Are property management companies the next hot spot for leads for real estate investors searching for deals on wholesale properties?

While many retail property owners are still misinformed and are trying to list at top of the market prices, many others are waking up to the reality of where the market really is right now. For a variety of owners in different locales, that means distressed properties and motivated sellers and agents.

Why Are Property Management Companies Ripe For Lead Generation?

Everything comes together at this intersection. Renters who are being financially crippled by inflation stop paying their rent, and end up vacating units, or in evictions. Owners who are feeling the pinch in their personal finances are coming up short when it comes to renovating vacant units at today’s sky high material and labor costs.

In turn, these properties become dead weight, a source of financial bleed, and a huge liability for property management companies which are supposed to be servicing them, but aren’t making any money on them.

These companies have large databases of owners. Many of whom want and need to sell.

At the same time, these can be great properties, which can become fantastic income streams with a little sprucing up, and new tenants.

How To Pitch Them For Leads

Cold emailing, and spamming main inboxes is unlikely to be very fruitful. Yet, there are many individuals in these organizations with this information, and who are motivated to help.

Team members in maintenance departments know which properties are sitting idle with deferred maintenance. Leasing agents know which are vacant. Account managers know their clients’ financial situations, and who is actively looking or needing to sell.

You can knock on office doors, call individual extensions, email various departments, and even use ringless voicemail.

While your value proposition should be obvious to this lead source, you can also sweeten the appeal by referring your end buyers back to them for property management service once they are ready for a new tenant.

A well crafted email series, phone script, and text message template can help you tap into these sources of deals at volume.

Remember, if they don’t have owners selling, then they probably have owners who are acquiring, and can be great end buyers for your other wholesale deals.

 

Grab this content and use it as your own ebook and opt-in magnet to boost your lead generation and building your list of motivated house sellers.

Scoop Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

PART 3

8. Not Knowing All Your Options

There’s more than one way to sell your home. It pays to know your options.

You can list with a full service Realtor. They can do most of it for you. You’ll typically have to lock into a legal agreement for a year, and hope you’ve chosen one who will put your best interests above their own.

Then there are so called ‘flat fee’ and discount brokers who will put your property on the MLS and major websites. Then you are pretty much on your own. What they don’t tell you is that on top of their fees, you’ll have to offer a competitive market rate commission to a buyers agent to get a buyer. That’s typically 2.5% to 3% of the purchase price, but could be more.

You can go the DIY for sale by owner route. You can go to Home Depot and get a for sale sign to stick in your yard (if your city and association will allow it), take out a newspaper ad and post your home on Craigslist. Then get ready for a whole ton of calls from Realtors who just want to list your property. A lot of busy work, with few real buyers. Even fewer, if any qualified buyers.

There’s also the question of how you’ll get paid. Clearly there are challenges and a lot of extra unknowns when accepting a buyer who will rely on getting a conventional mortgage loan. Selling to a cash buyer is clearly faster, easier, and less risky. You’re not just waiting for the deal to blow up due to the appraisal, repair issues, or weird underwriting quirks.

In other cases you may actually want to take your proceeds in installments. You may not want to put a big lump sum of cash in your bank account all at once. You may not want to deal with a big income tax bill this year or capital gains. You might owe more on your mortgage than the property is worth. A knowledgeable buyer who will pay in monthly installments and take the burden of the debt and maintenance off your hands immediately can be a great fit. You get an ongoing monthly income, without having to do anything. Any tax implications of a sale may be much lower. You won’t have long lost relatives popping up out of the blue asking to borrow money.

Or perhaps a mix of the two is right for you. Maybe you need $3,000 to move into a new rental, and then are happy to get the rest in installments which will cover your monthly bills.

9. Dragging Your Feet

You may be busy, you may not have much extra bandwidth in your brain for dealing with open houses and interviewing a dozen Realtors. However, the longer you wait, the worse it usually gets.

The market can change on you at any minute. Wait another month and your property could be worth $50,000 or $100,000 less. Or maybe your neighbor loses a similar home to foreclosure and completely trashes your home value by 50%.

Then there are all those nasty risks of natural disasters. Wildfires, electrical fires, earthquakes, storms, and more.

If you are already in a situation where you are behind on your mortgage, property taxes, association dues, income taxes, or code violation fines, waiting is only going to make it worse and slash your options. Some fines can accrue at $1,000 a day. That is more money bleeding out of any proceeds you could get in addition to all of the other holding costs we already mentioned.

Time is your enemy when selling a home. The sooner you can find a buyer, sign a deal and get through the closing the better.

10. Thinking Zillow Zestimates are What Your Home is Worth

Zillow has been a plague on the real estate market for years. Most obviously due to its controversial home value tool. It’s known for being wildly inaccurate and causing much strife between home buyers and sellers, lenders and real estate professionals. A Zestimate is not an appraised value. In the past Zillow has had to restate the values of millions of homes and has even restated years of historical Zestimates. There are now also many conflicts of interest which may influence Zillow to change values frequently for its own financial benefit.

The best gauge of your home value is a true appraisal. Second is comparing similar homes which have sold within 1 mile of yours, within the past 6 months. This includes comparing by square footage, bedroom count, lot size, age, property condition, and swimming pools. Then you may need to deduct the cost of any repairs or needed updates the next buyer will have to do.

Summary

The process of selling a home can be stressful and full of unexpected quirks. Fortunately, by knowing and watching out for these common fails you can skip the headaches, risks and long periods of sleepless nights, and just get onto the next great step in life.

 

Want more real estate leads and deals? Don’t snooze on this important day…

Mother’s Day is one of the top days for real estate investors. Recognize the massive opportunity, approach it in the right way, and you might find it the most pivotal weekend of your year.

Why Mother’s Day is so Important For Real Estate Investors

In the US, Mother’s Day 2019 lands on Sunday May 12th. Not only is it a day not to ignore for moms in the real estate industry, but none of us would be here if it wasn’t for a mother.

The most experienced real estate investors understand this one thing which is even more important than location. It’s that mothers are the chief decision makers. Whether they are the head of the household on their own, or they are the backbone of the family unit, it’s the moms that really make the decision on where to live, rent, buy, when to sell, where to invest the money and what work is engaged in. It really is.

If your product or service isn’t tailored to moms, then you are really missing out. This factor alone has made and broken big funds and developers.

Mother’s Day Marketing with the Right Attitude

The key to Mother’s Day for real estate investors is to start with the right attitude. Be wary of the temptation to oversell and unleash cheesy, salesy campaigns. Respect them, honor them, give, build relationships, educate and share knowledge. Seek to empower them to take care of themselves, their families and their communities.

Beyond the Average Mother’s Day Card

Done right, direct mail is still a very powerful and profitable tool for real estate investors. The overdone ‘yellow letter’, postcards and similar mail campaigns may not cut it. This is one of those times of the year when you want to weight your budget for sending something special to all the mothers in your database.

Mother’s Day Events

There are endless opportunities for Mother’s Day themed events. Open houses, educational events, fun meetups and brunches are all options. Give back, show them the opportunities in a warm way, and maybe create new property scouts and brand ambassadors in the process.

Online Contests

Have your online followers nominate their favorite mothers for giveaways. That can range from a whole house to a month of rent or mortgage payment, paying their property tax bill, a Lowe’s gift card or a pampered spa day.

Quality Time

Don’t forget to spend quality time with the mother figures in your life. If you are a mother, take time to celebrate what real estate has done for you as a mom, or enabled you to do for moms.

What are you going to do for Mother’s Day 2019? Let us know on Facebook!

Trulia recently published its 2015 Marketing Plan for real estate professionals. So what tactics and strategies does the online real estate giant recommend that can be adopted by wholesalers and agents, and what might some want to avoid copying?

Best Transaction Funding breaks down the highlights of the report and reviews the good, the bad, and the questionable…

Best Transaction Funding Reviews Trulia’s Online Marketing Strategy for 2015:

Trulia’s recommendations for 2015 are:

 

• Write a blog
• Implement SEO strategy
• Automate e-mail
• Commit to a CRM
• Invest in video
• Create unique property listing websites (SEO)
• Build out social media
• Invest Mobile Ads for your target markets

 

BTF’s Take: Clearly blogging and SEO top the list. While some real estate pros, including wholesalers have neglected these items in the past, 2015 should be the year they become top priority. The main obstacle all of these recommendations present is that few real estate agents, investors, and CEOs really have a handle on these marketing strategies, and lack the time to figure them out.

Fortunately, these items can be outsourced to individual experts, or online real estate lead generation can be turned over to turnkey services like Realty Motor or Sensei Gilliland’s (@SenseiGilliland) top secret Jabber Mouth Marketing service which we have been told is just about to come out of stealth mode. This will leave investors time to get on with the most important money making work – closing the leads that come in.

Related: 6 Easy Ways to Spark Lead Generation for Real Estate Wholesalers

Best Transaction Funding Reviews Trulia’s Social Media Strategy for 2015:

Trulia suggests…

 

• Do focus on quality over the quantity
• Do leverage images for double the sharing potential
• Do make it a two-way conversation
• Don’t only post your listings
• Don’t neglect “up-and-coming” social networks like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram
• Don’t underestimate others because you never know who could become a client

 

BTF’s Take: There’s not much new or unconventional here except for the reference to specific social media sites. Instagram has become a rock star in the social world, experiencing Bieber like overnight success for some. However, most would serious question the power of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. So what does the data say?

According to Shareaholic’s 2014 report:

 

• Facebook still delivers the overwhelming amount of referrals
• Pinterest is #2, but at just over 25% of that of Facebook
• Only Google+ and LinkedIn saw traffic rising in Q3 2014
• However, LinkedIn did not make the list of networks which saw traffic rise on an annual basis

 

Read: Where to Get the Investment Property Funding You Need

Trulia’s Marketing Budget Recommendations

Interestingly Trulia only identified and named 5 specific items to budget for in 2015:

 

1. Ads - Online
2. Website
3. Blog
4. Ads – Print
5. Business Cards

 

Conclusion:

Concluding that Trulia ought to have the budget, data, and research talent to deliver strong insights in their 2015 Marketing Plan real estate wholesalers may be best served by focusing on blogging and SEO, followed by print ads to capture offline leads. However, many may be best served in outsourcing these activities so that they can focus on closing transactions.

Don’t Forget to Check Out: 2015 Valentine’s Day Marketing Tips for Real Estate Wholesalers

 

Authored by Best Transaction Funding BestTransactionFunding.com is the leading source of transactional funding and hard money loans for real estate wholesalers in the US, where 100% financing, and saying “Yes” is what we love doing all day long

Mobile isn’t just a great medium for wholesaling marketing for real estate investors today, it offers a way to level the playing field, increase conversions and even get the jump on the competition. However, mobile marketing isn’t evolving quite as many anticipated. So what tactics can wholesalers leverage to get the edge?

Whether you are a solo investor just starting out or the CEO of a real estate investing franchise network mobile simply can’t be ignored. Virtually everyone has a mobile phone today and they are increasingly using them to do more research, shopping and find help. This also means that when they are using their mobile devices they are often in the right place, at the right time and right mindset for not just receiving messaging but eagerly taking action on it too. That means higher response rates, conversions and marketing ROI.

Four Ways to Engage Mobile & Win:

1. Your Mobile Optimized Site

Gone are the days of running multiple sites for desktops and mobile. Most independent business owners ought to be aware of the need for mobile responsive designed sites which automatically resize themselves to fit user’s screens. This should be old news. Tomorrow’s leaders, big leader generators and closers are now utilizing responsive sites which automatically personalize user experience on times they’ve visited, where they came from, and status in the pipeline.

2. Social

Social is the easy short cut to tapping into mobile prospecting for most real estate investors. It can be as cheap as free. However, it can also certainly pay to embrace paid Facebook and Twitter ads. Odds are a good portion of your traffic is coming from these channels already. You just need to turn up the volume.

3. Mobile Search

For those hungry for inbound leads and who have already been working on building their content efforts can be dramatically increased when complimented by paid search advertising. Many investors, including some of those with the bigger pockets that are spending six figures on Google Adwords aren’t bidding on mobile yet. Use this to leave the playing field for your budget. Think mobile text ads, video ads and even better – click-2-call for generating hot live inbound phone leads from highly motivated sellers and cash buyers.

4. Crossing Over
Many real estate wholesalers still have a hard time ditching traditional media for digital. Yet, while that is almost understandable it is certainly suicidal for most. Fortunately there are ways to leverage the best of bother worlds. QR codes have been great for this but may not be around much longer. Google Glass was hoped to be the next big thing but in terms of actually being effective on a decent scale for real estate marketing we are probably years away, except for at the highest end. By then other tech and trends will already be in play. Fortunately there are already a wide range of augmented reality solutions for crossing over from print and outdoor advertising to the web which can be deployed right now, and should be.

So get your mobile on, score more deals and let BestTransactionFunding.com fuel your transactions and help put more dough in your pocket fast…

Mother’s Day is one of those great days of the year for real estate investors that offer amazing opportunities for business building and lead generation. How will you maximize it?

According to the 2013 National Retail Federation’s Mother’s Day spending survey an estimated $20.7 billion will be spent on retail this Mother’s Day. While this figure incorporates consumer spending from jewelry to eating out, is also a huge day for real estate wholesalers.

Real estate makes an incredible gift on Mother’s Day, and will certainly be a present that will not be out down by siblings, quickly forgotten or re-gifted. A new residence might be on the list, but also consider vacation condos and cottages, and perhaps even more powerful; investment properties that can keep on giving to moms year after year in the form of passive income from rental cash flow, while growing in value.

This makes the run up to Mother’s Day one of those key times to make a significant marketing push. So how will you reach them and spread the word?

This is an optimal occasion for increasing visibility with display advertising. This can range from outdoor opportunities to online via PPC advertising, CPM and even new mobile pay-per-call options for generating hot live inbound lead calls.

Strong negotiators can also still find reasonable deals on broadcast too, whether it is radio or cable TV commercials.

Social is extremely powerful for real estate marketing at times like this. However, instead of just pounding the web with posts on your own platforms look into opportunities for marketing through parenting networks and other moms which are respectively 16% and 55% more influential than brands according to new research from comScore.

Of course if you are reading this then you also can’t ignore the advantages of blogging for Mother’s Day real estate leads either, and over the long run the ROI will really build up.

However, while winning new customers and building lists is great, keeping them, building loyalty, reaping repeat business and referrals is another thing altogether. So stay focused on customer service and wowing them. This is a great occasion to send reminders about your business and stay at front of mind with gift cards and even direct gifts.