How To Find “For Sale By Owner Properties” FSBO’s In Your Area To Market And Sell To

For sale by owner properties, or FSBO’s as they are commonly refereed, are some of the best places to look for new clients. If done correctly, they can provide a steady stream of interested and motivated new home purchasers. And at very little cost.

As a loan officer, your goal is to become the mortgage source that the FSBO seller will refer interested home buyers to, to get pre-qualified. And don’t forget that the FSBO seller may be looking for a new property as well—and with that a new loan. If you work the arrangement properly, you can get loans coming from both ways.

Here are some of the best places to locate FSBO’s in your area:

* The real estate classified section of your local newspaper.

* The Want Advertiser Magazine, and other small local buy/sell classified ad magazines. To give you a sense, a similar magazine is the Auto Trader, but there are ones out there that deal specifically with items and property.

* Drive around the neighborhoods you know are hot markets.

* Ask real estate referral partners such as realtors (they look for FSBO’s too, so may have seen one), appraisers (most FSBO’s will an appraisal report to justify a price), real estate attorneys (FSBO’s need contract work done), and others.

* Real estate section on ebay. A great resource!

* Warnock’s By Owner, an alerting service for real estate and mortgage professionals that tracks FSBO’s all over the country. You can visit their site at http://www.wbyowner.com

* Other FSBO sites to look at: http://www.fsbo.com, http://www.virtualfsbo.com, http://www.isoldmyhouse.com, http://www.salebyownerrealty.com, http://www.fsbonetwork.com, http://www.fsbo.net.

The most important thing to remember when dealing with FSBO’s is to identify to the prospect that you are NOT a real estate agent. You are there to help them weed out the unqualified prospects and save them time, money, and aggravation. These are the hot- buttons that will get your foot in the door, and a sale in your pocket.

In our next installment, we’ll look at how to best approach a FSBO prospect.