Want to find motivated sellers? You’re not the only one.
For better or worse, motivated seller lists are popularized by thousands of real estate gurus and lead generation services that target new real estate investors and agents.
Unfortunately, many of those new investors and agents discover that these motivated seller lists don’t yield immediate, effortless results.
And yet motivated seller lists remain a core strategy for tens of thousands of successful and seasoned real estate professionals.
So why are experienced, data-driven real estate professionals able to consistently discover new deals and clients pursuing motivated seller strategies year-over-year?
“Professional” typically means someone who’s learned from a making lot of mistakes and survived to become good at the strategy, tactics, and execution that leads to success.
In other words, it's not just about the list, but how you use that list that produces results.
That professional approach is what we aim to cover here:
Let’s back up. Why find motivated sellers? Fundamentally there are three attractive characteristics that drive the desire to pursue motivated sellers:
Context and timing, therefore, is everything.
So, why would a seller be motivated?
There can be a lot of different reasons, however, distress is the most common. Opportunity, however, is also very common and just as valuable.
More often than not, motivated sellers have just experienced, or are currently experiencing, a life event that has created the need and urgency to sell their home. They’re looking to sell their home sooner rather than later. Here are just some of the common reasons people end up highly motivated to sell their property. Use your creativity to think of other situations.
Because there are so many reasons why a seller might be motivated, there isn’t just one way to find them.
There are two main ways to find these types of sellers, and we recommend that you do both.
Many of the life events that indicate the propensity for an owner to become motivated are not in the public record. But that doesn’t mean that they can be identified and combined with public records searches to discover, understand, and connect with them.
Let’s dive deeper into the first method, and see some use cases.
People dealing with a foreclosed property make for very motivated sellers. And using public records to find foreclosed properties is a sure bet to finding these motivated sellers.
Unfortunately, searching through public records data can be a messy, time-consuming process. But PropertyRadar makes public records more useful and actionable by making sense of that data and enriching it to make it more useful.
You can draw a map shape of your market, and then add “All foreclosures” as criteria, or choose from different statuses of foreclosures or different property prices.
You can also use “Death of joint tenant” as criteria. This is a life event that can be made even more stressful when the homeowner is trying to maintain the property in the way they did when their loved one was alive. Tread lightly and with tact. The aim is to help out a homeowner who might be able to live a better life if they sell their current home.
Free and clear homeowners are a popular target for finding opportunistic motivated sellers. Not all of them will be interested in selling and making all of that equity liquid, but some will. You just don't know when. They might be experiencing other personal motivations that you don’t know about, such as the desire for a lifestyle change. Persistent and consistent outreach is vital to pursue free and clear owners.
Search for homeowners with 100% equity in your area. Refine that with other criteria such as property characteristics, owner demographics, length of ownership, and proximity to other hyperlocal markets changes.
Finding absentee owners can often make for perfect motivated sellers list. Why? They could be tired of maintaining a rental, or they might have a vacation property that they can no longer afford. Or they're no longer getting the value out of that vacation property, typically after their children have grown and left the nest.
You can search for absentee owners by first selecting your location and then adding that criteria when building a list inside of PropertyRadar.
Now let’s take a look at some ways to utilize the second method by combining your market expertise and personal network with public records.
A friend or family member might tell you that someone they know is getting a divorce. Or you might see a post on Facebook in your newsfeed from an acquaintance, or maybe in a local Facebook group.
When you know of someone who is getting a divorce soon, you can then qualify that lead by looking up the owner name or address of the property that they own, and see if they meet your criteria for an ideal client or deal.
Just like with our divorce example, you might hear from your personal network of someone who is planning to move. Once you hear of an opportunity in person or on social media, you can then vet that lead by looking up their property to determine if it’s a fit for your business. Age and demographics in context to local market changes are very common. Even the weather!
There could be things going on with some of the big employers in your area. Is an employer building a new complex? Is a company closing down? Have there been mass layoffs? With tactful and empathetic messaging, you can reach out to potential motivated sellers.
Here are some examples:
Once you’ve found the right people, you can look them up inside of PropertyRadar to see if they’re homeowners. And if they are, you can learn more about their property and see if they would be a fit for a potential listing or deal.
If you’re in a market whose property values have rapidly increased in the past five years, then there are likely hundreds of sellers in your area who might be motivated to take advantage of the upsurge.
Use your knowledge of the market to target neighborhoods with the most demand from new buyers. Inside of PropertyRadar, you can layer on additional criteria, such as age and equity percentage, to try and find empty nesters or others more likely to see.
For example, here’s a list of homeowners with 30% equity or higher who are 45 years old or more. With PropertyRadar, you can layer on criteria into one list, and create separate lists.
Once you’ve discovered lists of motivated sellers, how do you contact them?
Powered by public records, PropertyRadar has owner contact information for each property owner you can search.
This information is automatically stored in your lists. You can export that information, or integrate it with your CRM, power dialer, or direct mail provider using our Zapier integration.
For investors and realtors who want to contact motivated sellers, we recommend these channels:
PropertyRadar has the contact information you need to use those channels for the prospects on your list.
You’ll have the best results if you segment your lists strategically. For example, the way you reach out to the absentee owner of a likely vacation home is different than how you would communicate with someone whose property is likely to be a rental.
And for each dynamic mailing list you create, you can set up triggers so that when a new lead matches the criteria of a list, a direct mail postcard is automatically sent before your competition even knows the opportunity exists. That's winning by being proactive.
You can also win by thinking of things that others aren’t doing, more often than not that involves empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you respond to you? Because so many “motivations” are the result of distress, those who take the most care in helping come out on top.
For example, when there’s a death of a joint tenant, many people think to contact the surviving spouse, but few would think to research and contact the children, who are often the better advocates and decision-makers in this difficult time. Again, if the role were reversed, what would you respond to?
Newbies aren’t consistent. They hit one large list with a hail mary one-time outreach with poor messaging, no empathy, and expect leads to rain from the sky. When they get no results, they give up.
Professionals know better. Frequency and recency of outreach trumps list size every time.
It’s always better to make multiple impressions to connect over time than just one pass.
When you contact someone the first time, they might not be motivated at that moment. But circumstances change, and timing is everything.
More importantly: They’re not just working one list, but multiple lists and refining their messaging over time.
Some lists are worth contacting weekly, some maybe 2-3 times a year.
Ultimately, developing your brand and reputation over time, and across channels, is what separates the pros from the beginners.