Are these sites good for finding deals?

Question

Is loopnet or myhouesdeals.com a good place to find deals because I was doing research and found it interesting that myhousedeals.com had a lot of complaints against them?

Ibrahim Hughes · Answer

I'm with you Rob. My motto is if it's "for sale", I'm not interested.  :wink:

Rob Gillespie · Answer

My secret is to look where no one else is looking. I steer away from the sites that are swamped with other investors. Good luck Zubair!! :mrgreen:

Doug Smith · Answer

Hey guys,

Looks like I'm late to the party. Five or ten of you have already chimed in. I'm Doug Smith, investor and founder of MyHouseDeals.com. I'll quickly respond to a few of your comments...

Zubair: Throughout the years, tens of thousands of investors have come and gone as members. I think just 1 or 2 complained to Ripoffreport, so I'm happy with that ratio. Ripoffreport is bad for small to mid-sized companies because we get Googled more to see what kind of bad stuff is out there. Dell, for example, has 1,218 complains on Ripoffreport, but I doubt people even look them up or care that they have that many complaints.

Drew: Thanks. We do a 10 to 15 minute interview with each person who emails us saying they bought a property off our site. Glad you're getting some value from them.

Joel: Those values are mentioned in several of the interviews and will be different for each person.

Rob: If you aren't interested in buying properties from MyHouseDeals, it's still a good place to post. We see that the top wholesalers in many markets use our site to post and sell their deals.

Drew: Yes, these deals are posted by real people. Our staff just reviews and approves them if they meet the wholesale criteria.

Michael: Agreed.

Brian: I've met plenty of people who use our website as their #1 way to find deals. And I've had others tell me that they can't find a good deal on it. Guess it just depends on one's buying criteria.

Jon: Agree with much of what you said. On the MLS, good deals go in seconds. On MyHouseDeals.com, they go within a day or two, presumably because we get a lot less traffic than the MLS. Since they go fast, it's best that our members either check the new listings daily or unsubscribe. As for something else you mentioned, some sellers on MyHouseDeals post all of their deals to the site right away and some only post if they can't sell to their internal list. It's really case-by-case.

Carlos: We get a lot of repeat business on the $197 emails, but there's certainly no pressure to pay for that service. Hope you get a buyer for your deal. Wholesalers who post good deals tend to.

Mark: Sellers post their own numbers, and we warn investors to do their own due diligence. If you see someone posting deals with bad comps or inaccurate repair numbers, please mention that in the "property discussion" section on that deal's page. This will help keep them in check.

Will: Like with Mark, please use the property discussion section to call these people out.

On a related note, I've spent six years of my life and untold sums of money to build a website where wholesalers can post their deals, where rehabbers and landlords can purchase them, and where investors in general can profit. My team and I have also worked hard to convey the value of our services in a way that is appealing but doesn't come across as "scammy."

So many of our members love the site because they do get value and they do profit. I take a lot of pride in that. But if you're not a big fan, just know that we continue to work hard on making improvements. And it's my hope that one day, maybe one of those improvements will bump us up on your like-o-meter, even if it's just a little bit. :-)

Happy (and profitable) investing!
Doug

Jon Holdman · Answer

The site for finding deals is "the MLS".  That's a misnomer because the MLS is really a bunch of different systems for different areas.  But that's the one place where residential real estate is listed for sale.

But I think you're asking for a site where great deals are readily available for your choosing.  It doesn't exist.  Think about it.  It can't exist.  If there really was some site where anyone could go easily find a deal, all the deals would get snapped up.  I know people monitor the MLS diligently and make offers very quickly on good deals.  If there was some site where truly great deals got posted, people would monitor it continuously.  A great deal would disappear in a matter of seconds.

Now, if such a site does exist, and you grabbed deals and turn around and resold them at a profit, what value are you adding?  An investor could just monitor the site and find the deals directly.  That's somewhat true even for the MLS.

If you're wanting to make a profit wholesaling, you have got to get out and find the deals.  There are lots of ways to do it.  But all of them take time or money or both.  If you're short on money, spend time grubbing through publicly available lists and knocking on doors or making phone calls.

Even loopnet, which is a legit site, tends not to have the best deals.  If a broker is approached by a seller, that broker probably has a pool of buyers.  He or she can shop the deal to their buyers or list it on their own site.  If its a good deal, someone will probably pick it up.  If its just an OK deal, it goes on loopnet and (for smaller residential properties, at least) onto the MLS.

Michael Obloy · Answer

Joel-  I am with you on the curiosity of missing details in proformas.   I see it all too often and with each passing day I am more convinced that the general public has not learned their lesson with the downturn (we have short term memories).  If you don't know what you are doing, and are not willing to take the time to learn the right way, you are better off staying out of the business.  Too many amateurs out there doing dumb deals based on 3 line proformas they see on "flip men" with a going-in margin of 10%.  All they do is crowd the field and artificially increase pricing.  Just my two cents.

Peter Vekselman · Answer

@Zubair Khan in the end you will probably not find a ton of deals on public websites.  the reason many of these end up on these sites is the wholesalers are not able to wholesale them to their investor database.

if you are looking for consistency of deals you are really need to start getting to the owners directly.  anytime you have a middle man the price tends to go up....

Dawn Guyton · Answer

YES!! I HAVE CALLED AND DEALT WITH THE WHOLESALERS ON THIS SITE AND THEY ARE REAL DEALS THAT GO FAST .THE TRICK IS YOU NEED TO UPGRADE TO A PRIME MEMBER TO GET THE NEW POSTS 2 WEEKS BEFORE THEY GO PUBLIC.. AND BE FAST TO CALL AND CONTACT OK

Doug Smith · Answer

Ok. Your deal is listed (it was never taken down), and I just removed his deal. On Monday, Gracie will probably call Todd to see what happened. He may have a contract with the seller as well.

Thanks,
Doug

Carlos Flores · Answer

I don't have premium access to see the listing.  I clicked on the link in the email from your site and it took me to the higher priced listing.  That's why I thought you inflated it.  Thanks for clearing things up.  That other guy must be trying to remarket my deal.  I found another one yesterday where a woman had it listed on FB for 30% higher than my ask.  Kill his and put mine back up please.

Thanks for posting a well researched explanation.  Best of luck with your business.

Doug Smith · Answer

Hey Carlos,

I assume you're talking about your deal on Harvard Circle. I looked into it and can see that something really strange (and rare) happened.

Your deal was approved yesterday with the numbers you mentioned.

Today, another deal with higher numbers was posted by Tommy Weisz, owner of cashhousebuyersusa.com.

Here are the 2 deals side-by-side. Yours is on the bottom....

http://screencast.com/t/fXagAc59CRi

A couple of things...

1. Tommy's deal should NOT have been approved. It's our policy not to post duplicate deals. Gracie reviews and approves deals in the DFW market. I'll ask her why a duplicate deal was approved. I apologize for this.

2. Do you know Tommy Weisz? He either took your deal and raised the price (which is against our policy) or he also has a contract with the seller.

I'll leave his deal there for now, but I'll take it down as soon as you have a chance to see what's happening for yourself.

We definitely do not raise asking prices, ARV amounts etc. on the deals that are posted. We don't get a cut of the deals, so that wouldn't make business sense. In fact, we want the deals that are posted to be as cheap as possible so that the website and its listings have the most appeal.

Again, apologies for the duplicate posting. Tommy's deal should have never been approved.

Thanks,
Doug

Are these sites good for finding deals?

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