How to go from finding the apartment to finding the owner!

Last week I wrote about the advantages of whether you should be focusing your marketing campaign towards broker relations or direct to seller. Which I will reiterate you should be implementing both to a certain extent. But for this week I am going to break down the process and some great FREE resources for getting in touch with owners and what actions you must take to get a deal over the finish line. To start you need leads or a list of properties.

To get yourself a solid list of properties in your area there are a few great ways. The first, a classic, “driving for dollars.” Drive around the neighborhoods you are looking to purchase properties in and look out for signs of possibly motivated sellers. What you are looking for here is properties with differed maintenance. This includes long grass, unkept sidewalks, poor quality parking lots, trash everywhere, etc. As you drive write down the address and you will have solid start of leads.

The next strong way to get a list of properties, is by using your local county property appraisers website. Every county’s website is different, but most all of them have tools that will allow you to narrow your search to filter properties that fit your criteria. Setting filters such as, built before 1990, sold before 2010, multifamily (more than 10 units), and then maybe throw in a minimum square footage to narrow even more to a unit range that is more in your criteria than just +10 units. These two strategies alone can give you a solid list of a few hundred properties depending on your market, and guess what it’s all free! If you don’t have the time, but you have the money to spend, hiring a VA to do this for you is a great cheap option of gathering a leads list. If you have a decent amount of money to set aside for your marketing campaign you could use companies such as listsource, costar, and reonomy. But if you are just getting started I think there is value in doing this on your own, saving the money and gaining the experience. Once you have the list, now it is time to skiptrace the owners.

After attaining a strong list of leads, go back to the property appraisers website and get the owner’s name or company name for each property. If the property is under the owner’s name you can skip the next step, but if it is under a company’s name you will have one extra step. This step is to us the State’s website to find more information on the LLC, such as the managing partner’s name. Now not all state’s have as detailed information, but many do. This also isn’t a perfect process as some LLC’s will have their lawyer’s details instead of theirs, but again it is a step in the right direction. Now once you have a persons name for each property, now you skip trace.

To skip trace I use a free website called TruePeopleSearch.com. Entering in their name and city/state will give you a few numbers to call to potentially reach out to the owner. The majority of these numbers may be old, but many times their current number will be in there as well. And now you have the ability to reach out to owners. Sometimes this isn’t perfect, and sometimes it takes much more creativity to get in contact with them, whether that be through Facebook or through a relative, but compiling this list will give you a great list to start reaching out to owners. And then the fun begins. This work is tedious yes, but this is only the beginning. Next is actually reaching out to the owners, finding ways to do this creatively, and the most important part: the follow up!

What is your favorite way to compile leads? Would you rather pay for leads or do the dirty, tedious work? What do you think are the advantages/disadvantages doing this yourself?

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Introductions? And as always what makes YOU happy?

Everything is welcome here and I am happy to help in any way I can!

Thanks,

Tyler Lynn