Don’t do this if you want to find investment properties on your own

photo credit: etohaholic

In our previous article How to find good real estate/property agents? we discussed ways to find good property agents worth what you pay. Where do you begin to locate properties if you choose not to employ an agent or you prefer to do it yourself?

Watching the “for sale by owner” ads is probably going to be your primary source of available investments. Although most ads do not tell you much, you can contact the owner and get enough questions answered over the phone to determine if it is worth pursuing.

You will rarely see “for sale” signs on investment properties, as you do with houses, because most owners do not want their tenants to know that their temporary shelter is for sale.

Word of caution on this point
You will have occasion to walk around a property that is for sale. Don’t talk to the tenants, and especially, don’t tell them the building is for sale and that you’re considering buying it. You have a very high chance of having the owner take the property off the market and refusing to sell, just to prove to his tenants that it is not for sale.

Most owners seem to feel that if their tenants find out the building is for sale, they’ll all move out. This, of course, is not true. But don’t try to convince the owner of that. The odds are that every tenant in his property knew it was for sale within one hour after he offered it the first time, anyway.

How else can you find an investment property? We will discuss several ways to find cheap properties in our next article. Stay tuned!