Wholesaling Newbie - Where do you find the deals?

[AJ™]

Can you name an area in REI where there inst alot of competition?

[Jeff Corpuz]

I agree with one poster, you don't necessarily find these deals, you
create them.

There are a ton of deals on the MLS that you can get for significant discounts
that you can wholesale.

Even though MLS properties are public and your buyers can have access to
them, most of them don't have the time or would rather not go through the
process of making offers, renegotiating, etc. and would rather purchase
discounted properties via a wholesaler.

This is where you come in!

You created value by creating a deal that was unseen by most if not all other
investors!


-----

[jjweidman]

After reading all the answers given on this post I am reday to believe that not one person posting a response does any business. Wholesaling is all about marketing. That is the business. Market for new properties. Market for more buyers. To do this properly you WILL NEED money. You can start with as little as $3000-5000. If you do not spend at least $1000 per month to find new deals, it will be very difficult to do any kind of volume, and volume is the name of the game.

To answer your question, there are countless EFFECTIVE ways to find your own deals. These include:

1. Buy them from a website that generates leads.
2. Hang bandit signs in targeted neighborhoods to generate calls.
3. Direct Mail - mail post cards or letter to the following groups
- estates and probate
- vacant properties
- expired listings
- non-owner occupied properties
- out of state owners
- tax balance owners
- pre-foreclosures (be sure your state allows this or else you could be fined heavily)
- probate attorneys
- bail bondsmen
- any other grooup of people that may need to sell their property quickly
4. Bird Dogs - this will take a huge amount of time to find one good one. I had 65 people sending me leads (that were not leads) at one time, but now I have one individual that brings me 3-4 properties per month.
5. Go door-to-door knocking and ask people if they are interested in selling their property.
6. Hire the guy that delivers pizza, chinese food, menus, etc. to include their fliers with every order.
7. Billboards - limited effectiveness
8. Put ads on community bulletin boards.
9. Hire high school kids to put fliers on cars in parking lots - this is only good in some areas. If you try this in a neighborhood that is too nice, the cops will be calling you.
10. Any other way you can think of to let people know that you buy properties very, very very quickly.

The only way to get enough leads to get enough properties to do enough deals to make a good living is to market your but off.

[scostell]

I agree completely with the previous post about marketing. 

[Neg]

Brian,

If it sat on the MLS for 14 months and went all the way down to $149k, can you expect to get close to $215 for it?  Especially if it only needed $1k worth of work?  What kind of profit are you looking at?

If you keep a close eye on the MLS you can find plenty of deals. For ex. I have been watching a property that was originally listed for 225K, sat on the market empty for 14 months and was reduced all the way down to 149K. I made an offer for 124K and it was excepted. The ARV is 215K and only needs about 1K worth of work for retail. The property was built in 2005.

[run2thesun]

How much do you guys pay birddogs?  Is it a set fee per transaction or a %?