This is all about getting sandwich lease option sellers to call you to learn how you can help them sell their homes. It doesn’t get any better than getting the seller to pick up the phone first because they want to know what you can do for them.
Expect at least 10% of calls to convert into solids leads with 1 or 2 becoming signed deals!
How to Find Rent to Own Properties When Sellers Call You
As with most marketing, you must reach a lot of people before you can convert some of them into clients. The secret 
is twofold. First, you need to know which marketing strategies produce the best results. Second, you need to know how to implement that strategy to obtain exceptional results. How to find rent to own properties is no different.
There are a ton of proven marketing strategies to find sandwich lease option sellers that my students and I have fine-tuned over the years. Running classified ads and Working with Realtors are among the favorites. Bandit signs also work. But the one I am sharing today is the ‘direct mail campaign.’
How to find rent to own properties using a handwritten and personalized yellow letter is a great way to get sellers picking up the phone to learn what you can do for them. You are going to get calls from many different people who have different motivations. Some people will be ready to sell. These can be people looking for a way to sell without paying an agent’s commission. Or people looking for the maximum profit that includes a rent income stream for a year or more before receiving the lump sum at the end. Often it will be for financial reasons like medical bills, vacant houses, two mortgages, or any other financial reason. Others will have personal reasons like needing to move into assisted living, job transfer, or retiring to better weather.
You’ll also get calls from people who don’t want to sell but must sell for some reason. Many of these are for the same financial and personal reasons but they start the conversation with a different attitude. The course materials give you talking scripts and negotiation techniques to cover all the calls that you’ll be answering – from people who want to sell and people who have to sell.
Mail campaigns are about converting callers into solid leads and signed deals.
How to Find Rent to Own Properties is a Numbers Game
I’ll be completely honest; marketing is always a numbers game. The reason handwritten and personalized yellow letters work very well is because you are getting calls from people with a basic understanding about rent to own properties. The letter explains to them what you are offering. Here is a rough breakdown of how the marketing numbers often work out.
About 1 in 10 will be curious. These aren’t people that will be serious when you have the first conversation. Most will be looking for more information than is in the letter. But they are curious. Maybe they have already heard something about rent to own properties or maybe they have not. You want a simple script that gives them reliable information about how this can work for them but you don’t want to be too technical at this point. Your goal is to give them something to think about so that you can answer more questions during a follow-up call.
About 1 in 10 will be suspects. I call these suspects because I suspect they can become a reliable lead, but they still aren’t ready to discuss the details of a possible deal. These people are a little like the curious caller because they mostly need more information. Something that suspects often do is share with you the reason why a rent to own arrangement might work for them. They might tell you about their financial situation or that they need to relocate next week. It gives you a direction to steer the conversation to increase the possibility of converting them into a reliable lead. Again, this is a time to have a practiced script ready to go.
About 2 or 3 will be leads. These are hot leads that can more easily be converted into signed deals. This is when you gently go into more of the technical parts of rent to own properties. As the conversation moves forward, you’ll be able to share with them how you can help with their specific situation. That’s when you rely more on the detailed information in the course material.
Out of 100 letters, expect 2 or 3 to become solid leads.
About 1 in 10 will be angry. It’s the unpleasant truth but some people will not be happy that you have a mailing list that includes their name and address. These people usually feel the letter is an invasion of their privacy. My response is to suggest they just throw the letter away, the same way they would a catalog they receive in the mail without asking for it. If you get the chance, you can suggest they pass the letter along to someone they know that could use your services – it’s a way to always be marketing your business even to a person that can’t use your services.
Sending out 100 letters a week can bring in 8 to 10 solid leads every month. More than enough for a beginning sandwich lease option investor and plenty of leads for an experienced investor.
Yellow Letter Mail Campaign Basics
There are two ways to find rent to own properties. One is for you to make calls looking for a seller. These are generally known as ‘cold calls’ because you don’t have any expectation that the person you are talking to can use your service. I do use and teach these and I have ways to improve my success rate by calling on houses that are vacant or are for rent. The second and preferred way to find rent to own properties is by getting people to call you. It should be intuitive that when people call you, they are already interested in what you offer.
Mail campaigns get interested people to call you!
You can negotiate very good deals when someone calls you because they need what you offer.
There are a lot of marketing strategies. Even when it comes to mail campaigns, you have choices. If you want a huge mail campaign, you probably want to go with postcards because the cost is lower. The amount of information that you can share is also very limited and postcards can’t get very personal. Postcard campaigns work well when you purchase a generic mailing list.
Yellow paper letters work much better to bring in interested people when you use a targeted mailing list and customize the message to the people receiving the letter. BUT… that doesn’t mean you have to handwrite each letter. You can run a letter campaign that appears customized but is mostly generic to your intended rent to own seller audience.
You don’t even need to pay for a mailing list. You can easily create your own targeted mailing list or have an assistant do it for you. How to find rent to own properties is as easy as using these are two methods.
Find out-of-state homeowners. These are people that are not living in a house that they own. Living out-of-state while dealing with a rental or vacant house often gives the owner a big headache. This is how you improve your success rate in the marketing numbers game. You create your mailing list by using the local tax roll to find tax bills that are mailed to out-of-state addresses.
Look for vacant houses. This is another powerful way to find sellers interested in your rent to own property services. Either you or an assistant can drive around looking for vacant houses. Some cities put a red tag on the utility hookup of vacant houses. Overgrown grass and flyers on doorknobs are other indicators. Sometimes, a mail carrier will tell you if a house is vacant. There are also several ways to find the owners of vacant houses. One of the simplest is mailing the letter to the vacant house and hope that it is forwarded to the owner. You can also use the tax records to find the address the tax bill is sent to. Another is using a ‘skip trace service.’ A trace service does cost a little money per address but these are usually relatively inexpensive.
Once you have names and addresses, here are ways to customize your letters:
Use legal-size yellow paper. People will read these because it looks like it is something legal rather than marketing material.
Use the merge function in your word processer. This is the most custom feature you can use. Once you have a list of names and addresses, you use the merge function to open the letter using the person’s name (Dear Mr. Williams…. I’m writing to you because…). The rest of the letter can broadly list your services but the opening makes it sound like you have answers to that person’s specific situation.
Use a handwriting font. This is another way you personalize the letter. Use a cursive handwriting script for the entire letter rather than a block script that looks like it came from a word processer. It’s that easy to personalize the letter.
Don’t use a business letterhead. You probably have professional stationery or a cut-and-paste letterhead for your business, but this is not the place to use it. Letterhead makes the letter look like marketing material. You want the letter to look personal. The way to do that is by beginning with the simple opening… (Dear Mr. Williams…. I’m writing to you because…).
Unlocking the secrets to sandwich lease options begins by finding rent to own properties using these techniques that will have sellers calling you!
In today’s hot real estate market, there will never be a better time to get started than right now!
- Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
- Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
- You’re Wealth Building Arsenal.
- Add Personalized Coaching.
- Working with Realtors
- Limited start using Cooperative Lease Options.
- Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
By Wendy Patton
For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.
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