Author Archive
So What Do I Do When the Seller Refuses To Close?
Posted on September 7, 2016 bySince this scenario has arisen for me in the past on a couple of really good deals with a lot of income potential, I thought I would take the time to explain to you how to deal with this kind of problem.
Sometimes you will put a property under contract with a seller, get all the way through the closing process right up to the time of closing and for some reason the seller changes their mind and decides not to sell to you. While this is not a usual occurrence if you are following through correctly with your deals, it does arise occasionally and you need to be prepared.
There are a lot of reasons this situation can occur. One main reason is that the seller may have gotten a better offer on the property after putting it under contract with you. Or maybe a relative or friend tells them they didn’t sell for enough money or maybe they just get cold feet and decide not to sell. None of these are a good reason for them not to sell to you, especially when you have a valid contract with your seller and have followed through as you are required to within the confines of the contract. Read More→
Create a Wealthy Mindset And Never Be Poor Again
Posted on August 1, 2016 byDid you ever wonder why some people are really wealthy and some people barely live paycheck to paycheck? Did you ever think “Why can’t I be wealthy like them?” What do the wealthy people know that I don’t? “How did they get rich? These are all valid questions, but I would say, the reason why you are or aren’t a wealthy person is entirely between your ears. So what exactly do I mean by that?
It’s simply this. Wealth is based on a state of mind, not on how much education you have, how many hours you work, or who you know. A wealthy mindset is created by believing in who you are, who you want to be and where you want to go. It is said that our thought processes control the person we are and the person we become, and this is so true. I know a lot of people, many of whom are real estate entrepreneurs, who have become extremely wealthy and yet came from backgrounds of poverty and little or no education. Read More→
Using Realtors To Find Leads For Your Real Estate Investing Business
Posted on July 11, 2016 byThere are several ways to use a Realtor to help you find good quality leads for your real estate investing business. If you have not already added a good Realtor or Realtors as a part of your real estate investing dream team, now would be a good time to do so. There are many types of leads your Realtor can generate for you so let’s discuss them one at a time.
The first service your Realtor should provide for you as a real estate investor is to e-mail you the expired listings on a regular basis. You will need to set up a way for your Realtor to be paid for providing these leads. One of the ways I provide payment to the Realtor I work with is to re-list some of these properties with the Realtor once I am ready to sell them. You see the Realtors I work with sees the “bigger picture” and you need to find someone willing to work with you on a long-term basis.
You need to take the time to find a Realtor who is very creative in the way they provide leads and sell properties for real estate investors, just as I have done in my own business. And you should be working with multiple Realtors in your business in order to find a variety of leads. Read More→
Using “Bird Dogs” To Find Motivated Sellers
Posted on June 6, 2016 byUsing the people around you to locate motivated sellers for you is a great way to find even more deals absolutely free. Think about it, the more people you have locating deals for you, the more deals you are going to make. And personally, I always advocate “free” techniques for finding motivated sellers, especially those of you with a very limited budget for marketing.
So how are we going to find these people to find deals for us? Well first of all, look around you. Friends, relatives and co-workers are good sources of leads for you. They usually live, drive and work in different areas of town than you do and they come in contact with a lot of people that you simply won’t. So they are likely to bring you deals you would never know about otherwise.
You can also ask anyone who does deliveries to be a bird dog for you. For example, mail delivery, Fed-X or UPS delivery people are delivering packages all over your area and can tell you about vacant houses they may see. In fact, you could even give them some of your business cards to stick in the doors of vacant houses they find. Just have them write their first name on the back of the card so you can pay them if you get a deal from it. Read More→
How To Use Post Cards to Locate Motivated Sellers and Buyers For Your Real Estate Investing Business
Posted on May 2, 2016 byWhile I personally don’t use a lot of post card mailings in my real estate business, they definitely have their place. One of the main uses for a post card mailing is to either test a new list before spending a lot of money mailing to it, or to canvas large areas at very little cost to you. Post cards are also a very inexpensive effective means to building your buyers list.
If you are going to implement post card mailings, there are several different ways to do them effectively. On my web site at www.marketingmagiclady.com, I provide you with resources to find list brokers so you can focus on the specific mailing you want to do.
One effective way you can create these mailings is to download your list to usps.com and let them do the mailing for you for the cost of mailing the post card including printing. The post card is simply black and white, no frills, but can be used to canvas specific areas or large areas with your message.
There are some good reasons you might want to do this. One reason would be to do a sweep of a particular zip code range or group of subdivisions you want to mail to in order to find motivated sellers. This is a very inexpensive way to accomplish this. Another reason would be to do post card mailings to specific areas with high numbers of rentals in order to build your buyers list. Read More→
The Art of The Conversation With Motivated Sellers – Part 2
Posted on April 4, 2016 bySo how are we going to get ready to have a conversation with our motivated sellers? I believe that readiness is a state of mind, and I have put together some ideas for you designed to help you have meaningful and successful conversations with motivated sellers resulting in profitable deals.
First of all, expect to be anxious and know that it’s okay to be anxious. You probably wouldn’t be very good at what you do if you didn’t care about the outcome.
Next, while you are feeling anxious, get in front of a mirror and practice what you are going to say to the seller. Do this more than once. The more you practice what you are going to say, the more comfortable you will be and therefore less likely to forget what you were going to say. Practice controlling your voice and be mindful of how fast you are talking. Your speech should be at a moderate volume and speed when speaking to a seller.
Remember to breathe! Practice what you are going to say all the way through without making faces, gasping or throwing out any expletives. Your seller doesn’t care if you’re speech is perfect, they just want to know what you can do for them to help them solve their problem. You might even want to practice what you are going to say in front of a spouse or close friend. Read More→
The Art of The Conversation With Motivated Sellers – Part 1
Posted on March 6, 2016 byOne of the concerns many of my students seem to run into is; once they find the deal, what do they say to the motivated sellers? How should that conversation go? On top of these concerns, many of my students say they are not really comfortable with having a conversation with a stranger, so how do they handle that conversation? How do you get over the “jitters”?
Okay, so you’ve practiced what you are going to say, you have a plan, you have your paperwork, you’ve probably procrastinated a little, then scheduled your appointment with the seller, so now what? You still feel those butterflies in your stomach and you’re still not comfortable with how the conversation with the seller is going to go. What should you say first? How should you make the offer? What if they ask you something you don’t know? What if they accept your offer? What if they don’t? Also remember that if you created your direct mail campaigns correctly in the first place you already have most of the information you need to have from the seller in order to create the deal. Read More→
Attracting Even More Motivated Sellers in an Ever Changing Market – Part 2
Posted on January 31, 2016 byYou can also control the types of sellers who are contacting you and the types of properties you want to purchase. In a changing market, this ability to be flexible is especially important and using direct mail is the only marketing tool available that gives you the opportunity to pick and choose the types of sellers you want to deal with.
The more direct mail campaigns you do, the higher the response rate gets. So the more you do it, the less direct mail costs per lead and per deal. Direct mail is the only marketing technique out there that allows you to have these controls. I provide my students with a number of different types of direct mail campaigns to make sure they have the best opportunity to create more deals in their real estate investing business on an ongoing basis.
In addition, you are using your available marketing dollars to target specific types of sellers as opposed to other types of marketing like signage or an ad where you are hitting a much broader market area and hoping someone in that group has a property for sale. You should always have between three and five marketing techniques working for you at any given time and one of those needs to be direct mail marketing. I have lots of great information about other types of marketing tools on my website. Read More→
Attracting Even More Motivated Sellers in an Ever Changing Market – Part 1
Posted on January 4, 2016 byI am often asked whether or not there are still good real estate deals out there with the market constantly changing like it has been. The real estate market will always experience ups and downs and as real estate investors we need to be trained on utilizing the best tools to locate the motivated sellers within those markets. We also need to learn to be flexible in our marketing in order to bring in the highest number of new deals.
I often hear comments like, “you were just lucky” or “you got in on the real estate game when there were still lots of deals out there, it’s just not that way anymore”. Those folks couldn’t be more wrong in their thinking. This is just “stinkin’ thinkin’” as my friend Ron LeGrand would say. There are always deals to be made if you know where to look for them no matter what your local real estate market is doing. This is just a matter of having a marketing mind.
Using direct mail to attract motivated sellers is always one of the best tools in the real estate business for locating highly motivated sellers on a regular basis. I also utilize other tools along with my direct mail, such as lumpy mail pieces to make my direct mail stand out or I will send CDs to my sellers explaining to them why they should work with me. Using a little creativity with your direct mail campaigns will increase the response rate significantly. There are several reasons for this. Read More→
Long Term Benefits of Using Direct Mail to Locate Motivated Sellers
Posted on December 7, 2015 byAs you probably know if you have been reading my articles, I strongly advocate using direct mail to locate highly motivated sellers for your Real Estate Investing business no matter what market you live in and no matter what your real estate market is doing. With the market being in its current state of affairs, there are more motivated sellers than ever before if you know how to find them.
As a seasoned Real Estate Investor I fully understand that I need to be locating the most highly motivated sellers in order to construct the very best deals. Remember, the profit on a deal is made when you buy a property.
In addition, while many investors enjoy working with pre-foreclosures, short sales, REO properties and buying houses on the court house steps, these properties take time to close on and there is a lot of competition for them.
In the meantime you need to be able to continue to fill your funnel with cash producing deals in order to keep your business moving forward. Working with motivated sellers that your competition knows nothing about is definitely the way to accomplish this goal and direct mail is the best technique to draw in these very motivated sellers. Read More→
How to Locate Highly Motivated Sellers Using Business Cards
Posted on November 8, 2015 byFinding ways to attract motivated sellers to your Real Estate Investing business is probably the most important element in your business, since without the motivated sellers, there are no deals to be made.
There are several different ways to find motivated sellers for your real estate investing business using a shot gun type of approach to locate as many sellers as you can. A shot gun approach is where you “blast” your message out to your market and hope that there are motivated sellers among the bunch. Some of these techniques include yard or vehicle signage, business cards, t-shirts and hats, door hangers, pens, buttons, business card magnets, flyers and auto shades. What I really want to focus on today though, is using business cards to locate motivated sellers.
When having business cards printed, there are a couple of things you want to keep in mind. One is that your business card needs to have a grabber headline and it needs to catch people’s attention by looking different from every other business card out there.
Use bright colors and a benefit driven message on your business cards. List the reasons on your card why that seller should work with you and how you can help them. Remember business cards are a highly effective inexpensive lead generating tool for your business. On your business card, you want to provide your potential seller with a couple of different ways to contact you so they can contact you in the way that is most comfortable for them. So for example your card might include your phone number, your email address and a website for them to check out. The more ways you give a potential seller to contact you, the more of them will. Read More→
More Unique Strategies to Locate Motivated Sellers
Posted on October 20, 2015 byI am always excited by the opportunity to share as many ideas as I can with regard to locating motivated sellers for your real estate investing business. After all, without the sellers, there are no deals. I also like having the opportunity to share ideas for both the beginner investor and the seasoned investor alike within a variety of budget constraints. One of my favorite techniques is using flyers to get the message out there that I buy houses.
Flyers are a great way to target and locate motivated sellers. They can be used to target specific neighborhoods and subdivisions where you want to buy houses. You can either hire a company to hang them door to door for you, or hire older children to hang these flyers for you.
Do follow up by driving by the area to make sure the work got done. When using a company to lay flyers for you, make sure you get references from satisfied customers first. There are some companies out there that will take you money and not get the work done, so you want to check their reputation before hiring them. Flyers are a wonderfully inexpensive way to locate sellers and this technique can be repeated either monthly or quarterly depending on your time and budget. When we used to lay flyers door to door ourselves, we would take one weekend morning to do this. My husband and I would each take one side of the street and lay flyers door to door. We would keep a chart of the neighborhoods we had done so we could track our results. You always want to be tracking where your leads are coming from so you know which of your marketing campaigns are working best. Interested potential sellers will hold on to these flyers until their situation changes and they are ready to sell, so laying flyers door to door becomes one of your long term marketing techniques. Read More→
