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In this module of the Short Term Lets and Service Accommodation course. I’m going to be discussing how to find below-market value off-market deals. Now, this is the cream of the crop. This is what everyone is chasing because there’s so much profit potential in them and they are hard to find, but they’re not impossible. And there are many areas that you can go to get directions to the vendor. There are also many marketing strategies that you can use as well. I’m going to use what I’ve experienced and how I’ve managed to find mine and I’m going to show you how you can potentially find yours. So, the first format is the low-hanging fruit. So, we all have smartphones, and we all have the ability to text our phone book. Now, for me, this is the easiest option by just simply asking somebody, “Do you know anybody that might be looking to sell their property right now?”
Very, very simple. Now, I know I’ve got about four or 5,000 people in my phone book. I’m pretty sure most people have quite a lot of people in their phone book. If you send that same text to all of your phone books. I guarantee you’ll find some below-market value deals. It really is that easy. The question is, are you prepared to do it? Because naturally, most people have people in their phone books that they don’t necessarily want to be speaking to and they maybe don’t want to test that specific text, but if you send it. It gets out there and you will get a response. Don’t worry about it… Fear holds people back. Fear stops people, from achieving their true potential. Don’t be fearful of this. Just get the message written out and send it, okay? So, that’s point number one, the next place that you can leverage below-market deals from an auction.
Okay. Now, whilst this isn’t typically direct to the vendor. I do want to mention auctions because I think they’re fantastic places and I have got a lot of my deals from auctions. Just in case and note and I’m not going to cover it in this video. I will do another video on it, but for auctions, you need to really understand how the financing works and also how quickly you need to complete it. Make sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row before you go bidding in an auction because it can end up quite messy financially if you get it wrong. However, in auctions, typically you’re going to get rundown properties. You’re going to get properties that need to be modernized and people put them in there when they’re sticking a bit on the open market. There are different types of auctions, but one thing you want to do whenever there is the end of the auction and they’re typically more likely the end of the month.
What you want to do is you want to get in touch with the auction house and you want to ask them for all the unsold, okay? All the unsold properties that you can then make offers on. And by making offers on these properties, I guarantee you’ll pick them up. Don’t go for the auctions, don’t bid in the auctions. Just find and see what happens. You can’t bid obviously on the ones that you want to bid but have your limit. If you don’t win them, find out what’s unsold and then dig in the more and see if you can get a deal done. This means picking the phone up, building the relationship with the auction house, and going to them, so that is another way that you can find really good below-market value deals.
Another way is, often when you are out and about viewing properties, I found that you could always stumble across. So, I bought a house in a location and as we were doing the refurb, I was there just checking up on it and the next-door neighbour comes out, and start talking to them. They mentioned that the house next door had actually been empty for quite a number of years. And apparently, there were pigeons flying around in it and it was an absolute mess. For me, that is music to my ears because something and trash property are below market value. So, what I did was I went and pulled the title register, which you can do online, and I found out who the owner was. I then sent the owner a letter. I also found the owner on various social media channels and sent them a couple of messages inquiring about buying their property. Lo and behold that property was empty. They were from down in London, they had a big portfolio. They’d almost forgotten about it, but they were keen to do a deal.
So, we decided to discuss and do a deal and the rest is history. So, by just being a bit intuitive, listening to what’s going on in the ground, when you’re out and about, listening to things and also having your eye out. So, if you see properties that are bordered up or in a bit of disrepair. If you see the gardens all up, then just go and pull the title register and if they are landlords, if they are not owner-occupied, then normally there will be an address on there that is different to the address of the property. And then all you got to do is use the information there. You got to become a bit of a detective, you will get a name and you’ll get the address so you can send letters.
And obviously, you can try and find the person on various social media channels, Facebook, and Instagram, so connected to the world now. Okay and if you just think, look outside the box, LinkedIn, anywhere like that. Same for LinkedIn, if you get a company name here, jump on the company’s house, dig into it a bit further, and find out where their address is. Find out who the owners of the company are, try and find them on LinkedIn, and send them a message. So, there are so many different ways that you could get in touch with these people, but it’s about having your eyes open. And it’s a bit like when we go driving, okay, once we’re buying a new car, all of a sudden, we see all the same cars on the road that we never saw before. The cars were there before.
It’s the same right now. Now you know what you’re looking for. So, the different types of properties that we’re looking for, the rundown properties. Now, when you’re out and about, driving around, viewing or just walking the street, you’ll start to identify these properties. Make a note of the address, make a note of the street and then go onto the title register and start making those inquiries and start sending those letters out. That for me, worked very, very well and we’ve acquired quite a number of properties on that method and I would encourage you to do so as well.
Another great strategy for finding below-market value properties direct to vendors is Gumtree. I mentioned this before in the previous videos, how I use this as a tool, but for me come true are very motivated sellers and believe it or not, I have actually bought property on eBay. Anybody who is advertising on these two platforms for me is motivated. Especially if on here they have them for rent and also for sale, that smells motivation, okay? And this is where great deals can be done.
Now people are motivated to get out of properties for many reasons, but typically they either want to cash in on the profit or they want to get out of the debt. And when they’re on this type of channel, nine times out of 10, they’re looking to get out of the debt part of it and they want to do it quickly for whatever reasons. They might be moving, they might be going to a different country. They might just not want to be a landlord anymore. They might have lost their job. There are so many different reasons why people become motivated and that’s where you get the below-market value deals from.
So, there’s a whole host of other places that we can look but you just got to get creative. You just got to think about, where is it that these people are tending to advertise? Okay, how can I get more in front of these people? How can I get their information? You know Amazon is the richest company in the world because it protects data. It never links the customer data to the actual suppliers of the products. So, it’s always got that intermediary platform where they need them, and they need them. So, Amazon gets to charge both sides of the coin and then obviously they win. And that’s why they protect the data. Data is everything. If we can get data on who owns these places, we can unlock the next step, which is the contact. Can we inquire about it?
If you’ve got data, your phone book, you’ve already got data, use it, unlock the data and you just never know what comes from asking the question. You’re not trying to do anything bad here. You’re just trying to further yourself. You’re just trying to help other people, anybody that is potentially wanting to sell property needs help. If you can buy that property, you have solved their problem for them. What is wrong with that? That’s all you’re trying to do here.
So, I would encourage you to do everything I’ve said in the video and also look for all these other different areas where you can collect data and then start inquiring and start pushing the boat out, getting outside your comfort zones and start making inquiries, which lead to deals. In the next module, I’m going to be showing you how we actually analyze a service accommodation deal to make sure it’s the right area and to make sure that we’re going to be spending our money wisely and we’re not going to be blowing our investment. So, don’t forget to subscribe to my Youtube channel and as always, please hit me up, give me a like or a comment. I do personally reply to all the comments.
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