This quote is attributed (falsely) to the bank robber Willie Sutton. It could just as easily apply to real estate investors.
Just like bank robbers, investors want to go directly to where the money is. And most investors know the ‘money’ is in homes owned by motivated sellers.
Unlike banks though, motivated sellers don’t put a sign in front of their building advertising their situation.
Investors need to do some detective work. They need to find leads and track them down.
Where do they find the leads? For years, investors either bought leads from direct marketing list providers or did the hard research using public records and other creative resources themselves.
Lists can have varying degrees of quality, and they may not have the names or data you need. Plus, they effectively go out of date upon purchase. Then you have to pony up for more lists. Wholesalers may decide to buy two lists – one for sellers and one for buyers.
Doing it yourself can really be time-consuming. Public records are not exactly user-friendly. Anyone who has spent a day at City Hall or in County Records can tell you it’s a pain in the rear end.
You would think there would be a better way.
Time to Crank Up Your Radar to Find Motivated Sellers
One real estate investor felt the pain of trying to find good leads and decided to do something about it. Sean O’Toole was a successful Silicon Valley software technology entrepreneur turned house flipper with over 150 flips under his belt.
He faced the same issues and decided to write a software to solve it for himself and “accidentally” started a company to help investors find leads after he realized he wasn’t the only one frustrated with trying to identify markets and develop lists of leads.
Sean launched Foreclosure Radar in 2007 and rocketed to immediate fanfare among investors during the housing crisis, so much so that Sean appeared on 60 Minutes and hardly a week went by without him appearing in the news commenting on the state of foreclosure investing.
As the foreclosure feeding frenzy waned, Sean morphed ForeclosureRadar.com into PropertyRadar.com to assist a wider variety of investors and the search criteria they required. If you are an investor in the Western United States (California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon or Washington), you might seriously want to take a look at Sean’s product.
PropertyRadar provides you with over 100 different types of search criteria. Using their software, you can really narrow down your search to precisely the types of motivated sellers you want to go after.
Once you input your search criteria, PropertyRadar automatically puts them in a list, along with a ‘heat map’ showing their locations. PropertyRadar uses data on 24 million properties in states it covers to give you a great list of potential sellers.
For you wholesalers out there, PropertyRadar goes even further. Not only can you find motivated sellers, but you can also find those investor buyers who will grow your buyer’s list.
Property Radar will also send you summary alerts to let you know a new property has shown up that meets your criteria. Try getting that feature with a list broker.
100+ Ways to Slice and Dice Your List
Many investors like the popular lists:
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Absentee Owners
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Foreclosures
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Long-Time Owners (lots of equity)
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Underwater
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Cash Buyers
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New homeowners
But there are other opportunities out there as well…
You can also search by type of property (Single Family, Multi-family 2-4 units, Multi-family Apartments, Land, Commercial, Condos, etc.). Then search on comps for those properties. You can also see if those properties are bank-owned REOs or recent flips.
Or maybe you like auctions? You can look up when auctions or Trustee sales are happening in your area. PropertyRadar can then help you research the properties that are up for auction to determine what price you should bid.
All of the above criteria can also be searched for a specific location, such as your favorite zip code. Many investors like to concentrate in a particular area they call their ‘Farm’ or Focused Area Real estate Market. PropertyRadar allows you to keep that focus and stay up to date on the latest leads.
Property Radar can provide all sorts of details for each property on the list. You can research the ownership history of the property, size of the property, number of beds and baths, and other details. Those details can tell you if the property is a good fit for your investment business.
Nothing Happens Until You Take Action
Lists are worth nothing if you don’t do something with them. PropertyRadar will give you a little boost to put all that information into action.
Once you have your up-to-date list of leads, PropertyRadar has the functionality to send you the list in a format that you can use to take action:
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Emailing the list to you
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Printing the list
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Exporting the list in Excel format for mail merging
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Creating a mailing label file so you just print, stick and send
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Displaying the best route to take if you want to go door knocking
In addition to mailing or driving to the leads, PropertyRadar also has advertising tools for you. They have partnered with other companies to produce postcards, door hangers, direct mailers and flyers that you can use to get motivated sellers to call you.
If you have a team you work with, PropertyRadar can create workflows for the team. You can leave notes on each property for your other team members and make it easy to coordinate.
The first part of taking action is to sign up for a subscription to PropertyRadar. They do offer a 3-day trial period for you to try it out without obligation. Then they have a tiered pricing plan. As of the writing of this lesson, their pricing plan looks like this:
If you get one deal out of this powerful search engine, it will pay for your subscription for years to come. Of course, we would hope that you find multiple deals and receive multiple paydays.
The folks at PropertyRadar are very interested in your success. They have several YouTube videos on how to use Property Radar most effectively. You can see an introductory video here.
Property Radar also has a robust customer service function to answer your questions and provide guidance. If you’re serious about tracking down leads and making profitable deals in the Western U.S., Property Radar may be just what you are looking for.
What’s on Your Radar?
Do you have experience with PropertyRadar? We’d love to hear about it in the comment section below.
Make a List – No matter what kind of real estate investing you do, having a list of potential customers is key.
Market Consistently to the List – Sometimes you have to reach out to people 6, 7, 8 times or more before you receive a response. Remember that many of your competitors might drop out before they go that many rounds.
Follow Through – Once you have a lead, jump on it. You can’t steal in slow motion.
Don’t Stop When You Have a Deal – The great investors are always looking for their next deal. Don’t stop marketing and following up just because you are flipping a house you found. Keep looking for the next one.