Greetings All, I am new to the REI Club forum. I am looking for strategies that were used to obtain properties from absentee owners. Sample letters, approaches, etc.
Thank you
Alleah
If you go to the top menu, between the ‘help’ and the ‘profile’ buttons click on the ‘SEARCH’ button. When I search for ‘Absentee Owners’ in this search engine it pulls up over 60 posts with all the information and more to properly answer your question. These are all like topics to this one that have already been asked and answered.
GooD Luck! :beer
One of the easiest ways to identify an absentee owner is through tax records.
Peter V
Absentee Owners are a great list although I believe they are within three of the top seven lists
1 - COI
2 - Farm Absentees could be in this group
3 - NODs
4 - FSBOers
5 - FRBOers Absentees that have a vacancy
6 - Expired
7 - Unlawful Detainer Absentees kicking someone out
8 - Probate
9 - Divorce
10 - Bankruptcy
Mike,
What is COI and NODs?
Unless he means for them to stand for something else, the most common use of those abbreviation’s is:
COI = Certificate of Insurance
NOD = Notice of Default
GooD LucK! :beer
Actually I am really big on marketing to your “Center of Influence” People you know
Hi all. In regards to the reponse that was given on how to obtain info from ths forum on absentee owners, I went to the top of this page and clicked on ‘search’ and put in absentee owners. It did give me previous questions about this subject but I could not pull up the answers that other people gave. How do i access this info? I too am trying to find out how to get lists/information on marketing to out of state and absentee owners. Thank you.
I’m mailing “yellow letters” to absentee owners and I’m getting great response. I bought the list from a list provider, I forget the name of the company. I know Melissa Data is a big list provider. I have a company called yellowletterscomplete.com write the letters, and I have the calls routed to an answering service called PatLive. PatLive takes the info & emails the leads to me, I prescreen them, then call back the ones where there could be a deal.
nsu - thank you for sharing. Quick question - do you feel that people will leave a message in an answering service? I thought most people would simply get frustrated that they couldn’t talk with a human being and hand up… I guess my question is - do you feel you are missing some opportunities because you don’t answer the phone yourself?
aclarke - when I first thought about Real Estate investing, my wife and I drove through some neighborhoods to identify run-down and vacant houses. We then went to the tax assessor’s website, typed the address and get the address of the owners. I sent a card to them stating that I was a real estate investor and checking if they wanted to sell their houses. I probably sent 100 cards, got 2 calls back from people asking me to take them off my list. One was from the owner’s son and he basically said that the house was not in foreclosure. That was a mistake done by the bank and that he had already taken care of it. And that whoever had sold me the list, sold me the bad information… :O) I told him I didn’t get the address from a list provider. I said that I sent the card because I was driving by and liked the property - felt that the property had a lot of potential… I guess he was happy to hear that. It felt good that when he hang up he was actually proud of his dad’s house… :O)
And I got one investor from California that wanted out. I wrote down his number and told him I was going to call him back. Never did. I was not ready for the next step. I was ready to find potential properties, to create the letters/cards, to mail them. But I was not ready to close a deal. It dawned in me that I needed more education before I could become serious about investing in real estate.
After that I started reading the posts in this site, got my real estate license (which I am activating on July 1st… IUHUUUU), created a business plan (which helped me decide that I want to buy and hold, not flip) and a long term financial plan. I am feeling more confident now that I will be able to close deals.
Anyway - back to the reason for this post… It took me 2 afternoons to colect approximately 100 addresses of houses that looked bad; probably 5 nights (2 or 3 hours per night) finding the owners’ addresses; and probably another 2 hours to print the cards and mail them. I did it only once - I never contacted those folks again. I got 1 potential lead - not sure if the guy was serious or not. But at least he called.
A lot of work and I did not close anything. However I like this approach. I like to drive around with my family looking for houses that we believe have potential.
Have a nice Sunday!
Hi j1dias,
Actually the answering service IS a human being. Just like they are calling my “office” and I just happen to not be there when they called. The operator just asks them a series of questions about the house (# bedrooms, baths, mortgage balance, etc) so as far as the caller knows they just spoke to my assistant.
Good luck!
nsu - I guess I should have known… PatLive…:O) Thank you.
Hey Michael,
Just wondering, why is your probate lead generator at the bottom of your list? I ask because I am currently marketing to probates and let me tell you, unless I’m doing something wrong (newbie here, very possible), it is no walk in the park to get through all that information from the county records. But I’ve heard that it is a niche where your competition is not as abundant as in foreclosures for example and it’s worth the work that is put in to market to these folks.
Thanks.