Real Estate Investing Advisor

One of the keys to successful Real Estate Investing is finding motivated sellers. You make money when you buy.

A motivated seller is someone who owns a property and wants to sell it but can’t. Perhaps there is not enough equity to sell because they owe too much money on the mortgage. Maybe the place needs a lot of repairs and no one is interested. Perhaps they have moved and are carrying two mortgages. There are a number of reasons why sellers might be motivated.

So how can you find motivated sellers? There are a number of ways. Mortgage brokers are a good source. They might have setup the mortgage in the first place and these people have come back looking for help. Banks are another good source. They may be holding a mortgage for someone who has defaulted on their payments. Before going into foreclosure they could see if the owner is interested in selling to you. There are a lot of rules around this that banks have to follow first. Once it is repossessed it could be made available to you. Realtors are an excellent source. They can check the MLS listings for old dated listings to see if there are any motivated sellers. The Realtor would present the property to you and help you in the purchase process. Other sources include lawyers, friends, referrals, etc.

You could also run your own ads looking for motivated sellers. Run these ads in your local papers or even online classified sites such as Kijiji and Craigslist. Lately I have found the online ads work better than the newspapers.