Driving for dollars is an easy and inexpensive way for new real estate investors to find their first deal. In order to get started driving for dollars, you have to pick a target market which is the city or area that you are focusing on. If you are a wholesaler, your target market would be the area where you are looking to find your first house to flip to another investor. If you are a landlord or a rehabber, then your target market is the area where you would like to find your first rental property or fix and flip. What you are looking for when you are driving for dollars is vacant houses and houses that look like they are damaged or need repairs. Owners of a vacant property are more likely to be motivated to sell at a discount. In many cases, these properties are vacant because they were rental properties and the landlord could not manage to deal with the tenants not paying the rent, repairs, and evictions. We call these landlords “tired” or “disgruntled” landlords. These properties usually need some work in order to be rent-ready, and the owner of the property is very motivated to sell. Another reason we find vacant houses is because of a probate or inheritance situation where someone has died and the house is vacant while the next of kin are deciding what to do with the house. In many instances, the children or whoever inherited the property live out of state. You spot vacant houses by noticing obvious signs like newspapers and mail stacked in the driveway, overgrown lawns with weeds and brush, and out of control landscaping that has not been taken care of. Other things to look for when driving for dollars are damaged houses, and houses that have tarps on the roof indicating roof damage. In Florida, after a hurricane, it is very easy to tell which houses have roof damage since they will usually have a blue tarp on the roof. Once I have located a vacant or damaged property, I use the Deal Machine app to begin marketing to the owner of the property. You can find this app at: https://www.lexlevinrad.com/dealmachine/

The first step is to take a picture of the property with your mobile phone, and using the Deal Machine App (installed on your phone), you can set up a monthly postcard to go out to the property owner right from your phone while you are in front of their property. You can also use the Deal Machine app to “skip trace” the property owner to get their phone number and email address. You can actually call the owner of the property using this app from your phone while you are parked in front of their property! What I really like about using this app is that it saves and stores all of your leads for you. So when I get back to my office and I open up Deal Machine on my computer, I can see all of my leads (and follow up with them). Before using this app, we used to drive around and write down addresses to vacant properties on a notepad. This Deal Machine app completely changed all of that. Now you can get the property owner on the phone while you are parked in front of their vacant home. If you want to try out using this app use this link: https://www.lexlevinrad.com/dealmachine/

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