Found An Abandoned Home. How To Find The Owner and Make A Deal

Lets face it. Getting motivated seller leads can be tough sometimes. This site wants you to pay this and that site wants that.

Well I’m here to tell you that you don’t necessarily always have to pay for leads and its not always that hard. The chances of this working are greatly increased if your in a city where people are looking for a way to invest their money and your the only person wholesaling houses.

Vacant and abandoned houses

Homes that have been left behind by previous owners are great opportunities to get a deal.

Just like everything in real estate, its a numbers game. The more homes you find, the better your chances of getting a deal.

What most gurus won’t tell you is…. are you ready for this?

Most vacant and abandoned homes are vacant because their underwater meaning the runaway owners owe more on the property than its worth.

Now these are pretty much dead leads unless you are getting into short sales.

Here’s what to do step by step

1. First you do is write down all the addresses that you can find
2. Search the internet for your county tax appraisor.
3. Search county records by address and get the owner’s name and mailing address. If the owners name is a bank’s name, this is a foreclosure property or a bank owned. Unless your looking to flip bank owned homes, this is a Dead lead.

   If it says something about estate of, deceased or probate, this home is inherited or in probate. You have to contact the beneficiaries. You can get all their info at your local county courthouse.

4. What you want to look for is homes with last purchases 10 plus years ago. These homes have a better chance of having some equity. Think about it. If a home was bought 4 years ago for $90,000, do you think they’ve paid it off yet? Of course not. Homes that are free and clear are an absolute GOLD MINE!!
   
5. After getting their names, you can do 1 of 2 things or both. You can either search the internet for their phone numbers and give them a call or mail them a personal letter saying you want to buy their home.
6. When or if you get some calls, get all the info you can about the property. If it’s free & clear and if not, how much is owed, why are they looking to sell, how much repairs etc…. If it sounds like a good deal, you should make an appointment to go see the property. Forget what the gurus say about never going to see a property. This will give you experience dealing with seller. After a bit of this, then maybe you can flip homes from you balcony or something like that.
7. Make an offer on the property. You want to offer under what homes are selling for in that particular area for CASH only. You can hook up with an agent and have then send you a list of recent cash sales but if you don’t have an agent who will willingly work with you, you can always try the hands up approach. “Send me the list of recent cash sales or else…..”

   Just kidding but I use to use a site called ListingBook.com. It doesn’t show cash sales  but you can pretty much tell by the huge gaps in prices which are cash sales and which are retail sales.

8. Once you get the home under contract, do whatever you have to do to find a cash buyer. Put out bandit signs, do reverse look ups on recently sold homes to find the buyers and see if their interested in this one, network with other wholesalers to see if they may have a buyer for it.

Now I am making it sound easy but believe me this is not some “bet I make this golf ball in that garbage can” type technique.

Your going to run into a lot of leads that are foreclosures but don’t let that discourage you. You may be sitting across the street from a deal and don’t even know it.

What to do with stingy folk

I have a buddy that has a unique “hidden” strategy on how you can still make money off those pesky sellers who think they can get market value for their home.

This is a “hidden niche” that you’ll probably only hear about on DennisKnows.com

Check out this Super secret “hidden niche” now before the word gets out.

Tagged As: absentee owners, dennis marshall, dennisknows, flip a house, flip home abandoned, flip vacant house, flipping vacant homes, make money flipping homes, real estate investing blog