30 Ways to Find Motivated Sellers!

Transcription

1 30 Ways to Find Motivated Sellers! A step-by-step, detailed guide to find Motivated Sellers! By Ian Flannigan Copyright 2015 Freedom Investing Academy, LLC All Rights Reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for personal use, without prior written permission of the author. Disclaimer This publication is designed to provide competent and reliable information regarding the subject matters covered. However, it is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering legal, financial, or other professional advice. If legal or other expert assistance is required, the services of the professional should be sought. The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability that is incurred from the use or application of the contents of this book. All companies and domains are registered trademarks of their respective companies and we are, in no way, shape, or form endorsed or affiliated with any company other than our own.

2 30 Ways to Find Motivated Sellers! A step-by-step, detailed guide to find Motivated Sellers! By Ian Flannigan

3 DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to start off by thanking my family who is the driving force of why I get up everyday and strive to be the best husband, father & son that I can possibly be. Thank you to all the mentors and coaches that I ve had the privilege of learning from over the years. It s truly been a blessing because I wouldn t be where I m at today if it were not for them. You guys know who you are. I would also like to thank my business partners and team members, who work hard every day handling all the aspects of operating a real estate investing business. I couldn t possibly do it without a strong team. Ian Flannigan

4 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ian Flannigan is the co-founder of Golden Falls Properties, LP with his partner Bandel Kite and the co-founder of Freedom Investing Academy. The main goal for Ian and his company Freedom Investing Academy is to help aspiring and seasoned investors take control of the real estate market we are in right now and show them how to control properties and create cash flow from properties without ever using their own money. Ian has mastered the art of teaching investors how to create a return on investment upwards in the % range or even more. He has figured out the secrets to creating cash flow that others never knew existed. At the present Ian and his Partner Bandel manage real estate transactions per month leveraging debt on deals without utilizing any of their own money. A Little more about Ian Flannigan: He grew up in Texas and is a natural born artist in all facets of life. He studied music in college and shortly after pursued a career in hairdressing reaching the top of his industry. Since a young age, Flannigan had an entrepreneurial spirit, constantly pursuing his own endeavors to much success. For the past 9 years, he has been creatively buying and selling single family homes expanding his brand into a business consultant and personal coaching. He has student/partners that range from east coast to west coast. Flannigan is an expert in market segmentation for maximum cash flow with low risk employing his extensive background and education in seller financing, high yield notes, pre-foreclosures, subject to buying, as well as wholesaling & renovating properties for maximum profits. He has mastered the art of creating monthly passive cash flow for his company and his students. Freedom Investing Academy is dedicated to helping aspiring and experienced investors get off the wholesale/rehab hamster wheel and build a lifestyle business that provides consistent monthly residual cash flow.

5 Hello, my name Ian Flannigan and I'm going to show you 30 ways to find motivated sellers. But before I get into it I d like to take you through my journey of how I became a full time real estate investor. When I was growing up as a kid I always remember the association with wealthy people and real estate. As far back as I can remember, anytime the question was asked how did that family become rich the answer was always real estate. My first experience with this was when I was in middle school. I ll never forget the first time I went to one of my rich friends house that was in a gated community. I remember once we got there the house was just massive and I remember asking my friend what his parents did. The answer was simple, they re in real estate. So over the years I ve always associated real estate with being rich. Like most people these days once you graduate from high school you go to college, and then once you graduate college you get a job and grown up life begins. That s similar to what I did back in those days but I went to college to major in music. After 4 years of struggling in college and waiting tables to survive I learned real fast that music was not the road I wanted to continue to go down to make a living. So here I was close to getting my bachelors degree in music and I was flat broke with a ton of student debt. Most of all the musicians that graduated before me that I met were struggling to pay bills and were grinding it out to play gigs that paid pennies. I learned real quick that I needed to make a change towards something else because I did not want to struggle for the rest of my life. After a few months of really thinking about what I wanted to do next, one day I was getting my hair cut by one of my friends and I just kept asking him a lot of questions about how he got into the hair business. I realized that I had a few friends that did really well cutting hair. They always dressed really cool, drove nice cars and always seemed to be having a great time. So the next time I went to my friend to get a hair cut, I was asking him so many questions about the salon and what he did everyday, he stopped cutting my hair and said Ian, go to hair school and get your license, you ll be great at it!

6 I ll never forget that day because that was the day I made the decision to become a hairdresser. So after he referred me to a school I went in and signed up. And boy, I didn t have any idea what I was getting myself in to. 40 hours a week for 10 months, and you get written up for being late and leaving early. Talk about strict rules, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I was still waiting tables at night and didn t have a place to live. My mom lived an hour away from the school so I became a couch surfer and slept in my car a couple nights a week. That went on for almost a year nonstop because it took me 11 and a half months to clock my 1500 hours. Once I graduated I already had a few places lined up to go work and begin my career. I got really lucky and ended up working for a guy who had been in the business for over 10 years and made multiple six figures a year. It didn t take me long to start making money because I just replicated what he was doing and got really good at it fast. The owner of the salon became my mentor, not just in the hair business but just life in general. I had gotten myself in a pile of debt and legal trouble. He was the one person who saw something in me and knew I had the passion to change my life and accomplish anything I set my mind to. So the years start to fly by and I m making a pretty good living. By this time it s around and I m starting to pay a more to people who are wealthy and what their life looks like. Once again I m hearing stories about people who have become wealthy from real estate. So that s around the time when real estate really got on my radar. I started reading books about real estate and my wife started to take notice. Around Christmas time her sister wanted to get me something and she mentioned I was interested in real estate investing. So my sister-in-law got me a Christmas present that year and it was a 3 book series written by Robert Kiyosaki. The 1 st book was Rich Dad Poor Dad and that was the beginning of my journey into real estate. After reading that book I realized that I would trade dollars for hours for the rest of my life if I didn t once again educate myself and start focusing on assets that could pay me passively. I also realized that if I wasn t cutting hair

7 then I wasn t making any money and that really started to drive me crazy because I was working and standing on my feet hours a week. After reading some books and attending a few 3 day seminars I was confident enough to try and get into the real estate market. So I ended up buying my 1 st house in That was an amazing feeling to accomplish such a goal and get that 1 st deal done. Soon after I hired a personal real estate coach to the tune of $30,000 to seal my fate and once again be mentored by someone who was successful in the business. It still took me a few more years to walk away from cutting hair. I first shifted to part time hours at the salon while I continued to grow my real estate business. There came a point where I was so busy in real estate that my part time job cutting hair became a burden to go to everyday. That was really the turning point to make the decision to let go and become a full time real estate entrepreneur. I ve continued to educate myself constantly and believe that in order to grow you have to have the right knowledge and be connected to people who have already achieved what you are looking to achieve. So if you have ever asked yourself do I have what it takes to become a successful real estate investor the answer is yes! Anyone can become successful in real estate, you just have to make a commitment to yourself and begin your journey. It does not matter what your background is, nor does it matter what you look like. By now I m sure you ve decided that real estate can work for you because your reading this right now. So you ve already made the decision to get started in real estate. The time is now and you just have to take action and get out there and make it happen. Don t sit at home looking at houses online and never pick up the phone and call the seller. You never know what you will uncover just by simply talking to a seller. In the beginning I feel it s very important to call sellers and get into a rhythm of talking to people about buying their houses, plus these leads are free.

8 If you can t have meaningful conversations with free leads and buy a couple of houses, then it will be very difficult to pay for marketing and not be able to monetize your paid leads. A lot of novice investors begin their investing journey by looking for houses and that is the wrong approach. You need to look for and find Motivated Sellers that actually reach out to you and let you know that they have a property that they are willing to sell very, very quickly. That is where you are going to find the bargain deal. But before you start sending marketing out, where do you find these motivated sellers? I'm going to go through a list of about 30 different ways to find motivated sellers, in no particular order. Some of these ways will cost you money and some of them won t. Motivated sellers are not too difficult to find. However, they just don't come around and shout out, "Here I am." It can be safely said that the more difficult your search, the less competition you're going to have to find these sellers. And also, the more difficult the search, the higher the profits are going to be per deal. Anytime you come across a seller that has a property, ask them a couple questions. How much are you asking for your property? Does the house need any repairs? When are you looking to close? Would you consider selling your property with a down payment and the balance in monthly payments? Once you gather some information and do your market research to determine value, now send them an offer. Either make it verbal over the phone or send it to them in an . Just get an offer over to them. So let's start off, here we go. #1. Placing ads in the newspaper. You want to place an ad in every newspaper in the markets that you want to buy properties in and keep your message simple, "We Buy Houses Fast-Quick Sale-Fair Price. Try and negotiate a discounted annual price and have your ads running all year long. You want sellers to be calling you from these ads, that s how your going to find some really great deals.

9 #2. Penny Savers and Green Sheets. Place ads in the smaller publications as well, whether it be the Green Sheet's or Penny Savers. Try to find as many as you can to place ads in. These papers are distributed everywhere, grocery stores, laundromats, dollar stores. You d be surprised hay many people look through them every week. #3. Driving neighborhoods and looking for vacant houses or houses that are For Sale by Owner. A lot of these homeowners don't actually list their properties through real estate agents or put the property online for sale. That's a great way to find For Sale by Owners and vacant properties. Get out of your car a go knock on the door. If you can talk to the seller then great, determine if you want to make them an offer. If not then leave your business card on the front door. If the house is vacant and distressed, write the address down and go onto the county tax assessors website to find the owner and see if there is an absentee address to mail to. You can also skip trace the owner to get in contact with them and make them an offer. #4. Searching the Classified ads in newspapers for FSBOs. I call this making outbound phone calls. There will be a combination of homeowners and investors. You don t want to overlook an investor selling a house because they may have a lot of inventory and may be motivated to sell those properties. Call those ads and find out if they d be willing to sell their house. Also ask them if they would sell the house with a down payment and the balance in monthly payments. Once you find a couple people that are willing to sell, make them an offer. #5. Search on the MLS for fixer-uppers and ugly houses. You can also use a real estate agent to help you find them. You can go online through other syndicated sites like realtor.com and zillow.com and find tons of properties that are listed on the MLS right now. Target the beat up houses and start making offers. You must have the capital lined up. Either a private money lender, hard money lender, line of credit or bank financing. Or you must have a list of cash buyers to sell the house to. That s how you play the game on the MLS. #6. Have a real estate agent pull a list of expired listings. This is a free list that your agent can pull but you ll have to send them a postcard. This is a great way to find motivated sellers because they have a house they ve been trying to sell but couldn t. Once you mail them a postcard and you start getting returned mail marked vacant, you can either drive by the property

10 and leave your card on the door or go on the tax assessors website and send the absentee address a direct mail piece letting them know that you can buy their house. Bottom line, get in touch with them and make an offer. #7. Call every For Rent ad and every sign you see in a front yard. Maybe they're burned out landlords. Maybe they just have too many properties that they want to get rid of. Make them offers to buy their properties with a seller carry back or a lease option or some type of creative buying strategy. Those are truly no-money-down strategies if you have your buyers list ready to go. The key to doing a no money down deal is to get the property under contract either all cash or terms, during your contract period get your buyer under contract at a higher price and leverage their money to purchase the house. We also call it a double or back to back closing. #8. Go to the county courthouse and find landlords that are evicting tenants. You can find this list of landlords through the county clerks office. Become friends with the employees in the county clerk's office and they ll keep you informed with the evictions each month. If you hang around enough you ll start to meet landlords that are motivated to sell their properties. #9. Magnetic signs on your car. "We Buy Houses Fast-Quick Sale-Fair Price. Put them on your vehicle, put them on you spouse's and your parents' cars as well. Maybe if you have children, pay them each month to drive around with your signs on their cars. Or if you have a bunch of friends that want to earn some extra cash, put those signs on their cars as well. Now you have multiple cars driving around the metroplex in your market and your message is being broadcast out there for a very low cost. #10. Bird Dogs. These are people that will bring you deals that you can pay a referral fee. So as you're meeting people at networking events, it doesn't matter where you are, you want to let everybody know that you buy houses and you pay referral fees. Anybody that brings you a property and you buy it, you pay them a $500 referral fee and they are now your go to bird dog. You can also advertise on craigslist in the gigs section. Drop an ad in there and let folks know that you're looking to buy property and you pay referral fees. #11. Wholesalers. The great thing about other wholesalers is they find the properties, they do the negotiating and they bring you the deal. That's a great way to find a motivated seller because they already have the property under

11 contract. To buy these types of deals you ll need to have your financing in place and ready to go. You could borrow hard money, pull cash off of a line of credit, it could also be bank financing but the easiest to work with is a private lender. Wholesalers are a great source to buy properties. And trust me, wholesalers are motivated themselves because they want to sell that property. #12. Owners of condemned properties. You can check the tax records for these owners. So once again, going down to the county clerk's office, get a list of condemned properties. They will actually have a list. Send the entire list a letter or a postcard explaining you like to buy their house. Most of these types of houses end up a the tax auction, so if you can get to the owners before they go to auction then you can typically get a great deal. #13. Owners of fire-damaged houses. You can also find that information through the county clerk's office and your local fire station. Remember this is all public record, so don t be afraid to ask for this info. Burned down properties is a great way to buy properties at a huge discount. #14. Code Violations. You can go to the code compliance department and ask them for a list of code violations for the last 90 days in your market. And they'll be happy to hand that list over to you. Sometimes, you can do an open records search online through the county website. You may have to drive down there and do the open record search on their computers in the lobby and actually pay for the printing. I've had to do that tons of times. You pay 20 bucks or so to get a couple hundred leads. Send them all a post card and make offers one the ones that call you back. If the house is vacant and distressed, go onto the county tax assessors website to find the owner and see if there is an absentee address to mail to. You can also skip trace the owner to get in contact with them and make them an offer. #15. Create flyers and post wherever you can. Every time you pass through a neighborhood and see vacant houses you want to leave a flyer behind that says you buy houses. I like to call them "leave behinds." So put fliers out everywhere. Pay some teenagers to go put them on doors in targeted neighborhoods. Place them on all the cars at big retailers like walmart, target, and anywhere there's going to be a lot of people. On the weekends, if you pass out 1,000 flyers, you may have 5, 10, 20 phone calls and buy a couple of houses. So don't overlook that either.

12 #16. Hand out business cards everywhere you go. Hand them out to whoever and wherever you can. Just hand them out. Let everybody know that you come in contact with, that you buy houses. Make sure there is a phone number on there that they can call to get in touch with you or your answering service or assistant, however you have that set up. Just let every single person know that you come in contact with that you buy houses, and make sure you give them a business card. #17, Create door hangers and place them on every door knob you come across. So you can either blanket this in neighborhoods. Once you get those code violations, you can actually go put that out in the code violation properties, expired listings. If you don't want to direct-mail, you want to drive by them. But just go put these out everywhere you go, especially in your market, for sale by owners, so on and so forth. #18. Network with other professionals. They can be CPAs, attorneys, insurance agents, plumbers, contractors, etc. They can even be landscapers, the guys that mow your yard, they come across a ton of houses. It doesn't matter, just let other professionals know that you buy houses. But more specifically professionals that are involved with real estate, they all come across beat up houses at some point. #19. Network with service route people. Meter readers and the mail man. Meter readers and the mail man will actually let you know what properties are vacant. You can go find those owners people through the tax records. If you re having a hard time finding them, consider hiring a skip tracing service. #20. Absentee landlords. You can pull a list through listsource.com. You can also go to your local county tax assessor's site and pull a list of landlords, people that own property in your market that do not live there. Great way to find motivated sellers that don t live anywhere near the property they own. Send them a letter or a post card. #21. Estate sales. Every weekend, check the newspaper. You're already looking in the newspaper ads for the motivated sellers, people that have their properties for sale, people that have their properties for rent. Contact them. Go to the estate sales. Give them your business card. Let them know you want to make an offer.

13 #22. Tax sales. Go down to the county courthouse and find out where they are auctioning off the delinquent taxes on houses. Every month, typically it's the second Tuesday of the month, investors will go to the tax sales and bid on these delinquent taxes. You can also look in the legal newspaper for these fillings as well. #23. HUDhomestore.com is a great place to bid on government foreclosed properties. Check their website for listings. You will need a licensed agent to bid on your behalf but you can get deals at big discounts. #24. REOs, bank-owned properties. You can find REOs through the MLS and many other sites on the web. Auction.com is a great resource. There's tons of different sites that have REOs listed on them. Get a hold of those agents and make them offers. #25. Foreclosure auctions at the courthouse. You ll want to check with the county clerks office and find out when and where they auction them off. The foreclosures are different than the tax sale auctions. Some states are trustee states. Some states are judicial states. So preferably, the trustee states. That means that they just auction off the properties right on the courthouse steps. Great way to also build your buyers list. If you're looking for cash buyers, go down to the foreclosure auctions and grab all the business cards from the guys that are bidding on the properties. Those are real cash buyers in your market. And that is a huge, huge golden nugget to build your buyers list. #26. Make yourself a walking billboard. Get T-shirts made. Maybe a company branded shirt with "We buy houses" on the front and the back. If you want to sponsor a little league team, maybe it s your child's soccer team or baseball team, sponsor their team and put on the back "We buy houses." In every single game that they play, your message is across the back of their shirts. That s great exposure in your community. #27. Billboard advertising. It's expensive, but it can be very very effective if its placed in the right location. Try to negotiate an annual discount. #28. Mobile billboard advertising. It's expensive, but it can be more effective if its done right. What I mean by mobile is there are trucks now that have mobile billboards that flash a marketing message on the side. They drive around all day long so your message is passing through your entire market.

14 #29. Online local internet advertising. Run Google Adwords campaigns and drive leads back to your website. Run ads on Facebook, Bing and YouTube. The list just goes on and on. So get online and put your message out there to the market that you're buying properties. #30. Bandit Signs. This is by far my favorite way to pull motivated seller leads out of any market. There s a reason you still see those signs on the side of the road, it s because it works. When those people call you from signs on the side of the road, you better believe they are motivated to sell a house. So there you have it, 30 ways to find motivated sellers. I can keep on going on about how to find motivated sellers but the bottom line is, YOU HAVE TO MAKE OFFERS CONSISTANTLY if you plan on actually buying houses. I just wanted to give you some really good strong golden nuggets to start with. And obviously, you have a couple ways to contact these folks. You can either send them a direct mail marketing piece, which is highly recommended, or you can find their phone numbers and give them a call. Or you can just drive by the properties and leave your marketing behind. So there you have it 30 ways to find motivated sellers. Get out there and make some offers and start making money. Good luck to you. Ian Flannigan PS: If you have not registered for the BONUS Free Online Training, Click Here and Register Now Or Type this in your web browser: Freedominvestingacademy.com/qcmm/webinar/go1 This training will show you How to Turn ANY SELLER LEAD into $3,000-$12,000 Per Deal by Simply Playing Matchmaker.