The Definite Guide On How To Get Started Investing In Real Estate Succesfully

[Jerryll Noorden]

I get asked this all the time. Here is honestly the best way to get not just started, but become successful in record time.

So I decided, instead of answering hundreds of messages asking the same thing. How about I use this platform to give some free value to newbie investors? So here goes!

LESSON 1: Differentiating Data From Opinion

You need to understand that success in this space depends on your ability to find motivated sellers.

This is obvious, this makes sense. But, what do all the gurus and influencers, all these Youtube personalities tell you how to find motivated sellers? They will all tell you to:

⦿ Drive For Dollars
⦿ Text Blasting
⦿ Direct Mail Marketing
⦿ Bandit Signs
⦿ Door Knocking
⦿ Cold Calling

To the:

⦿ Foreclosure List
⦿ Tax Lien List
⦿ Probate List
⦿ Absentee Owners List
⦿ Green List, Blue List, Dog's List, Cat's List, and every list you can get your hands on

And this is "How You Find Motivated Sellers", well, according to all the "Experts".

Now, if this were true. If this was really "how to find motivated sellers", why then does it take 3000 mailers, calls, or texts to finally snag ONE deal? If you were truly targeting motivated sellers, it wouldn't take you 3000 tries, to get one deal, right?

Let me put this into perspective for you.

Imagine you were in front of 1000 people. They have not eaten in 30 days. Here you come along with a nice juicy Chicken melt bacon sandwich slobbered in bacon fat, and you ask these 10000 starving people: "Who Wants This Sandwich?"

How many of these 1000 starving people do YOU think will raise their hand? 

Obviously all of them. 1000 out of 1000 people will raise their hands. You will get a 100% conversion rate. The reason why you will get a 100% conversion rate is because you approached the right audience with the right message. 100% conversion. Marketing 101!

Now, if you have to send 3000 mailers, calls, or texts to all these lists to get one lousy deal, isn't it quite obvious that you are not approaching the right audience with the right message? People, this is not an opinion. This is DATA!

Guess what?! 

Your message doesn't change. Your message is "I offer cash for houses". That is your message, your business model, that is what you offer. Okay... then what else could be wrong if it is not your message? It is your AUDIENCE that is wrong.

People in foreclosure, job loss, tax lien, probate, absentee owners... are not characteristics of a motivated audience. These people are not "motivated sellers".

Think about it.

If you have to send 1000 mailers to the foreclosure list to get one deal, it means that 999 people on your foreclosure list were not motivated. That means that the foreclosure list is 99.9% not motivated. Your conversion rate is 0.1% How can any of you even dare to convince me that the foreclosure list is a good list?!  Do you now see the difference between opinions (all the gurus, and 90%+ of Biggerpocket users) and data?

This brings me to the point of the first lesson, I give anyone willing to listen to me.

Change Of Mindset

You all need to understand that this is not a popularity contest. It is completely irrelevant how many people "vote" or "like" a comment or post. It is completely irrelevant how many people agree with a notion, strategy, method or concept. The only thing that matters is data. The only thing that matters is the truth!

So the question then becomes: 

OK, if this is not how you target motivated sellers, then how do you target them?

EXACTLY!!

The short answer is this: You CAN'T!

But don't fret, I will give you a solution to the motivated seller problem. But in order for you to successfully implement the solution you first need to unlearn everything everyone has ever told you and understand what I will show you here:

LESSON 2: Understanding Motivated Sellers.

If you want to find motivated sellers, you need to first be able to identify what a motivated seller is. If you do not have the characteristics of a motivated seller correct, you will obviously not be able to target them. If a certain fish only eats shrimp, you will not be able to target that fish by putting worms on your hook right?

A Motivated Seller:

⦿ A motivated seller is not someone that wants to sell their house.
⦿ A motivated seller is not even someone that needs to sell their house.
⦿ A motivated seller is not even someone that desperately HAS to sell their house begging on their knees for someone to please buy it fast, in cash, NOW.

Nope! None of these are motivated sellers.

⦿ A motivated seller is ANYONE willing to accept an offer below market value regardless of the reason why. 

Now that you understand what a motivated seller is, how do you find them, is the question.

Well, you can not target motivated sellers. Today you are not motivated, ... tomorrow something happens and you became motivated. Only YOU, yourself know you are motivated, right? You do not magically automatically get a tag next to your name in the government registry that says "Jon Smith NOW is motivated, everyone send him a mailer call and a text". You do not magically appear in Propstream under the "motivated sellers" list when you suddenly decide it is more important to sell the house rather than how much money you get for it.

This concept is extremely hard to believe for most because of the constant hammering all the gurus and a lot of other Biggerpockets members keep regurgitating. But remember this... data trumps all.

Data is the ultimate deciding factor. But I get it. Everyone can talk a good talk, especially the gurus. So let's show you data!

Bring your attention to Exhibit A:

We bought this house for 10 dollars. (Yes you read that right).

Not a foreclosure, not a job loss, not a tax lien, simply a motivated seller.

Do you really think I am THAT good to trick someone to sell me their $280K ARV house for ten dollars? If they wanted more for their house they could have sold it for 30 dollars you know. That is a whopping 3X the amount we offered them.

To help you wrap your head around it, consider this:

The pain of owning that house was far higher than the monetary worth of that house. When it comes to truly motivated sellers, most of the time, money is not the reason for selling. It usually is anything other than "money". THAT my friends makes a motivated seller, motivated.

Now, again, now that you understand "motivation" you can start to comprehend why you can't target them right?

What Most Investors Do Wrong

As mentioned before, everyone goes after all these lists, and this is what they think, or, this is what their marketing logic looks like:

• 
  ⦿ Vacant House => Motivated => Deal
• ⦿ Foreclosure => Motivated => Deal
• ⦿ Probate => Motivated => Deal
• ⦿ Tax Liens => Motivated => Deal
• ⦿ etc. etc.

(the symbol "=>" should be read as "implies")

Instead, This Is The Truth:

⦿ Finding a vacant house + owner is motivated = Potential for a good deal.
⦿ Finding Foreclosure + owner is motivated = Potential for a good deal.

Yes it is a huge "PLUS". as in, BOTH conditions need to be met, not just one "being in foreclosure"

A vacant house/someone in foreclosure/someone dealing with a probate/tax lien DOES NOT IN ANY WAY imply "motivated seller" or "a good deal"... or that "they even WANT to sell" at all.

So.. people that go after "vacant" houses... or "foreclosures" or "absentee owners" or "probate" or..... need a bit of a primer on deal generation which I will be happy to give.

Now consider this:

Are all dogs animals, yes or no? Yes!

Are all animals dogs? Nope!

My point?

Yes, you found a motivated seller that so happens to be in foreclosure, Fantastic. Friggin awesome... BUT... that does NOT mean that by pulling the foreclosure list, you will get a list of motivated sellers. It doesn't work like that. And there is where I believe SO many people go wrong!

So let's organize all the data presented into a coherent set of conclusions:

Your success depends on your ability to find motivated sellers... YET so many of you use strategies that have less than a 0.1% success rate finding motivated sellers.

So many of you are struggling, wondering why for you it is not working while for so many it is. No!, It is not working for MOST people.

How often do you see people on Biggerpockets posting things like "ohh DMM works". This is my biggest pet peeve!

NO, it does NOT work.

Anything with SUCH a low success rate that people have to send THOUSANDS of mailers to compensate for the low success rate means it does NOT work right?

Let me rephrase this concept.

Because DMM cold calling and texting have such a low success rate, or, because DMM cold calling and texting "does not work", you need to send thousands of them to compensate for the fact that it doesn't work, to make it work. So No intelligence, common sense, and logic say: It doesn't work.

If every 100 times you turn the key to the car, and out of the 100 times the car only starts 1ce, do you consider the car "working"? The fact that it starts 1ce out of 100 tries is arguable to label "it works", or "because the car DOES start?". No right?

Why is DMM any different? So what is the deal with cold calling DMM texting, why do people keep pushing this?

Consider this:

People that have $5K to send on DMM, will make some money sure. They have to spend a ton of money BECAUSE of the poor performance of mailers calls or texts. But for the everyday little person like you, can't afford friggin 5 grand a month to send out 10,000 mailers. And the way these marketing channels work is simply by chance. The more you send out the higher the chance you get a deal. And this is why so many of you fail miserably doing those strategies, and why I personally do not recommend it UNLESS you have other things in place, but that is for another lesson.

So finally we arrive at the question:

FINE! But HOW do we target motivated sellers then?

The ONLY way to reliably target motivated sellers, is for you to make it extremely easy for them to find YOU! No one knows they are motivated, only they themselves know.

The more motivated anyone is the more pressing the need for them to do something about it.

Now, when was the last time YOU went to the library to find information on a pressing problem you needed solved?

Me neither. EVERYONE goes to Google to find a solution to their problem.

Google is the answer, Ads are the answer. 

In Lesson 3 I can guide people on how this is done, IF there is interest. It took me 40 minutes to write this, and if no one cares for this, I don't see a point continuing this.

But to entice you why you should care?

I know lead generation, because I used data to crack the motivated seller leads code:

We get more organic free highest quality leads you can ever imagine.

And my profits/deal are ridiculous!

Now I will tell you something really scary.

All these people here I bought these houses from at insanely low prices, were not on any list! Not in foreclosure, not in job loss, no tax lien, they are invisible to 99.9% of all of you. You will NEVER find these. These were simply people that didn't want to list. Didn't want to clean, didn't want to deal with walkthroughs.  The reason I find them is because I know what a motivated seller is, how they think and behave, and I know what VLUE is to them. That is my lure.

And what I said is even wrong.

I don't find them. They find me... so all my leads are 100% free! And thus, my ROI is infinite. Isn't that nice?

This is data, my friends. This is not some "popular" guy with thousands of followers, telling you something works because they have a yellow Ferrari next to them!

Let this be the start of a complete mindset change. I am sick and tired of all the wrong information circulating around everywhere. Let's change that. Let's all reliably become successful through data-driven decision-making!