If you’re a bit inexperienced, there are some delinquent properties that can certainly pose an issue to you. Properties with lots of back taxes, physical problems, or houses on them can cause a concern; not only because these issues will cause you to have to spend more money on the property, but can also change the way you will have to handle and sell the property.
Some of my students have issues with land that has houses on it. I say that I only like to work with land and a lot of my students feel the same way. So when they send out a ton of letters to potential sellers and find out that some of these properties have houses on them, they are either totally turned-off by the property or just don’t know what to do with it!
The best way to deal with properties such as these is through a process called “bird-dogging”. This is where you simply match up seller to buyer, and isn’t hard to do at all. There are websites dedicated to this kind of service, though you would be able to find a great deal of investors looking for properties on classifieds sites such as craigslist.com.
This method requires a minimal amount of work and if the deal goes through, you can expect to make anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on how large the deal is. So instead of throwing out all those sellers just because they have a house on their property, find someone else to buy it instead! The best part is you make money without ever closing on the property yourself you simply put the property under contract and assign the contract to another investor that pays you a finder's fee and then closes on the property with the seller. It is a win, win, win as they say!