You Built Your Database; Now What?

Now that you have a beautiful database of properties that are both on the market and off the market, what do you do next? You need to start reaching out. Whether you reach out to the owners or you reach out to the listing agents, you need to act. If you never do anything with your database will never be worth anything to you. As you start reaching out, make sure that you take notes. If you don’t keep track of your conversations, you could accidentally offend someone.

When you are talking with sellers or agents, it is very important to make a great first impression. You don’t want to fumble or come across as unprofessional. They need to believe that you are capable of buying their property. If they don’t think that you can buy their property, they won’t take you seriously. If you have never done this before, you should practice before you pick up the phone. Professional athletes visualize themselves successfully performing when they are not practicing. Mental preparation is critical as well as actual preparation.

You need to have a list of questions that you are going to ask about the property. What do you need to know in order to make an educated offer? You need to know the gross operating income. You need to know what expenses they have and how much those expenses are. You need to know who manages the property and how long they have been managing the property. You need to know what condition the property is in and what deferred maintenance there is. You need to know how long the property has been on the market and if they have had any offers. If they have had offers, why did they reject them. There is no point in making an offer that has already been rejected.

The agent who has the property listed is going to ask you a bunch of questions too. They want to know that you can perform if you make an offer. They want to know that they are not wasting their time working with you. You need to have an answer for how you are financing or paying for the property. You need to have an answer for what your closing timeline looks like. You need to have an answer for what you are going to do with the property and what your business plan is going to be for the property. You want to find a way to control the conversation. Be prepared to answer these questions.

Let the agent know that you have several different investors that you work with and until you know the details about the property, you don’t know how you are going to finance it. You might pay cash, or you might get a loan. Once you have more details about the property, then you can get a letter from your lender stating how you will be buying the property.

You need to talk to a lender prior to looking at properties to get an idea of what type of loan will work best for your situation. Find out how much you need to put down and what the timeline for that type of loan is.

If the property needs a lot of work or you are going to be doing a conversion, you need to have an idea of how long it is going to take to close the transaction. You need to have an idea how long it will take to get the approvals for your project. Talk to Planning and Zoning to find out what zoning allows self-storage and how long it would take to get approvals on plans to convert a property into self-storage within that zoning.

Gathering information is the first step in being well prepared to make a great first impression. Once you have information then you can ask educated questions. Start talking to people today so that you can start finding properties today. As always, happy investing.