Attracting Even More Motivated Sellers in an Ever Changing Market – Part 1

I am often asked whether or not there are still good real estate deals out there with the market constantly changing like it has been. The real estate market will always experience ups and downs and as real estate investors we need to be trained on utilizing the best tools to locate the motivated sellers within those markets. We also need to learn to be flexible in our marketing in order to bring in the highest number of new deals.

I often hear comments like, “you were just lucky” or “you got in on the real estate game when there were still lots of deals out there, it’s just not that way anymore”. Those folks couldn’t be more wrong in their thinking. This is just “stinkin’ thinkin’” as my friend Ron LeGrand would say. There are always deals to be made if you know where to look for them no matter what your local real estate market is doing. This is just a matter of having a marketing mind.

Using direct mail to attract motivated sellers is always one of the best tools in the real estate business for locating highly motivated sellers on a regular basis. I also utilize other tools along with my direct mail, such as lumpy mail pieces to make my direct mail stand out or I will send CDs to my sellers explaining to them why they should work with me. Using a little creativity with your direct mail campaigns will increase the response rate significantly. There are several reasons for this. 

The first reason is that generally speaking, there is no competition for these properties whatsoever. Most of your competitors don’t use targeted direct mail campaigns to locate motivated sellers; and the sellers themselves generally don’t know they are going to sell their property until they receive contact from you. They know they have a problem to solve regarding their property; they just don’t know how to do it until they receive contact from you and know you are there to help them.

And I have found from my own experiences in the last several months that as many Real Estate Investors got locked into the foreclosure and REO markets that many of these other sellers who are excellent leads often got left out. No one was working with them so this left a whole market open for many very profitable deals for me. Now that there are a lot fewer foreclosures and REOs investors are looking for more creative ways to find more deals.

Secondly, once you build a machine whereby you have direct mail going out on a regular basis, you create an ongoing source of leads as you continue to build credibility with the sellers you are mailing to regularly. Not only do you have deals coming at you today, you are constantly planting seeds for future deals. I also use a software program called RealProspect to track all of my direct mail campaigns, my sellers and my deals. This makes it a lot easier to keep track of my marketing and my deals. I have information on my website at www.marketingmagiclady.com regarding all the tools you need to increase the number of deals you are doing and track your marketing and your deals along the way. Now is definitely the time to start increasing the number of direct mail campaigns you have going out. When the holidays come around and property tax bills are going out, sellers are even more anxious to sell properties they have no interest in keeping.

Direct mail campaigns are the only marketing technique where you can create a scenario of ongoing leads. As these sellers’ situations change, they will contact you first because you have taken the time to create credibility with them through your mailings, even if they are contacted by someone else in the interim. You can also control the number of sellers who are contacting you at any given time by controlling the number of mailings that go out.  There is no other marketing tool out there where you are in total control of what you are doing in your business. Be sure and check out my article next month on even more ways to increase the number of deals coming in to your pipeline.