What are good sources to find properties for Rental income?

Question

Jody Schnurrenberger · Answer

There are a lot of ways to find deals.  There is driving for dollars where you just drive around looking for vacant and/or abandoned looking properties, then contact the property owner (find their info through the local county website) to see if they want to sell.  Interestingly, bail bonds folks often have properties for sale because someone put up their property for a loved one, then that loved one (very sadly) jumped bail.  I check out www.Auction.com regularly.  They want you to sign up, but it's free.  Also, in Alabama, there is www.AlabamaPublicNotices.com where you can find foreclosures.  I also look for sheriff sales posted at the local court house whenever I'm there.  If your agent allows it, you can always offer a lowball offer to something on the MLS.  You have the best luck if it's either newly listed or been there a very long time.  (If your agent doesn't feel comfortable with this, consider getting another agent.)  Tax sales are a little more complicated and I can't tell you much about them in GA except that you get 20% interest if you lose the property, so it's not a bad deal either way.  I was speaking with an investor who stopped investing in Georgia tax sales because he was only after the interest and he kept ending up with more properties than he wanted because they only have 1 year to redeem, unlike AL where they have 3.  I hope this gives you a couple of ideas of where to find a deal.  Good luck!

Steve Haight · Answer

@Terrell Washington

Welcome here to b/p, lots of like minded people here ready to help you. I have been investing in undervalued properties for over 35 years so I got pretty good at finding them. You ask all the right questions and even here on b/p you will find deals. Curious where do you drive truck? If you have any further questions reach out to me sometime, be happy to help.

Jim K. · Answer

@Terrell Washington

Buy your houses from dead people. Our last two properties have been estate sales, bought from a traditional agent thoroughly embedded in our target area. I've talked about this strategy before on BP, but I haven't written a blog post about it yet.

You've got to find an agent who handles a lot of as-is estate sales for a lot of people in your target area. Typically, this agent has been around forever, served on the municipal board, coached kid's softball for twenty years, volunteered for all sorts of social functions, knows EVERYONE in your target municipality. These are the local agents who have put in years of meeting people and passing the card. These are the first people called after the funeral.

So the way we found this agent was pretty specific to Allegheny County in southwestern PA, greater Pittsburgh, where we operate. I'm a contractor and I know that master plumbers throughout the county have to be registered with the county's Health Department, and ACHD keeps the list of plumbers online. I found four master plumbers in our target municipality and called them up to ask them if they could give me the number of an agent who's worked with them to do work on estate properties in the past. Two of them came up with the same agent, and that's how I met a guy I'll call "Boyd."

Boyd sold us two places he had as pocket listings. We came in hard and fast, lowball all-cash offers with no contingencies, 5% earnest money, close just as soon as the title clears. That's how grandkids living far away want to sell Grandma's house and turn their headache into easy money. They'll sell to the first guy they know who comes to them with a signed contract, a fat earnest-money check, and a promise that the buyers will not back out of the sale.

You can expect to haul a lot of dead people's trash out of the places and find all kinds of undisclosed problems with this strategy, but it's been incredibly worthwhile for us so far.

Tyrell Perry · Answer

@Terrell Washington Once you find the deal, make sure you know how to vet the deal...will make a world of a difference in your real estate investment success.

Remember, everything that glitters ain't gold and everything that smells isn't garbage.

Jody Schnurrenberger · Answer

Oh, 2 other sources I forgot about...

https://www.treasury.gov/auctions/treasury/rp/

Click "Upcoming Auctions"

and

https://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/gsaauctions/

Scroll down to "Real Estate"...if you can resist all the other cool stuff.  lol

These aren't the biggest places to find deals, but they are yet another resource.  :-)

Melissa Gittens · Answer

@Jody Schnurrenberger those are some great points! thank you for sharing this. I have been looking in Alabama for a while and haven't jumped in just yet.

Anthony Dooley · Answer

@Terrell Washington I use a Realtor.com app on my phone. It is great when I'm traveling to check out local markets. D.C. is an area to buy and resell because of rapid appreciation. This isn't a passive endeavor. If you want to buy and hold, you would do better around Fredericksburg, Richmond, or Raleigh, NC. These markets are less expensive and will give you a better return on your investment. Rent is high in D.C. but you need almost a million bucks to buy, so there is very little cash flow.

James Wise · Answer

• The bigger pockets marketplace
• Multi family listings on the MLS
• Zillow
• Trulia
• Craigslist

What are good sources to find properties for Rental income?

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