Finding Buyer/Tenants for L/0

I am planning on taking some properties sub2, and selling them L/O. When should I start getting buyers lined up. Should I start before I even have the properties, or should I wait until I have one in the hopper. I’m getting close - and have a few potentail deals coming up. I was thinking of running an ad in the local newspaper, and on Craigslist to find potetial t/bs and prequalify them. Is it too early - or is this how everyone does it? Thanks, Juliet

Is it too early? No, of course not. In this current market, t/b’s are not as easy to locate as before. Do some free marketing or inexpensive marketing and get the ball rolling. You’ve got nothing to lose.

When talking to t/b’s make sure that you get their email address. Add them to a group mail program and every time you have a house available, shoot out an email to all of them.

I personally have a group set up for retail buyers, t/bs and rehabbers /other investors. If anything it helps to keep your name out there as THE source for properties. Good luck.

any suggestion on free marketing or inexpensive marketing strategies

I’ve been reading up on L/O’s recently and am getting really interested in the subject…As soon as I finish my current rehab projects I’m likely to get into the arena…But I’m curious why the “t/b’s are not as easy to locate as before”…I would think in a market like this they’d be easier to find since they’d have a tougher time qualifying with a lender…No??

Good point, buff. But in my area, (Florida), the market is so bad with bloated inventory and falling prices and predictions of more gloom and doom in the papers every week, that many prospective t/b’s are afraid to commit, assuming that if they wait a year prices will be lower still.
On the other hand, with lending requirements tightening up, the serious prospects who might have been able to qualify 18 months ago no longer can. And that may indeed expand the marketplace for these lease options.

I am not going to invest in Florida because it is too far away from where I live. But every time I hear anyone talk about the market in Florida, I start to drool.

When there is blood in the water is when investors should be buying.

When prices have alreayd fallen a mile and the newspapers are spouting endless doom and gloom is when the serious bargains are available.

Real estate narkets go up, they go down, and then they go up again. You want to make some serious money, buy at the bottom of the market and then wait.

There’s the rub. How do you know when the market has bottomed?

This is one of those “which came first the chicken or the egg” type of situations. Start marketing for buyers now so that you will have them lined up for when you start acquiring properties. If I had to choose between losing the houses I have under contract or losing my buyers list, I’d choose losing the houses. A buyers list is a priceless commodity to have in this business. Picking up houses is easy, once you have a buyers list built up, it becomes a lot easier to move a house.

Building up a buyers list isn’t as hard as you think. I get an average of 10-20 calls a day… sometimes more depending on how vigorous I’m marketing a particluar property. The key is once you have them on your list, keeping them by following up and continuously marketing houses to them as you continue to build your list.

Best regards,

Daniel Durham