most effective ways to find off-market deals in MA?

Question

as a followup to my last post: i'm interested to hear from *local* investors, what have been the most (and least) effective ways to find off-market deals in your experience? if it matters, i'm in central mass. thanks in adv!

Antoine Martel · Answer

Hi Jessie,

Here are a few tips on how to find Off-Market deals!

1. Wholesalers - Find their website or get into their email list.
2. Property Management Companies - They have thousands of owners they work for so they know who and when they are going to sell so they can send you deals.
3. Turnkey Companies - Connect with a turnkey company.
4. Marketing - Do your own cold calling, email and texting.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Lead generation is a human thing, not a location thing. It is based on the human pshycology. If you are hungry, you get grumpy. If you get sad you cry.

When you are in distressed you try to find a solution. You go to Google, and figure out a way to get out of that distress.

DMM, wrong

Cold calling, wrong.

ANYTHING to do with a targeted list... WRONG!

All these leads below, were free. They look for me. not me looking for them. They are very motivated.

If you want success when it comes to lead generation the first thing you should do is read this post and see why EVERYONE is simply doing it wrong.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

ONLY when you understand why they are all wrong can you begin doing it right.

Best of luck!

Shawn L. · Answer

I grew up in Bellingham so I was familiar with Milford, and knew that it has a strong rental market. I started buying there in 2014, mostly on the MLS. I do still have the 4 unit I got off market as well as a couple other places in town. It's worked out pretty well so far, still have the inherited tenants in place about 2.5 years after buying the building, though the units are still a bit under market rent. Because I was able to get a good deal on it, it still makes money and I've already refi'd out the majority of my down payment without doing anything other than having a few roof leaks patched and general maintenance. My PM has been slowly increasing rents and when units turn over I'll do some upgrades and should see a significant increase in rent roll.

I actually just built the list from the assessor's database. In their old system you could sort by building unit count and just go down the list and type in the important data such as property address, owner name and address and build a simple list fairly easily (having multiple large computer displays helps). Now it seems that they've shifted to GIS instead of the patriot properties database, so this would no longer be so simple. I have used listsource in the past as well, and when I decide to do another direct marketing campaign I'll likely go that route or similar.

Lien Vuong · Answer

From an agent's perspective it's been cold calling as well as networking with people who are representing sellers or sellers through different meet ups looking to liquidate their assets.

Jessie Dillon · Answer

@Shawn L. thank you for your reply! so many questions.. 1. what made you target milford? 2. do you still own this property & how has it worked out? 3. how’d you originally compile that list of 1k?

Shawn L. · Answer

I picked up a 4-unit in your home town a few years back from a direct mail campaign, which was a mix of professional letters (on letterhead) and post cards. I designed and bought two different style post cards from vistaprint, and wrote and printed all of the letters with my laserjet. Addressing of all envelopes and post cards was simply done with MS Word's mail merge linked to an excel database again on my laserjet. I mailed my list of 1,000 or so owners every 3 weeks from what I recall, for several months. Lots of work but got me a good deal.

From what I've seen these days, lots of cold calling and cold texts.

most effective ways to find off-market deals in MA?

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