Anybody use ListSource and gotten deals?

[Luis Alfaro]

Pretty eager to use ListSource to get leads but just wanted to know if anybody got deals through it?

[Sean OToole]

@Luis Alfaro, I'm not familiar with the "Administration Center", perhaps you mean the "County Assessor"? While you can get data directly from the county, it tends to be less efficient (whether measured in time or money) then buying it from a public records compiler / reseller. Compilers, like ourselves and Listsource, do a lot of data cleanup, add other data (like amount of equity), and make it easy to filter to just the records you are interested in. There are no free sources that do those things, and while it is possible to do them yourself, you'd have to value your time at $0 to make it worthwhile.

Once you have access to the data, then you're right, finding the right list for you within that ocean of opportunity can be challenging. My suggestion there is to look around bigger pockets for list suggestions (there are many) and find one's that sound interesting to you. Then pull a small sample of those records, and go knock on those doors, talk to those people, and learn about your potential target market. Once you've talked to enough to get an idea of how to best connect with them, you can ramp up by doing direct mail with targeted messaging that takes into account what you learned.

For bonus points, when you are talking to those owners, ask them if they ever get direct mail from others trying to buy their house. Offer them cash if they will keep those mailings for you. There is no better method for determining how much competition there really is, who they are, and what their pitch is.