I am in the process of starting up my flipping and rehab business right now. Here is a secret that I have found: Find some houses that have been rehabbed in the past. You can do this by simply searching the public records at the county recorder’s office.
Find houses that were recently sold to real estate investors by banks, HUD, VA, FNMA, etc. If the buyer is not an individual (ie., a corporation or partnership), then you just hit your bull’s eye. More than likely this company bought the property to flip it or rehab it as a real estate investment.
The deeds should give the mailing address of the new buyer. You could send them a letter to tell them about your house flipping/bird dogging business. Or give them a phone call if they are in the book. Unfortunately, most of these companies won’t have a listing in the phone book, so you could do the following.
Check with the secretary of state and find out the officers of these companies. Look them up in the phone book and call them at home. This is a lot of research, but luckily you only have to do it one time to get a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers.
I will admit I have it a little easier than most in that my county’s records and the secretary of state’s records are Online, so I can do the research here at home on the old computer.
Another idea. Need a hard money lender? Check in the recorder’s office again. If you find an individual who holds a mortgage on a property, and that individual 1.) is not the previous seller and 2.) is not related to the owner (not the same last name), then there is a good chance that you have found a private hard money lender.
I have done this in the past and located several individuals whose sole business is making hard money loans to rehabbers and investors.