How To Identify Motivated Sellers For Real Estate Investing

Availability of good deals is one of the most important factors that ditermine the success of real estate investing.   Unless you can buy properties cheaply, you are unlikely to make profits with most real estate investing business models.

 Most of my best deals come from motivated sellers.  You are likely to come across all types of sellers when you are buying houses.  You must be able to identify the motivated sellers who drive your business.

 Of course, more targeted marketing will give you more motivated sellers.  People in legal trouble who own real estate form a major part of my targeted leads.  These are most likely to be motivated sellers.

 General advertising like classified ads, bandit signs and so on attracts all kinds of people looking to sell their houses.

So how do you identify the motivated sellers?   It is easier to explore different types of sellers.

1)    Unmotivated seller
 This guy thinks his house is the best in the sub-division.  They have spent their time and money to make it as flawless as possible.

They have probably tried to list it with their Realtor, or even for sale by owner, but have not been successful.   They are looking to get the full market price.

They will not be willing to discuss details and numbers, such as their mortgage balance.

Of course, you will never make money from these type of deal, so you are better off forgetting it.

2)    Luke-warm seller
 This type of seller first asks how you work, and hints he might be willing to let you buy his house.

 Even though he will listen keenly and ask questions, he is not comfortable discussing all details like mortgage balance.

He will probably tell you he has been trying to sell it for say, $150,000 and ask you to make him an offer.   He will insist you first go to see the house and see if you like it.

Even though he will show the interest to be flexible enough to negotiate, you are unlikely to get a good deal from him.

 Of course as a good real estate investor, you cannot make an offer without all the numbers like the fair market value, repairs, mortgage balance and so on.

  You are likely to waste a lot of time driving around to see such houses and never get a good deal.

 Usually I will ask him to call me with all the number before I can make an offer.

3)    Motivated seller
 This guy really needs to sell their house.   Maybe he is facing foreclosure of is behind on his mortgage payments.

Probably they have tried to sell and see no other way out.   He will be keen to provide all the information you need. Most of them just want to get out of the mortgage.

In my business, most motivated sellers submit their information through my real estate investing website, so by the time I call them, I already know whether I can make the deal happen or not.

 A phone conversation with such a seller usually takes less than 5 minutes and they provide all the information I need.

 I only deal with this type of seller in my business.  This is the only type of seller where you are likely to get great deals that can make you a lot of money.

Article Posted By : Simon Macharia Successful real estate investing requires that you pre-educate potential motivated sellers about how you do business to close more deals. Learn how an interactive real estate investing website can pre-educated motivated sellers for you, pre-screen them and pre-negotiate deals for you saving you time, money and effort allowing you to close more deals.