10 Awesome Strategies For Finding Great Real Estate Investment Deals!

you know at BiggerPockets there are two main issues that almost everybody who comes to us has number one they can't find any deals number two they can't find any money well today I'm not going to focus on the second question there I am going to focus on the first about how do I find good deals because after all if you find a good deal you can find the money to back that up in other words if you find a great deal you should be able to find a way to put it together so really everything comes down to finding a deal well my name is Brandon with BiggerPockets comm and today I wanna share with you my top 10 strategies for finding great real estate deals even in a competitive market all right so I'm going to go through all ten of these I'm going to use this little white board here gieux because make the organization just a little bit easier I'm going to walk through each one and you guys can kind of learn a little bit about different strategies for finding deals now keep in mind you don't need to do all ten of these in order to find a deal in fact just focus on one of these right now and rock that become really really good at that one Avenue and if you want to branch out to more and more then you can always do so but let me give you the list of the top ten that I use to find a good deal so number one let's go back over here we re on screen right here I think so let's go number one so the first thing we're talked about today is the what's called deep M L s it stands for the Multiple Listing Service now maybe you're familiar with that or not the Multiple Listing Service is basically where agents put their properties for sales so if you're a real estate agent you're probably gonna listed for sale on the what's called the MLS it's where again if you're like hey I'm gonna go and list my property for sale the agent is gonna put it on the Multiple Listing Service so all other agents can go look at it now of course that's where most people in the world go to look for deals at least in America and so it's the biggest playground there's a lot of properties there but there's a lot of people looking as well so if you want to do good on the MLS you got to be a little bit smarter than your average bear so I got four tips for doing that first of all I would recommend finding an investor an investor friendly agent give an investor from the agent they can help you find the best deals that are out there because they understand what you're looking for so first it was that second tip is look for what's called a hidden potential now hidden potential means you're looking for things that nobody else sees in a property for example when I look at a property I might want a you know three bedrooms do well in my area both for rentals and flips and so I want a three bedroom I'm going to look for two bedrooms though that have a lot of square footage because maybe there's some hidden potential in that other room all right number three look for fixer-uppers a fixer-upper obviously something I need to be fixed up a lot of people don't like buying them because there are a lot of work there's a little bit of risk involved so if you can look for a fixer-upper you can sometimes find an amazing deal that way and then number their tip D is going to be be either the first or last be the first or last in a deal when you're trying to buy an MLS there's a lot of competitions so you either need to be the first one to jump at a deal which means get automatic alerts set up for deals that match what you're looking for when deals come on the market don't delay don't wait rush go get them or be the last one in other words wait and look for deals that have been on the market for months and months and months maybe even years and go in negotiate on those ones because nobody else is looking at them anymore so the competition is a little bit lower alright moving on to number two on time with something called driving for dollars now driving for dollars is this idea where you get in your car and you go out and you drive and you look for vacant properties now what does a vacant property look like now you might be looking for something that has overgrown lawn like you know up to your waist or even like you know up to your it shin whatever like something like clearly has not been mowed in quite a while looking for piled up newspapers looking for boarded up windows looking up looking for windows that have no curtains inside that can be a really telltale sign if there's just no curtains in any window no blinds then nothing just open I look for little white pieces of paper that's on the windows a lot of times that means there's some kind of legal action going on there again look overgrown like just junk in there and just junk in the yard that looks like it's been there a long time there's a few indications and the more you do it the more you'll realize what a vacant house they kind of stand out like a sore thumb not too hard to find so what you're doing when you're driving for dollars is you're looking for these properties then you're going to go home and research you're going to look for the owner of the property you can usually find it online on your County Assessors website you want to contact the owner and just hit them up with either maybe a letter or you want to call them if you can do some phone number research and call them and say or email them or mail them and say hey you want to sell not everyone's gonna sell but some of them might alright moving on to number three something that a lot of experienced investors are doing today and it's something called direct mail marketing now maybe you've heard this term before drukmo marketing is something done in a lot of different industries for example car dealerships love doing it right so that you get a piece of mail in you get this piece of mail that says congratulations you want a new card you didn't really win the car but they're trying to get your your attention on this on this paper that maybe you'll go test-drive a car and then if you test drive it maybe you'll end up buying it so it's just like this funnel that they're trying to get they mail it thousands of letters hoping a few people end up test driving and a few of them end up buying same thing with real estate you send out thousands of letters hoping that a few people will call you to sell their property and then a few or a few of those calls will turn into sales so you might send a thousand pieces of mail you might get 30 phone calls 20 phone calls 50 phone calls 10 I'm not sure depends on your area and how good your marketing is and then at the end of the day you might have only close maybe one deal two deals five deals no deals it depends it's just that same sort of funnel so direct mail marketing can be a great way to scale up your business because if you want more deals just spend more money on letters typically a letter might cost you around $1 somewhere in the vicinity of $1.00 to send you know including postage and you know you can save some by doing the work yourself or you can spend more and have somebody else do it all for you a lot of companies out there that will handle direct on marketing for you so keep in mind that with direct mail marketing you want to focus on four things the first one is your list the second thing you want to focus on is the actual mail that you send out so your list is who you send to so may be absentee landlords or people that are 90 days late on their mortgage or you can buy lists online secondly mail you got a waiting to mail postcards letters whatever see is going to be to focus on your funnel what that means is focus on every part of that how many letters did you send how many phone calls did you receive how many you know deals did you close do work on that funnel and always keep track of that funnel where you at how can you improve it if you got 50 phone calls out of a thousand letters that's 5% what could you do to get 7% or 8% right so you work that funnel and forth or D here you've got the follow-up focus on your follow-up because the key with direct mail marketing is you never usually get the deal on your first mailing sometimes you do sometimes I get lucky actually my wore my fur meline they did last spring to a part of my list first mailing got me a deal but that doesn't that what happened right so the follow-up was what's important is our email these people over and over and over I mean you might want to mail them you know every other month or every month or every three months whatever you decide four years and eventually when they're ready to sell who are they gonna go to somebody they never heard of or maybe contact the guy who's the house or the guy or the girl who's the house buyer so that's kind of hot drink mail marketing works moving on to number four we're gonna talk about wholesalers now let me write it down here now a wholesaler is somebody who goes through all of these things that were going to talk about today and they do a lot of different strategies to find good deals now once they find them they don't actually want to buy them see a wholesaler is a middleman so to speak a wholesaler have finds good deals and then basically just sells them flips um or however they transaction they want to do it they get the deal to an end buyer so there's a lot of wholesalers out there today that are out there looking for good deals and there's gonna mark it up a little bit maybe they get the deal under contract for fifty thousand dollars and then they're going to see if you want to buy it for fifty five now they make a quick $5,000 just by marking it up but 55 might be a great deal for you or you know two hundred thousand five hundred thousand whatever the numbers are relevant but the point is whole so it can be a great way to potentially find deals but you got to find the wholesalers I'd recommend network you got to go to local real estate clubs Network on bigger pockets find people who are excited about wholesaling and talk to them tell them what you're looking for what kind of deals you're looking for alright moving on number five and that is auctions so an auction obviously you all know what that is it's where you go and you bid right but there's mainly a couple types of auctions that you're dealing with in the real estate space first of all a you're going to be dealing with what's called like online I'll even say online private auctions now what an online private auction is that something like auction calm right so auction calm is a site we can go and you can bid on properties a lot of bank repos a lot of banks that are you know repossessed properties I'm going to resell them a lot times they go through companies like auction calm to sell their stuff now there's another type of auction that you can potentially look and those are government auctions ah shins whatever you get the point a government auction is like a tax sale or maybe you know the government has a foreclosure sale sheriff sale usually those have done public auctions a lot of times are actually done at the courthouse in your local County so contact your county administration building find out who's in charge of the government auctions and get to know them I mean I don't if you can take them out to coffee or lunch just have a conversation on the phone with them go sit down in their office figure out when's the next auction how does it work and then go attend you don't have to buy your first time just go with ten so you lose there see what kind of networking you can do there and the more you learn the better you can get at auctions alright moving on to number six let's go over here for that one so number six I lead website so a lead generating website is a website that you own that has a like I buy houses and these areas kind of a message and so there's a number of ways that you can create a website like this you know protect potential if you are a little bit tech savvy you can maybe use WordPress to do it yourself not sure I'd necessarily recommend that route because you got to upkeep it and make sure it's all working well unless you're really technically savvy or you can find something maybe like wix.com or Squarespace Squarespace so Squarespace and Wix are both sides where you can create websites kind of like with WordPress but you can create a website but you don't have to have any technical knowledge but you do have to do all the writing yourself you have to know what you're getting into and you know make all the pages and within a few hours of work you can probably create a decent-looking lead generation website now options see though if you really want to go less work than that there's a site that I use called lead propellor dot-com my buddy Danny Johnson runs that and they're actually a kind of a sponsor but there they have a perks program two bigger pockets bigger pockets perks is for our pro members you get a discount so we propeller is one of those companies that if you happen to be a pro member on bigger pockets you get a discount with them but what lead propeller does is it gives you basically everything you need for a lead generating website it's actually designed by real estate investors and so you don't have to do all your own writing and making it sound real good you think it kind of fill in the blank and publish it up there and you get it now granted li pro is gonna be part of the most expensive option followed by a Wix or square space followed by WordPress and spry the cheapest but you know if you're technically savvy you can do a or B if not look into something like options see all right moving on let's go to ten number seven morning call number seven simply Craigslist Craig's List so Craigslist as the of course you know is the online classifieds section there's millions of people using it all the time and you can actually use it in two different ways to find real estate deals first of all you could post post an ad right so you can post an ad on Craigslist and tell people hey I'm you know looking to buy houses in this area there's even usually a real estate wanted section of Craigslist you can post it in there but another way that maybe would work even better depending you know on how you do here but option B would be to actually respond to rentals so what I mean by respond to rentals is find people who are like mom and pop landlords that are trying to rent their properties out and contact them and say hey I saw you were trying to rent your property out I'm not interested in renting but I am looking to buy a property are you interested in selling can we have that conversation and yet most people will probably say yeah no thanks but you'll probably make some good relationships in the meantime and every once in a while you're gonna hear that landlord say you know what actually what's thinking about selling that property now that you bring it up what do you what do you think it's worth or what do you want to pay get that conversation going it again it's just it's kind of like a funnel right you might call 10 people only one might say a maybe but you have enough of those calls and I mentioned that maybe you'll get a yes out of that so again Craigslist can be a good way to do it I know another closely related to the one that would be an actual newspaper now I know newspapers are kind of dying is kind of like a dying industry but there are still a lot of people out there who use a newspaper now there's a few ways just like Craigslist you can use a newspaper you can post an ad or you can respond to an ad or refund or rentals now some people actually list their house for sale in the newspaper like for sale by owner they might just list it there so make sure you keep an eye out for that you can also same thing as Craigslist you can post an ad or you can respond to rental ads in the newspaper and contact people the great thing about Craigslist and newspapers is the landlords in there especially if they're like mom-and-pop landlords doing their own rentals they give you their phone number right then and there in the dock in the in the ad like how much easier is it for you to track down owners of properties when they give you their phone number so again set up a reminder in your phone I mean pull out your phone that's over there pull out your phone right now instead a reminder for Siri or whoever your Google whatever is you know voice-activated they can say hey remind me every Monday at 4:00 p.m. post an ad on Craigslist or remind me every Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. read the newspaper I add classified ads so you do that every single week and maybe one or two or three a year you might be able to pick up some more deals that way all right so moving on to number 9 and that is print well that's a weird pee print so print ads are anything like you could rent a billboard I know some investors just get those big billboards and they can actually cheap or dependent your area they make cheaper than you actually think they are so maybe get a big billboard that says that you buy you know houses in distress or whatever you buy any house cash for houses whatever there's also things like just ads that go on your car on the back your car on the side of your car just magnetic as you get for twenty or thirty dollars online or you could wrap your car if you really want to go fancy maybe you want to sponsor a bench somewhere you like right near a park you you get the bench with your name on it maybe you want to get a little just what they call bandit signs now bandit signs are kind of a taboo around bigger pockets because frankly in a lot of areas they're illegal bandit signs are those signs used about three feet by two feet kind of political size and yet people stick them everywhere I'm billboard I've been on what do they call telephone poles or you know in yards that don't belong to them they post them all over the place in a lot of areas they are illegal to put out there so if they're illegal in your area don't put them out there they just kind of dirty up neighborhoods and the government doesn't like it much and you put your phone number on there they're gonna find you right but there are ways to use bandit signs potentially good for example you could rent space on somebody's yard you can actually ask somebody hey can I put this in your yard and if I get the deal from it you know can I give you a hundred bucks or 500 bucks or whatever you do or can you rent space on the side of a building you know talk to the shop owner back hey can I put this here and if I get the deal I'll give you a thousand dollars or whatever right so there's ways to keep it legal without trashing your whole town and trying to break the law all right and moving on to number 10 something I call passion so passion is exactly what it sounds like it's been passionate about real estate but loving real estate and and wanting to tell everybody you know what you do and why you do it and what you're looking for so the funny thing is when you tell people what you want people respond by trying to help you get that I mean think about it your friend came to you and said hey I'm you know I'm looking for a job I'm looking for something that's maybe like in the accounting field somewhere within 10 miles of here what are you gonna do you're in a zag no sorry or are you gonna start thinking hmm do I know anybody that look might be hiring don't need companies around here that might take this person you're gonna start thinking because they gave you something specific they want and they're passionate about it well your family friends are the same way so let everybody you know that the you that's around you go put on your Facebook wall today that you're looking for real estate deals maybe you're looking for trashed ones you're looking for ugly properties that are nasty and you know whatever get out there and let people know that you are I an investor and that you love real estate in fact that's how I got my 24 unit apartment building was just telling everybody I know that I was looking for an apartment building and lo and behold some day I was talking with they said actually we actually have an apartment building we are thinking about selling and that turned into a great relationship which turned into a great deal for me and a great deal for them and it all became out of passion so get passionate tell people what you want know what you want then then go out and get it so we used one over a list of 10 different ways you can find deals is that all the ways you can find deals of course now there are a lot more creative strategies I hear them all the time if you want to know more how people are finding deals today jump into the BiggerPockets podcast it's a completely free pie caste we host it every single week you find an iTunes stitcher SoundCloud the Google Play Store all over the place even YouTube we got our podcasts there and listen how other investors are doing it you know strategies change all the time but the more you learn about how to find good deals and the more avenues you got going the more deals you're going to get so if you are having trouble right now finding deals like I said at the beginning this video you know what to focus on all ten just focus on one that you think you're going to master you say I'm going to go after this one right now whether it's driving for dollars or direct mail marketing working with a wholesaler or whatever just start getting those leads coming in and remember not every deal is going to work out just because somebody calls you on the phone does it mean it's going to work out just because you put a sign somewhere doesn't mean they're going to call you it's all about marketing is about getting your name out there letting lots of people know about what you do what you want and hoping that a certain percentage of them end up calling you and even smaller percentage of them are going to end up selling to you so if you enjoy this video do me a quick favor give me a thumbs up on this video let YouTube know that there was value here I love that also if you could do me a favor and join BiggerPockets we're the free real estate investing social network marketplace and information hub more information than you could ever read in a lifetime about real estate investing right at your fingertips so go to BiggerPockets calm right now to sign up and lastly if you enjoy this whole idea of real estate investing and you want to get started you're not really sure where to go next you want to learn more every single week on BiggerPockets i host a free webinar and we talk about all different aspects of real estate how to find deals how to fund them multi-families flipping houses all that stuff if you want to learn more come to next week's webinar you can sign up bigger pocket at bigger pockets com forward slash webinar all right guys I gotta get out of here I hope you guys have a excellent week and I will see you on the next video thank you so much for being a part of bigger pockets Cheers

Channel: BiggerPockets

Views: 459,295

Rating: 4.9178877 out of 5

Keywords: biggerpockets, real estate, real estate investing, investing, Brandon Turner, real estate investment strategies, finding real estate deals, real estate investing strategies, investing in real estate

Id: zbexYWeZHZs

Length: 20min 38sec (1238 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2016