Find Deals Free The Best Tips on Finding Deals FREE: How to Use Them and Make Them Work for You
By
Darren Dicke Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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NOTICE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author and publisher.
DISCLAIMER The information presented within this book represents the sole view of the authors and publishers and is intended for informational purposes only as of the date of publication. This book offers no private or professional advice. The reader is encouraged to use good judgment when applying the information herein contained and to seek advice from a qualified professional, if needed. All references are for informational purposes and the reader is responsible for any subjective decision made as to their content and/or use. For questions or comments concerning this book please send an email to
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TABLE of CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction
5
Chapter 2:
6
Getting Started
Chapter 3: Take a Daily Task and Turn It into Cash
12
Chapter 4: How to Find Deals in Dumpsters
25
Chapter 5: Turn a Sheet of Paper into Cash
30
Chapter 6: Cash Calling
35
Chapter 7: Find Deals Online
39
Chapter 8: An Appeal to Business Owners
42
Chapter 9: Going Once, Going Twice
46
Chapter 10: Birds of a Feather Flock Together
48
Chapter 11: Make Money through the System
50
Chapter 12: Public Information
52
Chapter 13: Make Money with Your Competition
54
Chapter 14: Other Websites
57
Chapter 15: A Sample Wholesale Deal
58
Chapter 16: That’s All Folks!
63
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AUTHOR PROFILE Meet Darren Dicke Coach, Mentor, Expert Wholesale Transaction Engineer Member REI Power Team, High Volume Wholesaling Business Owner
Darren Dicke
Darren Dicke is the Wholesale Expert representing RealEstateInvestor.com, the premier networking site for Real Estate Investors, and inspires people to success through his teachings and monthly coaching calls. He has been a full-time Real Estate Investor since 2003 and is one of the top wholesalers in the nation. In that time, Darren has successfully completed the following types of Real Estate Investment Transactions: Lease Options, Subject-to’s, Owner Finance, Rehabs, Rentals, Short Sales, Sheriff Sales, and lots of contract assignments, thus making him a bonafide Transaction Engineer.
Darren has been wholesaling houses all over the country. On a deal in less than 8 days, he took a contract on a fire damaged duplex and turned it into a check for $13,020! He has coached more than 30 real estate investors on how to start their own profitable wholesaling businesses. Providing hands-on mentorship to a select few students each year, the students and Darren regularly cash huge checks wholesaling houses, even with no experience and in low-priced markets. Valued for his money-making, no-nonsense, personal approach to the business, Darren shares his experience and acumen as both a top-rated industry speaker and sought-after personal coach. He continues to double his income year after year and has completed more wholesale transaction in the last two years than most folks do in their whole investment career. He taken vacation after vacation, including getting married on a private island in Fiji, all because he’s great at what he does.
To Your Success!
Darren Dicke www.finddealsfree.com www.thecolumbuswholesaler.com Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION I'm my own boss! But don’t think it’s always been easy. There have been times I wasn’t sure where my next check was coming from, where I felt frustrated, tired, and left looking through the classifieds at job listings. However, I didn’t quit. I got creative and looked for ways I could keep my business going without the cash to back me up. It was those tactics that saw me through. I tell you, nothing will make you work harder than working for yourself. There’s no greater satisfaction than knowing you are responsible for your future. Especially in times like these, it’s important to create your own destiny, your own wealth, and not be caught in the whims of someone else. Speaking of times like these, that’s exactly why I decided to write this book giving away some of my best secrets, mind you, because I want to pay it forward. I want you to be able to get deals done, regardless of how much (or how little) cash you have lying around. So here they are, my best tips on finding deals FREE. Use them, make them work for you, bring home the big bucks, and then tell me all about it.
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CHAPTER 2: GETTING STARTED Before we really dig in here, let’s talk about what YOU are going to have to bring to the table. We know I’m bringing you the best ways to find deals for FREE, but hey, I can’t do everything. As any of my students will tell you, I want success for you every bit as much as you, if not more, and I want you to be ready to get it in the game. So let’s get started. First and foremost, YOU must bring a positive attitude, belief in yourself, and a strong desire to succeed. This business is not for the faint of heart! I can’t tell you how many times I thought about giving up and getting a “real” job. There are times when things are tough, and not everything always goes your way. If you don’t have a burning desire to succeed, this business is not for you. I can remember four separate occasions when things were so tough that I pulled up all the job listings in my area on www.monster.com. After dreaming nightmares of working for someone other than myself, I woke up the next morning with a renewed motivation and focus to do whatever it took to make it work.
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Attitude and belief go hand in hand. While having a positive, confident attitude and an unshakable belief in yourself are important, a desire to succeed is crucial. Desire is that thing that wakes you up every morning. Desire is that burning in your belly that pushes you on, even when you don’t feel like it or have something better or more fun to do. A perfect example of desire comes from a duplex I wholesaled a couple of years back. My goal every week is to call back every single seller lead before I finish working on Friday night. This particular Friday evening was one that I will never forget. All of my buddies were out getting the weekend on, and here I was at 10:00 p.m. making seller calls. As matter of fact, I had a buddy in the family room drinking a beer and playing Xbox, reminding me every ten minutes there were places more fun to be. My desire overtook everything else and I made it to my last call, a gentleman with a fire-damaged duplex. On Saturday morning, I head over to see this duplex. I work him down a few thousand dollars and we settle on a price. I pull out my purchase contract and, voilà, my next wholesale. I rush back to the office and start calling a few of my duplex buyers, giving them first crack at the property. Two days later, I get a call back from a cash buyer and he is ready to make a buy. The following Saturday, eight days Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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later, I am in my attorney’s office with the buyer and the seller and we close the deal. It was a big one, too. The moral of the story is, if I didn’t have a burning desire to be successful, I would not have been disciplined enough to ‘stay the course,’ even when something more fun was waiting on me. You tell me… was $13,020 in 8 days for 3 hours of work worth the missed party?
Desire, there are no two ways about it. Every person who is a successful entrepreneur has a desire to succeed. You must have it as well.
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Trust me, the lifestyle that wholesaling provides is second to none. Heck, I was married in Fiji on a remote island with an acre of oceanfront, alone with my new wife, and a full-time staff of seven catering to our every whim for ten days, all thanks to wholesaling.
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And I spent ten days in Israel a month before that, all thanks to wholesaling.
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This business does work, but only if you work it. Create an Action Plan. Actually write down the ideas you learn and create your plan of action – yes, just like a real business. Get out in the real world and put these methods to the test. Just because each of these methods has been extremely profitable for me doesn’t mean it will be the same for you. But how will you know until you put it to the test yourself? See what kind of results these methods produce in your market. Try this stuff out. That’s all I ask. Plus, since it’s Free, what have you got to lose?
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CHAPTER 3: TAKE A DAILY TASK AND TURN IT INTO CASH The first, and my personal favorite, way to find massively profitable wholesale deals for free is the same way I spent so much time when I first started in real estate investing, driving for dollars. On a personal note, this is a method I’ve used to build a database of well over 10,000 names and addresses of people that we still mail to four, five, six years later, and still pull deals out of this database every time. What is driving for dollars? Driving for dollars in its simplest form is hopping in your car, turning it on, pulling out the map book and circling an area, a big neighborhood and saying, “You know what, I’m going to drive this neighborhood today. Let’s see what kind of deals I can find.” Take off, start down at the bottom of the square on your map, and drive up and down the street. • Side streets • Main streets
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• Alleys • Every street in the area It’s kind of like an Easter egg hunt. But when you find a deal on this hunt, it pays thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. What type of houses to look for when out driving for dollars? Houses with an orange sticker on the front door that range in size from a couple of inches across by a couple of inches up, all the way to a legal paper size sticker. Normally, the smaller stickers mean the house has been winterized, and the bigger stickers are the ones the city places on a vacant house to notify police/neighbors of this fact. I’ve seen white, red, and green stickers before, so the important thing with stickers is it’s something out of the ordinary, and a really good indication something isn’t right with the property. The cool thing is the houses that make great wholesale prospects don’t always have to be vacant. Find any house that clearly has a disinterested owner, whether the people living in the house own it or are just renting it.
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These houses aren’t hard to find, because they stand out like a sore thumb. However, a house being vacant means it is immediately a good prospect. Things to look for with prospective houses: • Anything rundown • Super tall grass • Overgrown shrubs • Lots of newspapers on the front porch • Mail jamming out of the mailbox • Broken windows • Hole in the roof • Fire damage • Tree has fallen on the house Basically, you’ll be looking for any sign that the owner of the house doesn’t have a lot of interest in the property. Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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When you get out in the neighborhoods, you are going to see these houses, because they stand out like a sore thumb. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the super nice neighborhoods. Although, I will say when you’re driving through the super nice neighborhoods you’ll find fewer leads, but at the same time potentially higher profit. You need to weigh your options when deciding. Personally, I want to get a lot of leads quickly, which is why I focus a lot of times in the inner city and urban areas. I’m not talking war zones, although there is plenty of money made in the roughest sides of town when buying houses. What I’m talking about are the areas of town that have a good mix of owneroccupied housing and rental property. Here’s the thing. Any neighborhood is fair game. Any side of town is fair game. What we’re looking for are the vacant, the rundown, the ugly, anything where the owner is potentially interested in selling for well below market value, especially with the market the way it is today. How to drive for dollars: •
Take a notebook, a legal pad or a voice recorder and write down three different types of leads.
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- Vacant or rundown houses - Houses that have a handwritten For Rent sign in the yard - Houses that have a handwritten For Sale by Owner sign in the yard When you’re out driving for dollars, write the addresses of the rundown, vacant, dilapidated properties. What you are looking for are: • Single family houses • Duplexes • Four units • Old abandoned church buildings • Rundown carry out • Vacant land • Apartment complexes Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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You name it. The second thing to write down when you see a handwritten For Rent sign is: • Phone number • Property address If the For Rent sign is like a realtor sign, a really nice sign and it’s like the local, big property management company, that’s not what we’re looking for. Generally, professionally managed property owners are not as motivated to sell, though that’s not always the case. The best shot we have at finding a motivated seller is by finding the little handwritten, hard-to-see For Rent sign, the ones that are hidden behind a bush and you have to get out of your car and pull the bush aside and squint at the number cross-eyed six times before you get the right one. These are the For Rent signs that make great leads. The harder the sign is to read and to see, chances are, the better the deal is. But we’ll take any handwritten For Rent sign.
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The third leads to write down are For Sale by Owners, the houses that have an FSBO sign in the yard. Write down the property address and the phone number from the sign. That’s it. Let’s go through that one more time, as this could be your #1 source of hugely profitable wholesale deals for FREE!!! 1. Pick an area. 2. Map the area. 3. Drive up and down each street. 4. Write down all vacant, ugly, for rents and for sale by owners. For the vacant or rundown houses, just write the addresses down. Keep the For Rent leads on a separate sheet of paper and do the same for all For Sale by Owner leads.
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What are you going to do with leads once you get them? The quickest and most effective way to track these owners down is to just look for them on www.whitepages.com
Go to the Reverse Lookup tab and do your thing.
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Try to call the owner first. If you can’t track the owner down over the phone, write them a letter or send them a postcard. By the way, I like to keep things with my marketing messages simple, because it regularly produces great results for me.
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I know it costs to mail letters and postcards, but if you handwrite all your stuff, it will save a ton of money. Plus, you’ll get better results. If you don’t believe me, try mailing to a list with a typed letter and try one with a messy, handwritten letter like this one above. Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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For additional research, pull up the address with www.google.com, which, by the way, is the best place to start when searching for anything. Also try this one, Google “free online people search.” Programs will pop up that let you search people for free.
The bottom line with this research is to find the owner of the vacant property lead, find their phone number and give them a call. Ask them if they want to sell their property at X address. Believe me. It is as easy as it sounds, especially in today’s tough markets.
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Again, this is an Easter egg hunt, and it’s not always easy and it’s not always going to happen right away. But the cool thing about it is, if you keep doing it and you keep at it, success is certain to follow. It’s just a numbers game. Wholesaling is just a numbers game. The more leads you find, the more people you actually get a hold of. The more people you ask if they’re interested in selling their house, the more properties you’re going to get in contract, the more buyers you’re going to find, and the more assignment fee checks you’re going to cash. That’s just how it works. Again, sometimes it’s not always easy, which is cool, because if it was easy, then every Tom, Dick, Harry, Larry and Moe would be out there doing it. Take heart. When the going gets tough, suck it up. If you really want it, go get it. It’s yours for the taking. When I stopped driving for dollars after two solid years, I hired somebody to do it for me. And guess what – he didn’t have a car! What he did was ride around the neighborhood on his bike and take a little voice recorder to track the leads. He was paid to get exercise and find these vacant, rundown properties.
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Whatever you have to do to do it, do it. Heck, walk if you have to. The other day I heard of a gentleman who is in a wheelchair, and he pays somebody to come pick him up to take him around to drive for dollars. The reason he does this is because the deals he finds by this method bring him the best deals. I’d say it's definitely worth a try. Wouldn’t you?
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CHAPTER 4: HOW TO FIND DEALS IN DUMPSTERS My next favorite avenue of marketing and way to find these massively profitable wholesale deals is with bandit signs. Now, a bandit sign is just a sign. You see them hanging on telephone poles, you see them advertising garage sales, you see them offering free hair braids, you see them advertising garage sales, you see them doing DNA testing, pool cleaning, We Buy Houses, etc. That is a bandit sign. “Well, Darren, bandit signs are great, but they cost a dollar a sign. I thought you were talking about stuff for free?” Well, listen, here’s the free part. Go to your local grocery store, or go to your local hardware store, or go to Home Depot and drive your car or your bike behind the store. What you are looking for are the big boxes they have by the dumpster. You know, the ones that are flat and ready to be taken away.
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Grab a couple of those and take them back to your house.
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The next step is cutting out the actual signs.
Measure them 12 x 18 or 10 x 10, or whatever size you can to have it be seen. Sure, the cardboard signs might not stay up long and don’t have the staying power of
Coroplast signs, but we’re talking about ways to find these
massively profitable wholesale deals for FREE.
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Tips: •
Double the cardboard over and it will stay up longer. See picture below.
•
Get the biggest permanent market you can find and print this, "We Buy Houses," and your phone number.
We do this in the spirit of keeping it simple. Plus, this message is proven to work time and time again.
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•
Then just walk over to a telephone pole and bang them up. Use roofing nails, a heavy duty stapler, or a zip tie.
Again, it’s a high turnover proposition and they’ll come down quickly. I guess that means you’ll have to go put them up every week. But how bad do you want it? Hands down, bandit signs are the number one, most effective way for motivated sellers to find you. Number two is driving for dollars. Prioritize the first two, driving for dollars and the cardboard bandit signs.
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CHAPTER 5: TURN A SHEET OF PAPER INTO CASH The next way to find these massively, hugely profitable wholesale deals for free is handwritten flyers. Handwritten flyers are just as easy or as simple as getting notebook paper and with a red permanent market write "We Buy Houses" and your number, or "I Buy Houses Fast, Please Call" and your number.
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Creativity is rewarded in this business, so do something a little bit different. Some of our best flyer campaigns were totally off the wall, just very personal messages. “Hey, my name is Darren. I want to buy your house. Will you please call me at this number?" Plus, another cool thing about being a wholesaler is you don’t have a boss telling you what to do. You don’t have someone you need to get approval from on the flyer message. The main thing is to just get them out there. Where do you place these flyers to be seen? • Barber shops • Laundromats • Local businesses in your farm area • In an area of town where you choose to focus your business energy • Grocery stores • Pawn shops
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• Libraries • Community center • Post office • Mail Boxes, Etc., UPS Store, etc. Here’s the thing with flyers. As you find locations to put your flyers, document the process. That way, as you prepare to do it the next time, you won’t have to start at square one.
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What I mean by document the process is Google search all the pizza shops in your area like this:
Call each pizza shop and see if they have a community bulletin board or a place where you can leave a flyer. If they do, add them to your list. If they don’t, go on to the next. Once you finish calling all the pizza shops, go to the grocery stores, and so on. Find all the places you can hang your flyer and circle them on a map, and/or create a route or list of stops, kind of like delivery people follow. The cool thing is when you do your route next week, the work of coming up with the list of where to put the flyers is already done. Plus, when you can afford it, you just give this list to someone else and pay them to do it for you. Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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Tips: •
Many of my coaching students have great success with the flyers that have tear-off tabs at the bottom with your name and phone number, especially at grocery stores.
Are you starting to see how simple and easy this all is?
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CHAPTER 6: CASH CALLING Another really good way to find hugely profitable wholesale deals is dialing for dollars. Here’s what I mean. Dig up the yellow pages and start calling other related professionals. Who will you be dialing for dollars? • Local property management companies and individual property owners/managers Ways to find these people? • Google property managers for your city and state What are you asking these people? • Tell them you buy and sell houses Say you were calling to find out if they know anyone who needs to sell some of their rental houses. • You can also ask if they have any clients who have wholesale houses to sell. Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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They are in the business, so they should know what a wholesale is. If they don’t, just ask them if they could help you find a couple of really cheap houses to buy. The main thing we’re asking these property managers is, “Do you know anybody?” Since they are well connected with landlords and other investors who own rental houses, we just want to find out if they know anybody that has a house they need to sell fast at a huge discount. And trust me, in this unpredictable market, they’ll return your call. • Section 8 landlords This is a government program and happens to be public information. You can get a list of all the landlords from Section 8. A lot of the times, you actually have to go down to a Section 8 office to get the current list. Take this list and: • Call the landlords • Call the property managers • Call the people who own the rental houses in the Section 8 program Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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With the For Rent signs you wrote down while driving for dollars, you just call these people and see if they have any rental houses for sale. Simple… hmm… I can hear the wheels turning. The same thing goes for these Section 8 landlords or any landlord that you talk to. “Hey, do you have any rental houses you want to sell? Would you be interested in selling this house? Do you know anybody that has property that they need to sell fast?” If you get “No” three times, then it’s no problem and you’re on to the next. That’s the worst thing they can say is “No” three times. A little nugget for you to glean here is don’t end the call. Real quickly, ask them if they are looking to buy any more rentals. If not, then the call is over. However, if they are looking to buy, find out what they are looking for and add them to your list of buyers. How cool is this? Not only are you finding hugely profitable wholesale deals dialing for dollars, you’re also finding landlord buyers as well. I can’t stress the importance of this every time you talk to a landlord or property manager. These folks are well connected.
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This will also allow you to make the best use of your time. By the way, I’ve included a list of questions to ask landlords and for sale by owners in Chapter 15, beginning on page 58.
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CHAPTER 7: FIND DEALS ONLINE This is one of the best resources online, in my opinion, period. And that is free online advertising websites like: • www.craigslist.org • www.backpage.com These are the top two free advertising sites and the most heavily trafficked. However, there are 106,000,000 search results when I Google "free online advertising."
To say this is an avenue worth your time is an understatement.
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With Craigslist being one of the top websites on the entire Internet, and a place you should invest a lot of time placing ads on, I’ve decided to give you a crash course. Here’s how you find deals for free on Craigslist, and the same thing goes for most other sites as well: • Write an ad each day (examples included) • Post the ad on Craigslist under "real estate wanted to buy" or "real estate services" • Post the ad on other free online advertising sites Tips: •
Each day you write an ad, save it in a Word document. After a month of writing these ads, you won’t have to write anymore ads. You just copy and paste. - We Buy Houses message - I’m a House Problem-Solver message - Got a House You Need to Sell Quick? I’m Your Man message
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•
On each ad, include a way for people to contact you.
As you are on these sites posting ads, use the time to check out other investment property postings. Know what the market is doing and you’ll be a step ahead of the game. Things to look at on Craigslist: • “sell house fast” • “discount property” • “wholesale house” • “investor” • “landlord selling” This will help you learn the investor market and what investment-grade property is being sold for. Remember, knowledge is power. The more you know your market, the better.
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CHAPTER 8: AN APPEAL TO BUSINESS OWNERS Think this sounds odd? It’s not, I promise. This method is all about networking with local business owners. Here’s what I mean. It’s a similar concept to park benches, but it doesn’t cost anything. Create a We Buy Houses sign, but here’s the rub. Don’t put your phone number on it, so when people see it, they have to come into the store and talk to an employee about buying their house.
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The employee takes down the person’s information, name, phone number and the address of the house they want to sell. And then you get a call. You take the person’s info and give them a call. If you work out a deal to buy or assign the property, here are some suggestions for your referral program. Either a flat fee of $100 to $1000, or cut them in on a portion of your profit, 3% to 25% of your assignment fee when you get paid. Basically, the more leads they bring you and the more deals you close, the more money everybody makes. What businesses should you approach? • Liquor stores • Pawn shops • Laundromats • Carry outs • Barber shops • Subway Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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• Florists • Beauty salons • UPS store or any store that has mailboxes/copy centers • Any business has possibility If the owner agrees to find deals for you, place the We Buy Houses sign in the window and go do it again, and again, and again. When people see that sign, they’re going to go in and talk to the owner and say, “Hey, I’ve got a house I need to sell.” The store owner is acting as a bird dog for you, and it doesn’t cost him anything. All he has is your sign in his front window. There is only an upside for the business owner, because when he brings you a lead that you close on, then you pay him the flat fee or percentage fee, whatever makes sense for him and for you. Tips: •
Consider paying the business owner for each lead he sends you, regardless if you get a deal or not. It doesn’t have to be much, $5
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to $20 per legitimate lead, but in today’s economy every little bit helps. •
Again, the more money he makes, the more he will want to send people your way. He has no risk. And a benefit to you is that you don’t ever have to worry about the signs being taken down. They’ll stay up forever.
•
This is a true win-win business arrangement and one that helps everyone involved.
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CHAPTER 9: GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE The next way to find profitable wholesale deals for free is by going to auctions. Not only sheriff sale auctions, the ones you see advertised in the newspaper, but Google "auction,” “real estate auction,” “house auction,” your city and state auctions, and watch what pulls up.
Sign up for each auction company’s email newsletter list.
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Auctions are a great place to find lots of landlords and house rehabbers. Meet as many people as you can while at an auction. Take their cards. Shake their hands. Be genuine. But most important, have fun with it! Meet as many landlords as you can and ask them if they have inventory they want to sell. Boom! There’s your next deal. Here’s a cool thing about the auctions. There will be lots of people there who are buyers of wholesale property. Yes, look for deals, but also be building your buyers list. A lot of these people are landlords. There are a ton of landlords who have houses they desperately need to sell. At the same, there are landlords who are aggressively building their investment portfolios; all good things. Just like with For Rent leads, when you go to auctions, meet all the landlord owners you can and find out if they have property they need to sell and what houses they need to liquidate quickly.
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CHAPTER 10: BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER The same thing goes for landlord meetings. At landlord meetings, you will find potential buyers for your rental properties that you’re going to wholesale. A cool thing is a lot of the landlords you are about to meet are also faced with challenges such as: • Unsupportive spouse or partner griping at them every day about selling their rental houses that the tenants keep tearing up • The rental houses always need new paint and carpet • That we have to pay the taxes on • That just got broken into • That just got the plumbing stolen • I want to move down to Florida and retire and forget all about this landlord business
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These landlords are out there in droves. And you know the saying, birds of a feather… Go to every landlord meeting you can find. Where to find out about landlord meetings/associations: • Search "landlord meetings" in your city/state • Search "rental housing associations" in your city/state • Search "property owner associations" in your city/state Here’s the thing with landlord meetings. A lot of them are based on neighborhoods or areas. What you’ll need to do to find out about these, if they’re not on Google or Yahoo, is to ask around. Call and ask the other landlord associations. Ask around at your local real estate investor meetings. Call For Rent signs in the area. One more thing about landlord meetings is some associations meet on an annual, bi-annual or quarterly basis. This means all the birds don’t get together very often, so make sure you know when they do so you can be there.
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CHAPTER 11: MAKE MONEY THROUGH THE SYSTEM Another doozie of a way to find the best wholesale deals for free, and also a place to find landlord buyers for your wholesale property, is through the eviction court. Every city in this great country of ours has a civil court that handles evictions. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been through an eviction, but if you have, you understand the pain. Being a landlord is rarely easy. Basically, eviction sucks and landlords turn into MOTIVATED sellers after an eviction. It takes a real pro, somebody that’s really in the game, so to speak, long-term to be able to deal with evictions and high turnover. Eviction court cases are public information. Go online or down to the county courthouse to access these files. Ask someone at the Clerk of Courts office for help finding the eviction cases. Tips: •
When dealing with government employees, you can ask five different people the same question and get five different answers.
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Moral of the story: If they tell you this list of all the eviction filings doesn’t exist, it’s because you aren’t asking the right person. •
You’ll need to give the folks at the records department a range of dates you’d like to see for the cases. Be prepared to give them an answer.
•
Sometimes, you will be asked why you want this information. Really, it’s none of their business, but share as much or as little as you are comfortable sharing. Remember, the information is there for all the public to see.
•
Getting the eviction court case information should never be a problem or a big deal. It shouldn’t take someone at the courthouse more than a few minutes to point you in the right direction.
•
When you find the eviction case information, ask an employee if there is a place online where you can access the same information.
Take your legal pad with you. Once you find a list of these cases, locate the landlord’s name and rental house address, and then follow the same instructions on driving and dialing for dollars. There is no one consistent setup with all counties. Eviction cases are handled and recorded a little differently, depending on your specific area. Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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CHAPTER 12: PUBLIC INFORMATION The next goldmine of public information lies with your city’s list of code enforcement violators. Again, this information is public knowledge. The code enforcement agency in your city and state is designed to protect the city and neighborhood from people who no longer care about their properties. Let’s say you have a neighbor who has a dog that just barks and barks and barks and won’t shut up, and you want to take your shotgun out there and show the dog who’s boss. You call the city to complain, and if the homeowner does nothing to fix the problem, the city will issue a violation. It’s the same thing if somebody lets their grass grow too tall and there are rat infestations, and the same thing with a house that’s vacant and not properly secured. The city will slap the owner with a code enforcement violation. Find the list of residential code enforcement violators and take this list to your computer. The place to start the search for your city’s code enforcement violators is by visiting the city’s website. Go to the neighborhood division and look for the code enforcement unit. This will pull up info about your code enforcement division and give you a contact number. Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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Another way to find the code enforcement division is to call your city’s switchboard and ask to be connected to the code enforcement. It's simple. The information you are looking for is a list of all the residential code enforcement violators for the last 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. If they can email you the list, great, although a fax list would also work. Basically, you want a list of all people/properties that have received a code enforcement violation by the city. Once you receive this list, start with the ones you think are the worst violators, like a vacant property that is not properly boarded up (hint, hint!). After you decide which violators you want to focus on, follow the same steps as all the others before: • Look up the owner online • Call the owner if you find a phone number • Or write them a letter • Or drop them a postcard A piece of cake….
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CHAPTER 13: MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR COMPETITION The next free way to find profitable wholesale deals is through other investors and other wholesalers, other investor’s properties for them, whether they own the house or not. You can wholesale a contract of a contract. “Well, that’s great, Darren, but I don’t know any other wholesalers.” Fine, you have a computer, right? • Get on your computer • Open up your Internet browser • Go to Craigslist • Pull up your city and state • Go to the “real estate for sale” section • Type in "wholesale" and search and see what pulls up • Type in "landlord" and see what pulls up Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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• Type in "investor" and see what pops up Again, doing this Easter egg hunt, this free wholesale deal hunt, is rarely something that you look once and there it is. That’s why it’s important to keep at it. Other investors post their deals on Craigslist. Try this as well: Go to www.google.com and search these terms: • “wholesale properties” • “wholesale” • “landlord houses” • “rental houses” • “fixer upper” • “handyman special” Include your city and state. Perform this search again on www.yahoo.com Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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Finding other wholesalers is not hard. As a matter of fact, one of the best places to find other wholesalers is by going to your local real estate investor meetings. Tips: •
To find REI meetings in your area are, type in "real estate investor meeting" and your city and state in a Google or Yahoo! search.
When you find another wholesaler, check out his deal. If it’s a good deal, ask if you can market it to your list of buyers. If the wholesaler agrees to let you market their property, put an option on the property. •
Again, with this being an ebook on free ways to find wholesale deals, if you don’t have an option agreement, see if the wholesaler or another investor can give one to you.
•
DO NOT EVER market a property that you don’t have a legal interest in. Meaning, if you don’t have a purchase contract or an option agreement on a property, then you have zero legal interest in that house and you could be found to be practicing real estate without a license. This equals HUGE TROUBLE and MAJOR FINES! Don’t do it!
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CHAPTER 14: OTHER WEBSITES In your quest to find hugely profitable deals for free, try sites like these: • www.rehablist.com • www.hotbargainproperties.com • www.realestateinvestor.com •
Google search "wholesale property" websites • www.fsbo.com • www.kijiji.com • www.oodle.com • www.forsalebyowner.com • www.analyzeddeals.com • www.fixerlisting.com • www.postlets.com • www.classifiedflyerads.com • Real Estate investing forums/groups on Yahoo!, MySpace, Facebook, etc.
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CHAPTER 15: A SAMPLE WHOLESALE DEAL All names are totally fictitious, and there were no animals harmed in this project. Tom is driving around town one day and pulls up to a stoplight. He looks over to the right and sees a handwritten We Buy Houses sign prominently displayed. Tom quickly writes down the number and continues on his journey. Tom has been thinking about that damned house the tenants just tore up, and he is wondering what his next move will be. Does he fix it up and rent it? Does he list it with a realtor? Does he forget about it and let it be taken back by the bank? Decisions… decisions. He remembers about the handwritten We Buy Houses number he wrote down and decides to give it a shot. At this point, what does he have to lose? The moment he dials the number he is connected to a live person, me. I ask Tom a series of questions to see if there is anything worth pursuing, like: • His name?
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• His phone number? • How he heard about me? • Why is he selling? • The best time for me to get in contact with him? • The address of property he wants to sell? • How soon he needs to sell? • The best all-cash price he would accept? • Will he sell on a lease option or land contract? At this point, I want to gather more information about the house, including: • Is it the house you are living in? • Is it an investment property? If so, is it currently occupied? Yes, then how much is the rent and how long have they been living there? • Are there repairs needed? Copyright © 2009. Darren Dicke. All rights reserved. www.finddealsfree.com
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• Do you owe property taxes or have any liens on the house? • What do you think the property is worth as it sits? How did you come up with that number? • Is there a mortgage on the property? If so, what is the balance, monthly payment, includes taxes and insurance? Is the payment fixed or adjustable? • If I could pay you more, would you let me make payments directly to you instead of a bank? • What will you do with the property if I can’t help you out? This is always enough information to get me started, and will be for you as well. By the way, one piece of advice is to keep the call conversational. With experience, it will come more natural to you. When I first got my start talking to sellers, I would tell the seller that I have a list of questions I’d like to ask and would that be all right. People appreciate honesty.
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Once I receive an adequate amount of information from Tom, I will then move into homework mode. I know, I know, homework was something I hated in school too, and you may be the same. However, the homework process in wholesaling will either, save you a ton of time and make you boatloads of money, or it will lead you to waste all your time and give up. It’s your choice. The homework I do consists of running comps, checking with my contractor to verify fix-up costs, and driving the neighborhood to verify rents. Once I know what the house is worth and how much it will rent for, I can determine what my offer to Tom will be. I present Tom with my offer and he agrees, so we go into contract. Tom agrees to the purchase price I presented to him, and we set an appointment to sign the contract. Now I have a signed contract at $30,000, and I already know the house needs $10,000 worth of work to make it rentable. After the house is fixed up, it will be worth $75,000, all figures learned by doing the homework. Don’t skip the homework part! Next, I will take my contract with the seller for $30,000 and immediately, I can’t stress the “immediately” part enough, start marketing to investor buyers. I do this through signs, ads in the paper, networking at investor
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meetings, talking with other wholesalers, talking to the neighbors, and placing online ads. I continue to do this until I find a buyer who is able to close and agrees to my price. Once this person is found, I meet them, assign over to them my control of the property, and grab an earnest money check of at least $500 and normally $1,000 to get the closing process started. The title company follows my instructions and the transaction is closed. And guess what? I just got paid by wholesaling a contract on a house. And so can you.
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CHAPTER 16: THAT'S ALL FOLKS! I’ve just shown you 13 ways to find deals for free. Now get out there and use them to change your life forever. I trust the information you learned today will be an inspiration to you and let it inspire you to action. Test these proven methods in your market. What do you have to lose? Once you take consistent action, you will start seeing the fruits of your labor in the form of more seller leads than you can handle. Trust me, having more leads than you can handle is a problem you want to have. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Then again, maybe you don’t believe a word I just said and you’re thinking, “There can be no way that anyone will ever call on a handwritten cardboard box. There’s no way!” If that's you, then I invite you to prove me wrong. Go ahead and prove me wrong. You might just surprise yourself. Or just take confidence in my experience and hit up these marketing techniques with reckless abandon. How many deals do you want to do next month?
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Put it to the test, because I know that when you do, your life can and will be changed forever. I want you to succeed. I want you to experience the lifestyle and the freedom of schedule and the freedom of choice that come with taking control of your own future financially through the avenue of wholesaling. Again, a lot of this business is just flapping your gums. You need to talk to people and let them know what it is that you do. Let the world know who you are and what you do, and great things will start happening. I’m working on a lot of exciting stuff, a lot of information that’s going to help real people in the real world experience real success and make real changes in their lives. Oh yeah, and generate cash where they never thought possible before. I appreciate your time today. Class is over. Now go make something happen. When you do, send me an email with your stories of success. To Your Success!
Darren Dicke
[email protected]
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