3 Ways To Find Great Deals in 2023
By Anson Young, Author of Finding And Funding Great Deals
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
I like to try and keep a pulse on the real estate investor community, and look out for patterns of questions that come up quite often. Focusing on common pain points where investors are struggling. Whether I’m networking, at a conference, or just talking to my fellow real estate friends, the same few questions always come up. The first is: how do I find deals in this market? The second is: how can I create a consistent deal machine? I want to share with you how we are finding consistent single-family and small multifamily deals in four different markets across the US and what is working today. I do mean today, as in April and May of 2023. Let’s jump in.
Marketing
Marketing is a necessary evil in the real estate world since it seems like we are at least 15 to 20 years behind every other industry in that regard. The method hasn’t really changed in the eight years that I’ve been doing direct-to-seller marketing when I finally unburdened myself from just looking at MLS for the same deals that everybody and their grandma has seen. I’m going to lay it all bare here for you, I am doing direct mail and cold calling to lists of targeted sellers who have some motivation or equity spread that can generate a deal. That is not groundbreaking news, I’m sure that you all have heard of these methods before but I’m going to sprinkle on a little bit of sunshine that helps us while doing these old-school methods to find deals.
Direct Mail
The first tip for direct mail is boring but absolutely crucial and it is: consistency. I don’t consider mailing any list unless I am committed to mailing at least 8 months’ worth of mailers to that list. Many new investors will mail a list once and may not get the results that they were looking for and just quit and move on to something else. Eight months and more is key because anything less and you are missing out on the magic of The Snowball Effect. This is where homeowners have seen your marketing consistently, have seen your logo over and over, and have seen your changing message over the months. So you’re not sending the same exact thing every single month. I like to build campaigns that build on the previous things that I have sent, always changing up the message, the call to action, and of course the envelope or what I’m sending.
The second tip is to stand out. While there is no way to track this metric, I am positive that I have a 100% open rate on my mailers. I don’t want my piece to look like anything else in a homeowner’s mailbox, which means colorful and eye-catching postcards or envelopes. My trademark with direct mail is handcrafted and handwritten, always having something unique and adding a personalized touch with something that is handwritten on the envelope or the piece itself. Even if that ‘handwriting’ is just a font it still adds a nice touch that we get complimented on. Everything is also mail-merged so that people see their own name and address inside the body of the mailer so it doesn’t look like it was just blasted out to everybody.
Cold Calling
You may not know but a successful cold call campaign is only as good as the list that you have and how accurate it is. if you have bad data you will always have a bad time with inaccurate numbers and frustrated cold callers who are getting nowhere with the list of thousands of homeowners that you gave them.
My first cold call tip is to skip-trace your lists with the best data provider that you can find and that makes sense for your budget. If you are unfamiliar with skip tracing it is taking an address and a homeowner’s name and the service digs deeper to find their phone numbers, email addresses, and the most current mailing address. some of this will be trial and error based on your market and how good the data is for that area, but once you find a great service you can feel confident that your campaigns will run much better now that you have accurate data.
My second cold call Tip is to train your callers. if you are doing the cold calling make sure that you have invested in some actual cold call training so that you can make the best use of your time on the phone. if you are Outsourcing your cold calling I much prefer to have in-house cold callers that I can train from the ground up rather than relying on the training of a cold call service. this method will be more expensive but the money is well worth the results when we get more deals and have happier homeowners.
Systems
All of the best Marketing in the world would be pretty much useless if you didn’t have any kind of systems or follow-up procedures in place so that you can use to maximize your budget and effort in finding deals. too many investors drop the leads that they pay for and that is just sad.
The first system that we use is a good CRM, one that keeps us organized with the leads that are coming in and one that has automated follow-up as well. I can generate tasks, I can assign different team members to different leads, and anything that’s automated is already set up so we have to only set it up once and then just drop leads in that bucket for follow-up. The money is truly in the follow-ups, we have closed dozens and dozens of deals based on just being consistent and changing up our follow-up from email to text to a live phone call even dropping in a ringless voicemail to keep on top of mind for these sellers.
Not all systems have to be technological, my second system is treating this as a customer service business. this helps me stand out far and above any of my competitors who don’t treat leads like actual customers. from a live answer on the initial phone call with a friendly voice to building rapport and warm handoffs between team members, to transparent and frequent communication through the sales process all the way to the closing table. We want to create win-win scenarios and people who are happy and comfortable through the process. Of course, this takes extra time effort and training, but at the end of the day, the results are so worth it.
Outro
If you are struggling to find deals consistently I would suggest implementing the methods and systems in this article so that you can reach your real estate investing goals. After doing over one hundred flips and multiple hundreds of wholesales, I am now focused on finding long-term cash flow properties and these are all methods that I am using on a daily basis to find over a dozen deals per month. If you have any questions or need anything from me feel free to reach out anytime, until next time: happy investing!
About the Author
Anson Young is the owner and Deal-getter-guy in Chief of Anson Property Group based in Denver, Colorado, which specializes in distressed property purchases. As a full-time real estate investor and agent for the last ten years, he has completed over 100 wholesale deals and 75 flips with some great partners and friends. He enjoys the process of making horrible houses look nice again and of course helping homeowners who are in need. Finding no satisfaction in the cubicle, he quickly eschewed corporate life as a Network Administrator in 2003, he turned to real estate and never looked back. Anson Property Group is committed to changing communities, helping homeowners and building long term wealth. When not working, Anson can be found exploring the wilds of Colorado by hiking the Rocky Mountains with his family, reading his favorite books to his son and attending loud rock concerts.
He is the author of “Finding And Funding Great Deals” which was released in 2017 through BiggerPockets Publishing.
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