Building a Buyers List

January 27, 2009 · 6 comments

Now that I have my first property under contract that I’d even consider wholesaling (buying and immediately selling to another investor for a profit), I need to start building a list of other investors in the area that I can market this and future properties to. I’m not positive I’d be able to (or want to) wholesale this deal, as it sat on the MLS for a while at the most recent asking price, and even though I think it’s a steal, it didn’t get much activity. Perhaps because it had a misspelling of its address or perhaps it was the horrible pictures, but regardless, the $29K list price didn’t seem seem to get all the other investors too excited.

That said, I want to start posting ads on some real estate websites, and start putting out signs to market this property to other investors, and it would be very nice to have a list of investors in the area that I could contact directly. The first step to accomplishing building this list was to create a web-based sign-up form so that investors could submit their info to me. Of course, to do that, I needed some sort of reasonable web presence for my business (a random web-page with a sign-up sheet isn’t going to garner much trust).

So, I quickly rebuilt my Lish Properties website from scratch…

Next, I created a web-based form that other investors could fill out and submit to me…

And lastly, I put an ad on Craigslist looking for other investors who might be interested in getting included on my mailing list…

Within about 12 hours, I had 74 people click through to my site, and 8 people sign up for my “Buyer’s List.” Apparently I need to do some optimization to get people to sign up once they get to the sign-up page, but I’m guessing a lot of people were more interested in seeing actual properties for sale than they were to get added to a mailing list. Point noted, and I’ll use that to hopefully improve my sign-up rate. Additionally, I’ll use other marketing tools to drive traffic to this sign-up page, and hopefully build a much larger list.

Tomorrow — once I actually get access to the duplex, as no-one seems to know the lockbox code — my brother and I will start putting up signs advertising the duplex deal, and if I can find a buyer in the next week or two that will allow me my desired profit, I’ll make a quick sale. If I can’t find a buyer at my asking price, I’ll likely board the place up, throw it on the MLS, stick a “For Sale” sign out front, and wait. At some point, either a buyer will come along or the market will improve and I’ll figure out another exit strategy. It may take a year or two or five, but for $22K in this town, I’m sure I’ll make a good profit on this property at some point.

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6 responses to “Building a Buyers List”

  1. Dan says:

    Not sure of your area.. but the best way to get wholesalers on your list is goto the courthouse bidding.. that’s where the old guys buy properties, and most of them don’t know any other way of getting a good deal. Just FYI

  2. Bryan says:

    Hi,

    Love the website and am learning so much from it.
    What was the ad that you used on Craigslist to help attract other investors? Any more tips that you would be willing to share about creating a buyers list?

    Bryan

  3. J Scott says:

    Bryan –

    I have to be honest — that post was SO long ago (about 3.5 years), I don’t remember what I put on Craigslist… Sorry!

  4. Bryan says:

    Based on your experiences, what kind of post would you put up or what would you recommend?

  5. J Scott says:

    Hey Bryan –

    I’d probably post something along the lines of, “Investor with too many deals looking for cash buyers…” along with a website URL to your site that has a short questionnaire…

  6. Renae B says:

    What kind of “questionnaire”, and what kind of a site would you use for this? I’m only able to use free websites (webs.com) until I build up an income.

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