All Forum Posts by: Chrissy Parsons

@Claire Flurry Congratulations on your new business.  Mailing to out-of-area absentee owners is a great idea. You could work with a mailing list broker to get the criteria adjusted to what you think best.

• decide where you want the properties to be located 
• owners live 50+ miles away, out of the county or out of state
• specify the home values - you probably want to steer to the higher end homes
• single and multi-family
• number of properties owned - this would be a topic of discussion with the list broker

Since your partner has experience with  the local market, they are probably aware of where their might be pockets where out of state owners live - join some investors groups in those areas and talk about your services.

@Jose I Martinez You might consider working with a list broker who can help with suggestions for your specific market. The Absentee Owner list has been the successful  go-to list recommendation for years. Unfortunately, with its success has come saturation. If you are in a competitive marketplace, competing with other investors, it's likely that the absentee owners have been getting multiple offers every month.

One list to consider would be Homeowners with Low Financial Stability Scores (FSS), pulled with the following:

• age 40-89
• owner occupied
• 5+ year residence
• eliminate known low equity
• home value within averages for your area
• Low FSS - likely to be struggling financially
• single family homes (not getting income from property)

These owners make good prospects for a number of reasons - the most obvious is that they could probably appreciate a cash infusion by selling the home. It's also likely that they haven't been keeping up with updates and maybe deferred maintenance. As a result they won't expect to get the same price as their neighbors with the new kitchen. 

It's good to have a mix of targets for your campaign. This is just one suggestion.

@Andre Bowdry Have you been able to match up the owner's mailing address with the vacant property?

@Todd Primmer I am curious why you went with Absentee Owners with low equity? Most investors want high equity owners. Was it primarily to hit owners that the others aren't?

@Jim Kittridge Depending on your area, Absentee owners could be getting dozens of offers from other investors. Senior homeowners can be a good target because they are often ready to downsize or transition to assistance. An added bonus is that quite often they won't have done a lot of updating so they aren't expecting as much as their neighbors with the new kitchen. 

Consider:

   Senior homeowners with 15+ year ownership

   Home value based on medium values for your area

   single family home 

   No trust of company owned

A good motivational criteria to add in is Low Financial Stability Scores. 

I think that it is more important to concentrate on the content of your mail piece rather than the form it takes - Make it BENEFIT driven. You can make easy for them to sell their house. They don't need to fix it up or have people walking through looking at their life. You can recommend movers, you can do the clean-out.

As you know, the list is the smallest cost of your campaign. You should consider working with a list broker to get a second list and alternate your mailings.

@Jared G. You have some good questions. Let me address the being proactive and a good deal. It sounds like you are looking at properties that have already been listed for everyone to see. It would be best to proactively develop some "off-market leads". If you have the budget to use mail, this is a great way to contact people who share the characteristics of people likely to be ready to sell their home. 

Absentee owners with equity is one widely recognized groups. Depending on your market area, this could be a great target.

If you are in a super-competitive marketplace, these guys might already be getting dozens of offers. You can be proactive by choosing other segments such as Seniors with Long-time Ownership (ready to downsize or transition to assistance) or Homeowners with Low Financial Stability Scores (FSS).

The key here is to let them know how much easier it will be for the owner to sell to you rather than putting it on the market to sell the more traditional way.

@Brandon Daughtrey You can work with a list broker and get about the same pricing as if you went online and took the time to learn how to use the system and figure out what you want.

Pricing will depend on the number of names you get and the criteria used to narrow the list down. There also might be minimum order requirements of maybe $150 or more.

An Absentee owner list using  the following: high equity, home value, purchase date, single/multi/condo should be in the range of  7.5 cents a name.

Contrast this with a list of homeowners with the same criteria but narrow down further with age and low Financial Stability Score (FSS) and the cost would be closer to 9 cents a name.

Criteria such as number bedrooms, number stories or year built will all add a bit more.

@Kevin Leppink You could work with a list broker to get a list that might be cleaner - and definitely more focused.  For example, the broker can help you pull only homes in the price range you want. They can also work a couple different owner segments.  You probably won't want to spend money on postage to send to the family that bought their house in the last 5 years. 

2 segments that seem to be working are Absentee Owners with Equity and Seniors with Long-time ownership.

Depending on which county  in UT, Absentee Owners may or may not be available due to restrictions in county reporting. 

Seniors can be a great target as they are often ready to downsize or transition to assistance. 

@Michael S.  that link to me to a "page not Here" message.

It is good to work with a broker who can make suggestions for you. Most of the time you shouldn't expect to pay more than the self-service sites.