Buying Off market homes for flipping

[Steven Alspach]

Anyone have experience direct mailing/contacting a home owner to make an offer even if its not on the market? I see a lot of run-down homes that have a lot of potential as a flip but are not on the market. I know someone who does direct mailed offers for land (he usually offers 40% of market value for the land, hoping to catch that 1 fish who wants to just get rid of a plot they inherited or never cared much about.....and it works). Wondering if anyone has applied a similar method to occupied, run-down homes and if it has worked.

[Don Konipol]

About i million people are trying to do this exact thing currently.  LOL. We all want to buy low, sell high.  People doing everything from knocking on doors, to phone and text spam, outlaw signs, magnetic signs on vehicle, billboards, direct mail, direct email, purchasing lists, phone banks, SEO, SEM, PR marketing, advertising on TV and radio, sponsoring events, holding webinars, seminars, meetups, real estate investment clubs, bird dogging, on and on.  You can search the forums, literally 10s of 1000s of posts.

So, here’s the bottom line.  The successful wholesalers I know, do this FULL TIME, and spend anywhere from $10,000 (low end) to $100,000 (high end) per MONTH on marketing.  Yes, every month one or even two of the 5 million people trying to buy property at 40% discount with no marketing money and no program DO somehow get very lucky and are able to make $10k - $100k on a deal.  But the odds of winning the lottery are much better, with a LOT less work. 

Up until the late 1970s there was little competition, and finding a below market deal to flip, rehab or just hold was a much simpler and more likely process to be able to achieve without spending much money upfront.  Then Bill Nickerson and Albert Lowery founded the real estate seminar business, and ever since we’ve had literally thousands of gurus and wanna be gurus, mentors, and “educators” offering (for a fee) advice on how to find, finance, purchase and sell the elusive real property you can buy at a 40% or greater discount to market value.  This has attracted millions of people through the years to try it, with many paying substantial cash to “learn the system”.  Used to be they sold “books and tapes” at the back of the room for $99 - $499.  The. It became full courses with books, tapes and phone help included for the one time price of $999.  Now, it’s mentorships priced from $20,000 to $40,000.  The only thing that’s changed is that the odds of making a deal continue to decline as transparency in real estate is increased.  Why? Because much of the teachings are concentrated on finding the seller who is “unaware” of the current value of his property; with Zillow, Trujillo, and Realtor.com, it would be a very rare person indeed who was not able to access the published on line information available.