Starting to wholesale

[Robert Nelson]

so I'm starting a wholesaling career with my wife in wesley chapel, FL (will be attending the tbrei meeting this Thursday) and had a question about finding our first deal. I am a realtor and have mls access, have been going through the mls in various areas around the Bay Area getting addresses of absentee owners and then using whitepages to look up phone numbers to said owners. How many phone numbers will I need to generate my first sale (I plan on getting and dialing 500 numbers this week) I figure this is a decent way to start because my marketing budget is $0 so can't really afford to send mail or get bandit signs at the moment 

[Chris Mason]

The "Tampa Bay Area" that always triggers my little keyword alert thing, or the real Bay Area? 

A lot of the "vacant" homes in the real Bay Area are drug labs with straw owners. Some people are stupid of course, but a huge chunk of these "vacant" homes are drug labs. We do not have much truly vacant real estate that has clear title, etc, in the Bay Area, because of where rents are at.

If you want to go after the real decision makers, dig through property profiles and mailing addresses where prop tax bills go, and so on, to track down the drug lords. Start with the MLS, but get use to having MLS on monitor one, and your chosen title company's title lookup website on monitor two, and of course google on monitor number three to see what "123 Main LLC" is and if that owner of public record is married to someone with a criminal history. If you find one that's looking to get out of that business and cash out his earnings, you could score a real coup. This isn't Hollywood, I wouldn't be super worried about them being violent. They are businessmen. Put an offer on the table.