Are bandit signs saying “Cash for Houses” or “We Buy Houses” the best way to find motivated sellers??
I have been getting foreclosed listings at the courthouse several times a week. I have gotten several calls…but nothing to make me some $$. It seems that buying a list of the foreclosures in the county 20 days before the auction seems pretty fruitless to me. I know there must be a lot of people purchasing these lists and those people going into foreclosure getting a lot of postcards and mailings from investors. Not to mention that you have 20 days to send a mailing, have that person to contact you and then buy their house…which I guess is do-able but tight on time.
Any help out there on how to get started, thanks for any comments on the subject
I have never gotten any fines… Taht’s after over 3 years of using them…
I have however heard of 2 instances of friends that have…
One was buying 8 houses a month… and using about a 500 signs a month to do so… His guy was caught putting the signs out by code enforcement… and they wrote him a ticket… it was $275…
Cost of doing business…
Depending on your tolerance… that’s cheap money… for the kind of money they were making… on the otherhand… I reccomend only putting out 15 to 25 in any given area… for the most effective use…
Not blanketing small areas with 100 - 200 signs at a time… it does become overkill…
The other folks I know doing were doing close to the same… putting them everywhere… but, put their business line on the signs… code enforcement sent them a ticket directly to their address… Use your cell, voicemail or 800 service…
I believe their fine was $300…
But, when you look at the profits versus… cost… no comparison…
I was wondering where are the best places to put signs for results…ie. exits/entrance for neighborhoods or more major intersections with traffic lights? what do you think would be a rough estimate for a size of an area (you mentioned about 15 - 25 signs for an area)?
I also read some of your other posts that say you don’t rehab - “there’s no money in it”. Do you retail the house at a discount? or, what method do you use to flip the house?
I agree with you guys…bandit signs are a solid way to get deals. Have used them extensively myself, and continue to do so.
But my best results lately have come from direct mail marketing to non-foreclosure targets, such as expired listings and tired landlords. It costs me an average of a little under $1,000 in marketing costs per deal. Each deal usually puts around $22K in my pocket. I like those numbers!
Signs work, you can post them at the entrances to subdivisions you would like to buy in. Personally I like to use direct mail since I can focus it on the specific type of motivated seller I want to buy from. Kathy Kennebrook
For me… It’s banditsigns… and of course you know why… Lol…
But, the reality… My cost to get a house is usually somewhere around $150 bucks…
And No competition… with direct mail… you’ve always got tons of competition…
Direct mail… It just never worked for me like I liked… and I was never the tediuos type to create a system around it… But, Hey… like ya’ll… I know others that it works for…
The point really is… create a system that works for you…
Get the leads coming coming in… buy some houses… change your life…
I would have to disagree. Signs are a great medium but they ae not targeted marketing. The type of direct mail I do is very targeted to specific types of sellers. There is no competition for these properties and half the time the seller didn’t know they were going to sell until they received contact from me. They knew they had a problem, they just didn’t know how to solve it. Some of the types of sellers I target are out of state owners, estate and probate, quit claim deeds, military transfers and others. Kathy
Bandit Signs, Newspaper Ads, Direct Marketing, etc. None work if they aren’t written and focused to the correct audience. To many people think we need to focus on areas where properties are good for flipping or renting, etc.
Instead we need to focus on areas where you can get your ads/marketing in front of people that are motivated. So think of what makes a person motivated to sell.
Here are some ideas:
Job Loss
Job Transfer
Divorce
Death (ok the heirs would be selling)
Bankrupcty.
Think of where those people tend to mass and work those areas.
Unemployment offices
Outside of buildings that house attorney’s offices
Funeral Homes
Divorce court buildings
etc.
Put your signs there, or ads there, and you will see a better response.
Hi- What I was disagreeing with was that there is alot of competition with direct mail. There isn’t, especially when it is very targeted. Most people don’t know what to do about their problem until they get contact from me. I also think signs are excellent, in several forms, bandit signs, bus benches and auto signage. One of my favorite “headlines” that works incredibly well is- “Sell your house on the date of your choice for a fair price in any condtion” This answers all their objections and lays out benefits for them. I usually do it as four lines plus a phone number. I also use this in classified ads as the whole ad. Since code enforcement kind of busts our chops for signage on main roads, I usually put mine at the entrances to subdivisions I want to buy in. I will share one way that I get around the sign issue. Put your “we buy houses” info on one side and the words “Yard Sale” with an arrow on the other even when there is no yard sale. Code enforcement seems to leave these alone. Kathy
I think that Finding Motivated Sellers is changing these days.
Guess what, everybody is online now. What do most people do when they want to buy a car or anything else these days? They go online and look?
Guess what, a lot of people I have met as of lately that are in foreclosure have gone online and did a Google search:
-We Buy Houses
-Stop Foreclosure
-Sell House Fast
I think another good way to capture Motivated Sellers is to use
an internet lead generating website such as “QuickOffers.com”.
You are not going to find all of your Motivated Sellers from one source. You need to have several sources if you are going to be successful in this game. For example, after talking to my super-successful investor friends last night, here is the breakdown of where his 82 deals came from last year:
I agree with you on the surface… but, you also, have to create a repeatable system… for instance… if direct mail or banditsigns, or whatever works for you… it’s just a numbers game after that… that you can both train someone else to do… and create a system around it…
When you all over the board… doing every kind of medium imaginable it means your doing a whole lot more work than you have to get deals…
For most real estate investors… 2 deals a month is a lot… 4 is huge… and 6 - 8 month is knocking it out of the park…
So, you don’t have to create any real huge budgets… unless your heading for a full fledged business at it… which once your doing that… then you should be creating a brand image… etc… etc…
David, I dont know what area you are from, but in California there is a lot of competition. If you think you are going to simply put up some bandit signs and have the calls go to a voicemail, good luck!
You are absolutely right, that is the problem with most new investors today, they are all over the board. The key is to find 2-3 sources that will bring you some quality deals on a monthly basis. I recommend that new investors starting out do a basic direct mail campaign as well as cash-offers to ‘absentee’ owners. After they land their first deal or two, they can then expand from there and possible try another method such as MLS first day out or knocking on doors of people in pre-foreclosure with an equity purchase agreement in hand.
In terms of creating any huge budgets? Have you ever compared what the price of an ad in a newspaper for a month would cost versus a membership to a lead generating website such as Quickoffers.com? The website would be cheaper. As a matter of fact, most successful real-estate investors I know are on 3-4 of them. They are smart and know that just one deal will pay for the site for the next 20 years! What I have found as of lately is that not everyone wants to meet over the kitchen table anymore! If you can direct someone who is in foreclosure to a website where they can get a FREE Report and where they can also fill-out an online sales form a lot of people will feel more comfortable with that. Also, the instant credibilty you gain from being part of a national site is priceless.
I think the goal of most investors out there is to create a business so that they can get out of the rat race and quit their jobs. In terms of creating a brand image, by being part of one of the reputable sites out there, you are instantly branded! Without creating any huge budgets…
Hey… I’m telling you that with experience… you don’t have to have 82 lines in the water to get a deal… You ahve to be able to repeat one thing really well…
Yes… having a quickoffers affiliation… cool… I have that as well…
You still have to market… and that means a repatable, trackable system…
Once you develop a good system… you run it till the market tells you not to… or it’s not cost effective…
Getting to the kitchen table… you have to do that no matter what type of marketing your are using… or bring them in to your office or something… You gonna need to set some type of appointment… I’ve heard of a few folks bypassing this step… and writing up a deal… but, very few…
And do I think a few banditsigns work to do the job… yep… I’ve been there done that … with tons of other stuff… just found there was no need…
David:
Speaking from a full-time investors point of view, being in the business for over 10 years and doing several hundred deals, I disagree with you. But we can all agree to disagree!
The key to being successful in this business is having 2-3 different sources of deals. Do bandit signs work? Absolutely, you can pick up a few deals here and there. I would highly recommend them for people to use and even put on their automobile. As a matter of fact I will share a success story on signs I purchased from your company. About 2 months ago I was at the gas station and a guy approached me after seeing my WeBuyHouses signs on the side of my car. He said that he had a house he was thinking of selling, but it was tenant occupied and needed some work. Long story short, I ended up buying it for $850k and I now have it in escrow for $1.2M.
So thanks to your company and your signs, I landed a deal that will net me a nice payday!
My whole point is to not get caught up on just using one source to find deals. Try to find 2-3 sources of finding quality deals that will work for you. This is how 99.9% of the investors I know operate.
Whether you are working the pre-foreclosures along with bird-dogs and some bandit signs or doing mailing campaigns and working the trustee sales, dont get tunnel visioned on just one source. An example is this, when I first started out back in 1995, the MLS was in ‘book’ form. When they switched the MLS over to computer, not everyone was computer literate. I was able to log into the MLS, pull up 10 properties, bid on them and buy two. There were other things I would do such as doing a ‘revision to list price’ to find motivated sellers as well as door knock expired listings. Guess what, those days are gone because everyone caught on. The cheese moved… Welcome HUD! A good source of deals if you knew how to play the game right. Have a broker in your back pocket, pay them on the back end because as I am sure you know, all HUD cares about is their NET. This soon dryed up due to non-profit program and every real-estate agent in town trying to sell HUD houses. The cheese moved again! The whole time I was doing deals the ways I have mentioned above I had ads in the paper, I networked with other investors to ‘wholesale’ me their deals, I had REO agents bring me deals that I had relationships established with. If I would have just concentrated my efforts on just one source of deals, I would have never made it! The cheese is always moving in real-estate!
So for all you new investors out there, go ahead and buy some bandit signs and even some for you car, but try to work 2-3 different sources of finding motivated sellers.
I agree… the cheese moves… my point is… more that… it’s better to perfect one system… get results and then wear it out… until it don’t get results…
Back in my early days… that was ads in penny savers… then… every investor in town did the same… I moved…
Then I switched briefly to direct mail… had ok results… but, to honest just wasnt diligent enough… and didnt focus on repeat mailings etc…
But, through the years… those stupid signs haven’t failed me… Sure If I wanted to move to buying 10 houses a week… I’d probably opt for a different plan…
But, at picking at picking up a house or two… or five a month… nothing compares…
But, that’s really not the point… The point being… I know how to exploit a system using one method… and if you study marketing… you’ll find most really good businesses do that until the market tells them different… that way a definable system can be created around it…
Now that could be birddogs, mailings, doorhangers… etc, etc… and we haven’t even touched the surface there yet…
David
P.S. congrats on the deal… and thanks for the kudos…
P.P.S. We don’t learn things from people with the same opinions… so, this is a good thing… whether we agree or not…
Take off the gloves guys, you are both right. You both have more experience than me but here comes my opinion.
I find deals where ever I can too. I look at the newspaper, MLS thru the Austin American Statesman, real estate for sale magazines, Greensheet, birddogs, Ads here at REIclub, Loopnet, website Webuyhousesforcash, foreclosure listing service, leads from Quickoffers and Fasthomeoffers and any other method I can use to get deals. I have not don ethe sign thing. I do see a lot of them especially in East Austin. I know they work as I see the same signs in front of houses being rehabbed or resold.
Do what ever works is the bottom line. I have heard from a lot of new investors that complain about not being able to find deals and are about to give up. My suggestion is always to keep trying, look at one more deal and it may be the one that gets you started. When first looking you need to look at enough deals to even know if you have a deal or not so you can compare one to another. No matter what the source of your deals do not give up if you have not found a deal yet. Buy some more signs, get a website, get more birddoggies, get a TV ad and more but do not give up.
No one has brought up the other way of marketing and that is, using a call-capturing system. 24 hour call capturing systems give 24 a day advertising and generate a lot of leads. You advertise a bold call-to-action ad which tells prospects to call anytime, 24 hours a day for free recorded information, which you do in your own voice. Prospects call and listen to a recorded description of your service, product or whatever you want the prospect to listen to. The good thing about this is that your cell phone and Email captures the callers name and address much of the time, and telephone number 100% of the time since 800 numbers cannot be blocked. You can then followup up with the lead. You can put your 800 number and the mailbox number on your signs, flyers, direct mail outs, business cards or newspaper ads.