Top cold calling strategies to find mispriced real estate? Direct Mail Marketing?
With the increasing challenge of connecting via random phone calls, I'm considering direct mail marketing as an alternative strategy.
Specifically, I'm thinking of sending personalized envelopes to the billing addresses for properties I'm interested in listed on the county appraisal district website. The envelopes would contain a handwritten address, asking if the property owner is interested in selling their strip mall, shopping center, gas station, land, or any other potential investment property.
I'm curious to know if anyone has experimented with this approach before and can share their experiences. How effective is direct mail marketing in the current market? Has anyone had success in finding quality deals using this method?
Alternatively, I'd love to hear about any other strategies or creative methods you've used to uncover attractive real estate opportunities in the sub-$10M range. It seems that traditional methods like cold calling are becoming less effective, so I'm open to exploring new avenues.
Following
I've done this going after small-cap properties in my market (5-10 units). My basic strategy was:
1) whenever I spotted a property while walking/driving around that looked like a potential candidate I wrote down the address (can usually determine the unit count by counting the doorbells or mail boxes or utility meters).
2) used the local gov website to look up owner information and confirm general details (unit count, last transaction date, etc) fit my criteria. Bonus points if the owner was an individual long-term owner and/or out-of-state who I felt would more likely want to sell / sell at a reasonable price if their basis was super low.
3) sent out a very brief mailer with a introduction and my two main selling points. One being that we could transact without a broker and save the seller 6% (they could still contact a broker to determine "market value" if they wanted to, but even if I bought at 3-5% discount they'd still net more proceeds without the commission), and two being that I would be willing to waive contingencies and close on a quick timeline (mention that I typically close in 3 weeks vs 30-60 days).
Overall the results were, as expected, not amazing. I sent out approximately 60 mailers and only received 1 response. The person that did respond was a ~75 year old long term owner who said when he's ready to sell he will come to me to make an offer first before hiring a broker, but who knows how long that will take. We touch base every so often but it could still be years (like 5+) before he's ready. The upside is that he seems very reasonable on pricing expectations since he bought it decades ago for like 20% of its current value.
I'm planning on doing something similar - I've been combing through two counties' property assessor's office looking for deals that would fit my buy box:
When I'm done, I plan to send out direct mail similar to what you and OP described. I've also been told to send follow-up letters every month for at least 6 months - persistence is key for direct mail campaigns. In terms of selling points, I'm thinking of orienting myself towards some sort of creative financing deal to get the right price where everyone's happy. Perhaps I'm being naïve, but that's the only way I expect to get to a deal done in this financing environment, with seller expectations are still sky-high.
I signed up to browse the forums while laying in bed and drinking diet soda but I thought I could give you some insight.
Direct mail is not a good idea because it’s either going to a registered agent office, a law firm, a P.O. Box, or somewhere else. The second I get letters like this I equate it to some schmuck calling me up to try and buy my home.
Find the real owners cell phone number and call him. You can find this through Rocket Reach reliably. This is also the most efficient way of doing it. Do not confuse yourself and equate time invested or “hard work” to making money.
What do I know though, I’m a stranger on the internet who probably owns no real estate and lives with their parents.
I have used rocket reach to look up email addresses but how do you use it to find the contact of the owner? Do you first look up the owner in the county registrar?
Find the ownership entity on the county website and then you can get a few things:
Google the entity name and go down the rabbit hole on open corporates or similar websites
Google the address the entity is registered to and see who operates from there
it’s really just going down the rabbit hole. Typically the harder it is to find who owns it the more institutional ownership is.
if I was interested in a property I would find the owners name through that process then go to Rocket Reach and enter his name. Usually you can find their actual real cell phone number there. I would simply call their cell, explain who I am, and tell them in a buyer if they’re interested in selling. I’ve called everyone from Joe Schmoe because the guy inherited property to billionaires from Rocket Reach.
Notwithstanding all that, I once had 0 assets and 0 credibility. I didn’t get my first deal by calling unlisted property. My first deal was a listed deal, ground up development in the suburbs. I had 0 personal money and 0 legitimacy. JLL represented the institutional seller and it took me about 1.5 years to buy the land because they thought I was BS. Ultimately JLL couldn’t get anyone else to buy it so they sold it to me.
Go work at marcus & millichap for 3 months and they will teach you all this
Is there a way where I can learn this as a side-gig? Gotta be a way to cold call on somebody's behalf via networking, Fiver, Upwork, etc.
I dont think so.. Its pretty time intensive to have a good spiel, know the market, find the owners, find their numbers, call them enough times to actually talk to them, have something interesting to say, manage the CRM, etc.
Just use the county assessors websites, CoStar, Secretary of State website (LLC Lookup), TruePeopleSearch.com, etc. Hardest part is making the calls and playing the long game.... Hit the streets as well, walk into the business talk to the employees ask who owns it be a nice guy. If you're looking for multi talk to the tenants how is the LL secret shop that mf.
Literally no one is going to pick up the phone day 1 and say YES I have been waiting for you my knight in shining armor to call me, I want to sell this thing today! It will take at min a year of monthly/quarterly calls to actually build the relationship to get there in my experience. Sure there are outliers but if you're really looking for off market deals at a moderate discount to market you need to build the relationship and track record.
Also id wager that 99% of these owners are getting these calls weekly. There are a lot of CRE brokers and many have to make like 300 calls a week, on top of all the other guys like you.
Best of luck
I hired a virtual assistant to call property owners whose properties fit my "buy box". I am focused on a smaller market, so not as many properties to call on as NYC or LA. To date, I have had about 6-7 warm prospects and have gotten far enough with one owner that I have presented a LOI (based on conversations we have had) and am doing a property walk through next week. 50/50 shot we move into PSAs if I had to guess.
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