finding motivated sellers

[Raven Walker]

Heres what i did, and i could have took the long way and i havent had any deals yet but ill break down my trial and error and the method i feel will work best for me.

first, i searched zillow for homes that are selling for low cost, found the owners and mailed yellow letters of course

-the problem with this is, a lot of these homes still have loans on them and probably bank owned already, the owner still lives there, theres already a realtor on the job, just way too many obstacles, i dont expect to get any calls from those letters but you have to start somewhere.

next, i started searching on auction sites for homes that did not go up for auction yet or the auction expired

-again, the problem with this is the homes are 9/10 bank owned. while some of them are foreclosures theres still extra loops to jump through.

I considered buying lists of vacant homes and stuff but i am the most frugal person you will ever meet lol, its not that i cant afford to buy a list, its just that i know theres a different way and plus whoever made those list had to have someone else generating that list for them.

-so i posed as the person that makes the list that are sold.

-i searched on google maps and it has this amazing feature that allows you to see the street in "3D" so with the mouse on my computer i "drove" around the neighborhood i would like to wholesale in, (where i think the best deals FOR THE BUYER) will be, not for my personal gain. with wholesaling, when doing research on properties, its easy to get excited about what you can potentially make, but anyone who has read "think and grow rich" knows that any profit is a reward. my motivation for wholesaling houses in the "hood" is because it is my home. No i dont live there anymore but that does not mean that i cant relate and want to see the beauty in the city again.

(back on topic)

so im on google maps "driving around" and i can see the abandoned houses and ones that look vacant, i zoom in to get the address of these properties and again search the owners and boom, its usually someone in a different state or part of town, and boom. Thats my seller. i do this for about 4 hours a day, and create my list in excel and theres my motivated sellers lists that will be getting one of my yellow letters.

im sorry for the typos and grammatical/punctuation errors. Thanks for reading and good luck to everyone. Its not easy work but it has been done which means you can do it too. 

[Account Closed]

My advice to new investors is to start wholesaling properties. First pick a neighborhood that you are either in or close to. Driver around all the streets and look for vacant houses. (Not by using Google maps because they can easily be outdated pictures) There should be some. 

Then look in the county assessors website to find the owners. it should give their name and mailing address. Send them a letter (not yellow letter because they are getting dozens of them) telling them you found their house to be apparently vacant. But if it is obviously abandoned, say so in the letter. Tell them you will pay them cash for a quick close. Write it up as a personal letter.

When you do all that, then contact a local RE Agent to give you a list of all the houses in that neighborhood that have sold in the last 5 years with all cash. That typically is investors. Then again go to the assessors website and find their name and mailing address. Also do a name search on the assessors website to see how many other properties they own. If they own several they are obviously investors.

Once you get a response from the seller of the vacant house, negotiate a deal to buy it for all cash and get it under contract. Then immediately contact all the cash buyers you just found that buy properties in that neighborhood and tell them about the house and would they be interested in buying it. If you negotiate a good enough deal that pays you then complete the transaction with the investor to buy the house you have under contract. 

Once you have done all that with that neighborhood, go to the next one and 'rinse and repeat.'

I hope this helps.

Steve Anderson