Tip: Finding REAL buyers for your deals
I live in a smaller city than most wholesalers here on BP so I knew I would have to be a bit more creative with marketing wholesale deals. With my first property under contract, here's what I'm doing:
1. Visit my county's tax assessor website and search by Last Name & search one letter at a time. (Ex: Type "A" in the search field to retrieve all records of homeowners with a last name starting with an A. Type "B" in search field for all B last names, so on and so forth.)
2. Scroll each list to find multiple records under the same name. It means they own or pay taxes on more than one property.
3. Open up your county's property records website. In my county, this is a separate website from the website where you pay property taxes and/or view property tax bills online. The property records website (if available in your county) may show tax value info, sale history, owner information, photo(s) of property, etc.
4. Take the duplicate names from Step 2 and plug them into the search field on the property records website. You search them on a separate website because the property records website usually shows more properties than displayed on the tax assessor website.
5. Once you see the results of your search on the property records website showing all the properties that one person owns, you can look at the property info to get an idea of what that person's "sweet spot" is as far as real estate investing goes. Most of the investors I've found this way have some type of preference - whether it be a certain area of town, a certain style of property or a certain house value range.
6. Open a spreadsheet and input the owner's name, mailing address and notes about their investing preferences.
7. Mail a flyer advertising your wholesale deal to the investors who may be interested.
I'm sending out the flyers today, so I'm not 100% sure this works by any means. But it's a different form of marketing than I've seen discussed here on BP so far.
Many of the tips for finding buyers I've seen are posted with the assumption that investors are actively searching for their next deal. When I've found it to be true that many "big time" buyers don't look, but let deals to come to them.
They have enough connections that they simply don't have a need to browse Craigslist, look at the newspaper classifieds, give their email to join buyers lists or even attend REIA meetings. We have to remember that the buyers we see on BP are just a fraction of cash buyers. Not every cash buyer is as interested in discussing real estate online as our fellow BP members.
In fact, I believe BP is a meeting place for the students of real estate and the teachers of real estate (the seasoned investors who share their valuable experience here). The doers are too busy DOING.
So direct mail it is... Without the need for MLS access to view recent cash purchases and without paying for a list of buyers.
I understand that every county doesn't offer this information online and especially not online for free. But if your county does, lucky you! Take advantage. :)