Marketing
to buy property deals
Online
- There are many different areas to find property
deals in this current climate and with investors willing
to work together more than ever before, relying solely
on agents and private marketing for deals is no longer
the only avenue to obtain property deals.
With
the rise in social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Blogs etc.) activity these days, there are opportunities
to be in direct contact with potential clients who
wish to sell their properties, simply by using keyword
search terms to find, communicate and build relationships
and ultimately help as many vendors we can by either
purchasing, passing onto agents to sell. The beauty
of social media is that it allows you to get your
message out to prospective clients from anywhere providing
you have a smart phone or internet access.
Offline
- Of course there is the traditional method of obtaining
deals through your estate agent. Personal we tend
to deal mainly with local agents rather than national
agents with a local presence, as this works well for
us in our location.
Relationships
with agents do take time to build, as you can imagine
they get a lot of investors walking into their offices
saying we are “CASH Buyers looking for discounted
deals from motivated sellers”, but ultimately
the agent wants to get paid, so all they really want
to know is “can you actually complete on deals
we do put your way and how quickly”. If you
can run through this process a successfully then you’ll
be placed on their “investor to call list”
as opposed to the bin list!
Clearly agents are not the only offline method of
obtaining deals. Personal contacts you meet networking
are also a great source for deals, lead sellers who
market nationally, other investors who get deals in
areas they just don’t operate in… But
to be even considered for these deals you need to
be remembered! The most common way for this to happen
is stay in touch with your contact database reminding
them of your location and the types of deals you are
doing and are of interest. This is the power of “recency”,
an investor or even agent will call you first if you
have interacted in some way for them to say “Ah
this deal in Lincoln, I’ll contact Jeff at Property
Renovations he operates there…”
Local
tradesman are a great way to get deals, they are in
and out of houses day in day out and as much as they
work on houses for a living we find they don’t
tend to buy properties to sell or even let, so once
they know you’re in the business of BTS (or
even BTL) they would much rather pass on deals knowing
they’ll be looked after via a one of fee or
be in a position to carry out works if appropriate.
The
traditional method to investors of using leaflets
can be fruitful, but this depends on your area, your
message and of course getting reliable individuals
/ companies to deliver them!
Negotiation
and Purchase
Once you get details or direct contact with a vendor
who needs to sell for whatever reason, the next task
to is come up with an amicable solution, that doesn’t
leave the vendor feeling like they’ve been hard
done by, but also leaves you feeling like you’ve
got a good deal you can add value to via refurbishment.
Letting & Estate Agents can provide ideas of what
the vendor will accept for a property, but is unlikely
to allow you direct access to negotiate even with
a long standing relationship.
Financing
Once a deal has been agreed between you and the seller
the next task is financing the deal. Now this could
be through a true CASH purchase using your own cash
or JV partner or with banks money.
With
mortgages more difficult to obtain, approaching the
bank with a well-defined business plan has been one
of our methods to finance purchases, but you need
to jump through a few hoops and LTVs don’t tend
be favourable for refurbishment deals. It’s
important to be confident of the property value.
