Where do you guys find great deals?

Question

I read many of the posts here and I'm near mystified by what some of you find. We are looking for a new primary residence soon and will rent out our current one for a decent price. That said how do you guys get such great deals?

Are they bought at auction? From wholesalers? Get lucky on the web? Is there a reliable site to get a jump on bank owned places? I'm not looking to get a place for $0.50 on the buck, but a jump on a place to maybe fix up and rent a few years from now would be great. Thank you.

James Hamling · Answer

@Kevin Reid shortest, simplest most accurate answer; it's a business and deal-making is our primary product.

I remember how mystical it all seemed decades back looking at it without any clue, and I thought "there must be some trick", truth is the trick is there is no trick. It's a business, and business building. There is long hours, unmeasurable amounts of persistence, effort, knowledge building, research, trial and error, networking, designing, implementing, redesigning, adjusting, and the overnight success is built over years and years of micro successes all compounding upon themselves.

Looking back I think a fair analogy is it's like digging a ditch with a spoon, lol. When you're all done its all pride, when your digging you sometimes wonder just what the hell you're doing.

If your not ready to dig a ditch with a spoon, it's good to know, so buy an already dug one from those who did. That would be turn-key investment properties. @James Wise has a lot going on on this front, I would suggest starting there, I call him "The Oracle of Ohio" and he has definitely earned that moniker.

(Warren Buffet, Oracle of Omaha, James WIse, Orac.... look, he's super-duper good a REI, a fancy way of saying super-duper good at it).

Account Closed · Answer

Great deals are not found! They are made! Sure you can get lucky as long as you are performing POWER PROSPECTING - So how do you make a not good equity or cash flow property a GOOD DEAL?

Know first what is a great deal to you ? What do you want? Cash Flow, to build a portfolio, Fast assignment?

Contract engineering and creative financing can make a poor listing or FSBO great. It is in my opinion about Control, control of the Equity, control of the chain of title, control with the seller or hybrid control and control of possession.

I start with determining the real amount of the potential equity (equity that can be converted to cash) negotiating for a percentage of the equity is what makes a good deal. Equity as you know is the wholesale value less fixed liens. Controlling the amount of that equity that you want for yourself is where a profit begins to materialize.

Cash in your equity using a public auction, assign your position in the property.

Offer a lease with an option to purchase with right of possession.

Offer a straight option to purchase at an agreed price to take place sometime in the future. w/right of possession.Offer at a higher price with seller financing with a delayed settlement with right of possession. You can pay more if you can negotiate a "principal mortgage" this is a mortgage without interest and all payments goes to principal until it is paid off.

Offer a fail price with right of assignment, offer the building at public auction (partner with the seller).

Long tern Rent agreement with payments and repairs going to discount the price and  going toward the principal, assign rental position to sandwich rent.

just a few ideas --

Rufus White · Answer

@Kevin Reid

I actually did this earlier this year. We purchased a new house, and are currently renting out our other house. We have a trusted realtor we have used multiple times now, and below are a few things we did to accomplish our goal

-Asked our realtor to setup email notification for houses on the MLS that fit our criteria, like price, bed/bath, and area in town

-Scanned Realtor.com, Zillow, and Craigslist regularly

-Went driving on weekends and evenings after work to look at houses in the areas we were interested in, and then sent direct mail to the home owners

-Called and visited websites of Banks to see if they had any foreclosures, as well as local property managers

Unfortunately we did not think to look at home path.com, which I now kinda wish we had. I don’t know how active you want to be, but I think Zillow and Realtor may show you foreclosures, you may be able to lookup the owners information and call them to see if they are still able to sell the property. I tried that once, however that particular call was not well received.

Hope everything works out for you!

Kevin Reid · Answer

We've been doing a lot of that. We have 4 different real estate agents from different companies sending us properties, but most we get alerts from zillow or realtor.com first. We check out CL and FB market place, home path, and auction.com. Not much we are interested in though as an actual place to live for 5-15 years.

We have seen many listed as preforclosures that look like good candidates, but they never seem to come to market. All 4 of the agents we work with seem to want to stay away from preforclosures.

Dave R Ludolph · Answer

As far as paying cash to whole salers how long does it typically take to get loans from 401k, home equity, and hard money? Would I ne able to get cash quick enough for a whole saler to want to work with me?

Kevin Reid · Answer

I'm afraid I'm not much use in networking as real estate is not my source of income or involvement really.

I will not be paying cash, so I guess my options are pretty limited. Thanks guys.

Collin Placke · Answer

Most get their deals from wholesellers or auctions. Pretty rare to see many bank owned properties, but that may flare up post covid. Just remember, wholeseller or auction will need to be a cash closing. No wholeseller will want to wait for you to get traditional financing if he has other investors ready to pay cash. Also many properties wholesellers sell don't qualify for traditional financing because they are in such rough shape.

Corey Stubbs · Answer

All of it.  Word of mouth is my biggest plug.  But no one will help you if nobody knows you have that need and nobody wants to help you unless you help with theirs.  Be involved with people and leads naturally occur.

Where do you guys find great deals?

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