I have been getting tons of feedback lately from many of you. Thank you! It is your engagement that helps me keep sending you what you want to learn and read. Many of you have been requesting I write more on wholesaling. So, if that is you…read on…

One of the questions that I hear a lot is “how do I find under market value distressed properties?”

There is no “one” way to go about this. In fact there are MANY ways. The following is just a sampling of these ways:

• Pre-foreclosures
• Short Sales
• REO (bank owned properties)
• HUD
• Trustee Sales
• Sheriff Sales
• Inherited properties
• Divorce
• Probate
• Absentee owners
• Pay per Click (PPC)
• Direct mail

These are just a few of the broad categories for finding distressed properties. Some of these work better at different times in the market than others.

For example, in 2008 direct mail was not working well at all. This was mostly due to very low equity in homes and the real estate crash that had just taken place. However, at that same time pre-foreclosures, Trustee Sales, and short sales were working like gang-busters!

What is imperative that you keep in mind is that the market is constantly changing, but the good news is that there is never a shortage of distressed sellers! It is just our job to find them.

My advice is to start with one way and get good at it before taking on another. The worst thing that you can do for your wholesaling business is to chase after every shiny new object out there and never perfect any of these methods. They all work. But the key word here is WORK.

I can tell you from first hand experience that doing just ONE of these ways works and can work extremely well. For the first 5+ years of my wholesaling career I ONLY did Trustee Sales. A business that got up to wholesaling well in excess of $100 Million per year in distressed real estate. All of that from just ONE source…Trustee Sales.

Now, that is not to say you should go out and learn Trustee Sales. Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. That is not the point. The point is that I learned and perfected just one way of finding undervalued deals to wholesale to the real estate investment community.

This is what I want you to do. Take one of these ways off of the list and learn it. Dissect it. Consume all that you can about it. Become the “Michael Jordon” of pre-foreclosures, or inherited properties, or PPC. Just pick one of them. As Cal Newton puts it in the title of his great book, “Become so good they can’t ignore you.”

Right now I am favoring direct mail for the best deals. This will most likely change at some point in the next few years, but right now, direct mail is crushing it!

Hand written yellow letters out preform postcards but they all work provided you have the right copy on the mailing and the correct addresses to mail to.

Mail direct to absentee owners with equity (think out of town landlords)…or to a list of inherited properties…or to a list of 30, 60, 90 day late on their mortgage…or to new divorce filings…or to probate. Did you notice that almost every way I gave you to find deals earlier you can do a direct mailing piece to!?

I hope that gives you some ideas of how to find distressed sellers in your city to begin your wholesaling career…or to take it to the next level. The most important thing that you can do is to take ACTION.

Next week I will talk about the massive importance of a distribution list and how you can build one from scratch.

In the mean time if you want to skip the trial and error…go straight to the front of the class… and use my top converting direct mail piece, along with where I get the highly coveted lists I use to mail to…head over here right now and check it out.

Till next week,

Andy