Looking for some property sourcing strategies?
Well, I am going to share with you some of the sourcing techniques that my team at The Insight Group uses to source over a 100 million pounds worth of world class property every month!
- Estate Agents
The first sourcing strategy is estate agents; this might seem weird but after all 90% of house sales go through them but you can use estate agents to make sure you get world class discounted deals!
This strategy will make estate agents call you first when the perfect deals come in! You may have to do this 13 times with a particular estate agent, but it will cost you just £1 a week.
On a Monday, at 9am and the estate agents have just opened their door. You walk in and say ‘Hey, I’ve brought these for you’ and you hand over a bag of doughnuts! You’ve instantly caught the attention of everyone in there, but this time you just walk back out and not engage with anyone.
After this, everyone in the estate agents is just going to be thinking ‘Who is this person bring in doughnuts!’ and they are all now talking about you – after just 1 time with a £1 bag of doughnuts.
But you keep it going… A week later, the next Monday you go back in and do the same! Walk in, drop in the doughnuts, say ‘Hey, I’ve brought these for you’ and walk back out again.
So, what’s happening now? Well, you are going to be known as this strange doughnut guy or lady, but they are going to keep talking about you and discussing you with each other in the office as they have never seen anything like this before!
You do this about 4 times, so 4 weeks, each Monday with a £1 bag of doughnuts. On this 4th time they go “Why do you keep bring us these doughnuts?!” it will be driving them mad trying to understand and they really want to know who you are, what you want and why you have brought doughnuts in 4 weeks running.
You just reply saying ‘”Hi, I’m Aran I specialise in family let properties I just dropped off the doughnuts because I thought you might like them! But if you do have any properties in mind, I would be really interested. But I’ve got to go now see you later”. You keep it short but informative, don’t give them time to reply back or strike a conversation yet and leave.
On the 5th week, you have been on all their minds and topic of discussion for these 5 weeks that they will really try and stop you and tell you all about the deals you said you were interested in! Instead of you going in and asking for deals, the estate agents are literally trying to give you them because you made such an impression coming in 5 weeks in a row with doughnuts.
In them 5 deliveries of doughnuts, costing £1 a time; you have gone from someone not known to someone they want to help and give you deals because you made such an impression!
- Accidental Landlords
This second strategy is totally different to the first but it’s one I love as you can do this from home.
If you live in a town or city when landlords advertise properties to rent in the local paper or if you don’t have a local newspaper you can use Gumtree or Zoopla.
Amongst the landlords advertising, there will be some serious landlords but there will also be many accidental landlords. What I mean by this is they may have moved in with their partner, they’ve got a second property and to be honest they just want it rented. Property isn’t their skill set or what they want to spend their time on and they don’t understand investing or building a property portfolio.
These adverts are where accidental landlords first advertise, they don’t really know what they’re doing and don’t want to pay a letting agency; so, they put up an advertisement locally.
Let’s say there are 80 properties advertised in the local paper and the landlords have given their mobile numbers. So, what you are going to do is text those 80 landlords!
Instead of doing it individually you can use software to batch send the messages, it might cost about 4p a text so that only adds up to £3.20 sending a text to 80 of these landlords.
The text you will send will be ‘Would you like to sell your property fast? We will buy it guaranteed for 20% below its market value! Text back or call now.’
Now, for this strategy you do need to be thick skinned as some of them will tell you where to go and that’s me being polite. These text messages do not breach rules, the advertisements have come from a landlord, and they have publicly advertised about a property and all you are doing is contacting them about that property.
People might not reply or not send very nice replies but let’s say I did that for 13 weeks, it cost me £3.20 a time so for 13 weeks it will cost me £41.60. But, if just 1 landlord comes back to me, they say I won’t sell for 20% discount but I will set it for a 15% discount and it’s a £100,000 property; so I make £15,000 of discount on that purchase! So, I only spent £40 to get a £15,000 discount!
- House Sales Falling Through
The 3rd strategy is probably the most powerful yet the most secret!
This is the only way to contact vendors the day their property sale falls through with a lifeline to their dream house. Imagine there is a chain for 6 houses and somebody in the middle of that chain today for some reason their purchase falls through. The chain collapses, they are literally sat there with packed boxes, in love with the dream house they were moving to but for some reason their purchase falls through.
Friday is usually the day that house sales complete and move. So, Friday is usually the day that house sales fall through.
If you sent a home owner a letter on a Friday, you can reach them the day their property sale falls through and when they need your help the most.
First you need a templated letter, that is evergreen and can be sent to several different people. The letter needs to say ‘Hi, I know you’ve got your property up for sale, if it is sold today then congratulations! However, if your sale fell through today, I want to help you. Call me on this number!’
You can pay a teenager to ride on their bike around the areas you would like to purchase properties in on a Friday, look for homes with sold signs outside and post them through the letterbox.
It can cost you just £10 to ask a teenager to cycle round these houses and post letters. It’s such a small cost to be able to reach out directly to people who are desperate to sell their house after their sale has already fallen through.
So, these are just 3 of many of the most powerful sourcing strategies that my team use to find a £100 million pounds worth of world class property every month. They are all either free or low-cost strategies that you can start using now!
