How do you buy out of state?

[Peter Rodriguez]

I've been trying to buy listings out of state and when I find a house that seems good I call up the listing agent or a real estate agent to help me buy it.

They chat me up and offer themselves to check the house out and will let me know soon. They then just never message, call or email me :/

They don't ask about pre-approvals or anything which I find strange. They are legit real estate agents and I've gotten info on 1 house but it had title issues.

Basically what steps should I follow to make sure I can look at a house out of state and offer quickly. How much should I annoy the agent and how long should I wait to switch agents? After being ignored for a 3 days , a week or longer.

I've been looking at a few markers but currently I'm looking at Wisconsin if anyone's curious. Thanks and have a good day.

[Marcus Auerbach]

@Peter Rodriguez what you desicribe is certainly unacceptable and will probably not yield you a deal worth making. It may have to do with how you present yourself as a buyer, but on the other hand, there are a lot of less than great agents. I know, I have to deal with a random co-broke on every deal.

Here is what may help to understand:

Before a buyer becomes a client to me, we have had a face to face meeting (or a video call) so I understand what they are looking for and how the roll. I also find out if they have unrealistic expectations and we can clarify and see if it still makes sense. The next step is to go out and look at a number of properties together back to back as an educational exercise and to establish a bse line for what a deal looks like. Next is I connect them with a good local lender I know and trust and get a pre-approval. This is a lot of time and effort for me, but at that point they are prepared and ready and an active client to me. 

Before all that I am just wasting my time.

I get random phone calls of people asking me to keep them in mind when I see a great deal. I learned very quickly when I do that and call someone back with a super hot deal they just look at it without context and ask me to keep sending them more... they can't understand, compete waste of time. They are neither ready nor educated or prepared. Which is why great deals go to active clients who are engaded and educated.

The issue we have in Milwaukee is low inventoy and 16 days on market on average (histroric norm is 6 months) - good properties offered for a fair price will go within a day or two. I do work with investors, because I have been an investor much longer than I have been an agent and that is where my passion is. But you also have to appreciate it is a lot of work for small deals and little money compared to the residential business. 

And by the way despite the market I am still buying properties for our own portfolio.

I have a talk next to agents about growing their business and about real estate investing - what I want them to do is a.) for some: stop renting and actually buy a house and b.) buy an investment property. What a lot of young agents want to do instead is working with investors, because they are frustrated with a lack of success in the residential world and think working with investors easy money. Now of course only a rookie investor will work with a rookie agent - talk about a power team (not).

You would think that agents have the inside track and buy the good deals for themselves, which is not the case: I think from 180 agents in my office only 3 or 4 own rental properties that I know of, and one is a builder. The reason is very simple - getting paid a percentage the economic carrott dangeling in front of them in the form of million dollar residential listings is just too big and shiny.

Sorry for the long reply, I hope it makes some sense to you!