How to Save Hundreds of Hours of Your Time

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How would you like to save hundreds of hours of your time? How would you like to avoid spending hours in the car driving to meet with sellers who don’t end up selling you their house?

Well, the solution is in this awesome quote from Hedge fund guru Seth Klarman: “When people start to give something away at a ridiculous price because they have to, not because they want to……that’s a good time to buy.”

How Many Appointments Do You Go On?

Have you ever heard it put more perfectly? I haven’t. Sometimes I’ll be talking with a new investor and they enthusiastically tell me that they went on 4 “appointments” in one week. Then I will ask them how many deals they closed and it will be zero. Guess what? That’s okay early on. In the beginning you need to go on appointments to get the butterflies out of your stomach and get comfortable meeting with sellers.

But as soon as you’re comfortable, you need to stop wasting your time. And you need to ask the magic question posed by Seth Klarman. Does the seller who just called you have to sell their house, or do they NEED to sell the house?

Don’t Drive Up To 60 Miles Like Me

If you ask that one simple question you will be amazed at how much time you save (along with your sanity). When I first started in this business I used to drive up to 60 miles to meet with a seller (yeah I know, you don’t have to say it). Of course I closed probably 1 out of 10 deals back then and wasted hours upon hours of my time.

These days, I won’t visit a seller unless I’m 90% sure I’m closing the deal. And every time the phone rings I ask the seller “why are you looking to sell your property”…….which gives me the answer to: Do they need to or want to sell?

One last thing before I go. I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday who’s getting ready to buy a property. He was talking about what a shame it is that right now there are so many good investment deals, but too many people are broke or have terrible credit….so they can’t buy any properties.

Yes, America is on sale. Even if you’re struggling, try to get at least one or two houses before it’s too late and you’ll be incredibly thankful 10 years from now.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.