7 Ways How to Generate Motivated Seller Leads on Autopilot

In this article, I will cover 7 proven ways for getting a steady stream of motivated seller leads. I will also share the pros and cons of each method, including how much involvement it requires.

Ready to learn how to generate motivated seller leads on autopilot? Let’s do this.

How It Works

Using 3rd party lead providers is the easiest method to get motivated seller leads on autopilot. It doesn’t require any involvement from your side with the process of the lead generation itself. Everything is handled by a provider.

Usually, for a monthly fee, you will get an estimated number of leads generated by a third party lead provider.

However, it’s important to make sure you choose a reputable lead provider as some providers deliver either outdated or not motivated leads.

Let’s look at two reliable providers which I can recommend.

HouseCashin

HouseCashin is a reputable online platform that connects real estate investors and motivated sellers.

Among other services and tools, it offers real estate investors fresh motivated seller leads generated directly through their platform.

Important to note that the motivated seller leads generation is just an addon to the core functionality I’m describing here.

The primary goal of this functionality is to send investors email alerts about new off-market properties available for sale that match their buying criteria.

The motivated sellers are simply a fraction of other deal types that you can receive via this functionality.

You specify parameters such as your target area, property type, and others. Throughout the process, you will also be able to request sending you motivated sellers.

Based on your criteria, the HouseCashin property matching algorithm sends you motivated seller leads as soon as they are generated by the platform.

As the platform is relatively new (but rapidly growing in popularity), their rates are very affordable in comparison to other lead sources.

To start using this service, join the buyer’s list on HouseCashin.com.

In the opt-in form asking “Which sources would you like to receive deal notifications from?”, select “Distressed sellers (for sale by owner)” to start receiving motivated seller leads.

Real Estate Bees

Just like HouseCashin, Real Estate Bees offer a similar solution. Real Estate Bees is a one-of-a-kind platform for real estate professionals.

The platform generates highly-converting motivated seller leads for real estate investors, wholesalers, and agents in their target market.

The unique feature of the Real Estate Bees’ program is that they offer multiple lead acquisition models:

1. Free leads
2. No upfront cost leads
3. Paid upfront leads
4. Shared expense leads

Pros of Lead Providers

• Consistent flow of leads
• Hands-off lead generation
• Instant scalability/downgrading
• Customer support

Cons of Lead Providers

• Ongoing payments
• No control over the lead generation process

How It Works

Maybe you don’t need a website to get started in wholesaling real estate or flipping, but if you want to stay in the game long term, it’s a must.

With the right SEO strategy and proper optimizations, your own website can generate leads with fairly low month-to-month maintenance required (after a proper initial setup).

You can attract different types of motivated sellers searching online for help with content relevant to their situation. For example, someone can use the keyword “need to sell my house fast”.

If you have high-quality content written on this topic and offering solutions to their problems, you can convert these visitors into motivated leads.

In addition to quality and solution-oriented content, your web pages should also contain conversion elements.

For example, a section in your article offering to resolve the reader’s problem by selling their house to you and a contact form to submit their inquiry.

Once created, the web pages of your website become 24/7 ‘sales agents’ that have potential to continuously generate leads without further effort from you (as long as your website receives targeted traffic).

This is especially true if you have one of the best real estate AI chatbots integrated in your website to ensure that the leads are pre-qualified and processed right away, without letting them continue shopping for offers from other investors while waiting for your answer to their contact form submission.

At the first glance it might look very simple. However, in reality, creating a website that generates a steady lead flow on a consistent basis is an entire science.

Creating an effective website by yourself requires implementation of various digital marketing strategies such as real estate SEO, user interface and experience, proper real estate website design, and other aspects.

If you want to learn how to successfully implement a SEO & content marketing strategy into your REI business, the D.E.A.L Method Academy can help you do it on your own.

However, you don’t have to necessarily learn most of these things to get a functional lead generating website. There are done-for-you real estate investor website templates or builders and other solutions available on the market.

Ready Website Solutions for Real Estate Professionals

There are ready website solutions created specifically for real estate investors and agents. They come already pre-built with all the necessary optimization for your type of audience in mind.

While they usually don’t come with a unique, informational content, you (or a professional you hire) just need to fill the website up with original content specific to your business.

Real Estate Bees is currently working on their own website solution. It’s the most thought-through and functional website for different types of real estate investors, wholesalers, and agents.

One of its unique features, which is especially important for real estate wholesalers, is a functionality that helps with the disposition of properties.

First of all, you will have a robust online property marketplace on your own website.

By posting your properties on the marketplace, you not only showcase them on your own website, but also syndicate them onto other online real estate marketplaces.

This dramatically expands your reach, helping you sell your properties significantly faster.

Secondly, the functionality named Reciprocity Network allows you to showcase others’ off-market listings on your marketplace.

In return, your properties will also be shown on network participants’ marketplaces making the exposure even greater.

To become one of the first beta users of this one-of-a-kind website solution, contact Real Estate Bees here and ask them to add you to the waiting list.

Pros of Using Your Website

• Possibility of generating leads on autopilot
• Moderate amount of required maintenance (depending on your needs)
• Unlimited room for growing your passive flow of leads

Cons of Using Your Website

• Requires knowledge (SEO, content creation, conversion optimization)
• Requires time investment for creating lead generating web pages
• May be costly (depending on your needs)

Now, let’s look at how to find leads for wholesale real estate offline.

A decades-old marketing ploy, bandit signs are small signs placed roadside to advertise something. The trick is to use a short, attention-grabbing message that can be read at a glance.

For real estate flipping and wholesaling, you’ll often see ones that read “Cash for Houses,” “We Buy Houses in Any Condition Fast”, or some variation thereof.

Bandit signs are less intrusive than some other old school methods like real estate investor direct mail marketing or when a homeowner is bothered by someone from a call center for real estate investors. You don’t have to reach out to people personally and annoy them.

How It Works

This method is convenient because it has motivated sellers call you themselves. You don’t need to skip trace real estate leads.

The strategy is to put signs in a high-traffic area for maximum exposure. Once they’re up, they act as miniature billboards that drum up motivated seller leads.

Consistency is the key to getting the best results. The more signs you put out, the more visibility you get. When starting out, you may want to go with 200-plus signs as some will get torn down.

Ideal placement includes retail center entrances and busy intersections where cars queue. But you need to check ordinances for what’s allowed. There may be code restrictions.

You can make bandit signs out of materials you have at home. Or, you can purchase them online. When buying them in bulk at one of your local printing company, they cost just $1-2 per sign.

To easier manage incoming calls and follow up, as well as to ensure anonymity, wholesalers indicate a disposable phone number on the signs.

There are paid real estate wholesaling tools to help you plan, track, and manage the location of your signs. But the work to put them out still needs to be done by you or a hired helper.

Managing your campaign includes keeping track of which signs and locations bring in the most leads. You also need to monitor and renew the signs.

However, this is one of the methods requiring the least amount of management.

Pros of Bandit Signs

• Low cost
• Can target specific areas
• Message displayed 24/7

Cons of Bandit Signs

• Outlawed in some locations
• Can ding your budget if you’re fined
• Can be time-consuming to put up a sufficient number initially
• Requires monitoring and maintenance
• Not a closely targeted approach

For newbie investors who are thinking of how to find houses to flip without investing much money in marketing, classified online ad websites are an effective avenue for free motivated seller lead generation.

Craigslist is one of the most established ones. Its setup lets you target ads to areas where you’re specifically looking for leads.

How It Works

Craigslist has an interface for creating ads that’s relatively easy to use. An online search will turn up free templates that can jump start the process.

You’ll need to pick the location and the section(s) where you want your ad to appear. There are categories for Real Estate Services and Housing.

After you’ve created your ads, it’s simply a matter of renewing and reposting. As others list new ads in the same category, yours will move down the list.

You must renew it if you want to maximize ad time at the top. Renewing is a quick click of a button. And you can renew every 48 hours for up to 30 days.

The free ads stay up for 7-45 days, depending on the city and category. When that time is up, you can easily repost.

Pros of Free Online Advertising

• No or low cost ($5 per ad in the Real Estate Services section on Craigslist)
• Targets specific areas
• Posting is quick and easy

Cons of Free Online Advertising

• May not cover smaller cities
• Generally no-frills ads
• Not a closely targeted approach

Digital advertising is a marketing model where you pay a competitive fee each time someone views or clicks on your ad.

Online advertising platforms show your ads to their users. By clicking on the ads, users are transferred to your lead-capturing web page (landing page) or call you.

From there, you can automate the process by using one of the best phone call live answering services for real estate investors.

How It Works

You have a choice of various platforms for your campaign. Google is one of the most powerful ones where you can set up ads to display on their search results pages.

Google ads are shown to users who search online by typing one of the keywords that you choose to trigger your ad. For example, “sell my house fast in Houston”.

These people are looking for your services. So, they’re already warm leads.

Thanks to their comprehensive targeting systems, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are also popular among advertisers.

The pricing model for online advertising is a digital auction. The automatic auction takes only a moment — every time an ad is shown to a user.

You set what you’re willing to bid for clicks (for Google Search ads) or views (on social media).

Your bid competes with others for available spots. The factors determining which ad is shown also include other factors than your bid.

Google Search ads also consider the relevancy of your ad to the user’s search intent and their location.

Social media ads take into account the user’s personal information: location, age, interests, and other relevant data that you specify in the targeting settings.

You can manage campaign costs by setting the maximum daily budget. That way, bidding stops when it reaches the limit and automatically resumes the next day.

This method requires ongoing monitoring to fine-tune your campaign. We reviewed and compared the best Google Ads services for real estate investors and the best Facebook Ads services for real estate investors that can manage your campaign entirely.

For the best results at the lowest spending, you need to continually adjust bids, budgets, targeting data, and the ads content.

If you prefer to self-manage these ads online instead of outsourcing to a marketing agency, you can do that as well. Depending on the size of your marketing budget, this can take, on average, from two to five hours per week to manage.

You can learn how to set-up and manage Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Facebook Ads & more in the D.E.A.L Method Academy for real estate wholesalers & investors.

However, when done correctly, online paid advertising is highly effective. It can bring you a constant flow of motivated seller leads that are highly targeted and warm.

Pros of Paid Online Advertising

• Refined targeting capabilities
• Analytics on how well ads are working
• Warm lead generation
• You can pre-qualify leads on your landing page

Cons of Paid Online Advertising

• Can be pricey for inexperienced users
• Requires ongoing management

Any real coach offering real estate wholesaling courses or classes on how to start off flipping houses will surely advice you to work on building a solid network of real estate professionals.

You have trusted connections when you have referral partners doing lead generation for you. So, you can get quality leads with minimal ongoing effort.

How It Works

Chances are, you already have an existing network of real estate professionals serving home sellers, such as realtors, lenders, short sale processing companies, or real estate attorneys.

A quick conversation may suffice to have them refer leads to you in exchange for a referral fee or another benefit.

If you have lenders in your network, you don’t even need to come up with a benefit to offer. Someone who’d buy foreclosures from them is already what they are looking for. This way, they can be your best way to find foreclosures for free.

However, expanding relationships takes time, especially if you don’t have a wide network yet.

Start reaching out to professionals via cold calling or emailing. Also, make sure to ask every new connection about referring leads to you.

Target professionals serving clients with distressed properties, financial hardship, and other situations you specialize in. For example, foreclosure attorneys or property tax attorneys.

Whether the partnerships are new or existing, you’ll need to manage them to generate a consistent flow of leads.

• Keep in touch and nurture the relationship to stay top of mind.
• Inform partners about referral outcomes and send business their way.
• Recognize, acknowledge, and thank partners for what they do.

Pros of Creating Partnerships

• Referrals come with built-in trust
• You have ambassadors to spread the word about you
• Leads have a higher chance of being sales-ready

Cons of Creating Partnerships

• Results may not be immediate
• Requires time and commitment to get partnerships going

Networking is important. If you are networking in the right circles, your name should come up when an off-market deal comes up.

— Adam Craig, CEO/Founder, CLE Real Estate Group

I get motivated seller leads through a network of wholesalers, because everything has been pretty much negotiated upfront for me.

— Odette Jordan, Owner and CFO, Paragon Property Ventures, LLC

Any activity to find motivated sellers that you hand off to someone else can keep leads coming almost without any extra legwork on your part.

How It Works

This method differs from using online real estate investor lead sources with the fact that you have more control over how exactly the leads are generated.

You can delegate within your team if you don’t work solo. You can also outsource the lead generation process. Or, do a combination of the two, depending on your situation.

For example, if you have or opt to hire virtual assistants for real estate investors, you can train them to take on specific tasks. Research is one of them.

That includes scanning public records and MLS for potential leads and using skip tracing services for real estate investors to locate distressed properties’ owners.

Driving around neighborhoods to find motivated sellers is another delegatable activity. You can hire a local real estate bird dog (property scout) if you want to outsource this.

Bird dogs are already versed in finding leads. They know what to look for and use specialized driving for dollars apps that facilitate the process. Some will help you put up bandit signs, too.

Social media marketing efforts are another aspect you can entrust to someone else, as well as online advertising and other marketing campaigns.

You can outsource to freelancers and virtual assistants. Many of them are open to working on a retainer basis.

Pros of Delegating Lead Generation

• Frees up your time to do other things
• Requires little to no management if the assistant or service provider is experienced
• Can take advantage of specialized skills others have

Cons of Delegating Lead Generation

• Requires effort and luck to find a truly reliable assistant or service provider
• Comes with ongoing costs

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About the Author

Kristina Morales is a REALTOR® with over 20 years of professional experience. She actively practices real estate in Ohio but also has practiced real estate in California and Texas. Conducting her real estate business in three states has allowed her to gain unique experiences that make her a well-rounded realtor. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Business Management and her MBA with a concentration in Banking and Finance. Prior to real estate, Kristina had an extensive corporate career in banking and treasury. She ended her finance career as an Assistant Treasurer at a publicly traded oil & gas company in Houston, TX.