Where to find off market properties

[Matthew Stevenson]

I'm brand new to BP and am in the process of saving money to try and get myself in a position to buy my first property within the next year. I'm wondering what advice BP community has for ways to locate off market properties. I don't have the cash to buy at a foreclosure auction so I'm thinking possibly REO off-market properties would be the way to go, but I don't know how to go about locating them. Is there a service that provides these listings or are there other methods that are recommended to locate off-market properties.

Our goal is to locate a single family house to buy and flip.

Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

[Justin Reed]

@Matthew Stevenson check out direct mail marketing for sure.

What I do is I pull assessor data of the type of properties in the areas I want and send ALL the property owners an offer. I scrub the list to remove things like properties with a mortgage, duplicates, etc. and spend a tremendous amount of time on pricing, because although these offers may be a lot less than retail, they are not out of the question. I explain in my offer letter to sellers that I am a serious investor, not an agent/broker, I pay cash, and are prepared to close as soon as x days.

Then I sit back and wait for the motivated sellers to call us. You can of course edit this model to fit how exactly you plan on purchasing and what specific property type you are looking for. It's all about getting there first and this is the best way I've found to do that. By the time a deal reaches the MLS or a lead source, someone else has already beat you to it. Also, knocking on doors (aka "driving for dollars") is an outdated way of doing this and honestly isn't worth your time. It's no longer about possible subject to leads - we now have DATA and computers and direct mail to get there first.