One of the most important things that determine the success of real estate investing business is availability of good deals. Unless you can buy properties cheaply, you are unlikely to make profits with most real estate investing business models.
Motivated sellers are my best source of great deals. When you are buying houses, you will come across all types of sellers. You must be able to identify the motivated sellers who drive your business.
Of course the more targeted your marketing is, the more motivated sellers you will attract in your business. I am particularly fond of targeting people with legal trouble who own real estate. These are most likely to be motivated sellers.
If you also do general advertising such a classified ads, bandit signs, and so on, you are likely to attract all kinds of people looking to sell their houses.
So how do you identify the motivated sellers? The easiest way to do this is to divide them into categories.
1) Unmotivated seller
This is the person that thinks their house is the best in the sub-division. They have taken great trouble to make sure it’s perfect for the next owner occupier.
They have probably tried to list it with their Realtor, or even for sale by owner, but have not been successful. In most cases they are looking the the full market price.
They will not be willing to discuss details and numbers, such as their mortgage balance.
Of course, you will never make money from these type of deal, so you are better off forgetting it.
2) Luke-warm seller
This is the type of person who calls you and says he might be willing to let you buy his house, and asks you to explain how you work.
He will listen keenly, maybe ask questions, but again is not very forth-coming with necessary information such as mortgage balance.
He will probably tell you he has been trying to sell it for say, $150,000 and ask you to make him an offer. He will probably ask you to go see the house first before you even know the numbers.
Even though he will show the interest to be flexible enough to negotiate, you are unlikely to get a good deal from him.
Of course if you are a savvy real estate investor, you never make an offer unless you have all the numbers such as the fair market value, repairs, mortgage balance and so on.
You could end up wasting a lot of time driving to see many such properties and not get any deals out of it.
Usually I ask him to give me a call with all the numbers before I can make him an offer.
3) Motivated seller
This is the person who really needs to sell their house. Maybe they are behind on their mortgage payments or even facing foreclosure.
Probably they have tried to sell and see no other way out. They will give you all the information you need without hesitation. Most of them just want to get out of the mortgage.
In my business, most motivated sellers submit their information through my real estate investor website, so by the time I call them, I already know whether I can make the deal happen or not.
If I pre-screen such a seller on the phone, the conversation is likely to take less than 5 minutes and they provide all the information I need.
This is the only type of seller I deal with in my business. This is the only type of seller where you are likely to get great deals that can make you a lot of money.
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