Realty Trac

[Whitney Blaine]

Anyone use realtytrac? They seem pretty good. I have tried them a few times...Have never been able to purchase a forclosure though. My experience has been when call the lender (the information realty trac provided) The guy told me, he was getting tons of calls for the same property i was calling on, and that he was not the lender, and didn't know why his name was posted on the site)

Realty trac is better than most out there, but the info isn't always the most current... and I have found a few fake listings.

Why is it so hard to find foreclosures?

[Rick Turman]

After researching everything on BP, it all comes back to Sending out yellow letters.  I thought there may be a better/easier/faster way to this, however the grind and the hustle is what generates the best of profits long term in any given situation to become successful.  If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

I will start researching the best of ways to become a step ahead of other investors (Competition) by cold calling, yellow letters, and door knocking, just need to obtain that list.  

I knew it would come down to this, just didn't know how soon.  

Has anyone had success doing this on Pre and Pre Pre-Forclosures?  How have you failed vs how were you successful?

I will be documenting everything and will report out what I find to help others.  Thanks everyone for this treasure trove of information, and for not allowing me to follow into the trap of realtytrac.com!

[Linda D.]

Hi @Rick Turman, Just checking in. We are going to start flipping houses. How did you make out?

[Ruth Lyons]

Thanks to all for taking the time to post on this topic. There's always so much to learn in this business and I appreciate all of you so much for sharing. Feeling vindicated about not signing up for Realty Trac.

[Rick Turman]

@Ruth Lyons,

To be honest, I completely forgot I even posted about this :-).  It's things like these that you re-visit and smile upon as now I can speak with infinite wisdom on my successes and failures over the past 2 years.  Keeping it simple, we have now turned yet another 2 properties (4 successful and very profitable flips) and are now building our Buy and Hold portfolio while we wait for this Market turn.  What was a struggle finding 1 unit, let to landing 8 units in 3 weeks recently.  End of Rant for me.  Now to answer your question:

I just finished writing up this same passage for another colleague so I am going to spit out what I submitted to save some time.  I hope it finds you and others well so that you too can spearhead the Analysis Paralysis and just PULL THE DAMN TRIGGER!  

SAVE TIME - SQUASH THE YELLOW LETTERS!!! Those are a thing of the past now. I too was a click away of doing yellow letters until my buddy in Orlando let me in on a little secret on what he was doing that worked. He called it "Skip Tracing" and has built a team to trace and take the deal all the way to acquisition without any single stroke of the keyboard.  Until he has to file paperwork that is for the contracts :-)

Basically I have built my own team to work on a funnel that I created based on a list that seems to be having quite a bit of success. I have this down to being almost completely automated. If only I can find someone to pull the lists for me now off the below site, and trace for me i'd be golden. Skip tracing is simply a team of people who take the list, and comb the internet for phone numbers affiliated with that owner, then it's added to a new Excel sheet. Easy as that.

Instead of sending out letters and waiting for someone to open and respond (could take multiple attempts to call) We have been skip tracing and have found to have about 75% success rate. I was going to do a discussion board on this here to help others out as we have seen amazing results but perhaps this post will entice others and keywords within will sound alarms to their biggerpockets notifications section. 

If you are not familiar with this, you obtain a list from your choice of sites, we use listsource.com obtain our lists based on a given set of criteria you choose from, and it pumps out a CSV and or XSL file with Owners, Primary address, and any information such as LTV, Years of mortgage, dwelling size, all the way down to how many and what type of windows a building has. That list then goes to the Skip Tracer who combs the internet to find the owners contact info (Cell or Personal home phone). My agent then starts cold calling to see if the numbers are legit, and if they are, request if they are interested to sell.

There are companies out there whom do the combing, however I lucked out as my buddy bought a company, and provided me access to a trial of 1K addresses.  If anyone is interested in his business check him out.  cashflowinvestorsportal.com.  Sorry for the shameless plug however I never returned the favor and perhaps this can help.  

Continuing on.... At this point you already have spoken to them (Property owners), eliminating the need to wait for them to throw your mailer away 5 times before opening it, increasing their time to respond rate, and money of course. Most say yes off the bat at X $ some say yes we are interested. Let me get with my accountant about depreciation, and please follow back up next week. I tested this new "Thing" out on a list of 10 that I pulled from my list, had my agent call around, and 7/10 responded where two were bad numbers, and 1 just wasn't interested in talking.

I am bringing this up to you as your area may still be a hot market. Mortgage rates are flattening pushing buyers to not want to buy but rent. Homes are way too inflated to where Rental rents will increase but still be tasty to the eye. This may be by far the most efficient way to get responses and be a step ahead of others as the MLS and Sheriff auctions are a thing for amateurs and seasoned investors. Sure you may find something, but you will still see the seldom few get burned on a bad deal continuously.

Ok end of rant :-) Let me know if this is something you are interested in, and I would be more than happy to discuss over phone and get you in a direction that may benefit you as it has me. Now just to get in touch with my agent to see if there are any good eats today :-) Have an awesome day Linda, and keep kicking some *** out there!