Austin, TX · Member since 2016 · 23 posts · 11 votes
Hello & thanks for the help,
I've identified a potential investment property but due to lack of public phone records or online presence of the home owner my last option is to write them a letter.
Pulling title and looking at public records... the owner is old. They've held the property sense 1974 and through my research it looks as if they are in their 70's, if not older. I don't want to come off as pushy but very genuine. This property is in bad shape and needs attention to meet its potential.
I'm looking for a template for this introduction letter. Whats worked and whats best practices? Can anyone share a similar experience and if they had success?
My plan right now is to shoot for a face to face meeting, I'm including a picture of my wife and I but other than that I'm not sure what to say. Or really what NOT to say.
Would you happen to still have a copy of this letter template? I’m looking to mail a few owner’s of small multifamily properties, in an effort to get an off market deal.
I essentially worked up a very personal letter with the goal of coming off as genuine as possible. It complemented the property and neighborhood, while explaining the interest of my wife and I to invest effort and resources to restore the property. I was hoping to present a win, win scenario.
The end result was a big fat nothing. I've sent three follow up letters, even hand delving a letter to the owners personal property an hour and half outside of town. No response.
I wanted to give you the results so you know that I have 't had any success... yet. haha
Sorry that this probably isn't what you're looking for but I wanted to give the update regardless.
@Levi Koskan It was cool to hear your story about approaching an owner regarding a property. I know this thread is from a few years ago, but would be interested to hear if you ended up approaching other property owners and what your criteria is/was for selecting properties? I'm in the middle of writing letters myself and wanted to hear about other investors' experiences regarding low volume letter writing.
With this property, I didn't have any luck. I did consider reaching out to potential family members but decided against that as it seemed inappropriate and stalker-ish. I created a google alert with the property and owners name so if the owner dies or the property becomes available I should be notified. No updates as of yet.
Outside if this, I applied my property finding research skills and found a few other distressed properties. In those cases, I did find phone records for the owners and called and talked with them, ultimately, getting shut down hard.
I work a full time job that is fairly demanding so I couldn't produce the lead volume necessary to find a qualified property/owner. I pivoted away from the off market, distressed properties approached and focused on properties on the MLS that would qualify for owner occupied financing and I could house hack. I ended up buying a property with an ADU on the east side.
So, you see, I took the easy way out. haha or rather just changed things up to match my capacity. Thats about as much of an update as I can give. Apologies that, that doesn't necessarily help you out.