Leaflets are the cornerstone of any local property investment strategy but get them wrong you can very quickly lose your shirt and get disheartened. A lot of investors spend a fortune getting leaflets printed and sent out but get no results and don’t understand why so today we look at everything you need to consider.
The First Deal I Found Using Leaflets
The very first property sourcing deal I found using a leaflet was back in 2007.
It was a fantastic deal, a small 2-bed semi-detached house in a great rental area. It wasn’t on the market with any estate agents and in-fact they only contacted me as their mother had received the leaflet and passed it on to them.
The figures were great, I purchased it at around a £30k discount to the market value and the rental income gave me a steady net profit of £250pcm.
To do this day I still have that property and have only had two tenants in 7 years as they have been in the property for long terms.
It was simply the right place at the right time and sure they might have seen a newspaper ad or gone online and found our website, but at the time I didn’t have any of this setup, and even if I had, I would have been competing with lots of other companies to get their attention.
Leaflets are the cornerstone to any local property investment strategy, but when they are done wrong you can very quickly lose your shirt and get disheartened.
I see and speak to many investors that have spent a fortune on getting 100,000 leaflets printed up and sent out on their first go.
But they get no results and don’t understand why.
It can be a pretty detailed topic and we cover a whole section on leafleting to source BMV deals (below market value) in our online property training course.
But to give you a taster of how leaflets can work for you, and how to find positive cash flow properties, I’ve asked Suzie Bates from Suzie's Property Leaflets to share some of her success stories.
Sometimes it can be good to show you not only how it’s working for me, but also how it’s working for other investors in other parts of the country, and I can’t think of anyone better to show you (how leaflets can work) than Suzie, who is using leaflets daily in her property business.
How I Got Into Using Leaflets To Find Cash-Flow Properties
Hi, I’m Suzie Bates, a part-time property investor based in Leicester in the East Midlands, and I’d like to share my property experiences with you and give you some tips on how to find motivated property sellers and BMV (below market value) deals using leaflets.
I first became interested in property in the year 2000 when my husband and I finally managed to ‘get on the property ladder’ by purchasing our 3 bed council house with a fantastic discount due to being council tenants for many years.
This was my first taste of purchasing property BMV (Below Market Value) and when we sold it 4 years later in 2004 we made a staggering £70,000 profit!
I’d got the ‘bug’ for property investment and knew right there and then that I wanted to take it further.
So I started searching the internet and read many books to learn more about property investment and how to invest wisely. NEVER underestimate the power of education - the more you know, the more successful you will become and the fewer mistakes you will make.
There’s no such thing as ‘wasting money’ on education, knowledge is power and without it, you will bumble along ok for a while but then eventually get frustrated, make mistakes and give up.
I came across several property investment courses advertised online and decided that at 45 years old it was now or never - so I enrolled, vowed to give it all I’d got and never looked back! I started the course and met many successful property investors who were already doing what I wanted to do, many who had started with little or no money.
I also made a lot of good friends, useful contacts, learnt from the best and most importantly learnt from their mistakes and became more confident in my own abilities.
In 2007 I decided I had enough knowledge to put what I’d learnt into action. TAKING ACTION is imperative, you can read all you like and take as many courses as you want to but NOTHING is going to change if you just sit there and do nothing.
In the space of 2 ½ years I sourced and purchased 3 BTL properties, two 3 bed semi’s and a detached 3 bed dormer bungalow, all in Leicester and all:
- Below market value (min 15%, max 32%)
- Needed minimum refurbishment (tidying up and decorating throughout)
- Cash flowing from £260 to £330 per month
A lot has happened since then and I’ve successfully profited from using several different strategies that I learnt on the courses.
Why is Leafleting One of The Best Ways To Source BMV Properties from ‘Motivated Sellers’
A ‘motivated seller' is someone who NEEDS to sell their property not just wants to sell.
By focusing on the seller’s situation and not the property, you will help more people and do more deals.
They may have a need to sell for a variety of reasons like...
- Repossession
- Divorce & separation
- Loss of their job
Sometimes it might be the early stages and they may just be thinking about selling to solve their problems OR they may be further down the line and have actually already decided to sell.
Either way, when your leaflet comes through their door it does two things :
1) Reminds them that they have a problem they need to solve
2) Spurs them on to take some action, ie; call you. And, if they call you BEFORE they contact the Estate Agents you have a much better chance of negotiating a good deal!
this actually happened on one of my own leaflet campaigns. I went to see a couple who were having financial problems and had decided to sell their house and go into rented accommodation.
They’d seen an advert on the TV for one of the national house buying companies and thought it sounded a good idea, then at the same time my leaflet came through the door - they saw it as a ‘fate’ and called me!
It could also be that the house has been on the market for a while but has had very little interest. Very few viewings and no offers. Maybe the property owners feel the estate agent they are with hasn't been pro-active enough.
So, when they read your leaflet they may see it as another avenue to explore to get their property sold quickly.
Some Key Benefits of Property Sourcing with Leaflets
There are a few key benefits that leaflets offer over any other form of advertising to find deals.
1) You can target a SPECIFIC AREA with leaflets - which you can’t do so well with newspaper ads or a website. Sourcing locally where you know the area, means you will know if it’s a good or a bad street or part of town.
(if you don’t know your area take a look at this video to show you how to find the best locations in your area)
2) Leaflets are a way of getting your ‘brand’ known. Familiarity breeds TRUST and people tend to trust people and things that are familiar to them because it makes them feel more comfortable. So, if you constantly put your leaflets out in the same area people will start to recognise your company name, and, even if they weren't motivated enough to call you the first time around, they will call you when their situation gets more difficult.
3) Your leaflets often get ‘saved’ and I've had calls from people up to a year later! They also get passed around from person to person.
I got a great deal this way. I’d put some leaflets out in my usual area but got a call from a guy on the other side of town who said his daughter had handed him my leaflet because she knew he needed a quick sale on his bungalow that had been on the market for months.
We negotiated a fantastic deal, he was able to pay off his mortgage and I got a 3-bed property in great condition for £45,000 less than the asking price!
4) It’s a relatively cheap way of marketing - 5000 customised A5 leaflets cost around £110.00 to print and roughly £40 per thousand to deliver (it’s best to use your own distributors, not the big delivery companies.)
For more information on how to do this download our FREE ‘Leaflet and Distribution Report’ at the end of this post
So, an investment of £310.00 could potentially net you a deal which makes or saves you thousands of pounds and a great buy to let property in the process.
Quick Tips When Using Leaflets In Your Property Sourcing Strategy
Don’t overcrowd the leaflets, keep it simple and use bullet points like:
- NO ESTATE AGENT FEES
- NO CHAIN
- FREE PROPERTY VALUATION & CONSULTATION
- WE WILL PAY YOUR LEGAL FEES IN FULL
- WE STOP REPOSSESSION
I do hope this has been helpful, because it’s been proven that sharing your knowledge and helping others to succeed is the best way to get ahead and become successful yourself.
It’s no fun doing becoming successful and having no one to share it with!
So get out there, attend networking events, do the courses, TAKE ACTION and reap the benefits!
Very best wishes,
Suzie Bates
Leaflet Round-Up
As you can see leaflets can open up a world of possible deals that you may not have had chance of sourcing through the usual channels (estate agents).
As Suzie mentioned you can pick up their free 24 page Leaflet & Distribution Report
This is a great starting point if you’re looking at setting up a leaflet campaign.
Still left with any burning questions on property sourcing using leaflets?
Let us know in the comments below and we’ll be sure to answer any questions you have
Hi Rob,
I’d like to thank you and Suzie Bates for this post.
Can you please explain what “no chain” means? I’ve seen that phrase a number of times on Rightmove and Zoopla.
Kind regards
Desirée
Hi Desiree,
Thank you glad you liked it and found it helpful 🙂
To help with the ‘no chain’ description on property listings and sales,
What this effectively means is that the property being sold or marketed is not involved in any other sale,
By that I mean, in some sales what you may have is a first time buyer buying a house let’s say, they would be at the bottom of the chain. Then the house they are buying, the owner of that property is buying another house, they would then be second in the chain, and the house they are buying maybe that is a vacant surplus property so the owner of that third property is not looking to buy another property.
In this situation you have a property ‘chain’ of people buying and selling three people in total.
If one person in that chain pulls out of the sale for any reason it has a knock on effect to everybody else, because it breaks the chain and now the others may not be able to buy or sell.
So a property that is listed as ‘no chain’ simply means they are not dependent on any other property sale or any other person buying and selling a house for this sale to happen.
As a buyer that is quite comforting as you know there is less risk if you did like the property and wanted to purchase it that it might fall through due to situations out of your control.
In the UK on average 1 in 3 property sales might fall through (and for many reasons) so a no chain listing can be beneficial
Hope that helps 🙂
Hi guys awsome info really well layed out 🙂
Quick Q – the websites for property investors link seems t have expired?
Hi Shof Mohammed Islam, Glad you liked the article 🙂
Which link is it you were having trouble with as I’ve just looked through the links on the article and they all seem to be working well,
Let me know which page or link you were trying and I can make sure it’s working for you 🙂
All the best
Rob
I’ve had this backfire on me very recently. We found an estate that we liked and viewed a number of properties through estate agents. One was a repo and in poor condition, another was poor condition and over priced (negative equity issues with the property) and another was smaller but in reasonable condition but had been on the market for 18 months and had no offers. We dropped leaflets on properties but had no response so we decided to look at the smaller property with a view to adding an extension.
We made an appointment to view and the EA messed up the day so we went the day after the vendor was expecting us. We waited for about 20 minutes (expecting they may have been delayed at work etc) then posted a note saying we had called and to give them our contact details as we could return latter that same evening. We then had an email from the EA the next morning telling us that we could not view the property and that the vendor would not sell to us (we are cash buyers ready to go). They explained that the vendor was upset that their property was not considered before dropping leaflets so as we had not made their property a priority, they would not sell.
Is it me or is there some other issue here? NO sale for 18 months, cash buyer looking for a property on the estate and yet refuses to sell to us because they were upset they were a fall-back property!
Hi Tony that is a pretty unusual situation and sounds like a un-motivated vendor that still has attachments to the property
It’s rare but you do get situations like that where vendors don’t really want to sell, or they don’t have a strong enough reason to sell so there timeframe is completely open ended,
We saw one a while back that had been on the market for 4 years!
It may be the excuse they gave but I would anticipate it’s other issues at play, either way I wouldn’t dwell too much on it, some properties are not meant to be and there are always other deals around,
Were the Estate Agent funny with you about it or were they ok?
Thanks Robert and Susie
Great article and useful to have ballpark costs also.
2 things please…
1. I attempted to download the report but I’m getting a Dropbox 404 error. Would you be kind enough to email it to me please?
2. Susie, you said that you’re better off using your own leaflet distributors. Do you mean a small local company, or do you literally mean find individual distributors? If the latter what tips could you share on the best way to find reliable ones so our leaflets don’t end up in a bin or hedge somewhere please?
Cheers Un
Hi Una,
Thank you for your message,
We’ve updated the links for the dropbox download so if you go in there now you should get access to the report, any issues let me know 🙂
I’ll also pass on your question to Susie on the tips for handling leaflet distributors.
We cover this in detail in our online property training, and my personal opinion is using local distributors that you manage is way more cost effective and suitable for most investors using leaflets.
There is a full process that goes in to managing them from giving the maps, schedules, targets and all the way through to confirmation addresses, which is how we check that leaflets are being dropped, it’s difficult to go in to detail in a quick message though as we have a couple of hours training on sourcing and managing off market lead generation alone
Hope that helps and gives you a little insight
All the best
Hi mark,
Can you tell me what you do in a situation where a vendor has their house on with an estate agent and you’re trying to get it BMV? – I’m just starting some property sourcing and don’t want to pay estate agent fees or want my investor to either! thank you for your help!
Hi Jane,
If you’re sourcing properties via estate agents then you wouldn’t have to pay an agents fee don’t worry. The estate agent works for the seller, so they get their fee from the seller for selling the property. As a buyer you would just pay your usual purchase costs (solicitors fees, surveys etc…)
Alternatively if you buy the property direct from a homeowner who has contacted you via your own marketing (leaflets, newspaper adverts, online advertising etc…) and the seller is already on the market, they may have to pay a fee to their estate agent (depending on the terms of their agreement with the agency) but this wouldn’t be payable by yourself or your investor, this is still payable by the seller.
Hope this helps 🙂