Developing relationships and a process for working with Realtors® using lease options is a strategy that I personally use often. Working with Realtors® is an important tool to have in your toolbox. This is a concept that almost no other investors even experiment with. But I’ve found it highly valuable and even built an entire course around it.
High Value + No Competition = Success
Give the Market What it Wants
Working with Realtors® is a strategy that goes hand-in-hand with lease options. The reason most other investors 
don’t work with Realtors® is that it isn’t suited for the type of investing they do. Working with Realtors® doesn’t work well with foreclosures, fix -n- flip, and other common and highly competitive investment strategies.
What the Realtor® strategy does work well with are lease options. Here’s why…
Foreclosures, fixers, and those other strategies involve damaged and distressed properties. Damaged properties don’t appeal to the vast majority of buyers and sellers in the real estate market. Make no mistake about it. The vast majority of the real estate market are retail sellers and retail buyers. People that want sparkling clean and well-maintained homes with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. These are ‘retail homes.’ These are the exact homes that both Realtors® and lease option investors work with.
Working with Realtors® and lease options in retail markets provides what the vast majority of people want and will pay for!!
Realtors® Work Best for Buying Lease Option Properties
Realtors® are in the business of selling houses. They are either selling a house for someone or selling a house to someone. Realtors® know all about the houses for sale in their neighborhoods of expertise.
Lease option investors gain a huge advantage when they have fast and full access to all the houses that Realtors® know about. A Realtor® can easily know about 100 or 200 houses that are available for sale over a 2-month period. Almost all these houses will be sold to retail buyers. But a lease option investor only needs 4 or 5 of those houses to be hugely successful. And that’s for a full-time investor. A part-time investor does great with only 2 or 3 of those 100s of houses.
I’ve personally acquired between 90% and 95% of my lease options through Realtors®.
Realtors® Control Your Local Real Estate Market
As an investor, you need to get to the sellers so you can acquire lease options on houses. You also need access to buyers that are best suited to purchase a house using a lease option. Realtors® are the professionals that both sellers and buyers go to first. At least 90% of sellers in your market go directly to Realtors® when they are ready to sell. Yes, you’ll find sellers with advertisements, cold calls, and using other methods. But that is the remaining 10% of all possible sellers.
This is a numbers game for lease option investors. You may only need 3 or 4 solid leads each month. But think about how much easier your life will be if you are looking where 90% of the sellers are at already. Working with Realtors® will boost your numbers and boost your success.
Working with Realtors® is the most logical timesaver that every lease option investor should use.
Working With Realtors® Gives Investors the Information They Need
My course provides you with great scripts that get sellers to provide you with the information that you need. But better yet, Realtors® already have the information that you need at their fingertips. Easier is better in this case.
When Realtors® take a sale’s listing, they get the information that will make both of you more successful. The Realtor® learns why the seller is motivated to sell. They know if a seller is paying another mortgage on another house (key information for a lease option investor). Realtors® know if the seller needs to move next month. They know if the seller has health problems causing financial difficulties. This and much more information is very important to lease option investors!
Realtors® know if the seller can get the price that they want and if they can get it today. They know how desirable the neighborhood is. Realtors® also know the demographics and characteristics of the neighborhood. They know the school system, transportation system, economic health of the community, etc. They know the average market rents which are critical for lease option investors working with Realtors®!
Working with Realtors® covers all your investment bases.
Finding the Right Fit When Working with Realtors® as an Investor
Finding the right fit begins with both of you understanding what each of you brings to the table. The one thing that all Realtors® have in common is that they are always looking for leads. Buyer’s agents are looking for the next buyer and listing agents are looking for the next seller. Their repeat business is far and few between, which means they constantly need to find new clients.
What you bring to the table is that you are a repeat client. But you are a client with different needs and expectations as an investor working with Realtors®. That seldom means the real estate office “Rock Star” is going to be the best fit. Rock Stars earned that title because they are the best at generating new client leads.
What you want is a Realtor® who also has an interest in real estate investing. Naturally, many Realtors® do invest in real estate. But their investing interest is usually a sideline separate from their day job of listing and showing houses. They are not competing with you for lease options.
Key to working with Realtors® as an investor is finding agents who:
- Own investment properties. You want to know how long they’ve owned these and what types (single-family, apartments, commercial, etc.).
- They have worked with investors. Have they closed any deals for investors? How did they feel about the process and the business relationship?
- What types of investment deals where these (flips, rentals, REO, probate)?
- How many investor deals have they worked on and how many closed?
- Have they ever worked with lease options?
- Which neighborhoods, price ranges, and other attributes do they know well and are suitable for your investing goals?
- How time-sensitive are they to your needs as an investor?
Also, talk to them in the lingo of investors. If they aren’t already familiar with lease options, it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker. You may be able to draw on their experience putting together seller-financed deals. Working with Realtors® as an investor can also be seriously enhanced when an agent has sources for third-party financing.
Realtors® bring a wealth of information, leads, and knowledge to the table that helps both of you thrive in the high value and low competition lease option niche!
Working with Realtors® is only one of many ways that you become a leader with lease options. You can get started today with any of these methods that work in today’s hot real estate market.
- Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
- Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
- Cooperative Lease Options.
- Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
- Add Personalized Coaching.
- Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
- Round it all out by Working with Realtors.
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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