All Forum Posts by: Shaun Greer

Have a website and target your website to capture motivated buyer leads in your local area. If you are starting out with you own website you will probably want to do a pay/click marketing campaign so you start generating leads quickly. Make sure your prospective buyers are sent to a landing page or you will just be wasting money.

You need your website to come up 1st on Google and Yahoo when people search for rent to own homes or lease option homes in your area.

If you do not know much about search engine optimization you may want to sign up with a company that dose it for you. There are lead broker sites that you sign up for and you just sit back and collect leads. If you do decide to go with a lead broker site I would suggest doing some research. Some charge enormous monthly fees and do nothing but pay/click campaigns themselves.

Others are well worth the money and allow you to dominate your local area by showing up on the 1st page of Google and Yahoo for as little as $50/month.
Hope this helps.

Hi Dan01,
Yes you can definitely wait to complete the full title search until you have a buyer but you are taking a very big chance. What if your seller and buyer go to closing and there is a large lien on the house and the buyer can not buy?

You can generate a large amount of money wholesaling properties with not much risk…I always pay the little bit of $ to have a full title search completed before I get a buyer signature on paper.

If you have a relationship with your title company they will not make you pay for the title search up front.
I hope this helps,

That is exactly what I do when I get a new lease option property available. My buyer list for lease option houses is a little over 1,000 people for my area. I send out an e-mail the day after I get the house under contract.

I add a sense of urgency in the e-mail explaining that because they are included on my buyer list they are being offered the home before I start my regular marketing.

Make sure to include photos of the house, a link to a map so they know where the house is, the price for a 1 or 2 year lease option and your expected monthly payment.

Here is a great tip when sending out to your buyers list….put the purchase price and monthly payment but do not include your expected down payment. Instead include……”We are flexible with down payment, monthly payment and terms”. This little text has increased tenant/buyers from my buyers list 100%.

You also do not know how much people are willing and able to put down for a down payment. One of my tenant/buyers last year put down $30,000 for a $180,000 house! Now she is a great tenant/buyer and very happy she has her own home.

Hope this helps.

Please be sure to consider the tax benefits when making your decision to buy or to rent. I see people out there (some on You Tube) talking about how home prices have historically appreciate only 2% per year including inflation. The great thing about real estate is the tax advantages is offers.
Thanks,

I am pretty amazed at the posting on this thread about internet leads. I would consider myself an expert on internet leads, but only because of experience. I have found internet leads to be the best leads I can find.

Here are a few reasons I choose to use a website targeting motivated sellers as my number one lead generation source.

[list]1. It works 24/7. I have found that many of my motivated sellers complete my on-line seller form late at night or early in the morning, when I am not working.
2. You can target your local area. Your target area can be as large as a state or as small as a neighborhood.
3. One of the greatest benefits of websites that generate motivated seller leads…it is very inexpensive to generate leads.
4. Another great benefit of generating motivated seller leads from a website; some times you are the only person the motivated seller contacts to receive an offer on their house. Simple law of supply and demand. If the motivated seller is only receiving an offer from you, you will get a great price for the house. [/list:u]

Here are some tips if you want to use a website to attract motivated seller or buyer leads.
I would recommend using a website that is already set up. For one it saves time, you can have a website up and running in less than 24hrs. Perhaps the largest reason is because you need a website that is built correctly. By built correctly I am referring to SEO (search engine optimization), and the website programming. I too often see people trying to build a site by themselves and compete with highly optimized websites. Unless you make it your job to create a great website, you will always be behind your competition.

The things you need to watch out for are the price you pay and how leads are distributed. When I started getting leads from the internet I was paying over $2,000/month for the leads in my area. Granted I was signed up for multiple websites, but still that is a lot of money. I quickly found out that some websites are just out to get rich off of other people. and others are very over priced. If you are signing up for a website make sure the leads in your area are only distributed to you. I also would not sign up for any website that charges a sign-up fee.

P.S.
If you want to get started buying houses and you do not want to sign up for a monthly fee. Sign up for a free account at multiple lead broker sites. Then when you see a lead you like purchase the individual lead. This is how it all started for me. My 1st lead cost me $35. I was the only person the motivated seller was contacted by. I made over $15,000 off of that lead by flipping the house. That is why I like internet leads so much.

I hope this helps anyone looking to generate motivated seller leads by way of the internet

Happy investing
Thanks,

That is correct.
Thanks,

You can assign a pre-foreclosure as long as you are not conducting a short sale with the bank.
The equity in the home is the FMV of the property – what is owed on the home – repairs.
Assign the contract to the end buyer at the highest price you can get. After all that is your profit, the difference between your purchase price and your sale price.

That answer is it depends on how you wrote up the sales and purchase contracts.
I typically have the sellers pay 50% of the closing cost. Then I have the buyers pay 50% of the closing cost. In turn I have no closing cost.

You do have to work with you title agent and let them know you do not want to purchase title insurance for yourself. It is my opinion it is not needed because the title is in your name for only a few minutes.

Your title agent doing the closing should be able to give you a very close estimate of the closing cost.
Hope this helps,

Get with a local realtor who can pull reports from their local MLS (Multiple Listing Serve). I know the MLS has pre-set up reports that a realtor can print.

I also get home sales information from my local Chamber Of Commerce. It is free information on the web.

I hope this helps.
Thanks,

Internet, and direct mail have been my best ROI.

Set up a website and dominate your local area. When people search how they can sell their house in your area several sites should come up on the 1st page of Google.

Set up a direct mail marketing campaign. Purchase software to manage your direct mail marketing letters. Purchase a list or sign up with a list broker website. Send letter to out of state owner and quit claim deeds.

It is well worth the money and effort.

I hope this helps.
Thanks,