{"id":89895,"date":"2019-10-27T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=89895"},"modified":"2021-03-16T12:28:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T18:28:28","slug":"find-bargain-properties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/find-bargain-properties","title":{"rendered":"The No. 1 Strategy I Use to Find Bargain Properties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I want to talk to you about the number one strategy that all of my companies use to find absolute bargain properties. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For those of you who don\u2019t know me, I am proud to say that I moved to the United States several years ago from Australia. And to date, I have been involved in the closing of hundreds of real estate deals. In fact, I shoot for a couple hundred properties a year. And in buying all of these properties, the best strategy that I\u2019ve used all along is yellow letter campaigns. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7528q3FDUtE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Related:<\/strong> <a href=\"\/renewsblog\/warren-buffet-investing-advice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This Simple Advice From Warren Buffet Guides Me to Deals No One Else is Finding<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h2>How We Send Effective Yellow Letters<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, the way we structure these yellow letter campaigns is quite simple. We send a very basic yellow letter. We like to target absentee homeowners and folks residing in their properties for 20+ years. We do this because the likelihood of these guys picking up the phone and wanting to sell their houses is the highest out of any demographic you can choose. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What the letter consists of is actually very basic. One letter that we have states, \u201cI was riding my bicycle through the area, and I saw your house. I might be interested in buying it. I\u2019m a cash buyer. If you\u2019re interested in selling it, give me call.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another example of a letter we use is, \u201cI was driving my car through the street, and I saw your house. I\u2019m a local investor who\u2019s a cash buyer. I can close quickly. If you\u2019re interested in selling your house, give me a call.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What we have found is that those two basic topics will get us the most call backs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With yellow letters, you don\u2019t have to get too complex with the topic of the actual letter. What you have to become is consistent sending out these yellow letters. So, you have to send them out on a weekly or monthly basis in order to get the best return on your investment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-76577\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/wholesalers-tasks.jpg\" alt=\"phonecall-communication\" width=\"702\" height=\"336\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/wholesalers-tasks.jpg 702w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/wholesalers-tasks-300x144.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 702px) 100vw, 702px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Concentrate on the Phone Calls<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where you really have to start working hard is once you start getting those phone calls. I know that most of you out there don\u2019t have three, four, five, or 10full-time employees like I do, so you\u2019re going to have to do the legwork yourself. It\u2019s also going to take a bit of time to set up the systems where you can put this on autopilot. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What I suggest you do is get ahold of some of the wholesalers in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/forums\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the forums<\/a>, because the wholesalers really know how to send out these yellow letters and how to set the system on autopilot. Personally, I like to take every call live, and if I\u2019m not able to take it live, we just let it go to voicemail and call back. <\/span><br \/>\n<em><br \/>\n<strong>Related: <\/strong><a href=\"\/renewsblog\/deal-making-tactics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">3 Deal-Making Tactics That\u2019ll Help You Find (&amp; Close) Real Estate Transactions<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You\u2019re going to have to get really consistent with sending out these yellow letters and be prompt at calling these folks back. The longer you wait to call back, the more likely you are to lose the lead. Now, keep this rationale in mind: For every 5,000 yellow letters that we sent, we get around 300 call backs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My buy criteria is very stringent, so we will only buy around one to two properties from those 5,000 yellow letters. What tends to happen is over the coming months, we will buy another two to three properties just based on the fact that sometimes someone doesn\u2019t call us immediately. They see the letter at a later date on their dining room table, so they call us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or maybe we can\u2019t get in the property immediately. It also takes a bit of time to negotiate and whatnot. That\u2019s why we don\u2019t get those immediate purchases; we get those purchases at a later date. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, once again, the rule of thumb is 5,000 yellow letters to get around 300 call backs. Over a period of around two to three months, we tend to buy around five properties. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m telling you\u2014you can buy absolute bargains doing yellow letter campaigns. I don\u2019t know any other strategy where you can find better or cheaper properties. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of these folks want to sell their houses now\u2014they want an exit, they want cash, and they don\u2019t want to list it through a real estate agent. Of course, make sure the title is clear and that you\u2019ve inspected the property prior to purchase. Good luck!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/BiggerPockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-114268\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/6.jpg\" alt=\"ad-youtube-channel\" width=\"706\" height=\"125\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/6.jpg 706w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/6-300x53.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/6-702x125.jpg 702w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 100vw, 706px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you guys have any other methods of finding awesome deals where you can buy absolute bargain properties, I\u2019d love to hear from you.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Leave your comments below!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To date, I have been involved in closing several hundred real estate deals. THIS is the top strategy that I\u2019ve used to find them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1672,"featured_media":115317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-marketing"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}