There are a lot of benefits to birddog, forget the funny title, it is the best place to begin your new real estate investment career! No, the pay is initially not good, but one has to decide are they in business for the long haul or looking to get rich quick? For the long haul, education is invaluable in our business. Education is precisely what bird-dogging is all about. A birddog by definition finds motivated sellers for seasoned investors. In return they make $500-$1000 dollars per deal once the investor closes on the house. A bird-dog simply points to the house. Bird-dogging has no risk, and needs no money to place the house under contract. Many new investors ask me how I get my ugly houses 48-70 cents on the dollar. So after discussing this with new investors I finally wrote an ezine or e-book that discuses in precise detail how to talk with sellers. The goal is to find numerous investors who one can bird-dog for, by calling the We Buy Houses signs and ads ect. Then ask them where they like to buy and rehab houses so you can go to there goldmine areas and find gold. You are looking for vacant houses with unkempt yards, boarded up windows, usually much older houses, the worse the house the better, asking neighbors who owns the property and do they have the phone number? When I was bird-dogging I would show the investor the house, we would agree on the finders fee, then immediately I would begin to look for the next motivated seller/house. But what typically happens is the investor would turn my deal down time and time again. Turns out what I thought were wholesale deals were not deals at all! They were mentoring me, and I in turn made them money, while establishing trust, forming business relationships, and finding out which investors could close and who were newbies. I learned the areas, the houses, the market, the players, timing and many other things that would have taken me months doing it on my own. When I started out as an investor, I like most had stars in my eyes and a hunger in my stomach for success. In time I began to realize that building a business takes time, knowledge, perseverance, some money (a job helps here), and dogged determination. So by starting as a bird-dog I got a good quick education. I only had to birddog a few times, then began wholesaling. The benefits I received as a birddog proved invaluable. All of the nos I got taught me what a yes or a real deal was! Hope this helps some and may you have a profitable, and fun investing career. |
