Transcript:
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy.
I’m Casey Denman, a tax sale veteran, expert, and trainer, author of the tax sale playbook, founder of the tax sale academy and your host here on the tax sale podcast.
Thanks for joining me on today’s podcast, and as always, at the conclusion of this podcast, if you’re looking to learn more about investing in tax defaulted real estate head to taxsaleacademy.com. That’s taxsaleacademy.com.
So today we’re going to be discussing one of my most valued assets. Something that has allowed me to quickly flip countless properties. We’re talking about a buyer’s list.
Early in my career, I sold properties in fairly conventional manners. I’d list them with Realtors or advertise them myself. And I’d do this every single time. The buyer was really just a commodity for me. They were a person who wanted to buy a property and had money. We exchanged the property for money and that was it. Much like your interaction with most people you’re involved with when goods are sold – it was a transaction to me, nothing more. Exchange goods for money and move on. That’s it. No personal connection, didn’t really want to talk with them in the first place, and I certainly wasn’t going to followup with them to see how they liked the property . . . because after all, I had already moved on to something else and my payday was finished.
Then one day, about two weeks after a particular buyer purchased a property from me, I get an email. I remember seeing the subject line and it was something along the lines of “About My Real Estate Purchase” or something like that. I immediately started thinking about all of the worst case scenarios. What happened? Was there an issue? Was he upset? Was it not what he expected? Did I misrepresent it somehow? Is he mad?
Well, it was actually quite the opposite. I had sold the property for a fairly good deal. I had made enough money to be satisfied, but was still able to sell it for less than market value. This gentlemen emailed me to tell me that he actually had already resold the property himself. He didn’t tell me how much he sold it for or anything like that, but it didn’t really matter. He went on to ask me if I had any other properties around that same price in that same area, which meant for less than full market value although he didn’t come out and say it. I actually had one more property that he purchased. A few weeks later, I get another email from him asking for more. I didn’t have any in that area, but he ended up purchasing a third property from me in an entirely different area.
Then it donned on me. The truth was I spent hours researching these properites before I purchased them. I knew they were quality properties. I also knew that I was selling them at discounted prices. So I didn’t have a single thing to worry about when it comes to following up. So I started to followup with my buyers and unknown to me, many of them were active investors flipping the properties I sold them – in fact, if you’re selling properties below market, you’ll become a magnet for other investors, which are actually more desireable than end users because of two words: Repeat Business. The day I discovered this is the day I created my buyer’s list. It was many years after I first started in this business. But over the years, I have nurtured and grown that list to the point where I can buy a property at an auction, send out an email or text message and have that same property essentially sold prior to even paying for it. Now, obviously I have to go through the transactional process, record deeds and all that good stuff but I can make an agreement on the price prior to leaving the auction. It’s a pretty unreal system.
So, how exactly could we accomplish this feat? Well, before we approach it from a tactical standpoint, we must thoroughly understand the point of this list. Everything we do in marketing requires what’s called an audience, which are the viewers of whatever marketing methods you use. A super bowl commercial’s audience are the folks that are watching the superbowl, for example. Now, the more targeted your audience, the smaller it will often be, but the better results you get. This is something I wrote about in Tax Sale Playbook – but a essentially an audience of fitness fanatics probably won’t be a targeted audience for a an infomercial on deep frying desserts, right?
So, the buyer’s list is designed to provide you with a targeted audience of potential buyers that you’ve interacted with over time. Then you’ll provide them good deals that they’ll have the opportunity to act on. From a marketing perspective, it does not get any better.
Ok, so back to tactics.
First off, start from day one the moment you start advertising your property. Advertise every property in a way to generate leads – like, contact us for details… and other properties. Then just ask if you can send them below market properties in the future and start logging names and email address and phone numbers, if possible. And do this for every single interaction you have with any potential buyers. And when you get another property, advertise it as much as you possibly can . . . your goal is to not only sell that property but to also generate potentially interested buyers that you can add to your list. And do this over and over and over again. I still do this to this day to continue building my buyer’s list.
Now, there’s are lots of ways to store this list but you can start off with an excel spreadsheet to keep it simple. Eventually you can use more advanced methods like software databased and email programs. But a spreadsheet is a good way to start.
You can also segment those contacts many different ways. At the very least start with “potential buyers” and “buyers” to separate who has actually purchased something previous. They can also be segmented for area, price, type, interest levels and countless other ways depending on how specific you want to get.
Then, when you have a new property that meets the expectations of your list, contact them and you’ll likely have a buyer very quickly.
Two things to mention before I wrap up today:
(1) The value of your buyer’s list is determined by the value of your offers. If you send your buyers overpriced properties, they’ll lose trust in you, you won’t sell your property and you’ll lose those buyers. If you send incredible deals, they’ll fight over your properties and they’ll check for your emails daily to make sure they don’t miss out.
And the second thing is this: Interest levels change. If someone says don’t email me again, that’s actually a good thing. Because everytime and uninterested person is removed from that list, the rest of the list become more concentrated. You should be after quality, not quantity.
And lastly, start your list from day one. I mentioned this before, but I want to mention it again. It is so so important you start building your database the moment you start advertising your first property.
Your database can become the catalyst to your business if you build it correctly. There is so much more to it obviously, but this episode should have given you a brief overview of it’s importance. Inside the tax sale academy we have workshops and trainings on building your buyer’s database as well as lots of other comprehensize and step by step trainings on how to get started as a tax sale investor. Fo rmroe information on the training we offer, head to taxsaleacademy.com. That’s tax sale academy.com.
And if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to pickup your copy of my free book, Tax Sale Playbook, which you can get at TaxSaleAcademy.com. The book itself is free, we just ask for your help covering the nominal shipping costs.
And as always guys, if you found this episode helpful it will mean so much to us if you take a few second to leave positive feedback.
Take care guys and make it a successful day.
See ya!