Finding Motivated Sellers

[Austin L Archer]

I'm looking for a more efficient method of searching for motivated sellers of distressed properties. Driving for dollars works but it seems there are better ways to find them.

[Pablo Avila]

Everything boils down to a numbers game, also consider that majority of people are using commercial software such as Propstream (watching their favorite Gurus on Youtube which will continue recommending this). 

Here's a competitive advantage that you can use when finding distressed/vacant properties in your area or as a virtual investor in other states.Using your city's 311 service & Code violations you can "Virtually D4D" to find off market deals that WILL NOT be in commercial real-estate software such as batchleads, propstream, and listsource. Look at your city's 311 service, it's public data and will have hundreds of reports such as abandoned lots, homeless activity, high grass, etc.. all reported by other neighbors.

Majority of the time this is what cities utilize to determine code violations/enforcement, so if you request that list, you'll be ahead. Additionally, these are updated daily and typically have the "incident opened date" which you can easily sort by.

1. 1. Find the website (Google 311 service request your city name) - I'm sharing a google sheets document we put together (weeks worth of research) for you to easily find your city's 311/code violation service (If you have more, please share and help the community!).
2. 2. Locate the full data list (This will be raw data, you will need to open it with excel or a text editor (Notepad ++ works great). For many of these, you can click on "visualize" on these sites, or just download as .csv. (Note: some of these files are huge!)
3. 3. Format the data (Depending on the city, this might already be categorized such as Vacant/Overgrown Property, or it might have a full description. If it does have a description:
   1. Here's some of the keywords you can look for: ABANDONDED,unoccupied,homeless,squatting, prostitution,uninhabitable,disconnected,destroyed,water leaks, ,damage,rodent,utilities,,moved out,not secure,maintain property,Encampment.
4. 4. Determine the full address and now tie this information together to your county appraisal data which should have the owner name/mail address.
5. 5. Once you tie these determine the parcel # and identify if there's any tax delinquencies, or whatever other indicators you typically use to increase the likelihood of a motivated seller (i.e. tax liens, evictions, etc..)
6. 6. Take action and call them

This is a great way to find vacant properties as neighbors or people that have an intimate knowledge of those neighborhoods are the ones that report these properties which tend to be eyesores for their communities.

Again here's the document!

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Another option is to setup a good inbound marketing channel. If you're serious about finding motivated sellers then have them come to you. Invest some money in registering a website (example: webuyhousesinyourcity.com), make it easy to navigate and SEO friendly. We used to get 4-5 solid leads per week and 99% of the times these were motivated to sell.