Well actually it is going to cost us 1$ and the closing costs, but you get the point.
It probably doesn't seem logical to you that you could possibly get a house turned over to you for the big price tag of 0 dollars, does it?
Believe me, your not alone, we didn't think it was possible either.
Your probably saying, this house has to be falling down in the worst crime zone in your area.
Well....the house is in rough shape, but it is actually in a good part of town.
So how did we do it?
Where It All Begins
There are two things you must master in order to become a successful real estate investor. Those two things are:
1) Your ability to find funding
2) Your ability to attract and close motivated seller leads
If your real estate investment business is struggling, you are either having trouble with 1 or both of these things.
For you to find an off market discounted property, you need to attract motivated sellers.
Motivated sellers come in all shapes and sizes carrying all different motivations.
The best deals come from sellers who have multiple motivations.
What we mean by this is:
They may have inherited the home, be behind on taxes and have just lost their job
They may have inherited a home, going through a divorce and are relocating
They may be behind on their taxes, lost their job and have a severe illness
or you may be dealing with a homeowner who has inherited the home, had a severe water leak in the basement, has been hoarding garbage in the home for what looks like years and also has a illness.
This is the exact case for the property that we just closed on, that just required a transfer of title.
When you are in this business, you have to deal with these circumstances and fully understand the details of each situation.
How The Lead Came To Us & How We Closed It
Our main source of lead generation is through Inbound Marketing.
When we speak of inbound marketing, we are talking about our ability to attract, close and convert our leads.
1) Attract
When it comes to traffic to our website, we do not just want any and all traffic, we want targeted traffic. We want the right people that are actually going to become leads. These people are defined as our ideal customers or our specific buyer persona's. These are people that will have a high level of interest in our service and will also be a great fit for our company. Here are a few ways to attract the ideal customer to your website:
SEO
Blogging
Multiple Pages Around Specific Topics
Social Publishing
Resource Page - Educational Hub
2) Convert
A website with a lot of traffic but with no conversions is basically useless to us. So, once we have attracted these website visitors, our goal is to convert them or push them into our sales funnel. Contact information is the most valuable currency as an online marketer. So in order for our potential clients to give us this information, we must offer them something in return. All leads come into our business at a different stage in the buying (or selling) cycle. The offers they sign up for will help us determine where they are in this cycle. Some of the most important tools to help convert our visitors are:
Lead Forms
Whitepapers
Calls to Actions
Landing Pages
Contacts (CRM)
Ebooks
Tip Sheets
Free Consult
Get creative with your offers, test and iterate to find out what your buyer persona wants. The best way to convert these customers is to have them fill out a small form (asking for name, email, phone and property address) and then push them to a larger form to get more detailed information from them.
3) Close
So, if you made it this far, you are on the right track. You have attracted and converted an ideal customer for your business. However, attracting and converting a client will not bring revenue and profit into your business. Now we need to convert these leads into clients. Prior to this step, we will do our due diligence on the property to find specific details and or numbers on the property to determine if this lead is a fit. From this information, we will be able to determine:
ARV
Serious Repairs
Clients Asking Price
Location
Property Style
Motivation
If There Are Any Liens or Judgements
If The Property Is Listed
If you are interested in seeing the second form that we ask our leads to fill out, check out this page.
Once we have our potential leads contact information, it is time to reach out to them. If you do your research and they have high interest and are a great fit then you need to contact them immediately. Some of the closing tools are:
Phone Calls
Email
Drip Email Marketing
CRM Database
Marketing Automation
Here is the message we received from our website.
This lead, actually came to our "contact us" page where they filled out some minor information. However from this first submission, we were able to obtain valuable phone and email information to learn more details about the prospect.
After our initial contact, we sent them an email, made a connection and directed them to another form to fill out some more detailed information on the property. After we received this information, we set up a phone call to introduce ourselves and establish a meeting date to come look at this property. This all happened in the same day!
From this message, you can tell that this lead is very motivated. Once we made our second contact with the homeowner, we found out that this women was an extreme hoarder (see photos below) and there was even more motivation to sell then we originally expected.
Customer Service Matters
One of the most underrated traits of a successful business is the customer service within the operation. This is the service that you supply to your clients before, during and after the sale of their home. This business requires a very high degree of customer service due to the fact that your initial leads are very skeptical about your business. As we all know, real estate investors get a bad wrap and have a bad persona surrounding them.
Your first interaction matters with your clients, your speed of response, your transparency throughout the whole process, your ability to act like a professional and carry yourself in a professional manner. Your customer service will not only get you the current lead that you are nurturing, but also has the potential to get you several leads in the future.
Word of mouth spreads quickly
Back to our main point. Our company was the one and only company that had access to this lead. The main reason for this was our customer service. As soon as the lead came in, we made contact. We were very understanding of their situation and did everything to accommodate their needs.
As we all know sometimes, it is not always the price that matters. Customers are willing to pay more (or less) for a great, simple, hassle free experience. Focusing on Customer Service, is nothing new in business... it is just smart business. Try to make every touch point with your customers great. Try to improve your customer interactions with every deal you do and you will find that you and your business will be closing more deals. Here are some tips to consider when improving your customer service skills:
Improve Every Touch Point
Improve Your Customer Interactions
Enhance Your Customer Service Strategy
Understand Your Clients
Be Transparent With Your Numbers
Be Proactive
Always Be Available
Wrapping Up
This business requires you to be a creative marketer. Establishing several touch points with your ideal seller. Once you have made contact with your envisioned buyer persona, it is now your responsibility to nurture, accommodate with great customer service and close these leads. Once you have mastered these aspects of your business, you will have positioned your operation as a local leader in your industry. Remember, that when you are dealing with these motivated sellers, price is not always the main determinant.
In the comment section below, give us an example of one of your best off market deals to date that you have closed.
Look forward to hearing the stories.
HS Property Funds
Funds to Help, Problems to Solve
(315)516-8023
www.hspropertyfunds.com