How To Build An Effective Buyer’s List

Read Transcript for “How To Build An Effective Buyer’s List”

“I know you say that getting and building a buyers list is easy, so could you share the many different ways to go about it? I’ve watched almost all of your videos, but this is one video that I haven’t seen you dive into very much. I just want to know your perspective because I’m kicking off the “For Rent Method” in my city as I’m writing this and I don’t really want to co-partner with another rent to own investor in my city to get tenant buyers and lose part of my non-refundable lease option money.” – Bob Young, Glen Dale, Arizona

Joe: Good point – you don’t want to partner if you can avoid it especially if it’s not saving you a lot of time and effort. A lot of times, if you’re going to have somebody help you, you want to pay them hourly because it’ll be much less than paying somebody half of your income.

Joe: But, to build a buyers list – very important to do but not necessary until you have sellers, so the first thing that you want to do (and I tell this to all of my mentor students as they get started) – don’t worry about buyers at the beginning – worry about sellers. Go get a seller, get a lease option memo signed, and as soon as you get a lease option memo signed, then you put an ad on Craigslist. The ad on Craigslist must have in the headline: “Rent To Buy” or “Lease Option” or one of those things that explains to people that this is a seller financed type of deal – it can say “Rent To Buy – No Qualifying. 4 Bedroom”. If you have a special thing like it’s on a lake or it’s a 4 bedroom or something special about the property, you can put that there (or maybe it’s in a special neighborhood).

Joe: Then, on the text in the ad, you’re just going to put the information about the property, pictures (as many pictures as you can) bedrooms, baths, square footage, etc.) – all of the normal stuff you see in a real estate ad. And then you’re going to say ‘down payment required’ – you’re not going to put the amount of the down payment – just down payment required. So when they call you can ask them how much they have for a down payment.

Joe: So that’s the best way to build your buyers list. In addition to that, you’re going to have a sign in the yard. You’re going to get a lot of calls on that sign in the yard. There’s other places you can go – get on postlets.com (another one that we use). You can also put signs up around the neighborhood (“Rent To Buy”) – these are I think, less important because they don’t bring you specific buyers – they bring you generic buyers, and if you’re going to get generic buyers, you want to send those to the web pages. We’ve got the web pages and the clone site system and the “Automarketer” set up so that they convert those people that are thinking about doing a lease option into people that will go on your list.

Joe: What’s most important is that you sell that specific house. Building a buyers list doesn’t make you money unless you have something to sell, so make sure you get something to sell first then worry about that. If you have a property that’s purchasable through a lease option, you’ll be able to sell it very quickly and very easily if the monthly payment is accurate and it’s not over market rent, and your price isn’t too far out of bounds. Although we’ve sold properties $100,000 over market value, that is much less important than the monthly payment.

Joe: I think the reason I haven’t covered this much is because it’s so simple – it’s really not difficult. Building a buyers list can be very valuable, but after you’ve done 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 of these properties, you’re going to have 4, 5, or 600,000 people on your list simply because each one that comes in is going to bring you in 20, 40 60 or 100 people that you’re going to be able to put on your list and sell to later. So next time you get a lease option memo signed, then you’re going to send out an email to the list that you’ve got, and once you get it up to 500 or 1000 people in a particular city, the likelihood is that 10 to 20% of the lease option memos that you get are going to sell almost immediately to that list. Now, it’s not everyone – its 10 to 20%, but that’s still way better than having no list of all.

Joe: Having a list can make things go really quickly, plus you build a relationship with people over time. They get to know who you are and they’re easier to work with because they know that you’re in the business and they trust you more. So building a list is valuable, but it’s the last thing that you do – after a lease option memo. It’s not the last thing you do – it’s the thing you do after you get the lease option memo signed.

Joe: Don’t worry about buyers. Get the lease option memo signed, then follow the instructions that I give in order to find the buyer and then put those buyers on your list and eventually that list will build up. Again, you don’t have to have 1000 or 5000 people on your buyers list to start out with. All you need is a good property to sell and it WILL sell. Alright, I hope that helps. Thanks, now.