What is Driving for Dollars and Is It Worth Your Time?
As a real estate investor, you’re always looking for ways to find more leads. And not just any leads, but those that convert into deals. Driving for dollars is one way you can get quality leads. It’s a valuable method for investors just starting out and have a lot of time but no money, but it can also help more experienced investors if they want to hire someone to do the driving and lock down these gold mine leads.
How Does Driving for Dollars Work?
Most people go online to a database and find a list of people who are interested in selling their homes. They may be on the list because they are behind on the mortgage payments, have quite a bit of equity built up or because they have owned their home for many years. They also may be non owner occupied all together.
Another option is to get in your car and drive around your target neighborhoods for your investment properties and look at houses. Write down the address of any home that looks like it’s falling apart, boarded up or where the lawn hasn’t been mowed. Check out the houses with mailboxes overflowing with mail or newspapers lying at the door. Any indications that no one lives in the house makes it a potential investment property.
These are the kind of properties you want. You can buy them for a fraction of the cost because they are run-down and off the market, but they are often quick to fix. Then, you can either sell them for market value if you fix it up, or you can wholesale it to another investor and put up little to no money. Either way ultimately you make a nice profit.
Once you find these properties you can capture the address, and set them up on a direct mail campaign. Other options include skip tracing them and cold calling, or even door knocking or talking to neighbors if the house is really run down.
Is Driving for Dollars Worth the Effort?
This is a time-consuming, labor intensive way to market. On the other hand, it also provides you with higher quality leads. These are leads that other investors may not be getting, which means less competition for you.
To determine if this option for marketing is right for you, decide if you have more time or money. If you have more time with little funding then spend it tracking down these gold mine deals that few others will find. You may decide even if you have more money, it may be beneficial to spend it on driving for dollars and just pay someone else to do the driving.
Check out the driving for dollars app to make the process easier and way more automated. You install the app and pin any house you’re interested in as you drive around. The app pulls up the information you need on it, so you don’t have to do the research yourself.
Another bonus with this app is that you can export the list you create to us and easily start up a campaign. It makes sending direct mail much easier and faster for your multi-touch campaign.
While technology has automated a lot of things, especially with marketing, sometimes there’s just no substitute for getting out and doing the work by hand. Consider driving for dollars and how it can enhance your investment portfolio.
Contact us to find out how we can enhance your mailing campaign with batching.
