Find Motivated Sellers

In This Issue:

1. Seven Proven Ways To Find Motivated Sellers (AKA, Great Real Estate Deals)
2. Your Real Estate Resources

7 Ways To Find Motivated Sellers

1. Pre-foreclosures.

When homeowners get behind on their monthly payments they don't automatically think of themselves as sellers. They may not plan to sell the house and move. Yet many of them are extremely motivated to get something done to stop foreclosure.

When you talk to them about buying their house, that something might just be getting rid of the home in attempt to save their credit ratings and get a little bit of money for their equity to allow them gracefully move into another place.

So they're perfect cadidates for our highly motivated sellers list. When you go after them, it's your chance to pick up a bargain. The foreclosure notices are a part of public records and are posted at the county clerk’s office in every county in the area where real estate records (deeds, liens, etc.) are filed.

There are companies, some nationwide, some local, specializing in compiling the filings of foreclosure notices to make them available to lawyers and investors. Some counties have legal newspapers published where the same notices are listed.

Look for the companies who sell foreclosure notices compilations to investors or for a legal newspaper in your area to get your hands on that hot list of potential bargain properties.

You can ask about them at the county recording office, because the reps for these companies are there almost daily with their little laptops compiling those filings. The county employees usually know them by face and even names.

Buy the list and then find these motivated homeowners. My favorite way to get to them is to mail them a post card offering a solution. It’s a cheap, fast and effective way of delivering your message.

One of the challenges of chasing motivated sellers who're in preforeclosure is - it involves a lot of running around. These sellers are somewhat elusive and aren't very eager to talk to all the real estate investors who're trying to get their attention.

One of the alternatives that are a lot more passive is to be found by motivated sellers on the Internet.

2. Online Seller Lead Generation With A Real Estate Website.

We're pretty deep into the Internet age now. A large number of motivated sellers are doing their reserach and looking for ways to unload their homes online.

These home sellers go to search engines, like Google and perform searches on these phrases (examples for my market in Austin, TX):

"sell my home in austin fast"

"sell my house fast austin"

"sell house in austin fast"

"sell home fast in austin"

"sell home fast austin"

and similar searches.

Notice that I didn't include more generic search terms "sell my home in Austin" or 'sell house in Austin".

It's because we don't just want to target ALL sellers. We want to target motivated sellers. A seller who just types in "sell my home in..." might be looking for a real estate agent to move his property. However, a motivated seller is someone who needs action fast!

That's why when they type an extra word "fast" with their search phrase, we can tell they are probably more motivated to do something quick. This is the kind of seller who'll likely to sell his house on the terms and for a price that will allow us to make a profit.

So... how do you generate these online seller leads?

For starters, you need to have one of these real estate investor websites that targets motivated sellers. A site like that has all the marketing built-in and the lead capture forms that collect all relevant property and loan information that allows you to come with an offer on the house.

Here's my site for example, that you'd see if you Google sell my house fast in austin. The second piece of the puzzle is making sure your motivated seller website shows up in search results. That's called search engine optimization, or SEO for short.

My company offers this service to real estate investors. In fact, go ahead and Google "sell home fast in austin" and you'll see that my website www.austin-cash-buyer.com comes up at #1 or #2 in search results. If you need help with your SEO, shoot me an email to support (at) getrichlazy.com.

The service ain't cheap. But when you get just a few of these motivate seller leads, with just 1 deal from online lead generation you'll have X10 return on your investment in SEO.

3. Property Management Companies.

Management companies in your area have their hands on a lot of property owned by out of area landlords. Get to know several biggest residential management companies in your area and let them know you are interested in buying properties from some of their landlords who are tired of dealing with rentals.

Let them know you are interested in these properties before they list them in the MLS and you’d let them keep 6% commissions, instead of 3% they’d get if it were listed.

I recently bought a house from an out of area landlord who listed his rental property with the realtor – yes, the same realtor who was managing his rental property. Guess what, I happened to know that property manager who was pretty eager to earn a commission.

Because the home wasn’t fixed up and still had a tenant in it, the house didn’t sell in 5 months. I offered zero down payment with seller financing. The owner took it and even paid a 3% commission out of pocket to his realtor. Here's the web page where I was advertising that home. I sold it with owner financing, the buyer has already paid in full, and I made about $30,000 on that deal.

4. Small Landlords.

One of my favorite ways to get homes is by calling on the “For Rent” ads and talking with private owners advertising their homes for lease. These are usually individuals who may have become landlords against their will, when they either inherited the property or it’s their own former home which they couldn’t sell, while already bought another home.

I recently was making calls like that and stumbled upon an owner who had a rental ad running in my area newspaper. After talking to him I learned he was moving to Colorado, had 4 rental homes he couldn’t sell during the summer and was very anxious to do something about them before he relocated.

If you call on “For Rent” ads, I promise, you’ll come across motivated sellers like that.

5. Local City Building Code Enforcement Department.

You have a department within your local government which enforces building standards on all local property owners. Whenever neighbors complain about a house with the overgrown grass, or kids getting inside empty homes, or boarded up neglected structures – it becomes a matter of building enforcement meetings, hearings and corresponding orders to correct the situation.

This meetings and hearings are public matters advertised in local newspapers. Pay a visit to your building enforcement department and find out their schedule of hearings, operating procedures, etc. Visit the hearings and hand out your business card to the property owners.

You’ll make some great deals if you persists.

6. New Subdivisions.

If you look up foreclosure records at your local county courthouse, you’ll find that almost a half of the homes heading towards foreclosure are those purchased within last year or two.

Why so?

Well, for a lot of folks building new homes the transition from a rental payment to a mortgage payment is somewhat of a shock. People usually buy homes bigger and fancier than what they were renting before. Hence, the cost is much higher and the payments are a few or even several hundred bucks higher then what they were used to.

They did have enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan, but they didn’t account for the “life style” factor. They were spending a lot of money for a nice lifestyle: restaurants, movies, toys, etc. After buying a home they haven’t given up their spending habits, so it’s no wonder they are heading for troubles in a year or two.

So what’s your search strategy?

Farm the new subdivisions. Put out flyers, signs, posters in the areas with a lot of recent home construction. Use billboards in the area grocery stores, etc. Let the homeowners in these new subdivisions know you are in the market to buy.

You’ll hear from some of these overburdened homeowners. And you’ll get some good deals from them.

The great thing about this method is – I take over payments on existing low interest owner occupied loans from such homeowners and since they don’t have a lot of equity, I don’t have to pay them any down payment.

The total cost to buy such a home for me is only $50 notary fee. Sometimes they even agree to make a month or two extra payments after I buy the house from them.

You too can learn how home sellers can give you their homes for FREE. Take a look at the 'Real Estate Resources/Hot Interviews' section at the end of this issue. I was recently interviewed on this subject of 'taking over payments' without qualifying or down payment. This 1-hour interview was recorded and is available on the audio tape for your introduction to this powerful concept. Click Here for more info.

7. Same Model - But Older Neighborhoods.

The same approach will work for the same reason with homes recently purchased in older areas.

How do you get to them?

You need to find an insider. I realtor who’ll be kind enough to print out a list of all property sold with FHA and VA financing a year to two years ago. Once you get the addresses, you mail the owners a 20c postcard with the same offer: “I buy homes”.

Another Example. Not long before writing this article I puchased a $2,560 Sq. ft., 4 years new home in a nice area. The owners of this particular property received a postcard from me, because they bought a house only a year ago. They responded because they were selling a house due to the very reason I told you about – the payments were too high for them. They qualified for a loan alright, but were not prepared to change their lifestyle to support their new monthly obligation.

As a result – I picked up a nice home only 4 years old.

8. Your Own Advertising.

If you have a little bit of money, try you own advertising. Put a few ads in the cheap weekly newspapers and neighborhood association newspapers. The ads in these publications are quite a bit cheaper than in the major metropolitan newspaper. Although the major newspaper could produce more leads.

The trick with running ads is you’ve got to commit to be there for a long time, at least half a year. You never know when that $30,000 call will come. Sometimes I’ve gone for 3-4 months without any results and was tempted to drop the ad. But I stayed and the calls came. I’d say just 1 newspaper ad brings me at least 3-4 deals a year.

Here's one of the purchases from the newspaper ad I made. Paid only $75,000 and the home is worth about $110-115,000.

Advertising ain’t cheap, but it pays really well.

For More Information On Finding Motivate Sellers:

Please review one of the best courses on this subject that also includes a proprietary direct mail software and marketing budgetizer software. Click Here.

Hot Real Estate Interviews

1. Blueprint For Real Estate Success

Peter Julian, a successful investor from Ohio, shares how to establish multi-million dollar credit lines and explode your business to where you can buy 90 homes a year.

Close to 500 subscribers already own this tape. Do YOU? Get your copy of this incredible interview tape toady! Click blueprint for real estate success to check it out.

2. Building Your Real Estate Empire With Taking Over Payments “Subject-To” Existing Loans

Heard the buzz about a “subject-to” strategy but still don’t quite know if you should fork over $400-$700 for one of those “subject-to” courses?

A discouraged unemployed friend, who recently lost $4,000,000, interviewed me about this strategy of buying homes that involves no bank qualifying or producing a down payment.

Now you can affordably learn the basics first, BEFORE you spend hundreds on the course. Click take over payments to check it out.

Money talks. If you can smack $10-20,000 in cash on the table in front of the sellers when you negotiate your deals - you'll have an edge over your competition.

While they're trying to talk sellers into accepting 'no money down deals', you'll be able to give sellers the cash they need to move, make a down payment on a new home, pay off some old bills, stop foreclosure, etc..

Which offer will be more tempting for them? You're darn right - yours!

To discover how you can get your hands on millions of dollars from private money lenders <-- click here. Invest their money in your projects and they'll thank you for giving them an option that's a lot safer than the stock market and pays better than bank CDs.

The 'Supercharge Your Cash Flow' course can help you start earning EXTRA $500-800/month from each home you buy and $30,000-$40,000 when you sell without costs and commissions. Click on lease options to check it out.

Here's an 'un-authorized' testimonial posted on Creative Real Estate online forum by one of the purchasers of this course - showing exactly the kind of results you might be able to achieve epmloying some of the simple strategies outlined in the material.

.....Until we meet again in the next issue of the 'Real Estate Magic' E-zine, your source for ideas and inspiration for creative and profitable real estate deals.

Alex Gurevich
investor & publisher

If you have any questions, feel free to E-mail me