HOW WE MAKE HUGE PROFITS FLIPPING HOUSES OFF THE RMLS!
In this article I am going to dissect one of our rehab projects that we purchased off the RMLS and managed to renovate and re-sell the for a nice six figure profit! I hear a lot of investors who claim there are no “real” deals to be had on the RMLS since everybody can see them, but to be honest I couldn’t disagree more. My business is now set up to mainly derive our deals from direct mail and online marketing towards motivated sellers, but whenever our marketing is a little slow and we are in need of a deal, the RMLS is always at our fingertips to help fill up our pipeline….but the key is knowing how to farm the RMLS for deals. I started really ramping up my business back in 2008 by purchasing REO’s when nobody was bidding on them in my market, but since then a lot more competition has come into the market and we have had to diversify our RMLS acquisition strategies. Today we definitely scour all of the REO listings and have relationships in place with REO listing agents, but we also pay special attention to probate deals that ended up being listed on RMLS, instead of having an investor like us purchase them ahead of time directly from the Estate. A lot of times the beneficiaries of any given Estate really want to try and get as much money as possible for the inherited assets, and in order to do that they will end up listing an inherited “fixer” property with a realtor. The property in this case study was a classic example of this….so without further ad-due lets jump into the case study! I found this particular deal while perusing the RMLS one morning while we were about to run short on rehab projects to keep the crew busy. We had a number of pending contracts in place, but since most of them were early probate deals there was still a lot of court paperwork to be completed before we could legally purchase the properties….so I decided we needed to find a deal fast and the best way to that was to dig around on the RMLS. I spotted this particular property a month or so back since it was in the same area as another rehab project that we had going at the time, and at this point it was really starting to rack up some serious days on market or DOM. Also from the comments in the listing and the fact that the property was vacant I concluded that it had to be a probate deal that ended...
CAN YOU FIND GREAT PROBATE DEALS ON RMLS?
Investing in probates can be one of the most profitable niches in residential real estate investing by far, but the reality is that it can also be difficult (at least initially) and time consuming. There is a lot of work that goes into locating your prospects, executing your direct mail campaigns and following up on all your leads….but there is an easier way for those of you who may not have the time or resources to market for probate real estate deals on your own. Although we do a ton (and I mean a ton) of marketing within my house buying business that is directed towards probate estates and their attorney’s, we also keep a close watch on RMLS to find & track probate listings. You may think that the only deals you can find on RMLS are Short Sales and REO’s…..but I can assure you that is not the case. While most investors are searching RMLS on a daily basis for great REO & Short Sale prospects, that leaves the door wide open for you to easily snag some great probate deals that are flying under your competitions radar. It is the case that no matter how much we market probates, no matter how solid our sales pitch and how much repore we build with a seller, sometimes greed and uneducated opinions will cause probate beneficiaries to ultimately reject our offers and list the properties with a realtor in hopes of getting a much higher price for the property. There are sometimes when listing an inherited property with a realtor is a good idea because it will most likely allow you to get more money for it….however I have seen more times than I can count beneficiaries list major fixer/outdated properties with a realtor because they and the realtor feel (at least initially) that the market will give them much more than the property is really worth (i.e full retail price). There are a few reasons why this happens, so lets go through them quickly so that you can better understand of the inner workings of a sellers mind when it comes to probate properties…..First off most sellers think that their property doesn’t need as much work as you know it does. This happens quite a bit mainly because most people just don’t know all that much about houses, construction and updating. Second they think that if the property is worth 200K fixed up and it needs 50K in work, then they should easily be able to sell it for 150K. And finally the third reason is because some Realtors actually believe the previous two items as well...
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