Motivated sellers are the single most important ingredient needed to become a successful real estate investor. You can take every real estate investment course available today and become a master of creative real estate investing, but you will be a starving expert if you do not have any people to apply your knowledge too. I advise students on a regular basis to spend their first year in real estate learning how to locate motivated sellers. Then once they know how to find this valuable commodity, then they should learn techniques to buy and sell real estate. Imagine buying all the equipment needed to drill an oil well but never learning how to determine where to drill? It can be a costly and frustrating experience. So let me give you some tips on whom is likely to be a motivated seller and how to locate them. Here is my top three.
Probable the number one reason a person needs to sell their home quickly at a discounted price is because of a divorce. Mortgage payments that were easily manageable with two incomes suddenly become a real burden when one of the incomes disappears. With divorce rates nearing the 50% level, this creates many motivated sellers on a regular basis. Some people may see buying a property from a divorce situation as preying on the weak and needy. I see it as just the opposite. Divorce is also the number one reason for a foreclosure. These people desperately need to sell their house and if you don’t make yourself available to help them sell their house, they end up losing their house and their credit in a foreclosure proceeding. You are providing a valuable service to them and a good income for your family by working with motivated sellers caused by divorce proceedings. Making contacts with good divorce attorney’s can generate quality leads for you on a regular basis.
Another situation that creates motivated sellers is a loss of job or a job transfer. A person may have no problems making a mortgage payment at their present income, and then suddenly they get laid off, downsized or relocated and now they are making substantially less income then they are accustomed to. This creates a tremendous burden on the home owner and quite often leads to a motivated seller scenario. They have to sell their house before they transfer or if they stay, they cannot afford their mortgage at their new income level so they need to sell quickly or risk going into foreclosure. This is a very common problem that you can profit from if you pay attention to the local job conditions in your city or town and keep up with layoff notices and job announcements in the local paper and on local television. If you are watching the news tonight and hear that the local potato chip plant is shutting down in your city, it is time for you to spring into action. I have personally gone down to a place of business like this and put flyers on the windshields of the cars that describe my abilities to assist them if they need to sell their house quickly. If this sounds too aggressive to you, then you must find another way of contacting the workers at the plant. An ad in the local paper or penny saver that reads “Attention Recent Nalley’s Workers” will get their attention. Also try to place ads on the local unemployment office website or bulletin board. A fair share of the laid off workers will be using those services. Remember they need your help! You have a service that will benefit them. Don’t be afraid to tell people that you can help them with their property.
Here is a tip that I will give you that is so powerful, if you develop it and work on it, it will deliver you endless amounts of quality leads. There is one person that you see on a regular basis in your area that knows every person that is behind on their bills, they know who is in foreclosure and they know who is moving before anybody else. This person carries a wealth of information that few other people know about. Who is this person that can line your pockets with cash? Your mailman! Think about this. Your mailman delivers all important letters and documents to every house in a neighborhood. If a person is behind on their utility bills, the mailman delivers the disconnect notice. If they are behind on their mortgage, the mailman delivers all the warning letters from the lender including the Notice of Default. If they are thinking of moving, they will ask the mailman for a change of address card. If the house has been abandoned, the mailman will know this and discontinue mail delivery to this property. As you can see, your mailman is plugged in better then any other person when it comes to potential motivated sellers. Make friends with them; ask them if they know about any potential deals. Do not ask about any personal information regarding the seller because this would be unethical. But you could ask them if they know of any persons on their route that might be in a position of needing to sell their house quickly. Treat them right and they can give you a world of valuable information. I was a mailman for 10 years and I can tell you for a fact that I knew who every motivated seller was in my area well before anybody else did. It’s the kind of information that can make you rich.
Motivated sellers are everywhere you go. Learning where to look for them will take your real estate investing to the next level.
Adrian has many years as a real estate educator, investor, and personal financial consultant. He has personally purchased over 50 single family houses in the past 5 years using various methods of creative real estate investing.. He shares his invaluable experience and techniques to those looking for guidance in their real estate and personal financial activities. He is currently a Certified Real Estate Auctioneer selling properties in the Tacoma/Seattle area of Washington State. For more information visit his websites at http://www.auctionsnorthwest.com
No comments:
Post a Comment