Epic Real Estate Investing - How to Find Motivated Sellers Without Buying a List | 3rd Degree Thursday

Episode Date: November 13, 2014

Today Matt responds to a question from an Australian listener who cannot buy lists because of local laws.  Matt responds with the top 3 ways to find motivated sellers without buying a list.  Enjoy!�� -------  The free course is new and improved!  To access to the two fastest and easiest strategies to a paycheck in real estate, go to FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com or text “FreeCourse” to 55678. What interests you most? E ducation P roperties I ncome C oaching Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to third degree Thursdays, the show where I subject myself to you giving me the third degree. All righty. So got a question from Kath, hailing from Down Under in Australia. And she has sent me a question based on the special online trainings I've been releasing all week. And if you didn't know, you can go to epicquicktips.com and get free access to those special trainings. So if you didn't know, now you know. They are all in the spirit of. of last week's theme back to basics and keeping your business simple.

So you can go to epicquictips.com, just like it sounds, and get all access there. So Kath has been tuning in, and she's a bit frustrated. So Kath writes, Matt, I have just listened to the three simple principles to finding deeply discounted properties, and it has heightened all capital letters, my frustration, all capital letters. So she's very frustrated. Not your fault, of course. but in Australia, you cannot buy lists.

And the Privacy Act there, it's pretty strong, and all of that is illegal. I'm so jealous that you guys can just buy a list of potentially motivated sellers, then contact them directly. So take step three, pull a list out of that video, and you'll start to feel my frustration. I've been trying to move at the speed of instruction, but this is starting to be a speed bump. Get creative, I keep telling myself. I'm starting to target the people that work with potentially motivated sellers, for example, family loss solicitors, divorce lawyers. But that is relying on them to tell their clients about me.

I am doing the things I can, for example, for sale by owners, website, her websites, classified ads. I've been or I've even targeted owner occupants because I can just put owner on the yellow letter and the property address and say I was just interested in the area slash property. So the question is, if you can. could no longer use list sources, where would you focus your efforts to find motivated sellers? In other words, where do you get the most deals if you took out the results from mailings to lists? Okay.

Let's see. It finishes up with, I know you've talked about targeting absentee owners who can be sourced via for rent adverts. I'm starting that now as well. I know there are ways just curious about your results so I can focus some efforts. Thanks for any input, Kath. All righty, great. Great question, actually.

I mean, what did investors do before they had the ability to buy marketing lists, before they had the ability to buy mailing lists? Well, before I offer some suggestions, Kath, I want to commend you, as well as make an example out of you, a good example that is. You know, as I read her email, there are two things within that email that jump out at me of which everyone can take a lesson from, whether it's your first time learning it or whether this is a refresher course. You could probably never hear this too much. And the first thing is, in Australia, she cannot buy a marketing list. But she's not letting that stop her. You know, as you heard her mention everything else that she's trying to do, she's relentless in finding a solution.

And I cannot tell you how invaluable of a character trait that is for a real estate investor. You know, as she puts it, this particular issue is becoming a speed bump. And, you know, the streets of real estate investing are lined with speed bumps. So this won't be your last one, Kath, but I have faith that they will not interfere with your progress. Okay? They will not interfere with your success. So you've got what it takes. Okay, so have faith in that.

Number two, she wrote, get creative, and she put that in all capital letters and followed it with a couple of explanation points, and she keeps telling that to herself. And again, an invaluable character trait for a real estate investor, not only to get past the speed bumps, but to solve property owner's problems. as that's what we are. We think we're real estate investors that get paid for buying and selling real estate, but no, actually, we are problem solvers because the only way we're going to make a lot of money and make a lot of money consistently in real estate is if we focus on solving property owners' problems in the interest of making a trade for some equity, a trade for a discount. In short, we know that property owners will trade equity for peace of mind.

And the more peace of mind you provide, the more equity you'll receive. the quicker you provide that piece of mind, the more equity you'll receive. And to do those two things consistently, as no two deals will be the same, that's going to take creativity. And what she is doing, I mean, she's connecting with people that are connected to property owners with problems. That's perfect. Family lawyers, divorce lawyers, you know, keep doing that.

And I've said this umpteen times, marketing may be the fastest way to do deals, but networking. it's the best way. It just happens to be the slowest way. So that's why we teach marketing also. That's why we conduct marketing also because we need fast money as well as we need long-term money. But networking is the best way. So, Kath, keep making these connections, okay? And keep building and nurturing those relationships.

Keep building your network while you're seeking other solutions. So let's get to our question. Her question is, if you could no longer use list sources, where would you focus your efforts to find motivated sellers? So she sort of mentioned at the end of her email, what would have been one of my suggestions. It's in the ballpark. And that is to peruse property management websites. Or you could use for rent ads as well.

But I like going to property management websites because they're properties that are probably already fixed up and they are vacant and they already have a property manager assigned to them. So a lot of the, that could alleviate a lot of the extra work that you might have to do afterwards. But go to property management websites and take me. note of the properties in their for rent section, the stuff that they're advertising to tenants. And then look up the owner's mailing addresses. Boom. You've got the non-owner occupied owners right

there, right there. So to look up mailing addresses, there's a few ways you can do that. I use property shark.com. I've got a subscription over there. Propertyshark.com to find the owners. It's very affordable. I think it's just, I don't know, 20 bucks a month for their basic service. Also, you can also get it for free from your realtor. If you got a good realtor on your team, they can provide this information for you. And Kat, if Property Shark.com doesn't work in Australia, and your realtor won't provide it for you. I did conduct a really quick Google search for you on your behalf.

So try Australian-people-deckers.com. Australian-people-dash-records.com. You can do property searches there. Also on that website, you'll find a number of other search possibilities that may help you find motivated sellers. But look around. Also, there's another solution that this is the one I use primarily. Go to any of the virtual assistant websites and type in title search as a job description.

And what you're going to find are VAs that have the capability to look up property owners for you. Again, not sure if that can be done globally, as I've never tried, but if it can be done, you'll find someone there that can do it. So even if you don't know how to do it, Cathar, you just don't have the access to it or, you know, If that can be done, it's going to be there. So I use O-desk to find my virtual assistance, and that's just what I've used forever, and I had no reason to go anywhere else. And I've never have probably any less than five VAs at a time employed working on something for me.

And this type of work, like record research or record searching, title searching, is probably amongst the cheapest labor that you're going to find there. It probably won't cost you more than $4 to $6 an hour. So try that. All right. That's number one. peruse property management websites and search the owners of properties on that site that are currently for rent because, you know, like I said, what do you know here? You know that it's a non-owner

occupied property, right? Because it's for rent. And you also know it's vacant. Now a vacant property for a landlord could suggest and quite possibly does suggest there's some motivation to sell. They've got a vacant property. That's a problem for them. So that might be a problem that you can solve by taking it off their hands, right? It'll vary from property, property, of course, but it's a great place to find motivated non-owner-occupied sellers without having to buy a list. Number two. And this practice is probably as old as real estate investing itself. Driving neighborhoods.

Drive-through neighborhoods that you'd like to invest in it and write down the addresses of the ugliest properties. Properties that look vacant. Properties that need repairs. Properties with overgrown weeds. Properties that are boarded up or vandalized. Take note of these addresses and look up the owners using the methods that I just shared with you. and create a list that way. Okay?

Number three is a practice called farming. That's probably just as old as the other strategy as well. So pick an area of which you want to invest in and mail to every house. Really simple. Mail once a month or every month or maybe every other week. You can also walk the neighborhood and do little door hangers or sticky notes on the doors. You know, this strategy, like I said, it's as old as real estate investing. is as well. It takes some time. It takes some patience. And depending on how big the area you select,

it could be expensive. But it's a good investment. I mean, so many investors do it and still do it. I know a lot of real estate agents do it as well. And there are a few reasons for this. One, it's a shotgun approach. You know, you're working the numbers. You're throwing the spaghetti against the wall to see how much of it sticks and what sticks. It's bound, something's bound to stick. That shotgun, it's bound to hit something. So that's one reason. Two is you become familiar to the people in the area. You brand yourself, so to speak, in that neighborhood or that area. And people like to do business with what's familiar.

You just want to be at top of mind when the motivation hits them and it's time to sell. Number three, by selecting an area, you become an expert in that area. And as a real estate investor, that's a very good thing to be as real estate. It's local, right? The more you know about an area, the better investing decisions that you're going to make. So, Kath, those are the three things that I would do if I couldn't buy a marketing list. In fact, I do the first one that I gave you and I buy lists. So I do both of those.

I peruse property management websites. Actually, I have a virtual assistant to it. And then conduct a title search and compile the addresses in a spreadsheet for me. And we just add those names and addresses to our mailing list. All that being said, there are no limits to the creativity of which to find motivated sales. I mean, it sounds like you've got a lot of lines in the water, as you should, as all of you should. I would recommend no less than implementing three methods of finding motivated sellers. Five would be better and as many as you can comfortably handle would be best.

And, you know, as the backbone of your business is your lead generation systems. No leads, no deals. No deals, no business. So, Kath, keep doing what you're doing. And in the meantime, insert any or all of what I just mentioned into step three of the motivated seller's checklist that you received at that online training and everything else should be the same. Okay. Oh, and if you'd like to pick up a copy of that checklist that she's using, you want one for

yourself, you can by visiting a new site that I just set up for you, something I'll be updating regularly. I kind of mentioned it here at the beginning of the episode, Epicquicktips.com, epicquicktips.com, just like it sounds, no funny spellings or anything like that. And ultimately, this is what's going to take the place of the free real estate investing course, all in the interest of efficiency, simplicity, and profitability. Epicquickquicktips.com. You can get Epic Quick Tips. Makes sense, right? See how creative I was in that? Anyway, that's it for today. Should you have any questions, comments, concerns, or rants that you'd like me to address here

live on the show, send them to me at Matt at Epic Real Estate.com. Actually, cross that, because that email list is just so buried and it's so big and deep. send it to podcast at epic real estate real estate.com. Podcast at epic real estate.com. Send your questions, comments, and concerns there so I can give you priority and your messages don't get buried in my inbox. And it's deep now. So if you've sent me something recently and you haven't received a reply, that's why.

It's just so far down there. And it just that I've totally ruined that email address for any sort of efficiency for myself. Anyway, send them to a podcast at epic real estate.com and type third degree in the subject line. Or leave me a voicemail on the epic hotline at 1-88-891-7203. All righty? I'll see you tomorrow for Financial Freedom Friday. Simons has your holiday outfits sorted.

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