Until such time when our cash flow stabilizes, we have chosen to focus on the business of wholesaling properties to other investors. Doing so requires houses that are available for wholesaling. How do we find them?
One of the ways is to simply drive around the neighborhood in which many local investors like to invest and look for vacant houses there.
A couple of months ago, we started doing so once a week. In the beginning, whenever we spotted them, we jotted down the addresses and took pictures of them. We were able to find a couple dozen at a time. The end goal of finding vacant houses, of course, is to locate the owners and see if they are interested in selling them.
Upon returning to our home office, I checked who the owner was for each of them. I uploaded pertinent pieces of information and respective photographs into a system that is set up to keep them organized. That, however, turned out to be quite time consuming. We hadn’t even begun to send out the direct-mail campaign to the owners to see if any of them were interested in selling. Such time-consuming tasks left little time for negotiating actual deals – which should be our main activity as investors. So, a few weeks ago, we began to get a bit wiser and faster in how we do what we do. Let me share with you how.
Whenever we find a vacant house, only its street address goes right into my Excel spreadsheet. We no longer bother taking pictures. Why? Think about it – we KNOW they are vacant. There is zero incentive for us to identify any houses that are not vacant because it is our business to find them.* Until and unless some of these properties turn out to be actual deals, pictures do not mean anything to us. With this new method, the number of vacant houses identified in the same amount of time – but without pictures – jumped from a couple dozen to five times that amount!
I still need to painstakingly identify the owners through Oakland County’s Pubic Record Data.** Because our direct-mail-campaign goal is 150 addresses/week, that keeps me very busy. As soon as our first wholesale deal closes, I know we can start to delegate these busy tasks. Until then, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get the business of wholesaling up and running.
Happy investing!
*When we are in a position to delegate this task to others, however, one of the conditions for them to be paid is that they bring photographs as proof of vacancy. No photos, no pay.
**Again, when we are able to afford it, this is another task that we hope to be able to delegate to someone else.
