Identifying Motivated Sellers For Real Estate Investing

The success of real estate investing is mainly determined by the availability of excellent deals.  In most real estate investing business models, you are unlikely to make a profit unless you can buy properties cheaply.

Motivated sellers are my best source of fantastic deals.   You will come across all types of sellers when you are buying houses.   Identifying motivated sellers who drive your business is crucial to your success.

Of course the more targeted your marketing is, the more motivated sellers you will attract in your business.  I am particularly fond of targeting people with legal distress who own real estate.  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 can you identify people who are really motivated to sell their house?  Let us explore the different types of sellers.

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

 They have tried to sell and most likely not been successful yet.   They are looking to get the full market price.

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

 Look for the next deal, these will not make you any money.

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

He will listen keenly, maybe question questions, but again is not very forth-coming with necessary information such as mortgage balance.

 He will question you to make an offer and probably tell you how much he has been trying to sell for.   He will insist you first go to see the house and see if you like it.

 You are not likely to get any deal from his, even though he might look flexible.

 Of course, without information like the honest market value, repairs, mortgage balance and so on, a excellent real estate investor cannot make an offer.

  You are likely to waste a lot of time driving to see such houses and not get a deal.

Usually I question him to give me a call with all the numbers before I can make him an offer.

3)    Motivated seller
 This guy really needs to sell their house.  Maybe they are behind on their mortgage payments or even facing foreclosure.

Probably they have tried to sell and see no other way out.  They will give you all the information you need without hesitation.  Most of them just want to get out of the mortgage.

 Most of my motivated sellers submit their information through my real estate investing website; by the time I talk to them I already know if the deal can work or not.

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

This is the only type of seller where you are likely to get fantastic deals that can make you a lot of money.

Learn how an interactive real estate investor web site 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.