How to find a good deal / off market properties in Real Estate

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here.

So one of the questions I get asked a lot is how do you find a good deal or how do you find something off-market in real estate. So I'm going to be sharing my thoughts about this. Now, I've been buying properties since 2011 and 2012, which was arguably one of the worst markets for sellers. I've also been buying properties in 2016 and 2017, which is arguably one of the best markets for sellers. So I've seen both sides of the coin, and here are my thoughts for finding the best deal.

The first thing to do is see absolutely everything on the market because you need something to compare all the homes to. You really can't get a good reference of a home's value until you see probably 20, 30, or 40 other homes in that specific area. So the first thing you need to do is see absolutely everything on the market, and that way you have something to compare the possibly good deal to. Because otherwise, if you've seen just nothing on the market, you have nothing to compare it to and you have no idea if it's a good deal.

I mean, people send me properties all the time in the middle of nowhere, and they ask me if it's a good deal. And my answer is like, I have no idea if it's a good deal because I don't know the market. You have to be in the market, and you have to see everything else that comes up to get an idea of its true value.

So after you've seen everything in the market, it's really important that you see places as soon as they come on the market. Now, I have a program on the MLS which emails me every single listing as soon as it comes on the market. So within minutes, I get emailed of every new listing, and I know exactly what comes up. It's so important when a new listing comes up that you think is a good deal, you go and you see it within 20, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes an hour. You want to be one of the first people to see this and try to lock it up as quickly as you can.

It's really important when you see something you like just go ahead and write an offer. Be the first one to write an offer, try to get in at the very beginning, and try to get them to accept it. That's the best way to get a good deal. Now, instead of using the MLS, you can also use the realtor.com app, which tends to be really good. So I like using both of those.

The next thing I like to do is focus on listings that have been on the market a while that maybe people just forgot about. Because really, after the first 30 days, a listing loses a lot of its initial appeal and attraction from being like the new hot property on the market. So after 30 days, things tend to generally cool down a lot, and a lot of people just stop even looking at it after the first 30 days.

So my recommendation is to focus on listings that have been listed for a while, where maybe they just mispriced it in the beginning. They lost out on the initial wave of people going to see it, and then they just slowly started chasing the market down, and it happens a lot. So by focusing on properties that have been listed sometimes 3 to 6 months and just haven't sold, you can pick up some really good deals with sellers that may be, at that time, very motivated to sell. So sometimes you could score a really good deal from that.

I also like focusing on listings that maybe don't have the best pictures. Sometimes the listing could be great and just have the worst iPhone quality pictures that just look terrible, and sometimes other really overpriced terrible listings have the best photography. So instead, I like to focus on square footage, lot size, and location, and that alone can usually give you a great understanding and foundation of the home's actual value to determine if you're actually getting a good deal or not.

So in addition to looking at listings on the market, it's also really important to also look at listings off the market. Now, off-market listings are a lot more difficult; they're a lot more time-intensive to find. But sometimes when you find a good deal, it makes all the time you spend worthwhile.

So these are some of my top ways to find an off-market listing. The first thing you can do is just go to the area you want to buy in, or you have a client looking in, and just go door-to-door, asking if the homeowner wants to sell. It's just finding the needle in the haystack, and at this point, it's just a numbers game. You have to go to a lot of doors; I would say probably one in three people are actually home at any given time. So you have to go to a lot of homes to find people, and then you also have to find people that are realistic about selling who will actually sell it in the first place and will sell it at a good price.

So it's just a lot about finding something that may or may not exist. So just by going out there and meeting as many people as you can, sometimes you can find someone that maybe knows of a neighbor who wants to sell, or maybe they've been considering selling. So every now and then it may actually pay off.

So the next thing you could do is send out mailers to the area you want to buy in. Every now and then, you can mail off a letter that says something like, "I'm interested in buying, or if you'd consider selling, give me a call," and every now and then, you'll find someone that responds to that, that may want to sell. So sometimes it's worth it to find someone – ooh, that sounds bad! So every now and then, it's worth it to send out mailers and try to find somebody who's willing to sell their house.

So one of the other things I do is I look back at listings that have been listed in the last 1 to 3 years but just never actually sold. And every now and then, you can find some homeowner that maybe considered selling at some point, and maybe something happened. Maybe they didn't get the price that they wanted; maybe something came up. But sometimes, every now and then, they would still consider selling. So this could be a good opportunity to identify some places that have listed because you know at the very least they were considering selling at some point.

So you can look at these homes that considered selling in the last few years, and then you can just go up to their house in person and knock on the door and just ask if they would still consider selling.

So just to recap: to find the value of anything, you need to see absolutely everything on the market so you have a reference point of the home's true value and what is a good deal and what is not a good deal. So first of all, see everything.

So the next thing to do is you need to see every listing as soon as it comes on the market. So within the first hour, you should be already seeing it. Be on it; be one of the first to submit an offer. That's probably one of the most important things you can do as soon as something comes up. The next is to focus on listings that have been listed for a while that people just may have forgotten about, or maybe they don't have good pictures, or maybe they were just a little bit overpriced. But just find out that home's true value to you, and submit a lower offer. There's absolutely no harm in that, and every now and then, sometimes a seller will go for it.

Then, to find an off-market deal, one of the best things you can do is just go door-to-door, asking if people will consider selling. You'll find the random person that says, "Yes, I will consider selling; this is my price," and every now and then, it's a good deal and it works out. It's really just a numbers game at that point, so you just have to stay consistent with it and knock on a lot of doors.

You can also send mailers out to an area that you might be interested in buying in, or might have a client interested in buying in, and then you may find somebody who would consider selling where it's a good deal.

I also really encourage people to look at homes that need remodeling because, from my experience, I would say about 50% of the buyers out there just want something that's completely done, turnkey, ready to move in. So just in the fact that you're looking for a place that needs remodeling, 50% of the buyers are gone, and that's 50% of the competition when you're trying to get a place to purchase.

So that's my recommendation: try to find something that needs work. Not only that, but you can add value in the form of remodeling it yourself. You don't need to pay someone else a profit and a premium for their work and their remodeling. If you just do it yourself, chances are all the money you spend you'll get back in equity plus some in the form of profit, because you're going to get a return on that. If you have to remodel a kitchen, do new floors, painting, landscaping—all of these things just increase the property's value. So you may as well just do it yourself, and you reap all the benefits versus paying someone else to do all those things.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really hope this video was helpful. If you haven't already, feel free to click subscribe. I'm going to be releasing a lot more real estate videos coming up, so sorry I haven't had a chance to upload lately. I've gotten so much going on, but I promise I'm going to be uploading a ton more real estate videos.

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