Making offers on deals is hard! How do you do it successfully!?

[Alan Caceres]

Hey all,

As a newbie real estate investor, I have found that closing deals are pretty difficult.

I'm sure as I gain more experience, I'll look back on this post and laugh at myself for thinking this. So hopefully this is enlightening for my future self and for anyone new to investing.

I have been analyzing deals, networking, reading, listening... basically doing everything I could do to close my first deal... minus actually making offers on properties I saw as deals. I've been a "sideline investor"; looking at properties and determining if they are good deals for my area. I've found many deals over the past few months since I started this journey, but never actually went ahead and spoke with a realtor or the seller. I've have finally taken my next big step in participating in REI; I've contacted the listing agents for properties I saw as good deals to try to walk through the property and make an offer based on numbers that make sense for me, but I've hit somewhat of a snag. I keep getting callbacks from the agents telling me that an offer has already been accepted for a property!

I've analyzed hundreds properties and have found most of them suck for investing. I've also found that there are a few that are actually pretty good deals. It's frustrating to look at so many properties and only see a handful of them are actually worth pursuing. Since I started contacting the listing agents, I've gotten nothing but "already in contract" responses! Now I've only attempted to make an offer on 8 properties but this is crazy! I've read and heard that I'd analyze 100 properties and only find 10 properties that are worth it, and of those 10 I'd only be able to make offers on 5 and of those 5 I'd probably close on 1. That sentiment is completely spot on! I'm always getting beaten to the punch on these properties!

I've actually started getting leads for various properties in my area and have begun a marketing campaign for them to try to beat everyone else to the punch! Postcard marketing is expensive! Hopefully this marketing campaign will work out somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, I'm still analyzing properties and trying to get my first deal closed.

How do you guys go about getting your offers in before anyone else? Or even before another offer gets accepted? 

Thanks in advance!