Hi Everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Coast to Coast Real Estate Investor. In this edition I'll be continuing my multi-part series on how and where to locate suitable investment properties out of state.
In this edition, I'll be exploring classified advertising sites and resources. Right on the heels of the For Sale By Owner (FSBO) sites are the big national classified advertising sites. My top pick is the well-known www.Craigslist.com. I’ve heard a lot of people complain that they can’t find deals on Craigslist or that only amateurs use it. That can’t be further from the truth. Any time you have a collection of sellers, you are going to have a certain percentage that are “don’t wanter” types that are really flexible. You just need to know what to look for.
The trick to Craigslist is learning how to search. Craigslist allows you to do keyword searches, so you need to look for terms that would pull up potential candidates. For example, searching for “owner relocating” or “out of state” often pulls up some interesting possibilities. It does take a certain amount of finessing to really work Craigslist searches, and I’m going to dedicate a future lesson on just how to do some very precise looking. For now, searching for common investor-oriented terms like “owner motivated” or “fixer upper” can produce fantastic results.
My second pick in classified sites is www.backpage.com. It’s very much like Craigslist, but less well known. It has the advantage that it pulls ads from local papers and free newsies. It’s also very searchable, which makes it a great tool. I also like www.classifiedads.com for the same reasons, although the data on there isn't as extensive as the other two.
Don’t forget local publications like newspapers and Pennysavers. Their classifieds are often online, and of course, you can pick up the publications when you are in an area or subscribe to them. Browsing the online classifieds of an out-of-state newspaper online is fine, although if it has search tools, it's a better situation. One thing to be aware of when you use out of state newspaper sites is that the real estate classified ads are often nothing more than listings pulled from www.realtor.com, and are not the same as the actual ads run by individual sellers. You often have to look a bit deeply to find the actual ads that are running in the printed version of the paper.
Next time I'll be delving into national real estate sites. They can be a wonderful resource.
Until next time - live your real estate dreams!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment