Real Estate

Finding real estate investment properties isn’t always easy if you are doing the same old thing – you have to increase your odds by looking in places others aren’t looking. Who is more likely to get a cheap fixer-upper, an investor that looks through the MLS listings and calls it a day, or the one that uses TEN resources?

Here are ten tips for finding real estate investment properties.

Use the Internet.

There are hundreds of websites that post properties for sale by owner or for rent by owner (or both). The obvious one is Craigslist.org, but look for some of the lesser known websites for finding deals. Here is one of my investing quick tip videos on “How to Analyze a Deal in 30 Seconds or Less”.

Drive Around Looking for “For Sale By Owner” Signs.

Owners often test the market with a sign before listing with a real estate broker. Call every FSBO sign you see, and find out the name of the owner from public records and send mailers, too.

Find Old “For Rent” Ads.

Call if they are a few weeks old (you can find older newspapers at your local library, or start on Craigslist for rent from the oldest date forward). Landlords are often ready to sell, especially if the haven’t yet rented the units out. Maybe they had a recent bad experience with an eviction that could motivate them to sell?

Find Abandoned Properties.

That’s a pretty clear sign that the owner doesn’t want to deal with the property. He or she might sell cheap. Engage some “bird dogs” to drive around neighborhoods looking for properties that look abandoned – boarded up, grass grown high, and/or in disrepair. Look up the owner’s name on the county tax assessor’s website and mail them letters and postcards.

Old FSBO ads.

If you call on two-month-old “For sale By Owner” ads, and they haven’t sold, they may be ready to deal. Owners often give up the effort, but still would love to sell. Help them out!

Offer Someone a Finder’s Fee.

There are people that always seem to hear about the good deals. Have such people coming to you with potential leads (Tip: pay by the lead, not by the deal that is closed, otherwise people will stop referring deals to you quickly).

Talk to Bankers.

You might get a foreclosed-on investment property cheaper if you buy it before they list it with a real estate broker. Small, local, commercial banks are your best bet. They may also be willing to sell you a defaulted mortgage, which you can use to either negotiate a deed in lieu of foreclosure from the owner of the property or foreclose it.

Eviction Notices.

If you can get the information at the local courthouse, it can be useful. A landlord who just went through the process of evicting tenants is a likely seller, particularly if he or she did the eviction without a lawyer (a sign that they take it personally).

Setup a Blog.

Real Estate Blogs attract people who search for help, and they will find you with the right “keywords.” Something as generic as “sell your house fast Dallas” might not get you to the top of the search engines, but listing surrounding cities and suburb names are more targeted to someone who searches those words. You can setup as many free blogs as you like using WordPress.com and Blogspot.com.

Talk.

Let people know you are looking and sometimes the properties will come to you. There are a lot of owners out there who want to sell, but haven’t yet listed their property. Get to them before a broker gets to them to list their property. Everyone within your sphere of personal or business influence should know what business you are in, and they should think of your first when they find a motivated seller.

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I want to ask you two questions. One, do you have a Will? And two, do you have written goals for the next one, three, five and ten years? If you answered yes to the first question but no to the second, you are planning more for your death than you are while you are here. Think about it.

I want to challenge you to start setting some goals, but remember if a goal is not in writing, it is simply a conversation. It must be in writing and it must have a deadline. Here are a few guidelines for setting goals in real estate investing.

Goals Must be Specific

I want you to be specific and include details but start rough. When you start rough for example, you want a BMW. You do not have to get into the details about what color, what options, that sort of thing, just write it down. Make your list huge, what kind of home do you want, what you want for your family, college education, spend more time, travel, anything you can think of. You can come back later and prioritize them and set them up as to what you want in one month, three months, six months, twelve months, then three, five, ten, twenty, thirty-year goals. The more goals you have, the happier you will be, the longer you will live, and the more prosperous you will be.

Goals Must be Believable

Remember this, your goals must be believable, by you, or you will not pay the price. They must be believable, they must be just out of your reach, but you must know you can reach them if you really strive to do it.

Goals Must be Measurable

You cannot set a goal to be financially independent. There is no way you can measure that. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. You need to set a goal for the amount of income you want per month, per year, the amount of equity that you want in properties ñ one, three, five, ten and twenty years. It must be measurable. That way you can break it down to what I call ìreduce it to the ridiculousî.

If you know you want to earn $250,000.00 a year, you know that is about $20,000.00 per month. That’s just one flip every other month or 2-3 wholesale a month where I live. One of the things I have learned is, successful people set their goals quickly and they make adjustments as they go along. Just like successful people make decisions quickly, they do not vacillate in indecision or what I call sometimes; get mixed up in a funk of negativity.

Goals Must be Congruent

Your goals must also be congruent with your actions. You cannot set a goal to work harder, longer hours AND a goal to spend more time with your family. Those are not congruent. They must be congruent with your actions.

Visualize What You Want

Another good thing that will help you with your real estate investing goals is to visualize what you want. If you see yourself as already having achieved the goal, you will fake out your mind and your mind sees the goal as already having been achieved. It’s called “fake it till you make it”. I used to do this all of the time, by creating a “dream folder” with pictures of all the things I wanted, right down to the car, house, and woman (Ok, I didn’t get Farah Fawcett… but I got BETTER!).

Just take a minute or two each day and think about life as it is with your goals already accomplished. It’s really easy when you get used to it.

Work Your Goals

The next thing you want to do is work your goals, work on the priority that moves you closer to your goals every day. Plan your week carefully, focusing on what the late Stephen Covey called “Big Rocks”. The big rocks are the most difficult things to do mentally (not physically) that produce large results. If you wanted to fill a bucket with big rocks, small rocks, and sand, you need to put the big rocks in FIRST. If you don’t plan, the sand fills in first, and the big rocks don’t fit.

Number Your Goals

Number your goals in the order of importance. Not only is the goal important but so is the reason. Sure you want a car, but why do you want the car? Sure you want more money, but why do you want money? You want to be able to spend more time with your family, you want to be able to travel, you want to buy a Hummer, and you want to have an ocean front condo or send your children to the best college. Whatever it is, the reason must be there. The reason is more important than the goal itself.

Review, Monitor and Make Adjustments

Another thing you need to do is review, monitor and make adjustments on your goals. You have to be flexible. Some things are not going to happen, you have to face that, but you need to continuously strive to get better every day. If you will work harder on yourself than you do your job then you will always be growing. Remember that last sentence and write it down as it is worth repeating.

The Goals Must Have a Deadline

As I mentioned first, your goals must have a deadline. A goal without a deadline is just a dream.

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