Direct mail campaign for buy and hold commercial multifamily

[Jack Wang]

Over the last couple of months, I spent a lot of time reading, watching, and listening to real estate content from BiggerPockets and elsewhere, and I decided to change my strategy. I'm targeting small commercial multifamily deals (5-20 units) with a bias for creative financing to try to capitalize on my personal expertise on finance and also try to mitigate the challenging environment for traditional bank financing. I wanted to solicit feedback and advice regarding my plan from the more experienced members of this community.

Next year, I intend to begin sending out direct mail to owners of targeted apartments in my area, and these will mostly be mom & pop landlords. I intend to offer to buy outright, buy with seller financing, or do a master lease agreement (with a buyout option) with them. The intended strategy is buy-and-hold.

Below is my plan:
1) Using my county's property search tool, pull a list of all 5-20 unit apartments built after 1960.
2) Comb through and validate the entries (ensure that mailing address is the owner's rather than the LLC's registered agent's. If the agent's then need to ask the agent to forward to the owner in the letter).
3) Use a direct mailing campaign vendor to print out letters to send to my curated list. The general value proposition would be to offer to cash out (purchase), partially cash out (purchase with seller-financing), or provide a consistent income stream for the current owner (master lease).
4) Stay consistent in sending out letters, once per month follow-up. If possible, also complement it with emails if I can find an email address from skip tracing or Secretary of State search on the LLCs.

5) Keep doing this until I get deals

Would love any feedback regarding this plan. Any specific advice like how best to find the owner would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much in advance.