House flipping is back on the rise, and the recent surge has people wondering the best strategies to find deals when looking to property flip. Here are 3 of the absolute best ways to find deals in your market when looking for houses to flip.
Use the MLS
If you’re looking to invest in real estate, the number one way you can find flips in your market is on the MLS. Although using the MLS is difficult to use right now due to low inventory and a lot of competition, it still works.
In order to be successful using the MLS, you need to be faster than everybody else. This means you need to be checking it every morning, afternoon, and evening. You have to either have direct access to the MLS ( which means having an MLS ID yourself) or work with an agent who has given you direct access to the portal and the ability to get into these properties.
Maybe you have a comfort level where you’re going to make offers, sight unseen. Some owners may not like that you haven’t seen the property unless you just make it non-contingent on anything. You’re not going to give them a nonrefundable deposit which carries a lot more risk. I recently found a deal on the MLS, so this option is possible if you’re diligent with it.
Go Direct
If you want to go directly to the owner and cut out the MLS, that’s going to be your best way to get deals. This is where the hard work is going to come in. You should be sending out mailers, knocking on doors, and calling and telling lots of people you’re looking for deals. All of the hard prospecting work that comes with any type of sales machine is going to be relevant here when you’re looking and sourcing for deals. Going directly to the owner, targeting absentee homeowners, and using different sources to figure out who those absentee homeowners are are all steps you can take to cut out the MLS.
Become the Eye Buyer
This is for the licensed real estate agents and brokers out there. You want to become the eye buyer in your market. Be able to offer more solutions than anybody else to people thinking about selling their homes. Be able to tell them “Here are all of the ways that we can traditionally market your home at a traditional fee looking forward to a traditional buyer. Here’s how long it takes. And here’s how much money you would make, or we can buy your home in two weeks, cash out, and have you take your money”.
You want to be (or work with) the agent that’s able to offer them more solutions to people looking to sell their homes. A very few percent are going to take that cash-out offer because typically they’ll make less than if they were listing the property in a competitive market.
Still, there are going to be people facing pre-foreclosure, a need to move on, or inheritance. You’re looking for that needle in the haystack by offering more solutions. So if you’re an investor, work with an agent who wants to be an educator and offer more solutions.
If you’re an agent yourself and you want to get into investing, this is one of the best ways to do it now. House flipping is just going to become more competitive. In fact, in quarter two, we saw that 80,000 single-family homes were flipped, which is 5% of the market. According to Adam, a powering innovation with premium property data, less than 40,000 homes on flips were being sold in quarter 1. Here in quarter two, it’s up to over 80,000. This is the most we’ve seen since those 2005/ 2006 years. So it’s going to get more competitive.
There’s not a lot of inventory, so if you’re looking for deals, you want to watch your MLS every single day, every hour, three times a day, whatever it takes. You want to be going directly to property owners and you want to be either working with an agent or become an agent who’s going to be the eye buyer in your market.
Those are your three ways to get after flips right now. If you’re interested in a flip that we just found on the MLS, or if you want to learn more about how we found the property we’re currently flipping, leave a comment down below.