Lehigh Valley - Hot Market, Low Inventory

[Sean Bayliss]

Good Afternoon Investors,

Over the last 3 months I was able to quickly find 2 deals in the Lehigh Valley, Easton, PA to be specific.  Now my partner and I are in the hunt for our third deal and have thrown out roughly 10 offers and all were beaten.  Beaten to either a full cash offer or same cash offer with better terms,  terms such as buying as is etc..  Our current financing option is working with a local portfolio lender using 20% down and we've built in our closing costs into the financing to lower the 20% down payment.  After completing a deep dive and looking at some market data, in April of 2016 the Lehigh Valley had 3500 properties listed for sale and just two years later that inventory has shrunk to 1550 properties.  You can find this data at this link: Lehigh Valley Market Data.  I have several questions and wanted to see what strategies others in this market or other markets with similar market conditions are doing to find deals.

1. Is there a different financing option we could take to bring a stronger offer or a more creative way of financing the deal?

2. One of the two deals we found was an off market deal brought to us by our real estate agent and the other was off the MLS. How are you finding either good deals on MLS or how are you finding off market deals?

3. Should I hold my cash and wait for a deal or put it to use maybe as a hard money lender, throw in stock market, etc?

Looking forward to seeing what people are doing to find deals in this sellers market!