as many of them that way.

Joe: So, we had to find other ways to find those properties. And to do that you have to go ff market to make that happen. Properties that not very many people know about. So, you have to be able to dig them up. You have to find them. And that’s one of the ways that we use the Automarketer. The Automarketer will help us find properties of people that are listing them For Sale By Owner, and one of the things you find with For Sale By Owners the property that they’re selling For Sale By Owner may not be the deal that you want. That may not be the best deal that you want. But you want to be able to get a conversation with those people because a lot of them are real estate investors or a lot of them have other properties to sell.

Joe: Some of them have whole portfolios to sell. And you can find one of those people, they may be selling one property but they’ve got five other properties they wouldn’t mind getting rid of. They just haven’t done the rehab on them, they’re in bad shape. They’re tired of them. And they’ll work with you to get them financed, to get them sold. And you can buy properties and find properties that way through the For Sale By Owner section. Because a lot of investors are working using craigslist and Zillow to sell their properties.

Joe: The other source of leads that we’ll go after are expired listings. People that have put their properties on the market, on the MLS, it’s been on the market for six months or twelve months, didn’t get sold and that listing with their real estate agent expired. And you can buy those lists and then you can take those lists and you can import them into the Automarketer. And the Automarketer’s set up so it can send, if you have their phone number, you can send them a text message, or you can send them a voice blast message or you can send them a postcard. It’s also set up so it can automatically send a postcard.

Joe: So, if I import a list of expired listings, I can send out postcards or a yellow letter, or self mailers. We’ve got a couple dozen different types of mailers that all say something along the lines of We Buy Houses. And different types of We Buy Houses, postcards, and large ones and small ones, and all types of things.

Joe: So, if you have that list that’s in there you can click a couple of buttons and the service that takes care of those postcards will send out all those postcards for you.

Joe: Now, sending postcards can get expensive. You’re going to spend close to a buck apiece. We’re competitive with all the other places that sell those. But, it’s still an expensive lead generating process. If you use the Automarketer to get For Sale By Owners, you’re going to spend 20¢ for a lead. If you do it with postcards you’re going to spend $20, $40, $80 per lead. So, much, much more expensive if you’re doing snail mail over doing text marketing.

Joe: You can also, if you don’t have cellphone numbers for people, but you have land line numbers, you can send them voice blasts. So, you can create a voice blast that says, hey, I’m interested in buying your property, rent to buy, or buying it on terms. I’m an investor. If you’re interested, please give me a call. And you’ll get responses on that. You’ll get fewer responses on that type of ad than you will if you just to For Sale By Owners and say would you consider selling your home rent to buy? That’s the response rate, that’s the message that you’re going to get the most responses for.

Joe: And if you can get those responses and you can get them on the phone and you can design a deal that makes sense for that particular lead. So, For Sale By Owners, expired listings and then absentee owners is another source of leads that you can buy.

Joe: And sometimes you can only get the addresses and you’ll have to do postcards, same with expireds. But sometimes you can get their phone numbers as well. There’s a lot of companies out there like Melissa Data that has a append service that allows you to also ask for the phone numbers. Or, you can have a VA go in there and go into the white pages and find phone numbers for all of these properties, property owners and do it that way. And then you can do a voice blast out to those people, or a text blast out to those people and do marketing.

Joe: And the way the Automarketer is set up it does a sequence of marketing messages. So, on day one – and it’s designed for the For Rent Method. And we’ve got a couple of different campaigns, but I suggest you use the three-month For Rent Method campaign. The reason is it’s gets the most responses, which you want, because you can develop those leads. It also sends them a series of messages that have different asks. So, the first one is would you consider selling your home rent to buy? The second one, same thing, except this time it gives them a link to a website that explains how you work and how that Rent to Buy process works and how you would buy from them and how they would make money and how that whole process sells them on the idea.

Joe: And it has a form on that page that they can fill out. And if they fill out that form, they’re very likely going to work with you. It also, when they fill out that form, it sends them the lease option memo which if they fill that form out then you’ve got the deal. And you’ve done it without even talking to them. And that happens sometimes. But not as often as the people that you talk to.

Joe: So, it goes through this process. And then on day seven it sends them another message, and on day – and we’ve got two other websites that it also sends them to over this three-month period. You know, every few days, every six, seven days it’s going to send them another text message. And it’s going to send them a link to a site that says We Will Buy, WeWillBuy.com, to see what that site looks like.

Joe: If you want to look at the one, the first one, the one about the For Rent Method, go to BuyersForYourHouse.com. That’s the clone site that comes with the Automarketer, or one of the clone sites that comes with the Automarketer, WeWillBuy.com is the second one. Another one is the subject to website. It will also have the listing site that shows what you’ve got for sale. So you can see all these different websites and it happens through a marketing process that happens over time. So, people that have had their properties for sale as expired listings or as for sale by owners, they may not be ready to go the first time you contact them, but maybe a few days later they are. Maybe a week after that. Maybe a month after that. Maybe three months after that, when they finally get tired of doing the process the way they’re doing it and doing the things that don’t work.

Joe: One of the things that we know about For Sale By Owners is they want to sell their property. They are motivated sellers. It’s just a matter of – the big problem is they’ve chosen a way to sell their property that doesn’t work. We know that 85% to 95% of For Sale By Owners don’t succeed with the sale. They end up either taking it off the market or listing it with a real estate agent. So, if you’re a real estate agent, by the way, going after For Sale By Owners as an investor is a great way to get them to talk to you. Because that’s another option that you can give them in this process.

Joe: I used to get a lot of my listing as a real estate agent when I was a top producing real estate agent, I used to get them through For Sale By Owners. So, it’s a great source. But I would suggest that you try to do them as investment properties before you do them as listing because you’ll, they’re easier to do, you’ll make more money at it, and there’s potential that you can actually keep those properties and build a portfolio for the big money over the long term.

Joe: Anyway. That’s how you find and put those types of properties together and the type of lead sources to go after. There’s other lead sources out there that you can go after. But those are my top three. And I think they’ll keep you busy and you can do them all over the country. There’s lists like this that you can do this all over the country.

Joe: All right. Subscribe to the channel. Go to JoeCrumpBlog.com and sign up for my free newsletter. Go to PushButtonAutomarketer.com. That’s the automation software that brings in these types of leads and can work with these types of leads. And, by the way, with those leads that you buy, the expired listing leads or the absentee owner leads, you can import that CVS files into the Automarketer so it can send out to these people and keep track of them for you. And then of course check out my mentor program which is ZeroDownInvesting.com.

Joe: All right – Thanks a lot. Take care.