Three Ways to Find Ten Or More Houses A Month for your Investment Portfolio

Long gone are the days where finding great properties to purchase is a difficult feat. With the accessibility, we have to sites such as Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, and more, investors of all kinds are able to find their dream investment property with a few clicks of a mouse. Despite this accessibility, however, many people still believe that in order to find good deals, you need to look off-market. Luckily, there’s no need to look off-market to find the best investment properties in 2020. The main benefit of using MLS sites is the ease and speed at which you can find properties. In addition, searching for your own properties on these sites will give you tons of experience analyzing and finding the best deals possible. My company, MartelTurnkey, specializes in turnkey rentals, is a great example of a company that buys ten to fifteen homes a month, with a whopping 50% of those found on the MLS. The other 25% is from pocket listings from realtors and the remaining 25% from wholesalers. Therefore, there’s no reason why you aren’t able to go online and find the perfect property to invest in right away. Below is a breakdown of how each one of these three tactics work and how you can use them to your advantage. 

MLS

If you’re unfamiliar with exactly what MLS is, it stands for “Multiple Listing Service”. More specifically, it’s any site that you can virtually look for all of the homes and/or properties that are for sale in the United States. Typically, members pool their listings into a central database and make them available to the public. Therefore, sites such as Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, realtor.com, and even Craigslist all allow you to buy and sell whatever kind of property you’re looking for. Zillow, for instance, is one of the most easy-to-use and most popular platforms in real estate today. That’s because properties can be listed for sale by the owner and you can set your preferences for specific buying criteria in your desired location and/or within your desired price range. You can also set up an alert so that you’re notified as soon as a new listing is added, giving you the chance to find a potential investment before others. In addition, and as mentioned above, searching for potential properties on these sites is a great way to learn how to find the best listings and know what to look for in a property. 

Pocket Listings 

According to investopedia.com, a pocket listing is “any type of real estate listing that is retained by a listing broker or salesperson who does not make the listing available to other brokers in the office or to other MLS sites.” These listings can also be referred to as exclusive listings, as they’re not open for just anyone to view or make a bid on. 25% of our deals come from pocket listings from realtors. This can be done by networking at real estate events and establishing relationships with realtors. When you’re easy to work with, reliable, and communicative you can get to a place where realtors will actually send you those deals which is incredibly beneficial. The benefits to a pocket listing is that on the agent’s side, they’re able to keep the whole commission which is an incentive for them to present buyers with pocket listings. They also come with a guaranteed amount of privacy for both the seller and the buyer. So, once you have established those relationships, pocket listings are always a great and trusted way to find properties.

Wholesalers

A third valuable source when searching for investment properties is to work with a local wholesaler. A wholesaler will contract home with a seller and then find an interested party to buy it. The wholesaler then contacts the home with a buyer at a higher price than the seller and keeps the difference as a profit. You can find wholesalers by once again, networking with realtors or your local real estate association. You may also be able to find some by searching for “off-market investment properties” online. Wholesalers are an excellent source of deals. Many investors do not want to buy from wholesalers because of the fees they charge but if the numbers make sense to you as an investor then why worry about the wholesaling fee. Again, being easy to work with, closing when you say you’re going to close, and showing them your numbers, and explaining why the deal does or doesn’t make sense, will increase your chances of getting these.

RocketOffr is an example of a wholesaling company that is using technology such as artificial intelligence to identify, analyze, and make offers on properties.

All three of these sources are great ways to find your single investment properties. As stated above, MartelTurnkey is a company that has been consistently buying ten to fifteen houses a month. It’s entirely possible with a little bit of research and networking.