All you need to do is to drive your target market looking for vacant, boarded up properties and neglected properties that appear vacant. When you find these properties, you can call, text, or email the owner to see if they would be interested in getting a cash offer for their property.
One easy way to do this is by using the Deal Machine App which you can find at https://www.lexlevinrad.com/dealmachine
You can supplement your driving for dollars activity with bandit signs. If you are already driving your target market, then having a stack of bandit signs and a sign stapler in your trunk is a no brainer. You can strategically place your bandit signs on street corners in your target market.
Don’t listen to “gurus” that tell you bandit signs don’t work. The cheapest house I ever purchased was from a bandit sign ($4,000 for a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house). I know investors that have scaled bandit signs by hiring people to put out thousands of bandit signs and have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing so.
Driving for dollars has another big advantage that no one really talks about. You get to learn your target market really well. You get to learn the neighborhood and see how many houses are for sale and rent and how many houses are vacant and boarded up. You become really good at identifying which areas and subdivisions of a target market you really like. And this step is really important because identifying your target market is the biggest challenge for new investors.
Once you have those “perfect” areas, you can zone in and market the entire area with other methods like direct mail and text messages to find motivated sellers that want to sell their house fast for cash.
Do I do this every day? Hell no. But when I am driving to or from a rehab, and I see a boarded up or vacant property I stop and take a photo. I use the Deal Machine App to send a postcard to the owner of the property. If you do this over time, your dashboard and pipeline will be full of vacant property leads. You can skip trace that list and you can cold call them or even hire someone to do it for you. When my students are out in the field, I give them access to my Deal Machine App using the “team” feature and they find vacant, boarded up properties and add them to my pipeline.
If you want to scale this strategy, hire people to drive your target market for you. Every time they find a vacant or boarded up house, have them add it to your Deal Machine App and start marketing to them with direct mail. You can also skip trace and send text messages as well to the owners of these properties. And when your pipeline has many deals, hire someone to cold call your list of vacant property leads for you.
As you start making more money, you will hire other people to do the $12 hour tasks (like driving for dollars) for you. That is how you grow your business and create financial freedom.
Vacant boarded up houses can be a gold mine!
