Absentee Owners as Percentage of Households

[Troy Fisher]

I pulled my list 30%+ equity, 3-5 bedrooms, absentee owners.

The farm area is sitting at 34k households in total, of that amount 5,500 are absentee owners! 16% of the homes in farm area are NOO!

I'm wondering is there a sweet spot that you massive mailers find when it comes to this ratio?  Playing with the options in list source it looks like a small amount of those are corporate controlled, and about the same amount are owned by a trust.  

The farm area is an affluent area where the median home price is in the 600k range so it's not likely that a significant portion of those properties are bank-owned, foreclosures, or burnt out hulks.

With a ratio like this and knowing that I am mailing to the absentee should I use a different copy, call to action, or other wording?  

[Dev Horn]

That is actually a pretty high % of houses (I assume you set to Property Type = SFR) to be absentee, comparing it to other markets where I pull these lists. I don't care much about the ratio as far as how I message to these people. I do care about the ratio when it comes to understanding my farm area and which areas have more rental properties.

Now, the thing is, if you search for COUNTY = Santa Cruz, CA and compare the full SFR count to the Absentee count... you get 20.8% absentee for the entire county! In the county I'm in here in Texas (Tarrant), the ABS to ALL SFR ratio is 12.8% - more in line with what I see in a lot of other counties around the U.S. So, I'm not sure what it is about Santa Cruz county. Looks like you have a LOT of non-owner occupied houses out there in general!

Think about the PROFILE of the person you want to reach and that will help you think thru the messaging. We're looking for tired landlords and heirs who are tired of paying the holding costs on inherited properties. So, the 3 "pillars" of REI marketing work well here:
1) We pay CASH
2) We do it FAST
3) With NO REPAIRS

You can add a little "flavor" to the message for absentees by saying things like "Are TERRIBLE TENANTS or a VACANT HOUSE a financial DRAIN?" - that can make a connection ("Yes, that IS my situation.") but the solution is still built around the 3 pillars above.