What Are The Best Sources For Finding Motivated Seller Leads?

What Are The Best Sources For Finding Motivated Seller Leads

Joe: Hey, it’s Joe. Welcome back. This question is from Andrew. It says, “This is Andrew from Baltimore. My question is I’ve been through your mentor program and have some success with the For Rent Method, but I’m looking to start doing some of your other zero down methods. One thing that still confuses me is what type of sellers or people would we approach to make these zero down offers? Would it be FSBO’s, absentee owners, foreclosures, and any of these? What is the best source to find these leads and make immediate zero down offers whether it be through Zillow or craigslist or any of these other sources?”

Joe: My main lead source is through craigslist. We just scrap craigslist and we send a text to all those people and say, “Would you consider selling your home rent to buy rather than selling it outright?” And when we do that we get responses. And some of them will say, “Yeah, I would consider that.” Some of them, most of them, most of the responses we get are “No.” Eighty percent of them are “No, I’m not interested in that.”

Joe: But that twenty, ten to twenty percent that we get that say “yes” or “maybe” or “I don’t quite understand” or “How does that work?” or, “Yes, I’d do it if you get me $20,000 down,” you know, those are the people that we talk to. And having those leads like that that are already prequalified on some level, then we can get on the phone and we can walk them through their options and selling their property.

Joe: Those people are, everybody that’s on craigslist selling for sale by owner doesn’t really know what they’re doing. Eighty-five to ninety-five percent of for sale by owners don’t succeed. So just the fact that they’re on craigslist trying to sell for sale by owner proves to us that they don’t really have a clue on how to get this property sold. They do have other options and that’s what we have to help them understand. They have the option of listing it with a realtor. That might be a better option for them. They have the option of, if we do it as a lease option. Or maybe we want to take it as a subject to, or a land contract or an assignable cash deal. They have the option of giving it back to the bank and going through a short sale and foreclosure. They have the option of selling it to us for cash for dramatically under market value.

Joe: They have those options and we can tell them all their options and we can tell them all their options and then they can decide, based on the options that we’re giving them. And, by the way, the options that we give them are probably the same options that they would get from anybody who is knowledgeable except for a realtor who’s going to tell them the only thing that they can do is sell it through a realtor. But that’s not the only way. There are better options for them and there’s ways for them to make more money if they do it through us.

Joe: We’re not only going to make them more money, but we’re also going be – we’re not only going to be able to help the people that need our help, they can sell it without a realtor, but we can also help the people who want to make more money and that’s the beauty of a process like this.

Joe: So that lead source is, I believe, the best source. It’s also a good source for using the other zero down structures because not everybody is going to want to do a lease option. But they might do a subject to or they might do a multi mortgage or a land contract or contract for deed or an assignable cash deal. They might do any of those types of structures with us and if that’s the case, then we can, we can engineer those deals one by one as we’re talking to those people and we find out what their needs are. We’re acting as a diagnostician. We’re asking them questions about their situation, about their property, about their mortgage, about their payment, and once we have all the information we need, and by the way, those questions are all in the Automarketer. There’s a list of questions that you can fill out a form, and then you’ll have all that information in front of you and you can make an offer based on having the right information.

Joe: You know, if you got a doctor, and you say, “Doctor, my stomach hurts, can you help me?” and he’s not going to say, “Well, here, take this.” He’s going to say, “Well, what about this, and what about this?” And he’s going to ask you questions and he’s going to find out what that problem is. And once he figures out what the problem is, then he’s going to make a recommendation. Then he’s going to, you know, give you the prescription that you need in order to solve the problem. An that’s exactly how we’re working. We’re going to find out what the problem is, we’re going to listen to them. We’re going to take that information and we’re going to analyze the deal and then we’re going to make an offer based on what we can do and then also tell them the other options that they have so if they want to go a different direction they can do that as well. This builds enormous trust with people. It’s also I think, the right thing to do.

Joe: Now, you’re not going to get every deal this way, but a lot of times I’ve found that people would prefer to work with you than do it the other way. And, the thing that we’re offering will actually make them more money in most cases than any other option that they have. So these are good options to be able to offer people as they’re going through it.

Joe: Now, the other types of lead sources that I go after are absentee owners, absentee owners can be wonderful for these types of under market value properties and expired properties, if you go after expireds you know, a lot of those people can do lease options or, you know, a lot of reasons that they don’t sell is because they didn’t drop their price enough. But you can get them full price for their property without them paying any realtor fees by doing, simply doing a lease option. So expireds are a good source of leads. Just be careful, especially if you’re an agent, you know, in contacting expired listings. Make sure that you’re not contacting people that have relisted with another agent. You don’t want to step on the toes of another agent. They’ll just cause you pain and cause you trouble and you don’t, it’s just the wrong thing to do, anyway. So stay away from stepping on the toes of realtors.

Joe: There’s also other lead sources. We scrape craigslist but Zillow is out there and you can go through Zillow and get for sale by owners, Trulia is out there. Those are good sources as well. So you could go through and manually do cold calls. You know, I like doing the Automarketer because it sends out and gets back responses and we get a lot more “yes” responses so we call those directly, instead of calling somebody cold – they don’t know what you’re calling about. Most of them are going to say, “No.” So you have to do a lot more dialing.

Joe: But it’s free. You know, get on the phone, you can open up craigslist and you start going down that list and dialing them, say, “Would you consider selling your home rent to buy rather than selling it outright?” And you’re going to find people. So, this deal, and that’s the way we used to do it before the Automarketer. The Automarketer made it a lot easier because it does all that for us and then we only have to deal with the low hanging fruit, the people that are serious and ready to go.

Joe: Anyway. Hope that answers the question. Thanks – good luck.