Posted by David Krulac on February 15, 2002 at 14:14:22:
cre works anytime. there are still people getting divorce, moving to a nursing home, getting job transfers, losing their jobs, getting married, dying, going bankrupt and losing their property to foreclosure, tired landlords, etc.
If you look for the people on the above list and anybody else who might be buying or selling a house and get to them before they get in the MLS, you will suceed. Much of that information is public record, like who’s getting divorced etc. all that information is there for the picking. its up to you.
what works in a seller’s market? - Posted by Bob (Md)
Posted by Bob (Md) on February 15, 2002 at 14:04:31:
I’d like to hear some ideas of strategies to pursue in my market. I live in a very, very hot market - most good properties are on the market for a very short time. We don’t see many REOs or fixer-uppers because the brokers sell them before they ever hit the MLS. The multi-unit properties seem to have very low cap rates - for instance, a duplex might generate $1600/month and sell for $160-180k. The area is under a building moratorium, which seems to have made the demand even hotter. I haven’t figured out how to make money doing fixups or even break even with buy-and-hold rentals. Since I’m just getting started and don’t have a lot of investment capital, what sort of strategies should I be pursuing in this market? Would it make sense to look for owner-financed properties, get them under control, and lease-option them? Any other ideas? The closest areas that would be good for rehabs and rentals are an hour or more away. Should I just start working in one of those areas until I build up investment capital?
Re: what works in a seller’s market? - Posted by J. Clifton
Posted by J. Clifton on February 15, 2002 at 19:54:22:
Short term strategy is to NOT ask agents about what isn’t selling (some agents may tell you everything’s going in 60 seconds, even if it’s a buyer’s market). Concentrate on UNlisted ‘property nobody knows is for sale’—the usual likely-motivated seller situations (divorce, probate, forced sales, out of towners, abandoned, etc.). Or, you could prepare a free public interest article or recorded phone message on “things you really, really need to fix-up before you sell your house,” and place ads about it to attract “pre-sellers” to call you (giving you first dibs).
Long term strategy: Canvas your farm area for For Sale signs, and follow-up in 4-5 months to see if they’re still up. The easiest way to do this is to pick up and archive every local RE adzine and newspaper RE photo section, date and track them, wait 4 months, then canvas the areas to see if they’re still for sale. These are “properties nobody wants,” that positively do not have buyers lined up making offers on them. They may already be the expired listings the reluctant agent won’t tell you about; bottom line, if you show them you’ve done your homework, they can’t pull that “everything’s going fast” line on you. One more way to do this, with online listings, is to sort all listings by date through the search engine, then call up agents about the 10-20 oldest properties.
This sounds exactly like my market. Especially 2 fam because owner-occ are willing to pay a premium to get into a house cheaper than a SFH.
Our current market time is 30 days and it was 1 day this past summer. 95% sell for FMV.
My strategy is to keep plugging away. The out of state owner next door wants to sell. I sent him a letter of inquiry. Real estate agents do this all the time (cold calls). I caught him at the right time.
I am a buy & hold.
As long as it breaks even I’m ok. The rent will eventually go up, houses will be worth more, tenants pay the note and I can write off the new kitchen stuff for my own house.