KGCI: Real Estate on Air - A Tactical Playbook for Finding Off-Market Real Estate Deals

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

Summary:This episode delivers a masterclass on one of the most sought-after skills in real estate: sourcing off-market properties. The guest expert provides a detailed playbook with three distinct strategies for finding deals before they ever hit the MLS. Agents will learn specific scripts for networking with professionals like probate attorneys, a step-by-step guide to launching a targeted direct mail campaign to absentee owners, and empathetic approaches for converting expired and withdrawn listings into pocket listings.

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be Uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Safright. All right, welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate podcast. I'm your host Chris Craddock. And I am super pumped to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is finding off-market sellers, finding off-market deals, what you can do with them, what are some creative options. We definitely don't have enough time and a half hour to go through it all. But this is a chance to figure out how to build well, right?

So you always want to keep the best, sell the rest, right? Every deal that ever hit the MLS that was an actual deal has slipped through the hands of a real estate agent at one point in time that did not have the foresight to realize this was a deal that they should have been buying themselves. So with that said, what are we going to do? How are we going to find them? what are we going to do to make big things happen? My favorite piece about real estate is you get a chance to build wealth. A lot of people think wealth is a big fat bank account. Well, you know what?

Your bank account, if you leave it in the bank by itself is a melting iceberg. You do not want to leave your money in the bank. Even getting interest will not keep up with the price of inflation, right? Cash is a melting ice cube. And I'll tell you, the rich are going to get richer. and the people who are rich, it's the same people that have always been the rich, always, always, always. This go back to like the middle ages.

It's the landowners. The landowners are the ones that are going to be wealthy. The landowners are the ones that are going to become more and more wealthy. The landowners are the people that are going to be the ones that will disproportionately grow their wealth. And here's the best part about living in America right now. anybody can be a landowner. There is no distinction, right, at all. Every single person can do that. And if you're in real estate, you get a special unfair advantage where you get a pick through things before they even hit the MLS and say, should I keep this? Should I buy this? And let me just share

with you before you go to any thoughts on, oh, yeah, you know, wealthy people, get to stay wealthy. Here's the story of my family, right? This is my, my mom's side of the family was like upper middle class because they were bankers and bankers who gave birth to kids that were bankers who gave birth the kids that were bankers. My dad's side of the family was super blue collar. My grandfather was a road worker with a GED for me, $3.25 an hour working on the side of the road. But he bought properties in North Arlington, which if you know the D.C. area, it's right outside of D.C. So he bought properties in North Arlington and ended up dying an incredibly, like, wealthy man

by the world's standards. He was definitely upper middle class by the world's standards because he owned properties. And so that was the whole thing. The rich will get richer and the core will get poorer. People are going to have a harder time affording real estate as time goes on. So buy now, buy now, buy now. This is for you, the real estate professional. You need to buy assets.

All right, with that said, you keep the best, you sell the rest. And how do you sell the rest? We're going to talk briefly. Again, we don't have a ton of time with it. You can list it. You can wholesale it. You can do novations. You can, I mean, there were just a lot of options for how you can sell, lease options.

There's just things that you can do and be creative on that. And we'll touch on all of those before the half hour is up. So let's talk about how we find properties that are off market. First, you look for dilapidated properties, right? Again, if you're Sherlock Holmes, right? If you think about things like that, everything tells you something, right? So if you go and you see a dilapidated property, it will tell you something. It'll tell you they don't have the time to take care of the property.

It will tell you maybe they don't have the money to take care of the property. Maybe they're just super overwhelmed and they need. to downsize, whatever it tells you, it is that in all likelihood, this is not a property that they need to keep. And so if you are a real estate agent, you have the double whammy. You get to talk to them and say, hey, would you ever be willing to sell if you got the right price for this property? That's the easiest script ever.

Would you be willing to sell if you got the right price for this property? Then if they say yes, then you find a lot of it. out what their situation is. Is the house dilapidated because they don't have money? Is it because they are overwhelmed and don't have time? Either way, a cash offer where people aren't coming into their house may be the right offer for them, right? Now, you may say, oh, but Chris, I don't have the cash. Well, I've been sharing this story forever, right? Here's my iPhone. Now it's a couple years old, It's the pro whatever, pro max 14, right? The big 14.

I think it's like one generation old. I think there's a 15 out now. Maybe there's 16, whatever it is. But I think that this is one generation old. It's still worth, I don't know, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 bucks is my guess. It's got a terabyte of data available like on the hard drive on the terabyte. So there's a lot of stuff in it that makes it valuable. But if I were to say, hey, I'll sell this to you for 25 bucks.

You know, yes, you buy it. But what if you're flat broke and you have no money? Well, then you find a way to get $25, let's say it's, it's $200. And let's see you have $0 in your bank account, right? You say, you call a friend and say, hey, will you loan me $200? Or you want to go in on this together, give me $200. You know, and honestly, flipping a phone where you make a couple hundred bucks is not that. It's not that exciting.

If somebody called me and asked me to lend them $200 to flip a phone, I probably I'm talking to laugh at them. But you get where I'm going with that, right? The whole idea is if you find a deal, there are options. So let me put it this way. You can always be a buyer. And again, if you say, but I don't have the cash, let's just say your market, like in the D.C. area, the average price point on a house is about $500,000.

If I found somebody that would sell their house right now for $200,000, if, if, if, If they could just walk away, no questions asked, hassle free, give me 200 grand and I'm good. What would I do? Let's say I had no cash. Let's say I'm brand new to the industry. Let's say whatever it is. I just maybe let's pretend like I haven't been producing for a while. I don't have access to cash.

What would I do? I would be creative and I would be resourceful. It's never a lack of resources. It's always a lack of resourcefulness. I would call every friend that I know and say, hey, I've got this awesome deal. And I would not say, do you want to buy it? And I get a commission, right? I would say, why don't we buy this together?

I'll bring the deal. I'll manage the deal. And we'll just split the proceeds if we flip it. Or if you have cash, then you buy it and hold on to it as a rental. Let's say it's in a good neighborhood. And if you don't know what cost segregation is as a real estate professional, Google it right now and send me a message. And I'll introduce you to my cost set guy because you can save a

fortune in taxes as a real estate professional by owning your own properties. You need to pay the government or the government will pay you to have rental properties for people, right? The government pays you as a real estate professional by accelerating the depreciation and saving tens of thousands of dollars on every property you buy. It's awesome. So what do I do? I go to them. I find out what they want ease and convenience, then I find a cash offer for them that'll make sense. If they just say, hey, I need to get the most money for the property. And listen, I know you're an agent. Your fiduciary is not to get people the most money for the property.

1,000%. If you think it is, you're dead wrong. Your fiduciary is to serve them. And think the golden rule, but it's not the golden rule, right? The golden rule is do under others as you would want done unto you. Well, the reality is the platinum rule is to do under others as they would want done to them. And so, you know, the reality is there are other people. When I traded in my car,

were people, like I prefer to get $2,500 less or $5,000 less on the trade-in for my car than have people come and take my time and negotiate with me and all the other stuff on a car. I'd rather take that time to a higher dollar per hour activity that is in my wheelhouse rather than negotiating on a car. But there are other people, maybe they make a few, maybe they make less money, or maybe they're in a different phase of life or whatever it is, where, you know, that $2,500 would be life-changing for them. And so for me personally, the fact that I would trade in, I just wanted to trade in my car and take less was better for me. But if somebody was in a different situation, maybe they'd want to do their own thing, right? Well, that's how we've got to look at these sellers with

distressed properties. Right. So some, It's the equivalent of trading in a vehicle, right? When I'm trading in a vehicle, I want to know that I've got certainty. And this is the thing. So many real estate agents have gone in. You've done marketing and said, okay, but I'll list your house for you. And these people want certainty, right? Their house is dilapidated because they're overwhelmed.

And so they want certainty. Well, what is the certainty? Could you imagine if I went to the dealership and trade it in my car and they're like, okay, but we can't give you the cash now, but what we can do is listed on auto trader for you, listed on cars.com for you. And we're going to get you more money later. I would have been like, what are you talking about? You jack wagon? I want to just trade in my car and be done with it and move on. So understand that that is the case for some people, not everybody. So when you think about your fiduciary as a real estate agent,

just know it's not to always get the most money for them. And I know so many agents are super rigid about this, right? It's not about getting the most money. It's about getting them what they need, what's best for them in their situation. And so offering the cash offer. And then again, if you don't have cash, I'm telling you, if somebody wants to sell at a massive discount, reach out to me, reach out to people in your market. Don't have the first call be like, hey look, all just pay me a two and a half percent, three percent, five percent commission, whatever it is, let the first call be, should I buy this? And then the second, and then then then think through, okay, if not, then I can sell it, I can list it, I can wholesale it,

I can knowvation it, like any of those other pieces. So back to finding them. You look for these dilapidated houses, right? Deal machine is a great tool. If you use the promo code uncommon, you'll get a discount on it. And what it does is it has a little app and you just click on everything. And if you see a dilapidated house. And the average is, according to deal machine, the average is every 158 dilapidated properties that you find, you will get one spread deal, a deal that you can flip, a deal that you can do some sort of creative investment deal or that you would buy substantially undermarket and keep as a rental. But if that is the deal there, that means at least two or three of those could be listings where they want to sell,

but they want to sell at a higher price and they don't have a need to sell immediately. So just understand that for every 158 properties, you'll find stuff like that. Now, we've got, I live right outside the D.C. area. It took us forever to find this little neighborhood we live in. It's a little worse community, right? In equestrian community, There's 20 houses in here, each of them on five acres, and there's a horse trail around it. Well, there's two properties that I see over and over and over again that, I mean, they're overground. One of them has a tarp on the roof and has the tarp on the roof for like a year.

Like one of them, like everything is falling apart. All like everything's rotting on the house. And other people would look at it and say, oh, my gosh, that's nasty. And our neighbors hate it and they're all bitter about it. And I see opportunity. but here's where I dropped the ball. I need to go knock on their door and just ask them if they'd be open to selling.

That's it. That is the opportunity there. So when you're looking for properties, you know, it's opportunity. So here's the way to think about it. When you think about getting a massive headache, which if your property is dilapidated and falling down, a headache is so,

it's really bad for the person with the headache, but you want to know who it's good for? It's good for Tylenol. Right? Tylenol makes a lot of money when you get a headache because they're solving a problem. So when you think of yourself as solving their problem that you're Tylenol to their headache, that's when you can make the most money because this is my quote that I say to my team all the time. This is the quote that I say to the people I coach all the time. This is the quote that I'm always, always, always sharing is the people that make the most money

are the ones who solve the most problems. and the bigger the problem, the more you get paid. Yes, absolutely. So where are we finding these properties? Every time you go on any appointment, every time you leave the house, you know, pull up the deal machine app or pull up, whatever you want to pull up,

I don't care, but go a different way and look for any house that any house that you can find that is dilapidated. And every single one that's dilapidated, you just click it. Maybe the grass is too long. Maybe it looks like, all of the, you know, around the windows, you know, all the window trim is, you know, deteriorating.

Maybe the paint is really bad. Maybe you're looking at the roof and the roof is just nasty. Like the things where it looks like the house is not up to snuck. Now, you may be in a neighborhood where everything is just falling apart, you know, like a really dilapidated neighborhood. And if it's below, you know, if everything is like that, then that's probably. probably not the neighborhood you're looking for. You're looking for like an average neighborhood where the house is not quite up to snub. So that's the first one. Now, here's the second. Absentee, and we've only got 13 minutes left. So I'm just going to do one, one second. Absentee landlords, right? We're in the investor space, which is where I spend a lot of my time.

We call them tired landlords. And let me just share with you. I bought my first investment property in 2008. And again, so many of you think that you have to do it by yourself, right? I did not make much money, but I knew that owning real estate would be my retirement. And it was when I was a pastor and I made no money. And so I, we got a property. We got a deal. And I, I cobbled together what money I could find, but I didn't have enough. So I went to my mom, right? My mom was my business partner. And went to my mom and said, hey, do you want to buy this house? I can't afford to buy it. But I said, great deal and it's cash flow positive and it's it's awesome can we do you want to buy this with me and she said sure so we bought the deal together right so just understand that that's that is a thing

well here's what happened the first year we had no means it was awesome I was loving it the second years oh boy the HVAC condensate line you know when when you know the water needs to go to a drain well, that got clogged and ended up back flowing into the HVAC, ruined the HVAC, flooded out to the flooring, ruined the basement flooring, and right at that same time, we had this old cast iron pipe because the property was built in 1953, and the sewer pipe, you know,

if you know anything about the cast iron pipes, they start collecting stuff. The sewer pipe ended up backing up and created, a massive mess. We had to get that fixed. Well, I'll tell you what, if somebody would have called me, so we, you know, just like real estate always, it had gone up in value. I probably, if somebody would have called me and told me they could get me out of that property for my break even, what I paid for it and when I put into it, I probably would have said, sign me up. I'm done. I'm so tired. I was a tired landlord. Right. And this was before I knew what I know now, right? Well, there's good years and there's bad years.

and I probably would have sold for less than what I've had into the property. But like I was so tired. I was so done. I did not want the headache of all the problem. And now I know that, you know, some years there's problems. And then other years you like don't have problems for years. And so what that taught me is and also knowing that the average landlord sells their property within three years, right?

So what that told me was, man, landlords are tired and they're happy to sell, right? So if you want to have just a target-rich environment to find off-market properties, you call these absentee landlords. And again, feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram page at Crowd Rock, CRA, D-D-R-O-C-T. I'll get my staff to send you who we use for data, if that's helpful. You can get cell phone numbers. You can people obviously scrub it on the DNC list. don't do anything stupid.

But you can call these people, and here's the best part about calling absentee landlords. You get the double whammy, right? Work smart. Not just you need to work hard, but you also need to work smart. So here's the double whammy. You call and say, hey, you know, I know the average landlord, and here's your shit. I know the average, I see that you own a property right here in Fairfax County. I know the average landlord sells within three years.

I'm just curious, you know, if you got the right price for your property, would you be open to selling it? A lot of them are going to say no, right? You're just looking for the yeses, right? It's going to be the majority. We'll say no. No, I mean, we've had it for a while. We got a low interest rate. You know, oh, cool.

Well, I'm just curious. So I'm calling people like you day in and day out. If I found some people that wanted to sell, maybe they wanted to sell under market just to have an easy, easy sale. Would you be open to purchasing more rental property if I found something that was a good deal? Yes, I would be. Right. But you got to watch out because some of them are tire kickers. We're like, ah, just send it over.

If they say yes, here's how to tell whether they're going to be a great fit for you. You say, oh, awesome. What is the criteria you'd be looking for? And if they don't know, then you ask a couple more questions. And if it's like, just send me stuff, don't waste your time. They're not going to be the people. But if they tell you, well, if it's cash flow positive in this zip code, then they're a real buyer. right? And then you can call all the absentee landlords and you know that you've got a buyer. And then

you know what? Here's the other thing. Maybe you're selling a property and you get like a 5%, a 6% and 8% whatever the commission is. But if you know that you have a ready made buyer, you can charge a larger commission if you want to, right? The whole commission is, it's completely negotiable. Right? So you can charge that. And here's the thing. If somebody brought me a deal, please understand this. Think about this. If somebody brought me a deal that was $200,000 undermarket, and they wanted me to pay them a $50,000 commission, maybe it's a $200,000 or like a $400,000 house and it would be worth $600. And they wanted me to pay them a $50,000 commission on a $400,000 house, I would pay it without blinking. I would say, yes, done. That's awesome. So don't be trapped into

the idea that this is what you're owed. I've got a $4,000. friend of mine, she worked with a lot of investors down in Florida. And she told me the story. She said that she didn't understand what she was doing with all these properties for all these years, until she read this article, and this guy that she found tons of off-market properties for was in this article. And he talked about how he built $25 million worth of equity. And she ended up feeling sick because she was like, you know, I made a few million dollars in commissions over the years, but he built $25 million in equity. And I, if I rethought about partnering,

if I rethought about keeping myself in the deal, if I thought about bringing somebody else in to be the cash in that, she's like, I could be at a point where I never work a day in my life again if I don't want to, right? Because that's why we build wealth is it gives us freedom, right? And so you've got to just rethink how, we're building wealth here, right? So these off-market opportunities, I'll tell you, I could give you a bunch more, and I will if anybody reaches out to us after the fact, I'm happy to do another half-hour

stint where we talk about some of these other opportunities. But here's my take, is, man, like these two things alone, it's called driving for dollars, looking for dilapidated houses, and just cold-calling absentee, tired landlords, and asking them whether they would sell if they got the right price, and if they say no, whether, and if they say no, whether you would, whether they'd want to buy more properties. I'm telling you, you will absolutely, absolutely grow your net worth. So we're kind of at the end.

I know this will go out as a podcast as well, but I know there's a handful of people that have joined us live. If anybody has any questions or things I want to talk about, for whatever reason, it did not get connected to Facebook today. Feel free to join our Facebook community on Common Real Estate. But please feel free to post anything if you want to talk about that before we sign off. But otherwise, I just want to say this, please, on begging and pleading with you, you've got to think about real estate as an avenue to build wealth.

It is not, if you're only buying and selling properties, I'm telling you, you will be on the transaction treadmill forever, right? You like my, my investments are earning when I'm on vacation, right? Because if it's only about buying and selling properties, when you go on vacation, your income goes on vacation. When you get sick, your income gets sick, right? You want money working for you when you're sleeping. And I said this at the beginning. Wealth is when your money works harder than you work. And you look at it, there's a pastor at my church. He was in a small townhouse. I begged and pleaded with him to get into their house that they can raise their family in. They did, right? And the prices over the last five years have gone up like crazy. And he called me,

right as we sold his house, he had like five days in between. He had a short rent back before he was buying his new place down in St. Louis. And he said, Chris, I've got over $300,000 in my bank account. He's like, you know how much I make, and it's not a lot. He said, there is no world in which I could have this kind of money if I would have not bought property, if I would have not bought real estate. He said, you just can't out earn investments like this. It's incredible.

So please rethink how you think about real estate, be people that build wealth. I'm telling you it will change not only your life, but it will change everybody. in your family's life, it'll change the financial destiny of the people that you care about when you start thinking differently, right? It's a rich dad, poor dad. All it takes is one person to start thinking differently about wealth that will change the financial future of everybody else that you care about in your world. So if I can do anything for you, please let me know, you know, reach out on Instagram at Cred Rock. I answer most of those. It's not a, it's not assistant. It's me answering most of those. And I'm happy to help.

And if you decide that this is something you want to run with, something you want to build, please reach out because people are so generous with me and with their time and energy. And as long as you're going to do the work, I'd be happy to help you set a great game plan in place. All right. Until next time, go kill it, make things happen, change the destiny of your family, and create a financial legacy that people will look at for generations and say, man, I'm so thankful that this person changed how we thought about money, finances and our future. Go get it. Boom. Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an

extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Saferight.