Your Daily Ritual of Searching for Deals Will Make You Wealthy

11 Feb Your Daily Ritual of Searching for Deals Will Make You Wealthy

Great real estate deals don’t interrupt you.  You must consistently search for them.  The investors who find the best deals look daily.

How can you search daily?

• Search for people selling their property For Sale By Owner via certain websites, like Zillow.com, Trulia.com, Realtor.com, or 4SaleByOwner.com.  I suggest that you stick to one website so you really master the navigation tools while keeping your daily ritual simple.
• Search the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) of the area where you wish to purchase properties.  For most people, that’s the local MLS.  Most Realtors® can give you a portal link or some type of consumer access through their website.  Most Realtors could also give you daily emails of properties that fit your specific criteria.
• Walk, jog, or drive around your neighborhood looking for:
  • Properties that have a For Sale sign in front, and
  • Properties that look dilapidated or ignored.
• Communicate with other real estate investors through online or in-person forums.  Wholesalers and investors can be great sources of deals.  There are social media groups where investors are active.  There are also a number of monthly meetings of investors where you can learn new techniques and build deep connections.
• Tell people in your sphere of influence that you’re always looking to buy real estate for investment.  Word of mouth costs nothing, yet sooner or later someone will tell you about a potential deal.  Many of these leads involve off-market properties, which means that you won’t have any competition.

If you do the little things every day, you’ll build enough momentum where eventually finding deals becomes easy.  The more “deal flow” you have, the more you can cherry-pick the most lucrative opportunities for yourself.  Also, you might find that other investors start coming to you asking for deals.

In 2004 when I became a full-time real estate investor, I started off looking daily for real estate opportunities using the techniques mentioned above.  After a couple of years, a number of investors started coming to me asking me to give them some of my deals.  I started making money by selling these deals to investors.  Sometimes I wholesaled the property to an investor.  Sometimes I bought the property and sold it at a wholesale price to an investor.  Sometimes I earned a real estate broker commission by representing the investor in the purchase. 

If you look at somebody who is really successful, remember that people are rewarded in public for what they practice in private.  Your daily ritual of searching for deals will bear fruit over time.  You’ll build wealth by buying some of these deals and perhaps by selling some deals to other investors.  If you want to change your life, you have to change your daily ritual.

Tai DeSa is a graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He became a full-time real estate investor in 2004 after serving in the U.S. Navy.  Tai has made colossal mistakes in investing (and learned some things along the way).  He has owned over 200 properties with various investment partners, and he has been involved in over 200 more transactions as a real estate broker in both Pennsylvania and Tennessee.  Tai and his wife Amira enjoy hunting for investment properties.  Contact Tai if you need some consultation on real estate investing.  Tai may be available for coaching and speaking engagements on a variety of real estate topics.  Send an email to tai@investandtransform.com.  Tai is passionate about helping investors make money and avoid mistakes.