I’ve run a large national network of real estate investor websites and because of this, I work with many real estate investors and a lot of real estate agents and brokers across the country. One thing my experience has shown me is how differently some agents treat their investor clients than others.

For example, I have some agents that when I give them the contact information of an investor, they try to e-mail them. I have others that immediately pick up the phone and call. The worst agents, in my opinion, do this though: they start bombarding the investors with every house for sale in the Multiple Listing Service. Apparently they think that investors want access to all the homes for sale in their market.

What’s sad is that this is one of the quickest ways to turn an investor client off. As an investor myself, I know how to go and look up properties on the web from various real estate websites. On those websites I can see just about every listing already. If I just wanted access to properties, I would not contact an agent.

As an investor myself, I’d want an agent to add value… analyze potential deals and tell me which ones look better than others depending on whether I am looking to buy for cash flow, or for equity to quickly resell. I personally would quickly block e-mails from an agent that was sending me 30 new listings each day ranging in price from low 5 figures to multi-million dollar homes.

If they had taken the time to ask, they would know that I am never going to buy a multi-million dollar single family home as an investment. In fact, I’ve never purchased above the median price in any city I’ve purchased in and so sending me properties above the median doesn’t fit my investing criteria.

If you are working with a real estate agent or broker, tell them the types of properties you’d like to see. Be very specific. If you wouldn’t consider a 2 bedroom property, tell them not to show or send you info on two bedrooms.

Some of my local clients wanted to receive a list of all the properties that are short sales. Others wanted all the properties that showed signs of being a fixer upper. I have set up custom searches set up for them to find these properties and to e-mail them automatically, but I do not send anyone all the new listings for the entire MLS each day.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. While using agents to find deals is just one of many strategies that we teach (and it is NOT my favorite) we do have an extensive section on how to find, interview and select agents to work with in our Real Estate Investor Wiki which is included free for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members along with free on-going training and consulting. Sign up for Real Estate Investor Bronze Membership and take your real estate investing business to the next level.