Finding Properties Beyond the MLS - Secrets Revealed! (Paid and Free)

There are many ways to find deals! And yes, even beyond the MLS!

Different Markets, Different Strategies, Different Properties

I’ve been investing in real estate for over 17 years now. We've done deals with strategies such as fixing flips, BRRRR, buying apartment buildings, foreclosures, etc. We've done it all creative financing, hard money lending, all those (non-traditional) things. Over our career, we're bought houses from Panama City, Florida to Birmingham, Alabama, all the way up to Northern Virginia. Dealt with different markets, bought different properties, and continue to scale up and grow. I love the creativity of finding deals. Right now we're at twelve deals for the year. We recently closed on our first Washington DC deal this past week.

Dynamic is Changing

There are different ways to find deals. A lot of people are hurting and struggling with how to find deals at the right price. They don't know where to go as there’s a lot of competition and limited supply. There's been a surge in the number of buyers over the last few years. The dynamic is changing a little bit, however, it’s still fairly competitive. I think six months from now, as we get into 2023, we might see more supply on the market.

Ways To Find Deals (Paid & Free)

I’ll divide them into 2 categories. Free and Paid and provide tips on how to leverage each of them with the pros and cons included.

Free

Multiple Listing Service

The number one easiest way to find deals is on the MLS. You don't have to be creative, you don't have to go out there and market to different motivated sellers to find people that want to sell. However, with MLS a lot of times you get more eyes on the listings. You have more investors and more potential buyers looking to buy that property. Obviously, more competition is gonna drive the price up and You’ll have to pay a higher cost in order to get the deal. We don't like bidding wars or having to overpay for properties. Our motto is to buy low and sell high. We add value in the middle to increase the value of the property.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the MLS and it’s one of my primary strategies for networking and building relationships with realtors and brokers. They can be your eyes and ears to bring deals to you before they hit the market. So that's one of the strategies with the MLS, we love to work with the listing agent versus us having an agent that works on our behalf. We work with that agent to get the house under contract and represent us as the buyer. We let the agent that's working with the seller already represent us, so we can get the information on how they're making decisions – like how motivated they are and when they're looking to close. The agent will be motivated because the secret behind that is now instead of them just only getting a 3% commission on a deal, they're getting both sides they're getting a full 6% commission on the deal. They are motivated to ensure you're successful because they're going to get paid more.

Driving For Dollars

Another frequent strategy used is driving for dollars. Getting out there in your car, taking a different route home every day, going down a couple of side streets, taking a couple of hours out of your Saturday, or your evening drive – to look for vacant houses, houses that grass has grown up, a bunch of newspapers piled up, a bunch of debris on top of the roof, and anything that shows signs that the house isn't being maintained. There may be an opportunity to even find an off-market property. You can drive for dollars in different neighborhoods around your market and look for “for sale by owner” signs in the yard. We even call “for rent” signs. Look out for such properties for four or five months and if the owner hasn’t been able to get it rented out. It could be because it's not updated (or perhaps because they didn't have a lot of pictures online or anything like that). You could call and inquire if they may be interested in selling the property to you. They may own it outright and sell with terms. In this case, you don't have to bring all the money to afford a traditional loan. To have the deal locked to the table to finance and they will become the bank and let you just put a small down payment and you take over the payments, fix it up, refinance it, pay the seller off, and now you own the property. So that's one optimal way that you can get in to get deals with driving for dollars.

Public Records

Public records are a great way to get free information on evictions for landlords that just evicted someone. You can also get information on pre-foreclosures, people that have 90 days late on their mortgage, you can also get probate information when someone passes away and the executor files in probate court. You can see if they own a piece of property. All of these are indicators, same with divorce, people, who have challenges in life that become public records because court documents have to be filed. You can get this list and you can start marketing to these people to get off-market deals. You can secure the bag, and grow your portfolio. You can come in and get deals at a really good discount.

Networking and Facebook Groups

Finding local REIA (Real Estate Investor Association) groups. You can meet with wholesalers, and other landlords that may be wanting to sell a property and/or their portfolio, You can get so much synergy by being around other investors that are localized to your area. Especially now with the pandemic a lot of organizations meet virtually. So you can tap in if you're in Los Angeles or San Francisco and/or a very expensive market, but you may be buying real estate in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Dallas, Houston, or some market in the Carolinas that cash flows a whole lot better than San Francisco would. So now you can virtually tag up in those weekly meetups, monthly tag ups, where you can meet people in the market, boots on the ground contractors, a lot of lenders frequent in those meetings. Building relationships to expand your network, that's a great one!

Social Media

Let people know on your social media that you're a real estate investor including family and friends, associates, and people at work. They may just inherit a house and don't know what to do with it. Knowing that you are a real estate investor, you’ll stay top of mind. Our recent Washington Dac deal came from an old church member who knew we were real estate investors.

Personal Branding

Continue to market and advertise wherever you go. I got my shirt on right now that states “If it doesn't cash flow, let it go.” So when I go to the grocery store, I got my website, on the back with the name of my company. It lets people know that I am a real estate investor. I encourage you to get out there and be creative with different ways that you can advertise and market in your area in order to get deals.

Paid

I'll start getting into some of the paid avenues where you can find leads to get more deals.

Direct Mail

Direct mail still works. I'll tell you from a lot of people within my network that do it on a high level that's been thousands of dollars on mail each week. The conversion rate is going down, they're getting swamped. There are a lot of people sending out mail, some homeowners, again, 10-15 pieces of mail a month. There's so much competition! A lot of people push these people to go out, pull the same data, and everybody's mailing the same folks –and they get aggravated. You can look at the direct mail, but the money with the mail side of it is finding a niche list that you can target and be in it for the long haul. You don't just send one round of postcards, you have to send at least six months' worth of mail once a month hitting them up and following through.

Marketing

Consistently marketing to people when they have the opportunity to sell. Something changes in their lives and they're ready to sell, now you're top of mind because you've been constantly marketing. Because guess what? McDonald's has been around forever, they still market and advertise. Coca-Cola has been around forever, but they still have marketing advertising dollars, they're still out here, pushing their product. It’s the same thing with direct mail, you have to be consistently marketing people. So when they're ready and hungry, they'll come and eat at your restaurant. So when they're ready to sell their property because they just evicted their tenant, or a loved one just passed away – they're gonna call you.

Bandit Signs

One of my next favorites is bandit signs. I think this year, we need to manifest them. I just thought that we needed to send out some more bandit signs. We spent around $440 for 100 signs and paid $250 to have them put out. We got a deal that we wholesaled and we made $33,000 on that deal. We bought it for $71,000 and we ended up selling it at $129,000. It took us about $10,000 to clean it out and get it ready and then put it on the market. We've invested a little bit over $600 with the signs and then we're paying somebody 14 hours away from where I live (in Panama City), shipped them to my contractors' address had assigned a person I found on Craigslist to pick them up. They put them out and got a deal within a week. So that's the power of bandit signs. That's another way you can spend a little bit of money, you can put them out. Make sure you work with a local ordinance and understand the rules when putting them out. We put ours out overnight on a Friday, so we can at least have them out for the weekend. Sometimes the city or somebody else will pick them up on Monday such as code enforcement. We never got one call from other municipalities in our area, but just one specific town. So we're going to avoid them next time we put in our next go-round and put some more signs out. Bandit signs have always worked. But make sure that you understand the laws and how they work in your area, so you can ensure you're on the right side of the law.

Google Ads

You can run ads on Google so when people search “sell my house fast in Nashville, Tennessee” your ad will come up if you're buying houses in that market. You can pay agencies that can run it for them or you can figure it out yourself and try to learn it on your own. I'm a huge proponent of leveraging other people's time. Outsource it to somebody else that's good. I would get referrals from somebody that used someone before you vs just out of the blue going with somebody who may or may not specialize in real estate ads.

In summary...

There's always a way to find deals. We can be as creative as we want! 

Which of these ways to find deals have you tried? Let me know in the comments, would love to hear about your experience and learn from each other!