How to get a hold of apartment building owners?

[Trent K.]

Hi all I'm new in the investing space but i know enough to know that marketing is a HUGE part of being a successful real estate investor. (Wholesalers know my pain lol) I'm trying to figure out the best practices when reaching out to owners of apartment buildings. Today, I looked up a list of all the commercial real estate brokers in the state of GA on LoopNet and tried reaching out to them. I'll likely continue to reach out and follow up with brokers but I just wanted to know what other people who are having success in this arena are doing? What do you guys do when you want to reach the owner directly???

[Cody L.]

As someone that gets a million "wanna sell?" emails and calls (paper mail is tossed before it comes to me) I can tell you that you need to focus on what you'll say and not just finding the person to say it to.

[Nick B.]

Originally posted by @Cody L.:

As someone that gets a million "wanna sell?" emails and calls (paper mail is tossed before it comes to me) I can tell you that you need to focus on what you'll say and not just finding the person to say it to.

 Interesting perspective, Cody. As a recipient of those "wanna sell" messages, what would make you to take a sender seriously and keep his contact info just in case you decide to sell later on?

[Trent K.]

@Cody L. That makes sense. What kind of conversation would pique your interest?

[Cody L.]

Originally posted by @Trent K.:

@Cody L. That makes sense. What kind of conversation would pique your interest?

 The conversation that would pique my interest equates to more time on your end.  Sending out a letter or postcard that says "I want to buy your property" won't do it.  I get 100's of those (seriously). 

Better to send a smaller number out and make the owners feel like you're sending the letter TO them vs. a blast.  Say specifically why you're interested in THEIR property.  That you're a LEGIT buyer that's not going to waste their time.  And if you have the time to do a quick analyze, hell, suggest a price on there.

When someone asks me "Would you sell" I say "Of course, everyone will sell anything".  I simply tell anyone that wants to buy my stuff "Send me an offer".  If they say "well send me 100 years of taxes and a copy of every lease and utility bill" I hang up (or don't reply if email).  The onus is on the person making the cold call to make an offer.  I'm not going to respond to a cold call by supping a ton of data.  A legit experienced buyer in a market should have a pretty good idea of what they can pay for a property and how it's performing. 

I buy via reaching out to owners all the time.  I say "Hi Bob, I'm Cody.  I'd like to buy your property. I own several like it. I close quick.  Minimal due diligence.  No retrading.  I'd be willing to pay $xxx.".   If they say that's not enough, I'll ask for some financials that'll allow me to pay more.  But at least they've seen an offer from me first so are more likely to provide.

Damn, I'm giving all my strategies away.  ;)

[Ken Vingua]

@Cody L. Thanks for giving away one of your strategies.  It makes a lot of sense to provide an offer and show that you have at least done some basic level analysis on the specific property before contacting them.  I can see this being a huge benefit in the multifamily space where you are reaching out to a much more narrow list of properties than the standard SF direct mail blast.

[Cody L.]

Originally posted by @Ken Vingua:

@Cody L. Thanks for giving away one of your strategies.  It makes a lot of sense to provide an offer and show that you have at least done some basic level analysis on the specific property before contacting them.  I can see this being a huge benefit in the multifamily space where you are reaching out to a much more narrow list of properties than the standard SF direct mail blast.

 Yes, but people don't do it as it's easier to blast out 1000 "I want your property" letters and spend time with anyone who might reply.  So most don't take the time to make a more targeted offer

[Rick Versace]

@Trent K. I also use direct mail campaigns, but I have developed an additional strategy that has been very beneficial in the past. When putting together a mailing list, I try to get as much information as possible. Usually I am able to get your basic details (Company/Owner name, Property Name, Owner Address, Property Address, # of Units) when purchasing a list from a database.

Once I have a solid list with solid properties in areas I am focused on, I will post a Data Entry job on a website like Upwork or Elance to obtain additional contact information for each listing. Usually I will give them a time frame, say 3 hours, and ask them to research each listing and find me a number of different details for each listing (Phone Number, Email, Mortgage Info, etc.). After the three hours is up I check their work, and if they were productive, I have them work for another 3 hours and so on. I have been able to build lists of thousands of direct contact information other than mailing addresses with this method.

This has helped me in a number of ways:

1. I can now use a website like Mailchimp or Constant Contact to put together my "E-Mailing Campaigns" and send information more regularly and not incur the same costs as I would if I were sending out as many direct mailers.

2. I can pin point my prime targets and call, email, mail the owner until I am able to get in touch with them. 

3. The mortgage information and other research allows me to put together a more detailed email/marketing letter when approaching owners. This is huge when taking @Cody L. 's approach and trying to refine your marketing material to get the owners attention. 

That being said, I love @Cody L.'s strategy of having an offer ready to go to show them you are serious.

I hope this helps! 

[Rohith Janga]

 This information is available to public at  local county office. Identify the owners Out of state and target them, you can have more success rate here, as OOS investors are motivated to sell for several reasons. David Lindal's "Emerging real estate market" talks about this, worth reading .

[Jill DeWit]

@Rick Versace

Why not just pull the precise data set you want from RealQuestPro? Or same product sold cheaper thru ownersdata?

Then scrub, create offers, and send via direct mail. Works like a charm. 

Oh and if you pull your own data, you can get it in the mail for a flat $0.53/unit via offers2owners.

For $0.99/unit (full service) - offers2owners will pull your specified data, complete mail merge, and get it in the mail for you. (Postage, printing, professional address list cleanup/verification all INCLUDED.) 

Available data and reports include:

Ownership and transaction detail

Foreclosure lien, and judgement activity

Property profiles

Document images (vesting deeds, loan/ mortgage documents)

Transaction history

Digital street maps

Recent sales comparables

Demographics

STATS:

Over 8 million commercial properties

Over 100 search attributes

97% APN match rate

97% of all U.S. real estate transactions

Over 145 million properties

Over 500 million historical transactions

1.5 billion document images

4.5 million transactions per month

Used by over 1,000 lenders and 3,085 counties

[Archana Rath]

where can I get the list of apartments ,owner,address and contact info? I am based in Dallas Fortworth area

[Joel Owens]

I ask inquiries for their financial statement. That usually gets rid of 99% of them. 

[Joel Owens]

It really amazes me how a lot of people (likely with no money or very little) want to talk to the whales that own these large properties. The whales have screeners to weed out people with no money or have limited knowledge of what they are talking about. WHY? It's simple time is money.

If you have the money then typically you do not have any extra time. So you only want to engage serious buyers that will not waste your time.

Think about the whales. They work hard and when they get time off with family,friends, vacations they do not want to be bothered.

I get sent requests all the time for NNN properties. I send them a PFS to fill out. If they do not do that then we go no further and I no longer respond to them. An exception would be a REIT, or Insurance company and I can see they have bought hundreds of millions or billions over many years or decades so know they are a real player in the game.