The Lazy Investor’s Guide to Finding Rental Properties

This is how to find investment properties the lazy way. Many of us work full-time jobs, have kids, or juggle a lot of responsibilities, so we can’t dedicate days each week to finding rental properties to buy. Thankfully, you don’t have to. If you have even an hour or so to spare each week, you can use any of these five “lazy” methods to find your next investment property. Henry is our go-to deal-finding expert and has bought over 100 houses using strategies just like these. These deal-finding tactics are so beginner-friendly that you can use many of them on your first real estate deal, with no prior experience. We’ll share how to find tenanted rental properties that can cash flow on day one, the secret behind getting agents to send you deals before the market sees them, how to make low offers en masse to get cheaper properties in any market, and how to get someone else to find the deals for you…for a fee. Finally, if you want to organically, cheaply, and sustainably grow your rental property funnel so you’re always being shared on deals, we give you the step-by-step path to incentivize other investors in your area to shoot you properties for sale first. Your next deal is closer than you think; here’s how to find it as a “lazy” investor. In This Episode We Cover How Henry scores rental properties for 40% off (routinely!) in his market Exactly what to tell an agent so they send you “pocket listings” first Getting on wholesalers’ lists so you’re constantly getting deals sent to your inbox What to tell local investors in your area so they’ll send you deals or even referrals on contractors A type of property that has tenants and management in place and is abundant for investors And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1341⁠⁠⁠. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Henry Washington?

  If finding cash flowing rental property deals sounds like a grind, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. You can be lazy and still succeed in real estate investing. I bought more than a hundred houses and I can tell you this, you do not need to spend your nights and weekends cold calling, or sending direct mail, or knocking on strangers' doors. I've made good chunks of money buying deals where I let someone else do the work instead of me. And yeah, paying someone to find deals cuts into your margins, but it can also help you scale faster and still be profitable. Today, I'm going to show you five ways to find rental properties ranked from the laziest to the most hands-on. Every single one of these methods can work for somebody. Some cost more money, some take more time, but at the end,

• 0:45Henry Washington?

  you'll know exactly which one fits your goals and your lifestyle.

• 0:54Henry Washington?

  What's going on everybody? I'm Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And today, we are talking about one of my favorite topics, how to find deals from the very easy methods all the way to the most hands-on. First on this list is definitely the laziest way to find a deal, but let's keep in mind what I like to call the comfortability versus profitability matrix. And that is, the easier it is to find a deal, the less profitable that deal probably will be. So, top of the list is turnkey providers, right? Turnkey providers are people who are selling rental properties that have already been renovated and they should be producing some sort of cash on cash return.

• 1:38Henry Washington?

  Now, we all know that the game of real estate is a game of adding value and then monetizing the property at its new highest value. And since you are already buying a property where the value has been added and paying somebody else for that property, a lot of your margin and profitability is lost in your purchase price for that profitability. Now, good turnkey providers still leave meat on the bone for the investor. And if they didn't, they wouldn't have a business. So, you can buy profitable deals from turnkey providers, but I say that with a caveat. Turnkey providers are going to give you a sheet, a pro forma, and they're going to tell you that this property is profitable

• 2:23Henry Washington?

  based on the numbers that they have researched and given you. Those numbers may be correct, those numbers may be vastly incorrect. It is your job as the investor to do your own due diligence to determine if that deal does meet your profitability needs. So, if your goal is, I need a ton of cash flow and I need it from day one, this might not be the strategy for you. But if your goal is, I just want a little bit of cash flow, maybe even to break even, and I want to have good tenants in a property that I don't have to manage a renovation in, and I want to be able to just start collecting checks right now, then turnkey can be an option for you.

• 3:03Henry Washington?

  But please be very, very, very conservative and very realistic with your underwriting. And then look at, does this property still perform like I need it to? And if it does, then you may find yourself a pretty easy way to start snagging some rental properties. Okay, next on the list is one we're all familiar with, and that is working with an investor-friendly real estate agent. An investor-friendly real estate agent is a huge resource for you, and it is a great way to get yourself access to some lazy deals. So, how do you get these investor-friendly agents to want to send you leads?

• 3:45Henry Washington?

  They want to send leads to people who they are confident can close the deal and will take the lead seriously. So, the best way to get agents to send you leads is to either have an existing track record that you can show them or prove to them that you buy deals, you move quickly, you don't bother people to death with overanalyzing everything and never taking action. So, a proven track record is a great way. If you don't have a proven track record yet, then you're going to have to build one. And so, if someone sends you a lead, analyze it, determine quickly what you can offer for that property, reach back out to that agent, preferably the same day or even within a couple hours, and say, hey, thanks for sending that lead over.

• 4:30Henry Washington?

  I ran the numbers. It looks like it might be a decent deal, but this is the price point I think I would need to be at. Here's why I think I need to be at that price point. Because remember, to them, you're new. You don't have a reputation yet. And so, if you're going to send an offer that may be lower than they expect, you better be able to explain to them why your offer is what it is. And so, just explain, hey, I saw that you sent 123 Main Street. Deal looks good. I ran the numbers. I'm actually shooting for a 10% cash on cash return. And if I put those numbers into my calculator, once I subtract the renovations I think this property needs, my offer is going to be about X, okay? That tells that agent several things. A, it tells that agent that you're serious. You took the lead, you analyzed the lead, you determined what you could pay.

• 5:15Henry Washington?

  Two, it helps that agent understand what you're looking for. It's one thing for you to tell an agent, this is my buy box, this is what I'd like to buy. It's another thing for them to see how you analyzed the lead and how you got to the number that you were coming to, so that they can start to take that into account before they send you the next leads. And three, it shows them that you are knowledgeable. It shows them that you know what you're looking for. It shows them that you know how to break the property down, and it shows them that you know what you want to pay for deals. All of those things build confidence. The more confidence this agent has in you as an investor, the more leads that they will send you. Now, as you do deals, if you're new, make sure you are documenting the deals that you do.

• 5:58Henry Washington?

  Just create some sort of spreadsheet or PowerPoint that highlights the deal, what you bought it for, what you put into it, and then what you either sold it or rented it for, so that you can start to build this packet that is a proof that you are a seasoned investor. So, when you meet other agents, you can flip them this packet in an email so they can see that you're serious and they'll want to send you leads. All right, the next on the list is one everybody's aware of, one that almost everybody's used, but I can promise you, you're not using it in the right way if you truly want it to be a valuable lazy investor lead source. And we're going to jump into what that is right after the break. Here's a strategy that most W2 employees have never heard of.

• 6:42Henry Washington?

  Normally, if you want to write off a rental property against your regular income, you need real estate professional status. That means tracking hundreds of hours a year. Rent to Retirement just launched a program that skips all of that. It's called the STR loophole tenant placement program. Here's how it works. You buy one of Rent to Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties. You set up an Airbnb listing and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent to Retirement then rents the home as a short-term rental to establish it as an STR for the year. No furnishing required, making this the easy button to save five or six figures in taxes this year. And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly minimum to meet.

• 7:23Henry Washington?

  That lets you use a cost segregation study to accelerate the depreciation and potentially write off over $100,000 against your income, even on your first rental. Add in cash back up to 13% of the home price, which exceeds $60,000 on some properties. With this massive cash back incentives, investors are seeing total returns up to 126%. New construction, A-class properties, and inventory is limited. Learn more at biggerpockets.com/retirement or text REI to 33777. Again, text REI to 33777.

• 8:01Dave Meyer?

  Most investors only think about insurance when something goes wrong. A tenant injury, storm damage, loss of rent. Then suddenly, the cheapest policy doesn't feel like the best one anymore. That's why a lot of BiggerPockets investors use steadily for landlord insurance designed specifically for rental properties. Whether you own one property or a growing portfolio, they make it simple to get covered properly. And BiggerPockets Pro members get an extra 5% off their landlord insurance premiums. Visit biggerpockets.com/landlordinsurance to get a quote today.

• 8:35Henry Washington?

  Quick word about a new pro perk you'll want to know about. Aven. If you're a homeowner, there's a good chance you're sitting on equity that you're not using. The problem is tapping into that usually means a cash out refi, a traditional second mortgage, or weeks of paperwork just to get approved. Aven built something different. It's a credit card, but it's backed by your home equity. So, you get a lot of the rate benefits of a HELOC with the flexibility of a card you can use anywhere. Rates are typically well below a standard credit card. Approval is fast and mostly online, and you can use it for anything. A renovation, paying down high interest debt, or just have more breathing room in your budget. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, there's an extra reason to check it out. Get approved for the Aven card and you'll get a $400 statement credit

• 9:19Henry Washington?

  after spending $400 on your Aven card. Enough to cover your entire annual Pro membership. Head over to aven.com/biggerpockets to see if you qualify. Aven Financial, NMLS #2042345. Cards issued per 202 license from Visa USA, Inc. by Coastal Community Bank. NMLS #462289. Member FDIC, equal housing lender, subject to approval, terms apply. Visit aven.com for details.

• 9:40Speaker 02

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• 10:11Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast and we are talking about a lazy investor's guide to buying your next rental property. We have covered buying properties that are turnkey investments. Those are properties that somebody has already purchased, already renovated, and oftentimes placed a tenant in it already, and you just get to buy it and start collecting money. The second is working with agents, specifically investor-friendly agents who have lead flow that they could send you. The key is, how do you get those agents to send it to you? We covered that. Next is the one everybody uses, but most people aren't using correctly

• 10:48Henry Washington?

  if they're an investor, and that is MLS deals, on-market deals. On-market deals are properties that sellers have raised their hand and said, "Hey, I want to sell my house," and a real estate agent says, "Hey, I'd love to help you do that," and then that real estate agent helps them list that property on the MLS for sale. Now, the MLS is called the retail market because the deals that are on the MLS are looking to sell at retail values. And we all know, as an investor, it is very hard to pay retail value for a property and have it produce a return for us.

• 11:26Henry Washington?

  So, our goal is to find the needle in a haystack on the MLS. And if you have a process for doing this consistently, you can find yourself with a very lazy way to generate good leads. So, how do you find deals on the MLS? The first thing you have to be able to do is you have to be able to define your buy box. So, your buy box is simply what kinds of properties you want to buy, where you want to buy those properties. That's what it boils down to. If you don't know these things, this is what you got to figure out, and you got to figure it out fast. So, some people want to buy three-bed, two-bath, single-family homes in certain neighborhoods of a town. That's just, that's what they want to buy. They don't want to buy anything else.

• 12:09Henry Washington?

  Some people are willing to buy any single-family home, as long as it's not above a certain square footage. Some people only want to buy in certain neighborhoods because other parts of the town don't produce the same return. Everybody's buy box is going to be different based on their investing needs and the market they're investing in. So, define your buy box. Once you have that defined, clearly give that to an investor-friendly real estate agent that you want to work with to help you find a deal. Once they have this buy box, they can set you up on what's called an email drip campaign. In other words, they can input all of your buy box criteria into their MLS tool, and it will filter all of the properties that don't

• 12:50Henry Washington?

  fit that buy box out, and then everything on the MLS in your buy box will then pop up in an email in your inbox. Now, you don't just need your buy box on this list, you also need some sort of motivation on your list as well. You need someone to need or be willing to sell a property at less than its retail value. In other words, they need to be motivated to sell it at less than its retail value. When you are shopping on the market, it's very hard to filter for motivation because we have no idea why somebody is selling their house because you don't get to talk to the seller. You have to talk to an agent. So, the way that you can

• 13:32Henry Washington?

  filter for motivation is to use days on market. And what we are assuming is the longer a property has been sitting on the market, the more likely that seller will be to receiving an offer at lower than retail value. Now, that is not a guarantee, but that is an assumption that we're making, and it's a fair assumption to make. If someone's got a property and it's been listed for several hundred days, they probably want to sell it. That's why it's still listed. If they didn't need or want to sell it that bad and it wasn't moving, they'd probably pull it off the market. So, along with your buy box filter, provide a days-on-market filter for

• 14:15Henry Washington?

  your agent. The way I like to do it is I want to see all properties that are within my buy box that have been listed for 30 days beyond the average days-on-market for my market. If average days-on-market in my market is 60 days, then I want to see every property in my buy box that's been listed for 90 days or more. So, now, what happens? I now get an email every day or once a week, whatever the criteria is for you, and it's got a list of properties. I already know that these properties are within my buy box because that's the filters that I

• 14:54Henry Washington?

  gave. This is where people fail at the strategy, right here. They get the list, and what most people do is they thumb through the list, and they're looking for the one or two properties that they think, "Yeah, that one would be cool. I'd like that one. Oh, I like this one." They may get a list of 30 properties. They'll find the five or seven that they like the most, and then they'll spend a bunch of time analyzing those five or seven, and then they'll find maybe one to two of those where they think that the price that I can pay is close enough to the price that they're asking, that I'm comfortable sending an offer. So, we have gone

• 15:37Henry Washington?

  from a list of 30-some-odd properties down to 10, down to two or three, and then we make two or three offers. And the offers are lower than they're asking, but within our comfortability zone. And then, they don't get a response. Well, why didn't they get a response? Well, they sent a lower offer, and they only sent three offers. This is what most people do. It will take you forever to get a deal like this. The goal isn't to make offers on the one or two properties that you like the most. The goal with this strategy is to make offers on all of them. You hear that? Every single one. Now, there may be some duds in there

• 16:21Henry Washington?

  that you need to filter out for certain reasons. I'm not saying make offers on things that you absolutely don't want to own. So, look through your list, but instead of looking for the ones you like the most, look for the ones that you hate the most, that you're like, "No matter what, I would not want this deal." Filter those out. Everything else you need to make an offer on. So, how do you make this offer? This is the challenging part of this strategy. It's still a very lazy investor's way because you don't have to do a ton of this work. The hard part about this strategy is convincing your agent to do what you need. But your goal is now, I've got a list of 30 properties. I probably need to be making offers on about 25 of them. How do I make offers on 25 of them the lazy way? Because analyzing 25 deals

• 17:04Henry Washington?

  and then figuring out what you can pay is a lot of work. That is the opposite of lazy. Remember, this is the lazy investor's guide to finding rental properties. So, we want to take all of that legwork out, and I only want to spend time on the things that matter. So, how do I do that? You come up with a formula for making your offers. And the formula that I like to use when making offers on these MLS deals is very simple. I take the asking price that they are asking for this property, and I subtract 40%. So, what does that look like in practice? So, if I get my list, I see a house listed for $300,000. I simply just

• 17:42Henry Washington?

  need to subtract 40%. $300,000, 40% of that is $120,000. So, I subtract that. $300,000 minus $120,000 equals $180,000. That would be my offer price for that property. That's the offer that we're going to submit. Now, the best way to do this is just to train your agent to do that. Say, "Hey, filter this list for me. Once a week, subtract 40% from everything on the list, and submit that offer." Now, most agents are not going to want to do this much work because writing up an offer and submitting an offer takes time and effort. And yes, it's lazy for you because you're just saying, "subtract 40% and make an offer,"

• 18:24Henry Washington?

  but it's not lazy for the agent because they've got to write up each one of these offers. And these offers are going to be so much lower than what the properties are listed for. They're going to be concerned about damaging their reputation. They're going to be concerned about people getting pissed off at them. So, how do you get the agents to do this? This is what I've told my agent, and this is what works for us. "Mr. Agent, everything on my list, subtract 40%, and let's submit an offer, but let's essentially submit a verbal offer." Because remember, the goal with this strategy isn't to get someone to say yes. Matter of fact, if I submit an offer at 40% and someone says yes immediately, I'm going to be scared that there's a giant problem, okay? So, it's not that we want them to say yes immediately.

• 19:05Henry Washington?

  The goal is to open a dialogue or get them to counter. Once they open a dialogue or we get them to counter, then I can do the due diligence on the backside. I can now deep-dive and analyze that deal because now I know that that seller is willing to play ball, or at least thinks they're willing to play ball somewhere in the price range where I need to be. So, I'm not wasting time analyzing 30 deals before I submit my offer. I'm only analyzing the one, two, or three deals where people are willing to have a dialogue. This is not that hard of a strategy to do. It is a very lazy investor way to start filtering leads, but it does require you to get your agent to do some work. So, you need a good working

• 19:46Henry Washington?

  relationship with an investor-friendly agent. But if you do this consistently, every week for the next three months, you will have a lot of leads for some potential deals that are needles in the haystack, sitting right there in the MLS, because we have no idea why someone would be motivated to take a lower offer. And the only way to find out if someone would take a lower offer on the MLS is to do what? Make the stinking offer. So, make the offer. We don't have to be scared of rejection. It's a business decision. Paint the picture on the front side. It's a business decision. Shoot your shot. You might make a few buckets. You know what I'm saying? I'm excited to talk to you about the next strategy because it involves another person who can sell you a deal. We covered agents who can

• 20:31Henry Washington?

  sell you a deal, but there's also wholesalers who can sell you a deal. So, I'll dive into how we can get them to sell us deals right after the break.

• 20:40Dave Meyer?

  You know, when I first started sharing my real estate journeys online, I didn't have a website. I had a spreadsheet, an Instagram account, and no idea how they'd ever connect. I remember thinking a real website was going to cost me thousands of dollars and take a developer weeks to build. So I kept putting it off. Then I found Hostinger. I typed in what I wanted, a site to show off my deals, share my story and capture leads. And their AI builder had a working version live in minutes. No code, no designer, no developer needed. And it didn't stop at launch. Once my site was live, Hostinger's AI agent helped me figure out what to try next, acting like a built-in team of specialists for SEO, website

• 21:24Dave Meyer?

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• 21:53Henry Washington?

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• 22:37Henry Washington?

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• 25:33Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast, talking about the Lazy Investor's Guide to Finding Real Estate Deals. We've covered turnkeys, we've covered agents, we've covered MLS deals, and now we're going to cover the infamous wholesalers. Wholesalers are a good resource for real estate deals. And it is a very lazy investor way to find deals, because wholesalers have done all the legwork already. They did the off-market deal-finding strategies. They talked to the sellers already. They negotiated the deal already. And they've served it up to you on a platter, and all you gotta do is buy it, right? Well, kind of. So here's how it works. Essentially, a wholesaler is a real

• 26:16Henry Washington?

  estate investor themselves who has done some direct-to-seller marketing or some sort of marketing strategy to find a very undervalued real estate deal. They find a deal, they talk to a seller, they negotiate a price, and then they say, "All right, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, I'll buy your house for $150,000." And the seller says, "Great." They sign a contract, and then that wholesaler will come to an investor like you or I and say, "Hey, I have a deal. ARV on the deal is $300,000, and I will assign the contract to you for $160,000." And so you go and you say, "Great, I'll buy that for $160." There's a $10,000 difference between the $150 they have it under contract for and the $160 you're gonna buy it for.

• 26:59Henry Washington?

  That $10,000 is called an assignment fee. And when you close on the purchase of that transaction, they will collect that $10,000 assignment fee. In other words, they are getting paid for finding good deals and then finding an investor to buy that good deal, and they make the spread in between. Now, there are wholesalers everywhere. In most markets of the country, you'll find someone who calls himself a wholesaler who is looking to assign contracts. The bad news is, there's a lot of bad wholesalers out there. And it is our job as the investor to vet the deals that come across our desk and to vet the wholesaler as well, because we don't want to put ourselves into a sticky

• 27:39Henry Washington?

  situation by buying a deal that things weren't done legally and ethically the right way. So the very first caveat with this is, do not trust the numbers that are given to you. Again, a wholesaler is a salesperson. They're trying to sell a deal. They are going to show you the best-case scenario numbers. This is the maximum after-repair value of this property. I think this property will sell for $400,000. Do your own research. That property may only actually sell for $300,000. You have to determine that. It is not their job to be correct. Unfortunately, there is nothing in place that holds them accountable for their numbers being correct. You have to hold yourself accountable for getting

• 28:23Henry Washington?

  the correct numbers. So when a wholesaler sends me a deal, I completely ignore all of the information. The only information on that deal that I care about that they send me is the address. Everything else, I want to figure out for myself. So I don't care if the wholesaler says the house after-repair value is $300,000. I'm gonna go figure it out for myself. I don't care if the wholesaler says the house needs a $50,000 renovation. I'm gonna figure it out for myself. I don't care if the wholesaler says the asking price for the property is $175,000. I'm gonna figure out the asking price that I can pay. I don't care what price they want to sell their property for. None of my business. My only business

• 29:08Henry Washington?

  is analyzing the deal and figuring out what I can pay, regardless of what they want. So keep that in your frame of reference if you're using this as the lazy way to find deals. Now, it's called the lazy way, but it's further down the list because you do have to do work. You've gotta analyze these deals. You've gotta figure out what you can pay, and you've gotta talk to the wholesaler. That's not nearly as much work as going direct-to-seller and having to do all the marketing and talk to the sellers and go look at the houses and go make the offers. But you must do your due diligence. That is why it's not on top of the list as the most lazy way. You've gotta do some legwork here. All right, we got that out of the way. You know you gotta analyze the deal. Once you analyze the deal, here's where people fail with working with wholesalers. And it's a lot of the same reason

• 29:53Henry Washington?

  people failed with working with agents on MLS listings. You're too afraid to make the offer that makes sense to you, because the offer that makes sense to you and the price that they're asking are so far apart. A wholesaler that really wants to be good at their job is going to hear what your offer is, see why your offer is what it is, and take that information into account the next time they go and get deals. When you explain yourself and you don't just shoot low-ball offers, and you don't just paint the wholesaler as the villain. This is where I think a lot of people get wholesale relationships wrong. They make the assumption that the wholesaler is a bad guy because the wholesaler wants

• 30:33Henry Washington?

  to make money without doing a bunch of renovation work. Well, in theory, you need the wholesaler. You don't want Go do all that work. So don't make them feel bad, right? And if they've got their renovation budget wrong, and if they've got their ARV wrong, we don't make them feel like a jerk for getting it wrong. We just explain to them why ours is different. And we stick with ours because at the end of the day, you're the one taking the risk. So I don't say, hey, your ARV is way off, bud. This is going to be a $300,000 house, not a $400,000 house. That's crazy. Where'd you get 400,000? I'm not going to approach a relationship like that. I'm going to say, hey, I see you got it at 400,000. I pulled my comps. Mine are probably a little different. I'm also being more conservative. I'm going to try to sell this for around three to 350. So here's where my offer would be.

• 31:16Henry Washington?

  You don't need to make them feel bad. You're trying to strengthen a relationship, not break the relationship. So if you want a wholesaler to send you leads over everybody else, again, track record is important. If you don't have a track record, then you need to start building trust. How do you build trust? A wholesaler wants a couple of things. Can you close quickly? And can you close without bothering the homeowner multiple times? Where people struggle working with wholesalers is they want to do all this due diligence that bothers the seller. And when you're doing that, it makes the wholesaler's job harder. So try to consolidate tasks. If you want to go look at the property, and then you want to bring your contractor back to look at the property, and then you want to bring a second contractor back to look at the property and give you a bid,

• 32:01Henry Washington?

  and then you want to bring somebody else back and you want to look at the house again, like that's too much. Another thing that's going to help you is to be able to close quickly. Because wholesale deals are hard sometimes. And if you can close deals quickly, wholesalers are oftentimes willing to make less assignment fee for the bird in the hand, the deal that's going to close now versus the investor who might pay a little more, but it might take them 30 days. So your ability to move quickly can help wholesalers want to work with you. How do you do that when you're not just paying cash for a property? Well, you want to look for lenders who can do in-house appraisals. The appraisal process is the longest part of the underwriting process. It's the longest part

• 32:43Henry Washington?

  that's keeping you from getting your deal to the closing table. So if you can find yourself a bank or a hard money lender or a private money lender who either won't do the appraisal and just trust the numbers that you give them, or does in-house appraisals, you can move a lot quicker and get deals closed in one to two weeks. And if you can get deals closed in one to two weeks, you can say, hey, Mr. Or Mrs. Wholesaler, I see you've got 123 Main Street. I know you're asking 200. I can only pay 150, but I can get the deal closed in seven days. They might be willing to take that. It strengthens your offer. So knowing what wholesalers want, speaking to them in the thing that they want to hear and positioning yourself as someone that can get them there without a lot of hassle

• 33:27Henry Washington?

  will help you build a rolodex of wholesalers who are going to come to you and feed you deals before they put them out to the public. All right. And our fifth way that lazy investors can find deals is through networking. That's right. Most investors default to this is their deal finding strategy because they are, they are investing by the hope methodology. I hope someone at a meetup sends me a good deal. All right. That's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about with networking is using networking to start to build consistent lead flow. So I'm going to give you a few things that you can do

• 34:08Henry Washington?

  to start to help you build a network that's going to send you some leads. First and foremost, incentivize people. How do you incentivize people? Well, here's something that you can do right now. We all have social media, right? It's the biggest networking tools that we have. You can use social media to start your networking and start sending you leads. Here's what we do. About once a quarter, I make a post on social media. And that post says simply, hey, everybody, I just wanted you to know that I buy houses and I buy apartments. These are the markets I buy in. If you or somebody you know is looking to sell, I'd love to talk with you or them, and I'd gladly pay you a referral fee of

• 34:49Henry Washington?

  $500 if I buy a single family home, or $1,000 if I buy a multifamily home that you recommend to me. That's it. Now caveat here is if you yourself, the person making this post, are a licensed real estate agent, you cannot pay the referral fees. So you have to leave that part out. You have to find some other way to incentivize people. But if you're not a licensed agent, you can absolutely pay somebody a referral fee for sending you a lead that you end up buying. Post that to social media once a quarter, once a month, and you're going to get leads. You're going to get leads for houses. You're going to get leads for contractors. I've had, I've found several contractors who just commented on this post and said, hey, I don't have a deal to sell, but I'm a licensed electrician. I'd love to bid a job. Let me know if you've got something.

• 35:33Henry Washington?

  I've had lenders reach out and say, hey, I don't have a deal, but I'd love to fund your next deal. Give me a call, right? You're going to get all kinds of leads for your business. So this is just a great, easy thing to do. Such low hanging fruit here. Most people don't do this, and it baffles me. I think people are just scared to let people know what they're doing. But if you make this post, you're going to get leads. It's going to be a positive thing for your business. There's really not a downside. And this is low hanging fruit. If you're not willing to do this, then how are you going to do any of the harder stuff that we talked about in this video? Very easy. I gave you the post. Go post it. Next, let me give you another person that you can network with that may be able to send you leads, but also send you tons of other

• 36:18Henry Washington?

  resources that your real estate investment business needs. And that is networking with title companies. What do title companies do all day? They close real estate transactions. They run the title work and they make sure that buyers can buy properties and sellers get the money. Great. That means that they are at the closing table every single day with people buying and selling real estate. Call a title company, especially if you've closed a deal with a title company already. Maybe you bought your personal home from a title company. Start there. Call the title company and say, hey, my name's Henry. I'm a real estate investor. I closed a transaction with you in the past, or I'm looking to close transactions with this business in the future.

• 37:00Henry Washington?

  But I'm looking for people that have lead flow or deals to sell. Do you know any real estate investors or builders who are looking to offload properties right now? I have bought multiple deals from a builder who is looking to offload his portfolio. How did I find out that builder was looking to offload their portfolio? My title agent told me. She saw him selling deals. He said, hey, do you know anybody that's looking to buy? I'm trying to offload my portfolio. She connected us and I bought three deals from this guy. Okay? Your title company is connected with all kinds of buyers and sellers. So it doesn't hurt to call them and ask. They're also a sales company. They want to do business. So if you can say, hey,

• 37:45Henry Washington?

  if you connect me with anybody and I, and I buy a deal, I'd be happy to close that deal with your title company. And I'll send any other business your way that I can send your way. All right. So those are some people that you can network with to start building your network of lead flow. But you want to make sure that you're just networking in general with a plan and not just showing up and introducing yourself and hoping for the best. So how to build a network? The best way to build a network of people who want to help you is to be a person that helps other people at these networking events. So here's a few tips for you at networking events. First and foremost, before you get there, tell yourself, write it down. I will find one to three people I can be of service to.

• 38:30Henry Washington?

  Not one to three people that I can get something from, but one to three people I can be of service to. What we're doing is you're telling your brain to listen. Listen for people that need help so that I can step in and try to be of service to people. The first thing you want to do at networking events is to put human nature in your favor. Human nature says, if somebody helps me, I want to help them. You want to start building a network of people who want to help you, start helping people at the networking events. Two, when you go to the networking events, don't do what everybody else does. They sit in the back, they stand in the back, they act like they don't want to be bothered. They only talk to people in their little circle of people that they know. That's not what we're doing. Networking events, you want to get around the people who have deals, who do deals, who are movers and shakers. Where are those people?

• 39:13Henry Washington?

  They are typically sitting front and center, right? So carry your butt to the front, sit front and center. Those are the people who aren't afraid to be front and center because they're not afraid to answer questions. They're not afraid to talk to people. Those are the people you need to be talking to. One of the best parts about the real estate investment community is not a lot of people are gatekeepers. They just want people to be successful. So go sit around people who are movers and shakers. When they find out that you've been coming up here, you've been actively engaging and you haven't done a deal yet, they'll be so willing to try to help you. But get around them. Don't go hide in the back. Don't go be quiet. And I know for some of you, that's easier than others, but this is what you need to be. Go sit right in the middle of things. That's where you're having conversations.

• 39:57Henry Washington?

  And third, know what you need and what you want. Oftentimes, people show up to these events and they do meet somebody who genuinely wants to help. And they say, what problem are you trying to solve right now? Or what is it that you need? And then I've seen just people stumble around and not know what to answer. Ah, you know, you know, we could use some more deals. That's not helpful. Know what you need. Have a list of one to three things that you specifically need. Maybe it's a deal in a certain market. Maybe it's a resource in your business you need. Maybe it's a giant problem that you're trying to solve, but write it down. Know it when you get there so that when you do come across that person that's like, what can I help you with?

• 40:41Henry Washington?

  Well, here's exactly what you can help you with. I'm looking to solve this problem. I'm having a struggle over here, and I need to fix this. If you're specific, then they can either figure out how they can help you or who they can connect you with that can help you. The purpose of networking is to build the network. But if you don't know what your problems are or what problems you're trying to solve, then people can't leverage their network to help you. So be specific. Understand what you need before you get there. That way, when inevitably somebody asks you the question of how can I help you? You have an answer and a good one. All right. That's the lazy investor's guide to finding your next deal. Here's a little secret if you haven't caught on yet.

• 41:23Henry Washington?

  There's not one of these single strategies that's just completely hands off. You're going to have to do something. But in all my experience, these are the ways to get deals with the least level of effort. There are tons of other ways to get deals that require a whole lot more effort, but that's a video for another day. If you've got another lazy strategy we missed, comment below. We'd love to hear about it. As always, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and we'll see you on the next episode.

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