One of the number one skills a new investor is going to have to learn is how to find motivated sellers. Finding good leads and then pull out the

motivated sellers is the key to success!

For example, a seller might be in foreclosure, have a job transfer or some other life changing event.  Sometimes when life changes the rules, so can a sellers motivation.

If you can provide solutions to the seller that helps them solve the problem by simply buying the house, everyone wins! When you provide a win-win scenario for everyone involved, you have provided a service to the seller, and the community.

The million dollar question (literally) is that how do you find these motivated sellers?

• Classified ads in the paper, and sites such as craigslist
• Drive the neighborhood and look for vacant houses
• Find a birddog, they find houses for a flat fee
• Work with a wholesaler who buys properties & and then sell them to investors
• Search the “notice of default” list which identifies all the foreclosure listings
• Check out the “notice to condemn” filings with the local building commissioners
• Divorce filings
• Probate filings can be a good lead especially if the beneficiaries live out of state
• Houses which need a larger amount of repairs
• Expired Listing are one of my favorites
• Tax Sales

There are several great techniques that you can use to locate these sellers. Some of my favorites include:

Bandit signs along the roads in the neighborhoods where I want to buy, drive throughs, shopping centers, entrances and exits of my favorite sub-divisions, and busy intersections.

Direct mail campaigns to the people on the lists, the more pieces you mail, the better, this is called a drip campaign, like a dripping faucet, mail to them over a period of time.

Websites can be a good tool, can take work to maintain, and a nice hunk of money to get set up. Canned sites look like everyone else’s and can be a turn off to the search engines.

Newspaper ads can pull one or two good leads per year, but patience is the key, run the ad for a year, and then forget about it.

Thrifty nickel ads can be a lead generator, but like the newspaper ad, patience is the key to success.

Posting flyers at the local grocery store can work; just make sure that there is a tear sheet so the seller can take your phone number with them

Now with this next one, you will always know if I have been around, business cards.  I almost always leave my business cards everywhere I go. Restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, minute marts… everywhere. Let your imagination roll!

Keep this one thing in mind, if you are looking for motivated sellers, you need to let them know that you buy houses, once you do that on a regular and consistent basis, the leads will come!

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