The BEST Ways to Find “Rare” Off-Market Real Estate Deals in 2025 (Rookie Reply)

Are greatLet’s get your questions answered. I am Ashley Kehr and I’m here with Tony j RobinsonAnd welcome to the Real Estate Rooky Podcast, where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And today we are diving into the BiggerPockets forums to get your questions answered in GSI forums with the absolute best place to go as a rookie to get all of your real estate investing questions answered from experts like myself, like Ashley, and so many more from the BP community. So today we’re going to discuss first how to find off market deals. A big thing in today’s market with supply being a little bit constrained. Second, we’ll talk about what market research you should do before investing. And finally we’ll talk about the best ways to handle updating lease agreement. So with that, let’s get into the first question.Okay, so today’s for question is pulled from the BiggerPockets forums. If you aren’t already sign up for a free membership to be a part of the BiggerPockets community, you can also leave questions for other investors to answer or maybe we’ll pull it to answer on the show for you. So today’s question is how to find wholesalers or off market residential properties. I am newer to acquiring properties as my rentals have been past personal homes and when I stumbled upon through a family friend outside of driving for dollars, what else can I be doing to find local properties? How do I locate wholesalers in my immediate area? I have found Facebook groups for my state and region, but all the properties are in more populous suburbs further away than I want my properties to be. Okay, so off of market deals. So he’s off to a great start this person by using their old primaries to turn into rentals and then getting a word of mouth referral from somebody knowing that they like to have rentals and selling them a property. Tony, how many off market or what percentage of your properties have been from wholesalers or off market deals?Probably close to 50%, somewhere in that ballpark, but some we source ourselves. We did a little bit of direct mail at one point, some from wholesalers that we’ve built relationship ships with and others from agents that we built relationship with where the properties never listed. They just came to us first, but I’d say probably close to about 50% of the single family homes have come from some sort of off market transaction, which I didn’t realize. And saying it out loud, I didn’t realize it was that big of a percentage, but there’s a few questions in here, but I guess first lemme ask the same question to you actually. What percentage of your portfolio came from off market?I would say it’s a little less than yours. I would say probably 35 to 40% off market just because I’ve gotten lately pocket listings, which technically they’re actually, they’re not put on the MLS, they’re under contract then put on the MLS as under contract. So I’m not sure how to, I wouldStill call those off market.Maybe a little bit higher percentage then, but mostly have been on market deals.I was just going to say, just to give some clarity to the listeners as well, we purchased multiple deals from the same wholesaler. We purchased multiple deals from the same agent who’s a agent slash builder. So it’s not like I have this massive network of people just kind of sitting me off market deals, but I think the point I’m trying to make is you only need a couple of really good relationships to be able to feed you enough volume of deals that you’re looking to add to your portfolio. So just one caveat there.So some way to find wholesalers or somebody that’s finding properties for you. So they talked about they found Facebook groups, but it’s not exactly what they’re looking for. And I think another way is to actually Google sell my house fast and up are going to be wholesalers looking for leads by trying to bring people in that need to sell their house fast. And you can go ahead and contact them from their website and say, Hey, I’m a buyer in the area, this is my buy box, this is what I’m looking for. Can you add me to your buyer’ss list? So that’s a very easy thing to do sitting from home doing that, going onto the BiggerPockets forums, going ahead and from here I’m looking for properties here. Also going to meetups.com or even in BiggerPockets on the website, they have different meetups, physically going to the meetups, connecting with people there asking who their wholesalers are or meeting wholesalers. The one in Buffalo, they always do a big circle sometimes where you could say your name, what you do and what you’re looking for. And so you could say, I’m looking for wholesalers in this neighborhood, this is the type of house I’m looking to buy, something like that. So that’s another great way to get connected with wholesalers, but the Google search is such an easy way and you’re going to find the bigger wholesalers that way too that usually bring in more volume.Yeah, I love that approach of reaching out to the people that are running ads for we buy houses fast. I’ve never thought about that. That’s a great little tip there, Ash. So yeah, obviously that’s one piece is going after wholesalers. I think another approach is maybe sourcing some deals for yourself. So this person mentioned that they’re driving for dollars, which is a great way to kind of build your own list. I think some other opportunities to find off-market deals are going after expired listings. So if in your area you kind of see properties that are sitting, they’ve gone stagnant, now that listing is no longer there, that’s an opportunity for you to reach out to those folks as well. Also just going after properties that are on market, and I know this is kind of anti to the question and we talk about this a lot of times in the podcast, is that the listing prices is often just a suggestion and you should in no way, shape or form treat the listing prices, the end all be all, you should be submitting so many offers to the point where the majority of your offers are rejected.Because if you’re only submitting offers when you feel like you’ve got a really good shot, you’re probably missing a lot of opportunity. I’ve shared the story before, but there’s a property that we were looking at buying in Tennessee. It was a cabin right down the road from cabin that you already have. It was initially listed I think at 1.2 we offered 700. They didn’t even encounter, they ended up dropping the price a few times. We said another offer at 700 and I think they countered at eight 50 and actually just pulled that property up not too long ago and they had just done another price drop from eight 50 I think down to eight 40. It’s sitting out right now. So a month ago they dropped a price at eight 40. So I might reach back out to them again with another or $700,000 offer and see what happens. So even just kind of working those properties that are listed can sometimes be a good way to get maybe deals that other people are overlooking.Yeah, usually I’m against wasting time just scrolling on Zillow. But one thing you can do is to set your filter to sort it for days on market but in reverse. So you’re seeing the properties that have been sitting on market the longest first and then kind of work your way down and kind of look, okay, this property has been sitting for 235 days. They obviously may be more open to a lower offer than somebody that’s been on market two days. So that’s another thing you can look at.I want to talk about a couple more off market strategies that we’ve used, but before I do just one other piece on market side, we talk a lot about Stream, but another app that I’ve been using a lot recently is Privy. So it’s Privy Pro is the website and it’s very similar to Stream. The UI is a little bit more 2025, so I think it’s a little bit more updated, but I also like it’s a little bit easier to inside of Privy, there’s just a few less steps involved. So what I have for my areas are saved searches. So I have a little map, a little radius that I drew on the map and I’m looking for any listings that mention the word TLC, cash investor damage or repairs. And I’ll just go in every couple of days, see what’s listed there and I’ll make offers that way. I just have a blanketed template email that I send out and majority of the times the answer is no. And I get people who are like, Hey, I’ve got someone way above what you’re offering, but at least I’m getting my reps in and I’m keeping the kind of pipelines open to potentially find something. So just another option to find some on market stuff as well.Okay. So let’s talk about that piece a little bit more as to you are actually sending the offers to the seller’s agent. Okay, so one piece I feel like we see very common, and I felt like this in several situations before too, is you almost feel bad giving your agent all of these offers to submit and to fill out all these contracts and do all this work where it can get to the point where some agents get frustrated like, okay, these are low ball offers, you’re wasting my time. So I think that is a great solution of actually emailing the seller’s agent directly yourself and almost are you actually writing up a letter of intent or it’s just more of a verbal offer of should I go through the process of actually putting together a full offer or this is not something they’re interested in at all. Can you give us maybe a little bit of your script of what you’re actually saying in the email?For sure. I’ll say, Hey, my name’s Tony Robinson. I’m a local investor inquiring about property X, y, Z. Here’s what I can offer, here’s how quickly I can close. I have no inspections financing or appraisal contingencies, and then here’s my offer. And it’s really just kind of quick and to the point. And like I said, a lot of times I like, hey, thanks and that’s it. Other times it’s like, hey, the seller might be willing to come to Y and other times like, Hey, we’re already under contract, but it’s a very simple email. Here’s my name. I usually also include that I don’t like, Hey, I’m not represented by anyone, so if you want to double in the deal, I’m fine with that as well. So maybe there’s a little bit more motivation for the seller’s agent on that side as well. But I keep it simple and just say, Hey, here’s my price, here are my terms, here’s what I can close.I think that’s great. So we got a little script here now about to source your deals. So what were some of the other ways that you have gotten off market deals?Yeah, so we’ve tested mail, direct mail, we’ve tested texting and cold calling as well. And we picked up one deal from a postcard campaign that we sent out. We picked up another deal from a call, a cold cost slash kind of text campaign that we sent out. Haven’t leaned into many of those super heavily over the last couple of years just because it does take a little bit of time to get that pipeline up and running and to maintain that. But we have secured deals from both of those channels as well. And I think the good thing about both of those options is that sometimes you can ride the, I guess maybe ride the momentum of other people’s work on the direct mail side because even if you’ve only mailed them once, maybe someone else has mailed them six times already and you just happen to be that seventh piece of mail that really kind of gets them over the edge and says, fine, I’ll finally do it. And the reason I know that that’s true, or the reason I believe it to be true is because the first phone call that we got from the very first ever postcard drop that we sent out, the very first phone call became our first off market deal. They resourced ourselves and we were looking at each other like, man, why isn’t everybody doing this?But in talking with him, he had been getting mail on this property for years and we just happened to be the one that he opened when he was in that mode to finally sell. So sometimes you can get lucky, but to really set expectations, you’re probably going to need to hit someone 6, 7, 8, 10 times before they’re actually ready to sell. That’s what I mean when you say you got to build that pipeline.I think before we move on to the next question is just one disclaimer out there is no matter how you’re sourcing your deals through a real estate agent or a wholesaler that you’re doing your own deal analysis, you’re vetting the deal yourself and not relying on somebody else to tell you what the numbers should be too on a deal, I think is very important no matter how you’re sourcing the deal1000% because every wholesaler will send you a deal and say, Hey, the rehab is only 20 5K, you got a $300,000 spread and here are eight comps that supported. And then you do a little bit of digging yourself and you find that some of those comps are two years old or maybe they’re 10 miles away or whatever it may be. So couldn’t agree with you more, Ashley, make sure you’re doing your own homework.Okay, before we jump into our second question, rookies, we want to thank you so much for being here and listening to the podcast. As you may know, we air every episode of this podcast on YouTube as well as original content, like my new series Rookie resource. We want to hit 100,000 subscribers and we need your help. If you aren’t already, please head over to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/at realestate rookie and subscribe to our channel.We’re going to take a quick break, but while we’re away, are you ready to ignite your real estate investing journey? Join us at BiggerPockets Momentum 2025 where top industry experts and investors come together to share game changing strategies and actionable insights.Okay, welcome back. We have another question. So Tony, what’s our next question today?Alright, so our second question says, I’m a resident of Seattle, Washington and currently own a home with a 2.75% interest rate. Geez, all of my other assets are invested in the stock market. I’m looking to diversify into real estate, preferably a single family home. I’m really getting started and looking for advice on what indicators do you look at before investing into a property? What research do you do about the neighborhood, the school district or the market trends in general? Lastly, given that I’m in a very high cost of living market, what targets do you set with cashflow and your monthly budget? Alright, so a couple of things to kind of break out here. Seattle, Washington, expensive market. We know that really good interest on the primary, but the questionnaire is really not even about their primary home, but just like, hey, what should I do if I’m looking to get started to buy that first real estate deal?I’ll give my quick thought on the very first step, but I believe that before you even start thinking about markets or potential properties or whatever this may be, you have to establish and understand your own goals and your own motivations. Are you doing this for immediate accumulation of cashflow so you can replace your W2 job as quickly as possible? Are you doing this for appreciation so that when you retire at the age of 60 that you’ve got assets then that you can live off of that? Are you looking to do this for the tax benefits? What is your actual motivation for getting into real estate? You say diversify, which is one piece of that puzzle, but what are all of the other factors that you are personally considering that has you motivated to actually jump into real estate investing? So I believe very firmly, that’s always a good solid first step is to identify the goals and the motivations. What about you, Ash?Yeah, I can’t agree with you more on that because that’s really going to kind of set the trajectory or your path that you’re going to take with purchasing that property. So you can compare yourself to another investor, but if you have a different reason for investing or a different why the deal that they have may not make sense to what you want to do or what you want to get out of real estate. So I guess looking at this person’s question is to, it doesn’t say exactly if they want to invest in the Seattle market or if they’re willing to go out of state, but I think besides setting your why, also the next thing is setting your budget. So what can you actually afford? Do you have money for a down payment? Do you have cash and you want to save or pay cash for the property?How much is that? So kind of establishing a budget if you need to go and get a pre-approval to see what that would be. Or maybe you have a private money lender, how much are they willing to lend you figure that budget out, then we can go ahead and start doing market analysis. So let’s just pick one of these things. Let’s say they’re actually going for cashflow because he does mention what would be a good cashflow to get as an investor. So we’re going to go ahead and start looking at markets and doing a market analysis. And the first thing to easily narrow down for a rental property is first, which states are landlord friendly. If you have the option of investing in any state, you might as well start in a landlord friendly state instead of like me in New York that is very, very tenant friendly.So we can start there narrow down by state, then we can look at budget. So what are the budgets that we can go ahead, what’s your budget? And kind of narrow down from city there. There’s some really good websites such as neighborhood scouts, there’s bright Investor where you can actually go and pull all this neighborhood data then see are there any areas that you actually have an advantage or opportunities such as a boots on the ground, maybe you even grew up there. So the neighborhood, that’s an advantage. Maybe you have a cousin who’s a real estate agent in a market that’s an advantage. And actually we did do a rookie resource YouTube video if you want to check that out, all about market analysis. And here you get to download a whole template checklist of everything you should be looking at the crime, things like that, that can really help you narrow down a few markets to eventually go ahead and pickAll good pieces there. Ashley, and I guess the only other thing that I would add is, I mean he did mention or she did mention cashflow here, so we can maybe assume that that’s the target. But I guess the other thing that I typically tell people to look at as you’re trying to narrow down the market, really the first piece it’s just like, Hey, where should I invest? That’s kind of the first piece. So if we look at 30,000 foot view, the big milestones, you’ve got to choose your market. What city should I be investing in? Once you choose your market, you have to then build a process or follow a process for finding deals within said market. And then once you’ve got a pipeline of deals that you found, you then have to go through the steps of analyzing those deals to see if they meet your investment criteria. And then once you analyze the deals, you find one, then you go through the steps of getting it set up to either long-term, medium term, flip, whatever your exit strategy is, but choose a marketAnd building your team,Building your team. And I think it is really those steps that we want to move through. But one of the first things that you should be doing, yes, definitely building your team, but I think even to help you narrow down the market a bit more, is just understanding not only your goals, your motivations, but then also your purchasing power. And when I say purchasing power, how much cash do you have in the bank that you feel comfortable investing into your first real estate deal and what level or what amount can you get approved for on a mortgage? And once you have the answer to those two things, well now you’ve got a better sense also of what market you should be focusing on because maybe you’re a high income earner, maybe you earn two 50 a year and maybe you can get approved for an $800,000 mortgage on your first investment property, but if you’ve only got 50 K that you’re willing to invest, it doesn’t matter if you can get approved for 800,000, you’ve got to go find a property where 50 K can actually get you into a deal and it’s not on an $800,000 purchase.So just kind of understanding at a high level your cash on hand that you feel comfortable investing and your pre-approval will also help you narrow down and kind of choose the right market.And then kind of the last part of this question quick was what kind of target returns should I be looking for? What’s the cashflow I should be getting? I think a great starting point for that is I think he had mentioned he invested in the stock market as to what are the returns that you’re getting in the stock because you are, and I usually say you want to get a better return than what you can get in the stock market or wherever else you’re investing, but you have to take into account the other advantages of real estate such as the tax benefits, the appreciation, the equity, different things like that. So even if you’re not getting as great of a return as you would in the stock market, then there’s these other benefits, especially if you have a high W2, that you have these extra tax advantages that come with rental properties, especially short-term rentals.So I think compare it to the other investments that you have to see if it makes sense for you, but then going into the BiggerPockets forums and asking people for that specific market as to what types of returns are you getting in this area, what is a good return? Is this better for appreciation? Is cashflow better in these markets? Because it’s very difficult to find the happy of both of those things of getting both of those, but it is out there. But if you just want one or the other, that’s a lot easier to find than I would say a happy medium of both of those. Okay. We have to take one final ad break, but we’ll be back with more after this. Alright, let’s jump in to your questions and we have one final question.Alright, so this question says, my tenant called me to explain, they’re separating from their spouse. They asked how they could be taken off of the lease. My concern is that the remaining party will not be able to afford the rent. Their income isn’t much more than the rent itself. So there’s no way they could swing it without an additional source. I wouldn’t mind terminating the lease early, but the remaining party said they would like to stay and intend on renewing the lease for another 12 months. Should I offer early termination for both parties and fine new tenants? Should I just prepare to start the eviction on January 10th or see if they managed to continue making rent and then decide to renew the lease or not?Tricky situation, I’ll kind of give my initial thoughts here. And then Ashley, you’ve obviously got a lot more experience here in the space than I do, but in my mind there is a lot of time, effort, energy and money lost that goes into tenant turnover because you’ve got to prep this unit, you’ve got to market this unit, you have to hopefully find and screen new tenants. So there’s time, effort and energy that goes into that. And we don’t know what city you’re in, maybe you are units can turn like hotcakes and you can list the unit today and have someone in there tomorrow. Or maybe especially this time of year, maybe winter people aren’t looking to move as much and maybe it sits empty for a couple of months and now you’ve got rent to cover on a unit that otherwise would’ve been filled. So in my mind, if they’ve been a good tenant, leave it up to them to figure out how they’re going to cover the rent. And if they’re looking to renew, then maybe they’ve figured something out, maybe they’re getting some sort of spousal support, maybe there’s child support, maybe they’re getting a second job, who knows? But I don’t know if I would kick a tenant out under the assumption that they may or may not be willing to pay when historically you haven’t seen any issue. So my 2 cents is someone who at the moment owns zero long-term rentals. So take that with a big grain of salt. Ashley, what are your thoughts?Yeah, so I think if they have a good tenant history, they take care of the property. They’ve always paid on time that they are worth trying to keep around if it works out. So I wouldn’t terminate their lease, especially since how long have they lived there? So when you did their rental application receive their income, could circumstances have changed since then? And also when they’re separating, they could be getting some kind of spousal support in the meantime until the divorce is final and then they could be getting alimony from the other person. So I think there’s a lot of different circumstances where they could afford this. Maybe they got a raise last month at their job. So you can always open that line of communication and just say, I would love for you to just submit a new application or run a new credit check or something.I don’t even know if that’s necessary to that extent, but just ask for an updated proof of income to show that they can continue to afford the apartment on their own. And then that will just kind of open up the discussion and maybe they will end up realizing like, no, actually I can’t afford it. I was going to try to, and then you can make the decision of this is going to be really hard for you to live off a hundred dollars a month for all of the rest of your living expenses. I’m going to go ahead and not renew your lease agreement. But I think that other option too is leaving it month to month and then deciding to renew it at a later date. In New York, and this could depend on what state you’re in too, like in New York, if you don’t renew a tenant’s lease, it automatically usually goes to month to month tenancy. And if you notify a tenant that you’re ending their lease agreement, it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to move out. They can still stay there and then you have to take ’em to court for a lease holdover that they stayed along or after their lease had expired. So look at your tenant landlord laws too and see if you’d have to go through the eviction process anyways. If you try and terminate their lease or end their lease or not renew it too.I love the idea of going month to month. I think that gives both the tenant and the landlord the ability to assess on a more shorter timeline of like, Hey, is this actually working for us? So definitely a good option there as well.Okay. Well thank you guys so much for joining us for this episode of Rookie Reply. If you want to get involved in the community of realestate investors, make sure you head over to biggerpockets.com and contribute into the forums. You can ask questions or you can answer them. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys next time on the next episode of a Real Estate Rookie.