Interesting note on absentee owners vs driving for dollars

[Charlie John]

I recently completed driving for dollars in 3 new areas of our greater Twin Cities metro that I will begin marketing to. These are desirable areas where you would actually want to buy a house to flip or hold as rental because they have good schools, safe neighborhoods and  little to no "war zone" type streets.

I drove EACH street looking for houses that are either outdated or needing serious repairs (based on exterior appearance). There are a lot of different things to look for but I will say this: you want to see some kind of distress.

Physically on the exterior is important (peeling paint, cracked driveways, original windows, overgrown landscape, rusty garage door, awnings, etc.) but also look for a messy yard or just ask the question-  Is the way this homeowner living kind of "weird"? Are there 3 broken cars in driveway? Do they have yard ornaments all over? Have the made they customized their house too much - like purple and pink house paint? That person might want to sell as-is because a cash buyer could make the sale of their home very easy, whereas if they suddenly needed to sell - getting the house ready for sale would take a lot of work!!

I take the data(house numbers) and go back to the computer to look up on the county's website to find the owners name and mailing address. I found this part interested once entered in the data :

List 1: 206 houses. Only 9 are absentee owned.

List 2: 189 houses. Only 11 are absentee owned.

List 3: 195 houses. Only 8 are absentee owned.

Now, these represent EVERY single house that has distress from the exterior in that ENTIRE zip code. I understand the motivated behind a tired landlord who lives 5 hours away and just wants to be done with the property, but how many of them are there? Especially one where the house needs a lot of repair...

Mailing to a blanket list of absentee owners seems like a waste of time/money because you are mailing to a lot of houses that may be in good shape and could be sold on a retail level. 

My custom driving for dollar lists based on distressed housing are made up of owner occupants with majority of them being older folks(55+). Names like Florene, Arlette, Gilbert, Eunice, Beatrice, Merton and many more! :-)

Just thought I would share this to BP! Hope it helps someone. Thanks!