Is deal flow more about volume or targeting right now?
Investor · Nationwide · Member since 2024 · 129 posts · 21 votes
I’ve been following a lot of different approaches to finding off-market deals, and it seems like there are two main camps right now:
Both obviously work, but they seem to produce very different outcomes depending on how they’re executed.
One thing I keep noticing is that even within targeted approaches, there’s still a wide range in how effectively people prioritize their lists once they’ve built them.
Curious how others are thinking about it right now—
Are you leaning more toward volume, or dialing in tighter targeting and trying to maximize efficiency per lead?
From what I’m seeing right now, the investors consistently getting deals done are not choosing volume or targeting. They’re using volume to create opportunities and targeting to actually convert them. If you go all volume, you’ll stay busy, but you burn time chasing deals that don’t make sense, don’t finance, or don’t close. If you go all targeted, your conversion is higher, but your pipeline can get thin fast, especially in a tighter market.
The sweet spot is layering the two. Use volume at the top to generate conversations and data. That’s where you learn what sellers are actually willing to do right now, not what lists say. Then you tighten up fast. Once you start seeing patterns, that’s where targeting kicks in. You double down on the situations that are actually producing real opportunities.
What I’ve also noticed is most people don’t lose deals because of lead quality, they lose them at the structure stage. They get a “deal” but can’t make it work from a financing or exit standpoint, so it dies.
That’s why targeting shouldn’t just be about the list, it should be about:
That’s where the real efficiency comes from.
From my side, being in the mortgage and real estate space for over 25 years, I see this all the time. The investors who win are the ones who understand how to structure the deal early, not just find it. They know what lenders will and won’t do, what leverage looks like, and how to position the deal before they even put it under contract.
So instead of thinking volume vs targeting, I’d look at it like:
Volume creates the pipeline, targeting creates the profit, and structure is what actually gets it across the finish line.
If you’re dialing things in right now, I’d focus less on how many leads you’re getting and more on how many of those leads can actually turn into financeable, executable deals. That’s where the shift usually happens.
OP what deals have you done and what approaches?
Fair question. I’m not actively running acquisitions myself right now—I’ve spent time around the deal flow side and have been focused more on the outbound / list side of things.
Specifically how teams are sourcing, prioritizing, and working through their lists to generate conversations and opportunities.
What I’ve been digging into is less about a specific deal strategy and more about what actually drives consistent deal flow on the front end—because that seems to be where a lot of the variance comes from across different approaches.
Curious—what’s been working best for you lately in terms of generating deals?
OP what deals have you done and what approaches?
I’m not actively running acquisitions myself right now—I’ve spent time around the outbound/deal flow side and have been focused more on how teams are sourcing and working their lists.
I’ve looked at a range of approaches—wholesaling, flips, and more targeted off-market strategies—but what stood out to me is how much variance there is on the front end. Two teams can run similar strategies and get completely different results depending on how they’re sourcing and prioritizing their leads.
That’s really what I’ve been digging into—less the deal strategy itself and more what consistently drives deal flow into those strategies in the first place.
From your experience, what approach has been working best for you lately?
From what I’m seeing right now, the investors consistently getting deals done are not choosing volume or targeting. They’re using volume to create opportunities and targeting to actually convert them. If you go all volume, you’ll stay busy, but you burn time chasing deals that don’t make sense, don’t finance, or don’t close. If you go all targeted, your conversion is higher, but your pipeline can get thin fast, especially in a tighter market.
The sweet spot is layering the two. Use volume at the top to generate conversations and data. That’s where you learn what sellers are actually willing to do right now, not what lists say. Then you tighten up fast. Once you start seeing patterns, that’s where targeting kicks in. You double down on the situations that are actually producing real opportunities.
What I’ve also noticed is most people don’t lose deals because of lead quality, they lose them at the structure stage. They get a “deal” but can’t make it work from a financing or exit standpoint, so it dies.
That’s why targeting shouldn’t just be about the list, it should be about:
That’s where the real efficiency comes from.
From my side, being in the mortgage and real estate space for over 25 years, I see this all the time. The investors who win are the ones who understand how to structure the deal early, not just find it. They know what lenders will and won’t do, what leverage looks like, and how to position the deal before they even put it under contract.
So instead of thinking volume vs targeting, I’d look at it like:
Volume creates the pipeline, targeting creates the profit, and structure is what actually gets it across the finish line.
If you’re dialing things in right now, I’d focus less on how many leads you’re getting and more on how many of those leads can actually turn into financeable, executable deals. That’s where the shift usually happens.
That’s a great way to frame it—especially separating pipeline, profit, and structure. It’s easy to focus on just getting leads in without thinking through whether they’re actually workable deals on the back end.
I like your point about structure being where deals are really won or lost. Even with a strong pipeline, if the numbers or exit don’t line up, it doesn’t go anywhere.
The piece I’ve been digging into sits a bit upstream from that—mainly around how those initial conversations are created in the first place.
Because even before you get to structure, there seems to be a lot of time spent on leads that never actually turn into real opportunities, either because they don’t engage or don’t have realistic expectations.
So the focus has been on tightening that front end—making sure the pipeline is not just full, but made up of people who are more likely to actually move forward into something that can be structured.
Curious from your experience—are you seeing more deals fall apart today because of financing constraints, or because seller expectations just don’t line up with the numbers?
Volume vs targeting matters less than what happens after the lead comes in.
Most people lose deals in follow-up slow replies, no real qualification, inconsistent outreach.
If you can respond fast and filter properly, either strategy works.
How are you handling that part right now?
@Chris Arnold, the volume vs targeting debate assumes the bottleneck is lead generation. In my experience the real bottleneck is evaluation speed. Most investors cannot tell within five minutes whether a lead is worth pursuing, so they spend hours on deals that fail basic math.
Whether you run high volume or tight targeting, if your underwriting is slow or inconsistent you burn the same amount of time per lead. The investors I see moving fastest are the ones who can stress test a deal in under two minutes and kill it or advance it immediately.
That is what makes either approach actually efficient.
So the question I would add to yours is not just how are you sourcing but how fast and accurately are you evaluating what comes in?
That’s a great point—and I agree, evaluation speed is a huge lever. If you can’t quickly kill or advance a deal, it doesn’t matter how good your sourcing is.
The investors who can make those calls fast definitely seem to operate at a different level.
The piece I’ve been digging into sits just before that stage. Even before underwriting, there’s still a lot of time spent getting to conversations that never make it to that point—either because you can’t reach the owner or they’re not actually in a position to move.
So the focus has been on tightening that front end—making sure more of the leads that do make it into the pipeline are actually worth evaluating in the first place.
Curious—do you see most teams struggling more with the speed of underwriting itself, or just the volume of marginal deals they’re trying to work through?
I’ve been following a lot of different approaches to finding off-market deals, and it seems like there are two main camps right now:
Both obviously work, but they seem to produce very different outcomes depending on how they’re executed.
One thing I keep noticing is that even within targeted approaches, there’s still a wide range in how effectively people prioritize their lists once they’ve built them.
Curious how others are thinking about it right now—
Are you leaning more toward volume, or dialing in tighter targeting and trying to maximize efficiency per lead?
That’s a solid way to look at it—especially the point about it not being either/or. Volume helps you learn faster early on, and targeting becomes more important as you get tighter on what actually converts.
I also agree on follow-up. Without that discipline, it’s hard for anything to really compound.
One thing I’ve been noticing though is even when people have good filters and are consistent with follow-up, there’s still a lot of time spent on leads that never really turn into conversations.
That’s the piece I’ve been digging into—once the list is built, how to prioritize within it so the time spent calling or texting is more focused on the leads most likely to actually engage.
Curious—once you’ve got a filtered list, are you doing anything to prioritize the order you work it, or mostly running through it top-down?
That’s a solid way to look at it—especially the point about it not being either/or. Volume helps you learn faster early on, and targeting becomes more important as you get tighter on what actually converts.
I also agree on follow-up. Without that discipline, it’s hard for anything to really compound.
One thing I’ve been noticing though is even when people have good filters and are consistent with follow-up, there’s still a lot of time spent on leads that never really turn into conversations.
That’s the piece I’ve been digging into—once the list is built, how to prioritize within it so the time spent calling or texting is more focused on the leads most likely to actually engage.
Curious—once you’ve got a filtered list, are you doing anything to prioritize the order you work it, or mostly running through it top-down?
Early on I was just working top-down like everyone else.
Lately I’ve been trying to prioritize based on how “real” the situation feels. Stuff with some kind of actual friction behind it (issues, timelines, something forcing a decision) tends to convert a lot better than clean lists where you’re just hoping to catch someone at the right time.
It’s not perfect, but it’s been a better use of time than just running straight down a list.
That makes a lot of sense—and I like how you described it as “how real the situation feels.” That’s usually where the difference shows up.
What you’re doing now is basically using experience to prioritize, which is exactly what most people evolve into—but like you said, it’s not perfect and it doesn’t really scale.
That’s actually what I’ve been working on—taking those same signals and turning them into a more structured way to rank leads before you ever start working the list.
So instead of relying on manual review, the goal is to surface the ones most likely to actually connect and move forward right at the top.
Curious—if you had a way to see that upfront, would you use it, or do you prefer keeping it more hands-on?
@Chris Arnold The volume vs targeting debate is interesting but I think there's a third variable that often gets overlooked — speed of response once a lead actually engages.
You can have the tightest targeted list in the world, but if a motivated seller reaches out on a Friday evening and doesn't hear back until Monday, the targeting didn't matter. Someone with a higher volume approach but faster response won that deal.
The investors I've seen get the most out of targeted approaches are the ones who've solved the response side first. Fewer leads means each one matters more — which makes the cost of a slow follow-up even higher.
Chris — in the targeted approach you're running, what does your response time typically look like when a lead comes in?
@Chris Arnoldundefined
That’s a really good point. I think response speed becomes massively important once a lead actually crosses the threshold into real engagement.
And honestly, the tighter and more targeted the list gets, the more expensive a slow response becomes because there are fewer “shots on goal” overall.
What I’ve been focused on sits a little earlier in the workflow — helping teams prioritize which records are most likely worth immediate attention before the outreach even starts.
Because ideally by the time a lead engages, the ownership/contact side is already clean enough that the team can move fast with confidence instead of wasting time sorting through questionable records or bad data.
@Chris Arnold that's a great way to frame it — clean data and prioritized records on the front end means the team isn't wasting the response window figuring out who to call first. The speed only matters if you're moving on the right records.
So really it's a chain: right records → fast response → lead feels acknowledged. A breakdown anywhere in that chain and the deal slips.
Sounds like you've got the front end dialed in. Is the response speed side something the teams you work with are handling well once the right record surfaces, or is that still a gap?
That’s exactly the chain I’m seeing too: right record → fast response → better chance the lead actually moves forward.
My focus has been mostly on the front-end piece — making sure the right records are surfaced before the team starts spending outreach time.
But I do think you’re right that response speed becomes the next bottleneck once that happens. If a team identifies the right records but doesn’t have a clean process for who follows up, when, and through what channel, a lot of that front-end work gets wasted.
So I’d probably separate it into two layers:
The front end helps reduce wasted effort, but the follow-up/response system still has to be disciplined enough to capture the opportunity.