Crack Direct-to-Seller: Build Small Lists of the Houses You Want

TLDR

Start with the neighborhood, choose an audience, add useful owner details, and look for a reason that owner might want a different outcome. Build several small lists and keep the reason behind each one. Don’t stack every distress signal into one impossible search.

Table of Contents

• Finding more houses isn’t the whole job
• Right people, right message, right time
• Go deep in a neighborhood
• The four layers of a useful list
• Keep the owner groups separate
• Build several small lists
• Signals worth investigating
• Make sure your message can reach somebody
• Match the message without exposing the research
• Choose the contact method you can operate
• The best response is relief

Finding more houses isn’t the whole job

I shut down a wholesale company that was doing about a million dollars. That wasn’t because nobody was buying the deals.

It was because running a successful wholesale business and buying the right houses for myself were two different things.

We could find a lot of opportunities across a huge area. We could sell those opportunities to buyers with all kinds of different plans. But only a small share were the houses I wanted to keep or renovate myself.

If your goal is to build your own portfolio, don’t accidentally build a machine that finds everybody else’s houses.

Right people, right message, right time

Direct-to-seller marketing has three parts that have to fit together.

The right person owns a house you want and has some reason to consider selling. The right message gives that person a reason to talk to you. The right time is when that conversation can turn into something useful.

A giant list doesn’t solve all three. Neither does clever postcard copy.

Start with the people and properties. If the list is wrong, you’ll spend money getting better at reaching people whose houses you don’t want.

Go deep in a neighborhood

The old way was to cover a whole county and look for one broad signal: absentee owners, tax trouble, vacancies, whatever the list provider happened to sell.

That can fit a wholesaler who has buyers for almost anything. It doesn’t fit my goal nearly as well.

I want a neighborhood I understand. I want to know its normal house, its renovated value, and the kind of work that makes sense there. Then I want to look closely at the owners of those houses.

The neighborhood method gives the list a starting point. Use the area’s normal house size, year built, and value range to get rid of the obvious outliers. Assessed value can help as a sorting field, but it isn’t your ARV.

You still need to evaluate the actual property. This first pass keeps you from paying to mail houses you already know you wouldn’t buy.

The four layers of a useful list

These aren’t four magic fields in a particular software product. They’re four questions you need answered well enough to decide who to contact and what to say.

A second address can be a useful clue. It doesn’t prove the person is a landlord. An owner might have moved, inherited the house, or used a different mailing address for another reason. Let the record tell you what it actually knows.

Keep the owner groups separate

An owner living in the house, a landlord with a vacant rental, an heir, and a flipper with a troubled loan may all want a sale. They probably don’t want it for the same reason.

I’m not trying to reach every flipper. I’m looking for someone who bought with a hard-money loan and whose project has run long enough to suggest trouble. I still need to find out what’s actually happening.

A landlord may want to stop dealing with tenants and repairs. An heir may want to stop managing a property from another state. A flipper may need a way out of a project that’s consuming money.

Keep that difference in the message.

If you erase the audience after building the list, you’re throwing away one of the most useful things you learned. You end up sending the same vague “we buy houses” message to everybody.

Build several small lists

Here’s the mistake I want you to avoid: checking every distress box at once.

You require a house to be vacant, tax delinquent, inherited, out of state, code-violating, and in preforeclosure. Then you wonder why your search has three results.

Some groups make sense. Others are so narrow they miss most owners you could help.

Think of separate groups:

• Landlords with a vacant house: Carrying costs without rent and a decision about the next tenant or repair.

• Heirs with an unwanted property: The work of owning a house they didn’t choose to buy.

• Owners with a failed listing: They tried one route and may be open to another.

• Flippers with a hard-money loan and a project that has run long: The project or loan may be in trouble.

• Owners with tax or property problems: There may be a cost or burden they want to resolve.

These are possible reasons to talk, not facts you get to declare about a stranger.

You might find ten owners in one combination, two in another, none in a third, and twenty somewhere else. Build those small lists. Stop expecting one giant filter to find every good prospect.

Signals worth investigating

A clue tells you where to look. It doesn’t tell you the whole story.

• Deed disturbance or title-cleanup activity: An owner may be preparing to do something with the property. What changed in the title, and does it suggest a reason to talk now?

• Visible condition issues: Deferred maintenance or a project that stopped. Is the image recent? Does the house still look that way?

• Tax delinquency: An ongoing property cost the owner hasn’t resolved. How much is owed? Is it still due? What happens at a sale?

• Liens or other recorded problems: Another obligation affecting the owner or property. Whose debt is it? Is the record still current?

• Preforeclosure: A possible need to resolve a loan problem. What stage is it at? How much time is left? Do they want to talk?

• A hard-money-financed flip that’s taking too long: A project or loan that may be in trouble. Has the work stopped? What does the loan require?

• A balloon or rate change: A financing decision coming due. Read the loan terms. One data field may not tell you enough.

• Code complaints, shutoffs, or fire records: A property problem that may require work. What happened? Is it resolved? Do you still want the house?

• Permits that didn’t lead to a finished project: A plan that may have stopped. What was the permit for? What work got done?

• An expired, withdrawn, or failed listing: An owner who already considered selling. Is it still for sale? What went wrong last time?

Deed disturbance is one I pay attention to. I’ve found a large portion of my deals through people trying to clean up their title work. That tells me they may be preparing for something. It doesn’t tell me they’ve decided to sell.

Some of that research can be done through public records. Some can come from property data. Some requires looking at the house or talking to the owner.

I call this broad research idea “AI swarming.” The useful part is checking several sources for clues. The label doesn’t make an inference true, and it doesn’t mean a tool has already verified every condition on the list.

Make sure your message can reach somebody

A primary-residence list combined with a postal vacancy flag deserves a second look. If the owner no longer receives mail there, sending a postcard to the vacant house may accomplish nothing.

The property you want and the mailing address you need aren’t always the same address.

Check for a usable owner contact address. Keep the link between that owner and the property. Otherwise, you can build a very clever list that goes straight into a pile of undeliverable mail.

When several searches find the same owner or property, remove duplicate sends as appropriate. Keep the useful details: audience, modifiers, the signals that found them, and which property you’re discussing.

Match the message without exposing the research

I don’t want the postcard to say, “I saw you’re in preforeclosure,” or “I know you haven’t paid your taxes.”

That’s not how I want to start a relationship.

The research helps me decide who may benefit from a conversation. The message explains what I can actually offer: a local buyer, a sale as is, less work, a workable timeline, or a way to stop managing a property.

For a landlord, that might mean being done with the house. For an heir, it may mean not taking on a renovation from far away. You can speak to the benefit without announcing somebody’s private problem on a postcard.

Use claims you can support. If you say you’re a local buyer, be one. If you say you can buy as is, understand the property and funding well enough to do it.

Choose the contact method you can operate

You can call, text, email, send a social message, or mail something. Each method comes with work after the first contact.

I’ve used callers. One issue was that a seller could warm up to the first person and then have to warm up again when the conversation reached me.

I’ve used text, too. The delivery problems and operational friction became more than I wanted to manage. Email hasn’t been my main area. Other people may choose those channels and run them well.

My preference is direct mail because the owner can look at it, decide whether the message fits, and call me when they want to talk. That’s a different opening from interrupting somebody and trying to create interest on the spot.

The right channel is one you can run consistently and follow through on. A list and a delivery method aren’t a sales system by themselves.

The best response is relief

One of the best kinds of deals is a house that’s become a thorn in somebody’s side and a project you know how to handle.

The seller isn’t assigning the same value to owning that problem that you assign to buying it. You have different needs and abilities. That’s why an agreement can work for both people.

I’ve had a seller thank me even after seeing that we resold the house. They wanted the problem gone. We took on the work and risk. There wasn’t some need to hide the fact that I was in business to make money.

That’s the point of all this targeting. Find people whose situation fits what you can actually do. Then give them a truthful, useful reason to call.