How much do you know before sending letters?

[Brian G.]

Good evening ya'll,

I've been doing targeted direct marketing in the hopes of finding a flipper in my town, but have had no success. None of the listing sites seem to be at all useful for my area so I scoured the county assessor data for months to build my own absentee owners list. Now I've got a big ol' list of properties I can sort by any number of criteria and have been sending letters to the ones I think will be most likely to produce leads.

On properties I think may be potential deals, I drive by and take a look to see if it looks vacant and to get a rough idea of condition, and then snap a quick photo. I'm putting loads of effort into this and getting no results, so my question is this:

Do you all send out a huge amount of letters without ever having done any research on the properties and wait for owners to contact you Before looking at them? I've thought it would be beneficial to know something about the occupancy and condition of a property Before mailing a letter, but that greatly limits the number of letters I am able to send.

Some perspective and advice would be appreciated much. Thanks

[Wayne Brooks]

Doing any research on a property, other than the owner's mailing address, prior to an owner contacting is a complete waste of time. This from someone who has a tendency to do too much research sometimes. I oils think Listsource would come up with the same names you do.