Consistently putting deals together is easier than you think. Really! Making things happen and making serious money as a real estate investor doesn’t require luck or extraordinary negotiation skills, and it doesn’t take talent or money or a masters degree in business.
Heck, none of that stuff matters. What does it take? In a word, PERSISTENCE.
I’m able to put deals together today because I continually get my message out to people who are looking for someone to help them out of their difficult situation.
Persistence is the key
You’ve heard of the “motivated seller”? Guess what happens when he’s introduced to Mr. Motivated Buyer. I’ll tell you what happens, deals! Things get signed off and someone ultimately writes a check with my name on it. And that’s what it’s all about.
Make sense? In order to put deals together consistently, just put your message into the hands of the people who are eager to sell, and your success is virtually guaranteed.
But you have to get your message out there consistently. Persistence is the key.
There’s lots of ways to pull it off. I like postcards, and I send them out by the hundreds. Postcards deliver my six-line message with my phone number right there at the bottom, and if someone is thinking about getting rid of his property about the same time that thing shows up in their mailbox–boom, there’s a deal in the works.
Contact “motivated” sellers
But you can’t just go send postcards to everyone. You need to target your mailing to the people who will most likely be looking for someone like you.
Example? We’re always researching public record and pulling names and addresses of people in trouble, and that includes people who are delinquent in the payment of their property taxes. After four years of unpaid property taxes here in Washington state, that property gets scheduled for a foreclosure auction.
You think those folks might be motivated? You bet they are. We mailed out a bunch last week, and I’ve got four or five calls to return on my voice mail right now.
Doing nothing more than this sort of thing, we consistently close six, eight, or even a dozen deals virtually every month. Again, it’s not luck or talent or skill that allows this to happen, it’s getting that phone to ring with a hot-to-go seller on the other end.
There are people who right now, at this very moment, are hoping and praying for someone like you to appear in their lives and help them out of their bind. Heck, they could be right next door. Now, ask yourself this: How would they find me?
Often, your only real answer is, “They can’t.”
However, if that motivated sellers is in my town, he can pick up the newspaper and see my ad, or call me on my signs or find us on our Internet sites or even…respond to our postcards. Because if he’s in foreclosure, or going through an eviction, or is delinquent in his property taxes, or has an IRS lien, or hasn’t paid his water bill, he’s heard from me.
But that ain’t all . . .
There are many ways to find motivated sellers
There are dozens of other paths to the motivated seller’s door, and time spent figuring out who those folks might be is generally time well spent indeed. I specialize in systematically finding and targeting these motivated sellers. And that’s what I write about in all of my courses.
We had a seller sell us a $35,000 property last month for $3,500, a tenth of it’s value, because he could no longer even think about “that damn tenant” in the place. He responded to a postcard sent to delinquent property tax owners.
A seller paid me $500 yesterday to take over payments on his home. But he owed less than 80% of what it was worth and has an 8% loan with payments that will allow us positive cash flow.
Reason for selling? The Air Force transferred him and unless he sold right now, his wife would have to stay behind until the house is sold. He responded to my ad in the paper.
Earlier this year, we bought three houses in one month on a mailing to out-of-state homeowners. In each instance, my postcard showed up in their mailbox at just the right time in their lives and they were sufficiently motivated to get that property out of their lives once and for all.
Hey, good thing I showed up, because when the dust settles, we’ll have netted over a hundred thousand dollars on these three deals alone. Get the idea?
How many sellers called you yesterday?
I talked yesterday with at least six sellers who were responding to any one of my marketing strategies. Six! Now, not a one of them seems to have anything I’m likely to buy, but that’s not the point. The point is, people ARE calling.
Again, ask yourself: “How many sellers called me yesterday?” If the answer is…zip, then you’ve got some work to do.
Lay the groundwork by getting your marketing in place. You don’t need to do it all at once or have a dozen things in place for now. Just get yourself set up with at least one good marketing strategy that puts callers on the line.
If you can figure out a way to do that consistently, you’re in business.