The Book on Rental Property Investing by Turner Brandon

Author:Turner, Brandon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: BiggerPockets Publishing, LLC
Published: 2015-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

3. Driving for Dollars

Have you ever been driving in your car and noticed a house that made you think, “Boy, that house needs some work!”

If so, then you are already proficient at “driving for dollars”!

Driving for dollars is the practice of getting in your car and driving up and down the streets of neighborhoods where you want to invest, looking for potential deals. Then you simply try to buy those properties!

But what does a “deal” look like?

Typically, when you’re driving for dollars, you want to focus on properties that look distressed, vacant, or transitioning negatively. For example, a property with 18-inch-high grass indicates that someone probably doesn’t care about the property much. A mailbox stuffed with old, wet pieces of mail shows that someone might not live there. A tarp on the roof that seems to have been there a while shows that the house might have some problems that the owner can’t fix.

While driving in the neighborhoods where you want to buy, you’ll likely encounter dozens of potential properties. Write down the address of each one, including notes about its condition, and snap a photo as well. When you get home, do some digging into the public records to see who owns the property. Many times you can even do a reverse phone number search to get the owner’s number. Or perhaps you just want to write a letter offering to buy the property and mail it to the owner’s address listed in the tax records.

Driving for dollars is one of the lowest-cost methods of finding potential properties, because it involves nothing but a tank of gas and your time, which makes it great for those who are looking to get started investing in real estate but have limited funds. It can also help you get to know your prospective neighborhoods really well, which will help you make smarter decisions about your real estate.

For more on driving for dollars, I encourage you to check out Chris Feltus’s posts, “Driving for Dollars Bible[vi]” and “Driving for Dollars Bible 2[vii].”

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