THE MOTIVATED SELLER

BIBLE

The Little Niches That Pay

The Biggest Profits

by

Chris Richter

Copyright 2013 Chris Richter,

All Rights Reserved

Published in eBook Format by

ebookit.com

http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN -

You have been given a free copy for your computer or tablet and are welcome

to print out a copy by downloading in PDF form from www.findmotivatedsellersnow.com.

Printing Out more than one copy or redistributing will get you a court date and a fine with

your name on it, plus you will go to hell.

It is far more simple to just not do it. Enough said.

Enjoy.

Published by:

FindMotivatedSellersNow.com

1752 NW Market St. 520

Seattle, WA 98107

Website: www.findmotivatedsellersnow.com

Email: support@findmotivatedsellers.com

Table Of Contents

Introduction

A Note on Information

Why Motivated Sellers Only

Who Am I

The Motivation Trinity

A C T

Foreclosure

Vacant Homes

Equity

Other Lead Sources

Introduction

This book was not written for the brand new investor and will not tell you how to quit your job

and get rich.

We will not be discussing:

Craigslist

Bandit Signs

Networks

Business Cards

Driving for Dollars

Although the following list is useful, this book was written to give you the most fundamental

pieces of the puzzle with as little “soft filler” as possible.

There are plenty of other places for that, and, they are useful tactics if used right. That said, in

my 7 years as a successful full time wholesaler it has been my experience that the following

niche lists are what “Real” investors use to produce deals for their business in a systematic way

year after year.

If you are looking to figure out how to get rich in twenty minutes a day online without ever

having to leave your basement, feel free to stop reading now. I do sell a course on how to breed

Unicorns and sell them to Leprechaun’s over at www.UnicornProfitMachine.com. Maybe that

would interest you.

I’m just kidding, kinda.

Doing well in wholesale takes dedication, education, and above all an unrelenting commitment

to success. It isn’t easy, but, it is pretty simple. Frankly, it does take far less time and produce

far more money than any job I have ever been qualified to work.

That said, if you pursue the leads in this book systematically and consistently over time, then you

will become very wealthy over time.

Make this commitment to yourself today, RIGHT NOW:

“I will not give up no matter what.”

A Note On Information

Today’s environment is different than it ever has been, the gap between the rich and the poor is

growing it continues to grow faster every day.

From Walmart to Wall Street, the world today is becoming more and information and highly

specific customer targeting. Sales and marketing today is as much about data science as

anything else. The information is what controls the marketing.

Real Estate is no different. Of course, the message and service need to be good. That said, the

message and service are the easy part. Having the right targets, that is the game….

At Find Motivated Sellers Now, we mine, aggregate, track, and analyze single family

transactions weekly in almost every city, state, and county across the county.

It has proven powerful for us, hopefully it will for you as well. In the next hour of reading, you

will be given the exact lists, tactics, and secret niches that have been critical tools in building

many great wholesale business’s, many of which you have probably never heard of and never

will.

If you sacrifice one night of TV, could it

change the course of your life?

The average American spends two and half hours a day watching television. Let’s be honest, that

is really pretty disturbing.

It may seem remarkable that if tonight, instead of spending two and half hours watching

someone else’s life from the sofa, you set just one night aside to explore, to learn, and to take a

small step toward changing your life forever.

By making the decision now to invest a couple of hours tonight, you will have enough time to

gain an understanding of the some simple truths and very basic actions that when executed will

allow you to achieve greater success than you had ever imagined.

Most of the world lives their life like zombies, like

the walking dead. The time is now for you to wake

up and begin to live out loud.

My goal in writing this is to “teach you to fish”, to

help you to do the basics right. Success in real estate isn’t about being smart, smooth, or well

born. It really comes down to actually taking some basic action and then hanging in long enough

to see success. This text will provide you with an education in the most fundamental sources of

leads that a large number of very successful real estate investors have leveraged over the years to

build their companies into vehicles that allow them to live the amazing lives doing what they

want, when they want.

I have noticed over the year’s one element that separates those that live lives of quite surrender

and those that transcend their surroundings.

Those that grow, those that lead, those that achieve

personal and financial success are willing to this

one simple thing.

They are willing to willing to T – R – Y.

Action expresses priorities. Let that marinate,

it’s the truth. If you don’t like your situation, but

you keep doing the same thing and don’t

T-R-Y, well… you suck!

“ If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you have always got.”

Those whose lives are driven by fear, those who are terrified to fail, and those that live the same

day over and over, like the Ground Hog Day are imprisoned by fear. They will never reach their

potential here on the planet earth.

The saddest part of that is that all of us lose what that one may have contributed. This

information can change your life, but, you are responsible for putting it to use.

Who am I?

I thought it might be beneficial to our reader to explain who I am and why I have decided to

share my experience, education, and my hope for you.

My name is Chris Richter, I have been investing in real estate for the last ten years and have been

a full time Wholesaler for the last 7 years in Seattle and the surrounding areas. My favorite color

is blue, I like long walks on the beach, and puppies… I kid.. I kid…

My story is my own, and, it is my belief and great hope that you go out there and create your

own path whatever that may be. The information contained has been applied in one way or

another by almost every long term real estate investor I have ever encountered, so, it is important

to understand that regardless of who you are or where you are from, this can work for you as

well.

I won’t waste our reader’s time with my dry and dusty autobiography, but, I will summarize to

help provide insight that might be of value.

First, I was born. No manger or anything, I sprang to life at St. Joe’s on Hill Top in Tacoma WA.

Growing up, we were not rich. Since a young age, I had a strong desire to make money.

As a child I would cut branches of my grandparents yard sell “Christmas Swags” to anyone in

the neighborhood who dared to answer my knock, maintained 2 paper routes, and cleaned tables

as a bus boy once I was of age.

By the time I was 15, I had saved enough money to buy myself an old butt rock Camaro at the

drug seizure auctions.

As a deeper peek into my personality, like many

entrepreneurs, I rarely asked for permission

so when it came time to get my license, I simply

drove myself there in the car I had bought

selling newspapers.

I was pretty proud of it, and, since I spent at least two periods a day in auto shop, I had time to

work on it.

Fast forward a few years. Somehow, I managed to get into college, don’t ask me how because I

don’t think anyone in high school would have considered me very academic. Turned out, when

no one was telling me to do my homework I actually liked doing it.

I’m weird like that.

Long story short, I graduated with honors with a B.S. in Physics and was hired full time during

my senior year at a start up doing optical engineering. The company was a start up with great

intellectual property, but, not a lot of money. So they gave me stock options and enough

money to buy rice and eggs.

I was working as an engineer and collaborating with scientists as NASA, the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory, and the Christopher Reeves foundation.

It was really great exposure, and I loved

the people I worked with. The problem

was, you can’t eat a diploma or stock

options. And, although being poor is

nothing to be ashamed of, it is really not nearly as cool as being rich. At all….

We worked on grants that often ran out, and, at the end of month I usually had less than 30

dollars in my account.

I knew I wanted to be in real estate, I saw the opportunity and I knew I could do it if I had the

right tools. So, I quit my job, and took a position at a big corporation in outside sales to save

some money and start my business.

Within less than a year, my territory was performing in the top 5% in the nation and I was saving

and reading every book on the Barnes and Nobel shelf about real estate.

After 14 months of saving, I felt the time was near.

I had heard through a friend of a guy in Charleston who was flipping houses, playing volleyball,

and driving around in a new Mercedes while putting in considerably less hours than me.

I thought, are you kidding me? Is this for real?

I bought a plane ticket, met him, verified it, and made the decision.

I got home, bought my first big ticket real estate course, closed the door, unplugged the phone,

and shut off the outside world for 4 days.

Then, I did exactly what

it told me to do.

Within 24 months I was consistently bringing in over $30,000 a month and working very little.

I thought I was pretty smart and that this was the result of my own prowess. I had a bunch of

rentals, a new BMW, a cool condo in the hippest part of the city.

Dude, I knew this was because of how smart I was, and charming as well. This was proof.

That was in early 2007…

Then my little world fell apart

one bank after another.

In the summer of 2008, I had lost everything I had built up. I was making daily lists of things I

was grateful for to keep my spirits up and my face was so sore I could only sleep on my left side

because of two overdue root canals I couldn’t afford without a loan from my family. This was a

low point.

I considered giving up. I could take a job in sales, pay my bills, and punch a clock. After a

couple of interviews, I was offered a position selling medical supplies and also a position back at

my old company with a raise.

I was sick over it, I felt like a failure. So, despite my massive fears, I turned it down.

Despite being broke, my business falling apart and having no plan, I actually felt incredibly

empowered and deeply content with my decision.

Now I could focus on finding a way to grow with what I knew and ensure this didn’t ever happen

to me again regardless of what the economy is doing.

Now, I tell about the next completely life changing five years in a separate place, but, for now

let’s skip forward a bit so we can get into the juicy parts.

Captain’s Log, Stardate Nov, something, 2011

I’m in my office eating a sandwich from across the street and browsing leisurely through some

photos of run down homes in southwest Seattle. I hear a young man outside my door cold

calling everyone in his phone to tell them, he was curious how they were after such a long time,

and to let them know that he is now real estate agent and that if they wanted to buy or sell

property he could help.

I walked outside, and casually introduced myself. I had never shared the secrets I had picked up

over the previous five years with anyone, and I was curious how it might work for someone who

was brand new, had a great attitude, and knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about real estate or

sales. This young man’s name is Cory Wilcox.

Over the next 8 months, Cory made roughly $130,000 with 3 week long vacations and never

putting in more than 30 hours in a given week.

It has taken me over $250,000 in education and marketing as well as great deal of challenge in

my personal life to distill these simple little niches contained in this text.

This, my friends, is a set of X Ray Glasses that will help you find motivation in your market

where ever you may be. Enjoy.

Why Motivation Is Key

As my mentor always says, our time on this planet is limited. It is critical to move with intention

throughout your day maximize the hours you have here on the planet earth. The average human

lifespan 75 years.

That translates into approximately 28,000 days. I’m 35 years old. That means, I have about

14,600 hours left to live.

If you have never Googled “4000 Saturdays”, you should.

The reality is that I’m here today and could be gone tomorrow so I better make today count.

What that means in my career, is that I don’t have time have time to talk to every person that

calls me about how great the tree in their front yard looks in the spring time.

I’m not a callus person, but, I’ll tell ya “I don’t care…at all”. I look at every seller call like this;

I only spend time with people that matter so I

can spend time with people that matter.

Now, I’m not saying every caller doesn’t matter to someone. Most people have mothers.

What, I’m saying is that I don’t look anything like their mother ( I hope) so unless you are stupid

motivated, I’d rather spend time with my family at home or with someone who will sell me a

house cheap so I can go to Disney Land. Or South America. Or Figi.

Every single one of us has forty hours in a week. Who I choose to talk to during those minutes

of the day determines how much I take home to my family and how many minutes I get to spend

with them, make it count.

I try to make every minute I’m at work to be as productive as it can possibly be. I don’t text all

day, I don’t go on facebook, and I sure as heck don’t try to sell my service to people who don’t

qualify.

If you call me and you are someone who is incredibly motivated, and you are qualified.., well,

I’m getting off the phone as fast as possible so I can use those minutes to speak to someone who

is.

If you have never seen the movie “The Pursuit of Happiness”, you need to watch it and absorb

that mentality.

By having the discipline to only working with highly motivated sellers, I am able to grow my

business, improve my knowledge and skill set, and build an incredible lifestyle that has allowed

me design my own days for many years now.

It isn’t easy, and it takes a concerted discipline to not go chasing every “opportunity” that comes

in the door. But by practicing that discipline and applying focus to your core strategy, your

business will grow and your life will flourish.

A Quick Note on Motivation

When we as investors say we are looking for motivated sellers, it is a COMPLETELY

different definition than when a traditional realtor or homeowner says motivation. Often,

a seller will say “we are pretty motivated. We were asking $150,000 but if you could do

something soon we might entertain coming down as low as $135,000.” My response to

that would be a polite version of “good luck”. When we say “motivation”, we mean

“absolutely need money very soon and will sacrifice massive value in exchange for

speed.” I am looking for a seller that tells me their place is worth $150,000 fixed up and

doesn’t flinch or hang up on me when I tell them I couldn’t pay more than $50,000 or

$60,000. This is IGM or Investor Grade Motivation.

The Motivation Trinity

There are many ways to get deals out there, and we will cover some of the best ways later in this

text. For anyone who is new, any investor who is struggling to get deals, or any investor who is

having success but working 60 hours a week (by the way… this isn’t success) I am going to

suggest you market to what I will call the Golden Trinity of Motivated Sellers and never stop.

These three sources of leads, which we will discuss in the following pages

are in the quiver of almost every successful investor.

Like I said, there are many other ways to get deals, but these three sources, once refined provide

an extremely powerful foundation for an investment business.

They are considered key to building a business because they pass the ACT test.

That means that they are:

This is a critical test for any marketing, as I learned the hard way.

I can tell you first hand that sitting at Cup Cake Royal on Market Street drinking coffee for 5

hours a day while reading code violations one by one and then typing in the addresses myself

doesn’t meet a single one of these criteria.

Me pushing a button to send out mailing to an auto generated list does.

So let’s take a closer look at our Trinity.

Foreclosure

In the beginning…there was foreclosure. When I say foreclosure, in this case I mean mortgage

foreclosure. Now, foreclosure certainly isn’t a “secret method” to finding deals but it is a

cornerstone or motivation and must not be discarded because of it’s high profile.

There is a reason everyone and their grandmother knows about foreclosure.

The market has changed and the methods have changed to get the most out of this deep well, but,

my own grandfather used to go after these, and, people will still be going after them as long as

banks expect to have their loans paid back.

Before diving into the how’s and why’s, let’s take one second to point out a critical piece of this

puzzle. Before getting started, every investor needs invest a little time to study the local

foreclosure laws and regulations in their state as well as the contractual provisions to keep

yourself out of trouble and in the black.

In many states, owners in foreclosure have certain rights and it is important that you make

yourself aware of any rules and regulations in advance so that you can grow your business with

confidence and avoid any expensive lessons that could have been easily avoided.

In today’s market, many homes are upside down and the banks aren’t even capable of taking

back all the properties in default. There is huge opportunity for the investor who steps up to take

advantage of this crisis.

Although many of the tactics and strategies are outside the scope of this book, I can tell you that

I have gotten more than my share of large checks from foreclosure deals and have close personal

friends that made themselves very wealthy in a very short amount of time by living, breathing,

and eating the foreclosure niche.

Foreclosure has been and always will be the poster child for the motivated seller and any real

estate investor who has been around for a season or two has leveraged this list in one way or

another.

Why is foreclosure the brightest motivation flag? Simple. These people are on a timeline, and

when it comes to motivation, that is the most fundamental element that we need from any seller.

They are on a timeline where are forced to sell, more often than not at a discount. As an

investor, anytime we answer that phone, when we qualify that suspect on the other end of the

line and turn them into a prospect, it comes down to one single question:

“Do they want to sell, or, do they NEED to sell.”

Most people won’t actually come out and say they need to sell of course. But, when they are in

foreclosure, they don’t have to say anything.

People in Foreclosure NEED to sell. Heck, someone drove to their house and taped a

piece of paper to their front door alerting the whole world they need to sell. No explanation

needed. It's going to be sold one way or another. The only question is who's going to get the

deal, if it is a deal.

Another reason foreclosure is such a critical element, if it isn’t already obvious, is that is it

simple to automate and time your mailings.

You know when the stopwatch started and you can see when it is turned off. It really doesn’t

come any more straight forward. All in all, there's huge opportunity in that for people that are

willing to take action. These people have the one key element that allows us as investors to have

success, motivation.

With that fundamental piece, there are all kinds of things that we can do if we're creative and

we're willing to work hard. This technique has worked forever. It's modified over the years, but it

has worked and it always will work.

Showing up at auction is more of a last ditch effort, at least here in Seattle. Because the hedge

funds are coming in today, and they're deciding to buy at auction, it's taken away a lot of

opportunity, at the auction, for the independent investor.

We have to go out there, and approach it from the front, be proactive about it, and get them under

contract, and get them taken care of, before they ever get to the auction. By doing this, we can

seize the huge opportunity, the huge volume, and ensure that, one way or another, we're not

missing out on this opportunity.

Tax Foreclosure

Looking at tax foreclosure, first of all, it's not as easy to find the information. When you do find

it, what you will find is that a lot of the properties in tax foreclosure are not worth your time at

all. Many of them are big pieces of land that are useless, or they're pieces of land that have no

access, or they're on a slope, or maybe it's a gas station that was buried and so you can never use

it for environmental reasons.

There are plenty of things that show up when the tax auction time rolls around that just don't

present real opportunities.

That said, if what you were to do was to go and look at the tax delinquencies, people that are not

making their tax payments, you always have to ask yourself

“Why aren't these people making payments on their taxes?”

Why aren't these people keeping up to date? Why would they risk allowing their house to go into

foreclosure? Why would somebody do that? Maybe there's a crisis. Maybe there's an opportunity

for us to step in and help out, and make a buck while we're at it.

There's always the question of why? When I'm looking for motivation in anything -- which is all

we care about, motivation, deep, deep, deep, motivation -- when we're looking at it, the question

is why?

Why is this showing up? Somebody who has always paid their taxes and one year they've

stopped, that's something that I would be very interested in. That might have some real potential.

With the tax foreclosure, it's not about waiting for the auction, because there's very rarely an

opportunity at auction, unless you want to get caught up in a bidding war. But, the opportunity is

obvious before it ever gets there. Very few people actively go out and take advantage of the

opportunity.

Vacant I don’t think I’ve ever gone through an investment course or listened to any real estate guru’s

material without the mention of Vacant Property. There is good reason for this.

In the past seven years, more than half of the properties that I have picked up at significant

discount were vacant properties.

Think about it, if someone owns a home and doesn’t have anybody living there it tends to get run

down, it costs money but produces none, and often times it is a huge liability because squatters

move in and set up a motorcycle club for the local chapter of the Bad Boy Bikers Club.

Back in 2010, I actually bought and flipped place where squatters had moved in and turned the

home into a combo chemistry lab and brothel. Police had shot all the windows out, tossed in the

tear gas, and raided the place. Keep in mind, this wasn’t a horrible area, this house just happened

to be the one the neighbors cringed when they drove by. When I found it, it was boarded up and

overgrown. I found the owner living on his mom’s couch, struck a deal, and flipped it for a

$25,000 profit in less than ten days.

The issue had always been, finding the vacant homes, then doing the research to find the owner.

For years, I drove for dollars in areas where I thought I could find deals.

It worked, I always found deals and making a six figure income doing this is very realistic for a

good salesperson. That said, driving around and finding ugly homes myself, then doing the

property research myself, finding the seller myself, getting the contract, then trying to find a

seller at the last minute is absolutely not a business.

It is a full time job with an unpredictable income that requires long

hours of work every day to succeed.

I tried everything to create a system to locate vacant homes without having to drive around for

hours aimlessly everyday hoping to find a good looking vacant home that in a best case scenario

will provide me with the opportunity to do hours of research so that I might have the opportunity

to make a sales call.

Methods I Used:

1) Driving homes with equity and tax values of structure less than 50% of total

2) Driving neighborhoods that had strong investment potential looks for boarded up

homes

3) Spending thousands of dollars mailing letters to “fixer” homes and seeing which

mail was returned as Vacant. (this is wildly expensive and you never get all the

letters back even if the home is vacant)

4) Spending thousands of dollars mailing postcards to “fixer” homes and seeing which

mail was returned as Vacant. (this is wildly expensive and you never get all the

letters back even if the home is vacant)

5) Walking up to garbage men on the street while they were working and offering to

pay them to provide me a list of the vacant homes on their route

6) Walking up to mail men on the street while they were working and offering to pay

them to provide me a list of the vacant homes on their route

7) Trying to purchase data from the utility companies (…. Uh… no sir.. )

After 3 long years of constant searching, I found a way to not only gather this data, but to find

the owner and the owners contact info.

If you are worried that I might not share this with you, feel free to wipe your brow and exhale

any anxiety that may have been building up. I have personally spent tens of thousands of dollars

and years of my life digging, researching, and producing exceedingly large profits from this one

niche. I am now offering it to you in the hopes that it might set you free and be the one piece of

the puzzle that rockets you into a successful career in real estate.

High Equity

Let’s talk about marketing to high equity owners. The data is easy to get, there are large number

of targets, and they are qualified right? Well, maybe… Let’s dig a little deeper.

I have a friend that is a retired banker. He isn’t poor and not too motivated to anything other

than argue about whether tea is better than coffee on a Tuesday afternoon.

He lives in an older home that has been paid off for more than ten years, it is in the normal price

range for where he lives, and he receives his mail at a post house down the street. Without any

thought, you might place him on your list because he has tons of equity, no loan for over ten

years, and a reasonable price point.

Now, if you didn’t know any better, you might send him 4 mailings spend a couple of dollars

over a few weeks to have him place your mail directly in the trash.

Just down the street, there is a rundown home, no loan in ten years, normal pricing, and the

owner is not in a care facility and the family would love to sell the home quickly for cash

without having to do repairs. If they were to receive a letter from you, you would certainly have

an opportunity to present an offer at the very least.

You see where I’m going with this. The two homes below look the same if all you consider is

equity and address. Whether or not you apply better filters can make the difference between

your phone blowing up with interested and qualified sellers and rapid opportunity or a silent

telephone and a huge pit in your stomach as you look at your mailing bill.

Something that costs new investors massive amounts of time and money is not recognizing that

equity and location are simply a prerequisite. For instance, if you were to pull a list of homes

with high equity in following counties, these are the numbers you would see;

San Diego County 271,844

King County 237,000

Los Angeles 679,236

Hillsborough 118,434

Sure, these are large counties and you could always narrow by zip code to get you count down to

something manageable. But, by doing that, you reducing the number of qualified leads. So

instead of having 50 good leads out of 100 you have 3 or 4…maybe!

Real estate is a numbers game. Having 50 out of 100 leads a month be good vs 3 out of 100 is

not just a matter of making more money, it is a matter of survival.

I have spent more nights than I can count up until the early morning digging through excel sheets

with every single metric available searching for insights.

Over the years, I’ve paid developers to create data mining tools and some basic pattern

recognition software to try to save a buck and have better information than the next guy. It has

paid off exponentially in the amount of deals I get for every dollar I spend.

Additionally, it is far easier to new wholesalers to bring in deals by giving them access to

information that they can’t find anywhere else.

With the help of my mentor, we have refined the equity list to its absolute purest form that

allows every stamp that hits the mail to guarantee the highest return possible. Again, we are

offering it to our users in the hopes that it might set you free and be the one piece of the puzzle

that rockets you into a successful career in real estate.

Code Violation

Ok, this is my personal favorite… I always joke that if I can smell the house as I’m walking

down the street, I want the deal.

The largest deals that I have done over the years have almost always come from this source. It's

not something that comes in huge volume, so it isn’t something to base a business around. It

isn’t predictable and can’t really be done in volume in any efficient way that I could think come

up with in the area that I live.

Although this niche isn’t the bread and butter, most of the trophy deals on my shelf had this little

slip of paper pinned to their chest at one time.

So what are code violations? A code

violation is a public notice that's filed with

the city or the county that states that a

particular property is in violation of a city or

county code. Sometimes, they are posted

because some rich guy on the lake built a

dock without getting a permit. We don’t care about him.

What we like to see is a code violation that says that the house has too many broken down cars

on the lawn, it is abandoned, the yard has become a jungle and the neighbors have complained,

or that the home is outright haunted and the owner is being fined.

One of my favorites of all time was a code violation property I found about a mile and a half

from my own home at the time.

Most of the properties on the street were $450,000 - $500,000. I saw a picture on line, read the

document, hopped in my car and drove to the place immediately. I parked across the street, and

looked on in awe….

The place was a “skinny” that was leaning to the side like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and both

the roof and the second floor had given way and fallen into the garage leaving a shell of a

structure…. A single tear rolled down my left cheek, I was in love (ok, that is an exaggeration

but not much.)

After quite a bit of hunting, I found the owner hidden in a mobile home park in the north part of

the city, made an offer of $100, 000 which he gladly accepted and assigned it 3 days later for

$118,000.

It wasn’t the fattest assignment of all time, but, you should have seen this place. It made my top

ten list because I think if I had a couple other guys we could have pushed it over.

Frankly, there is nothing I would rather see than a house with boards on the window and graffiti

on the front. Maybe there are some broken down cars out front, maybe the windows are broken.

I am a fiend for nasty properties, no way around it.

If it’s a place where no one lives and it's rotten and it's just ready for an investor to step in and

take over.

The short and skinny of it is this. When I'm driving down the street, I'm the guy that if I see a

lawn that is up to the windows, a roof that has fallen through, a chimney that's fallen over, or

drapes that look like they smoke cigarettes, I'm going to pump the brake and back her on up. It

screams opportunity.

Divorce

This source that is underrated, and is continuous, and unfortunately will probably go on forever,

as sad as it may seem, is divorce. It’s a fact. Roughly half of all marriages end in divorce. As sad

as it often is for all the people involved, it is a fertile source of leads for us as investors because

quite often these people own property and end up selling during the process.

Typically, when it is going to be sold, these are not people that want to hang out and spend the

rest of their lives together talking about it, thinking about it, working it out. More often than not,

they want to slap hands, part ways, and call it good.

This represents a huge opportunity for us because it means that they have a high motivation as

well as a timeline.

What’s more, is that barring miraculous intervention, homeowners will probably continue to file

for divorce and sell their homes at a fairly consistent rate for quite some time. It works in every

city, state, and county in the country.

Eviction

So let’s not forget about eviction. I don't know how many of you guys are landlords, and I don't

know how many of you guys have ever owned a rental property. I'm assuming almost everyone

has rented at some point or another in their lives.

As I write this today, I’m dealing with the tenant in Tacoma who decided to walk out on her

lease, leave me with a house that doesn’t look like it did when she moved in, and guess who gets

to pay the bill?

Similar to the code violations, this isn’t something you build a business around. The numbers are

small, which is good and bad. It's good because it's cheap. It's bad because you can't base your

business around this one small niche. But it is something where, if you're proactively working it,

you're going to get deals and you're not going to have to spend a lot to get them.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that you call every single owner who has evicted a tenant. It is

important to note that large apartment buildings that are owned by professional landlords or big

corporations aren’t going to feel the same emotional and financial motivation that an individual

with one or two rentals would.

I'm looking for a mom and pop or a person that owns a couple of single family rentals and either

did not understand what owning rental property really takes.

I remember the first eviction that I ever had to do. Beyond paying for the lawyer, paying for the

new property manager, changing all the locks, waiting for the person to get out, paying my

mortgage while they were not paying rent, then flying down because I owned a property out of

state. I own this property out of state.

Flying down to San Jose to go inside the house and to take a look around and realize that it was

going to cost me 10 grand to get back where I started. I had made about seven grand in rent.

If you don't think that I wanted to get rid of that property, you're confused. I would have done

anything to have somebody come in and offer me what I had paid for that property just to wash

my hands and move down the road.

Often, these are people that went in there, they read somewhere in the paper or they saw

something on TV saying that owning rental properties was the way to go, maybe their accountant

told them they should pick up some rentals to lower their taxes. Wherever the reason, these are

people that are engineers, teachers, contractors, mechanics, ect. What they are not is an

experienced land lord.

Owning rental properties is a great way to accumulate wealth -- it is -- if you are properly trained

and understand the true costs. But there are a lot of people out there that are not properly trained.

So how do I find them? When a land owner wants to evict a tenant, he/she files an “unlawful

detainer” with the superior court. Now I’m not a lawyer and I don’t work for the court system so

it may vary depending upon your county.

Where I live, it is as simple as walking into the courthouse, asking to view the list of unlawful

detainers, and reading the documents to see who will be waiting for me to call up and make an

offer to take over their headache.

Frankly, not that many work this niche because it's something that in many places, you have to

go down the county. I’d suggest hiring someone after you have done it a time or two, it will

certainly pay for itself in short order.

Utility Lien

This is as close as most real estate investors will ever come to being a psychic. When I see a

sewer or water lien, this is what crosses my mind.

“ Where there is smoke, there is fire.”

It didn’t take too many years of wholesaling to notice that a disproportionate amount of the

properties I closed out had utility liens.

Now, occasionally a lien might just be someone forgetting to pay a bill, or a rental property

between tenants. But, in my experience if someone is not paying to have the toilet flush and the

sink come on it is a pretty strong indicator that there are deeper issues that are early warning

signs of real motivation.

In what scenario would someone not care if their water turned on? In what scenario can you

imagine or could you envision that someone would not care if their toilet were flushing? That is

an enormous opportunity.

Often, these liens are a precursor to foreclosure. They also often show up on probate, eviction,

and short sales. These liens are like clouds on the horizon before the storm and for the investor,

they provide a head start.

When the property is a rental, it isn’t uncommon that the landlord is dealing with a tenant that's

vacated, probably trashed the property, and stuck their loving landlord with a sizable tab.

If that's not an opportunity, I don't know what is. Unless he is a veteran landlord, which most

people do not have the heart to do, he's going to have a powerful motivation to sell and be

thrilled to look at your offer.

If by chance the owner lives there, you really have to wonder. Why would someone not pay to

flush the toilet? Has the house been abandoned? Is the owner still living? Have they passed

away? What is the reason?

One way or another, it is a huge, huge red flag for motivation when you see those liens pop up.

There's something that's public, there's something that's easy to access, and there's something

where you're just not going to have a lot of competition.

So how do I find them? County Records, search for liens from the local water and Sewer

Company and look at what properties they are related to.

Probate

Ok, don’t freak out, I’ll talk about probate. Everybody talks about probate. I hear it all the time,

Probate, probate, probate. Every guru talks about probate. Here locally, if you are going to the

county to get your data, you might as well be walking into Cheers. The common joke is that

“probate is too late”.

That said, there is a good reason for all the hype. I have always had a decent portion of my deals

every year come from probate one way or the other. I’ve heard many stories of my grandfather

reading the obituaries and then heading out to door knock widows and offer up some cash for

their homes!

Well, it worked then and it works now.

You are generally making an offer to an heir who has inherited a property from a parent.

Sometimes they inherit beautiful properties and they inherit mansions. These are not the people

that I'm interested in talking to. These people have no need for someone like me.

I'm someone who's going to stroke a check and I want a discount. I want somebody who says, "I

can't believe mom or dad lived here. The house is in really bad shape." Or they're saying, "I don't

want to deal with my siblings. We'd like to put this behind us and move on." But for whatever

reason, they want to get that estate wrapped up. They're on a timeframe. They have a motivation

to get it closed and they're not emotionally tied to the price tag.

That's a big deal. Pay attention to what I just said. They are not emotionally tied to the price tag.

If I go to somebody's house and they start showing me around, and they're walking me through

the kitchen, and they're showing me the cabinets that they put in themselves and they crafted

them, and they laid the tile on the floor and they made sure that it went right up the edge, and

they used a special kind of caulking, and they take me out in the backyard and they show me the

apple tree that they planted and how tall it is and how good they took care of the siding, I don't

want to hear any of that. That person is emotionally tied to that property and they're emotionally

tied to the price, because they believe that it's worth all that hard work that they've put into it.

Somebody in a probate is typically going to be more objective about price. They are not going to

look at things from a personal standpoint, like, "I planted that tree." They're going to look at it

from the standpoint of, "What are things selling for in the area and what needs to be done?"

They're going to give you to opportunity to go in there and present an offer that allows you to do

some work and make a little bit of money. If there's no work to be done, that the house is

beautiful, there's still an opportunity because maybe you can list that property or you can pass it

off to your broker, and have them list it, and take a referral fee.

Given the publicity of this niche, at the end of the day it usually comes down to whether who is

better at finding the personal representative, whether or not they want to sell quickly or list, and

more often than not who is a better sales person.

As far as actually finding the leads goes, I don’t know of a site that produces actual probate leads

like you would find at your local court house. There are a few sites that claim to but I don’t

think that they are actual probate filings; it seems that what they're doing is tinkering with the

deeds and figuring that these people have probably inherited property.

Really, the best way to get the data is to pay someone to head down weekly and grab the data.

The fact that you can’t get the list on line means that fewer people are motivated enough to go

down to the courthouse once a week and sit down with a note pad. It's not that difficult a task,

and it has great opportunity and huge returns for the people that are willing to do that small

There's deep, deep opportunity in probate and if you're not working probate, you might consider

it as a next piece of the puzzle.

Conclusion

Often, what we really fear is failing. Isn’t that simply perspective? Society, media, American

culture is continuously raining over us telling us that success means this or that. All of that is

simply ridiculous.

Success simply means that you are happy with a result. It doesn’t even have to be the result you

initially attempted to achieve.

Success is often feeling great about failing to accomplish what you set out to but learning how to

get closer to that mark.

For example, a young man sets on a hike to find a lake around noon and need to be back by

sundown.

After a couple of hours he sees the lake off in the distance and knows he is on the right path. A

few hundred yards later he encounters a river that is a little too fast to cross. He is very

disappointed until he is told by two fishermen that there is a stone crossing about an hour north

along a trail he had passed on the way. They give him one of their many fish and he starts back

to get to his site before sundown.

Sure, our young man didn’t make it to the lake. But, he did get a beautiful bass, go on a

wonderful hike, and, tomorrow he has learned how he can reach the lake most directly. There is

no such thing as failure, there is only feedback.

This is particularly true in business. As the great Mark Cuban once said, and I paraphrase “the

best thing about business is that it is the game that never ends”.

Come visit www.findmotivatedsellersnow.com .

The time to start is now.