first contact through the mail with property owner

[Richard Vining]

What is witten in the first contact with property owner.  You obviously want a response that says "I might be interested in selling".  What is in the letter that seems to generate the most positive responses?

Richard - Fort Worth

[Nathan Platter]

Hi @Richard Vining ,

We often tell the sellers that we intend to keep the property (which is true, we rehab fulltime) but we also tell the seller we may assign it to another seller if we are unable to properly improve the property at this time. We want to keep it, but can't 100% guarantee that we will.

[Jonathan Holmes]

Depends on who you're targeting. Are you mailing other investors? owner occupants? People with equity? Tax delinquency? All of these groups will have different motivations. A tax delinquent property owner may be more interested in cash and a quick close. A long time investor with a paid off unit is going to need something more personal to get their attention or maybe you pulled them their name off of a list of recent evictions in which case a "tired of having the head ache of being a landlord? Sell your property to me for its cash value and never deal with it again!" might work. Owner occupants will also need a more personal touch this isn't some house its their home so a gentler hand is wise

You have to know who you're targeting and then try to guess what their motivation might be. A generic letter will get a certain percentage of response still but to push those numbers up you have to work harder and get more precise. I tend to focus on smaller more focused lists but to be honest it hasn't really paid off yet. So you may what to just go generic and go big. 

[Jim K.]

Just leave Jesus out of it. I get about a letter a week from investors. A large number of them include the salutation "God bless." This annoys me greatly. God's got squat to do with the letter. You wanna make some money off my a$$. It makes me want to call and talk about sacrificing chickens to Ba'al.