Wouldn’t it be great to know what cash buyers in your area want? What prices they want. What size house they want. How many bedrooms. How many bathrooms. And so on.
I’m not talking about just the ones on your list, or the few you’ve talked to at local real estate meetup groups. I’m also not talking about the ones who talk a big game but never buy anything. I’m talking the ones who pony up. The ones who belly up to the bar, put money down, and are out there actually buying houses.
We here at Real Estate Mogul know this one weird trick (don’t you hate seeing that ‘one weird trick’ headline all over the internet) that will reveal the dirt on all the cash buyers in your area. With a certain function in Microsoft Excel and a big list of actual cash transactions from the MLS in your area, you can segregate the information into very precise detail.
The Weird Trick Revealed
The function is a ‘Pivot Table’. It is a very powerful data analysis function that can take all that MLS data, and put it in a format that will tell you:
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The neighborhoods in your area with the most cash transactions
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Where the cash buyers want to invest
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The number of bedrooms and bathrooms that are the most popular with the cash buyers
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The prices cash buyers are willing to spend for the bed/bath combinations
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The price per square foot buyers are willing to spend
Armed with this information, you will quickly know (ballpark) what to bid on a property that comes up in a certain area. Obviously the MLS will not tell you how much the buyer will need to put into the place to rehab, but it sure will tell you if a property is overpriced.
But Wait – There’s More
Armed with this information, you can easily filter the large amount of data from the MLS. You can see all the addresses in the popular ‘cash areas’ and quickly have a buyer’s list ready to go. As soon as you find a property in that area, you can mail to these properties and find someone interested.
Your mailing list will be very targeted to buyers who have bought properties similar to what you find. That way you don’t have to waste money mailing to a generic list of investors and ‘potential’ investors who may never buy an investment property.
Just talk to your realtor. Ask for a list of transactions bought for cash in the last 6 months for your area. Tell them to put it in an excel spreadsheet. Anyone who has access to the MLS should be able to do this pretty easily.
Then watch the video below to figure out what all the cash buyers are looking for…
Learn – Learn how to use pivot tables in Microsoft Excel.
Apply – Apply pivot table functionality to your MLS data.
Win – Use your new analytical mastery to increase your competitive advantage with cash buyers.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.