The Secret to Picking Profitable Real Estate Markets

My brother Nathan Payne, how are you, my man?

I am, I'm great.

Today we're going to be going over how to analyze a real estate market. Now look, I look up questions, the top asked questions that real estate investors, wholesalers that are getting in the business want to know, and then we show you, we talk about the answer, our opinion, and we show you how to do it. Brought to you by BatchLeads, we're going to show you exactly how to analyze a real estate market. I'm going to show you today. So if you're wondering why the heck should I listen to these guys, Well, if you're asking yourself, am I in the right real estate market? We're going to break that down. But before we get into that, let's introduce ourselves first. I'm going to let Nathan Payne go first. Nathan, tell us, tell us why anyone should listen to what you have to say.

They shouldn't. No, I'm kidding, guys. My name is Nathan Payne. I've been in wholesaling for about 5 years, done a bunch of deals, a bunch of different states. Some of the things I'm known for was locking up over 100 contracts in a single year. Some of you might have seen a 30-day challenge I did a while ago to where I picked a totally brand new market where I had no contacts, no resources, nothing, and did a $20,000 deal in 30 days and only spent about 2 to 3 hours Monday through Friday working on it. So that was pretty cool.

Well, that's absolutely insane. And we're going to be talking—

and I didn't spend any money on marketing. Yeah, it was wild.

That is insane. Not a lot of people can say they know how to do that or have done that. Okay. And for me, my name is Nathan Payne. I've been in the business for over 6 years now, and I started knocking doors, started working really hard, not knowing what to do. And, you know, I've done over 100 deals now, done millions of dollars in transactions. But the reason why we do stuff like this is because we've been in your place. We know where you've been. We know the pain and the agony that people feel by just trying to figure out everything themselves. You don't have to learn everything yourselves. You can learn vicariously through us, right? Through others. So that's why we're here. We're going to be breaking down again how to analyze a real estate market. So, Nathan, tell— before we get into how to do it, tell us how important it is and how you got rocked in the beginning of your journey because you picked the wrong market.

Man, make me bring up that rough past, huh?

That's right.

So, guys, market is something Again, I can't understate this because you could do everything else right and you can do it perfectly, but you ain't going to make money if you're not in the right market. With wholesaling specifically, guys, one of the, one of the biggest lies ever told is, oh, if you find a good enough deal, the money or the buyer will find you. Not true, right? Nothing in life works that way. For us as wholesalers, we— I don't care how good of a deal you have under contract. We only get paid when we also have a buyer that is ready, able, and willing to pay us for that contract. So again, the buyer, the cash buyer, the investor, that is the person that's truly paying us. So that is our ideal client. So that's where we need to start. So again, when picking a market, the number one question we need to ask, am I in a market to where my ideal client, people that are going to be paying me, right, investors, am I in a market that investors want to be in? And the number one way we measure that is investor activity.

That's right.

Am I in a market where there's a lot of investors fighting for deals?

Now, that's, that's important. That's important, right? But it's also important to know that there's enough leads or enough people to go after to produce deals for those investors too, right? So we're going to be going over that. I'm going to show you in Batch how to do both check investor activity and how you can determine, okay, there are enough leads for me to go after. Who should I target? And I'm going to give you guys my opinion. So Nate did an amazing job explaining why you need to be in the right market. Now we're going to show you how to analyze. Nate, before I go into showing people exactly with my screen, you have anything else you want to add?

Man, I was just going to say, guys, In the kind of first half of my wholesaling journey, I was operating out of West Michigan and we had a company to where we're doing a lot of deals, but not a lot of investor activity going on in West Michigan. And that was the hardest thing. I was getting these deals locked up and under contract that were smoking deals on paper, right? In every which way you look at it. But the problem is, is there just wasn't a starving crowd. There wasn't a lot of people that were hungry for those deals. And so Didn't matter how good of a deal I had under contract. If nobody's really interested in buying it, you don't make a lot of money or you don't close a lot of those deals.

Wholesaling doesn't have to be complicated or lonely. Join my free Facebook group, Painless Flipping: Wholesaling Real Estate Simplified, where we're building a community of wholesalers crushing their goals. You're going to get access not only to free training, but tools and even one-on-one help to land your next deal. The link is in the description, so don't miss out. So how do you make sure you're not wasting your time? How do you analyze a real estate market? Let's dive right in. First of all, get batch leads. If you don't have batch leads, DM me, message me on YouTube. I have a link that gives you a 7-day free trial where you can try it out and see if you like it. Pretty easy. Okay. So the first thing you want to do, check investor activity. So how the heck do you check investor activity? So I'm just over in Sandy, Utah right now. I'm moving to Canada, but, uh, and, uh, but I'm going to invest here in the United States while I'm there. So let's just, I'll show you super quick. You just go under property search. You take your little boundary and you say, look, you know what, I really want to invest in Salt Lake City. I want to spend my time here. Is that the right move? All you got to do to see the activity of cash buyers is you just got to go over here to the quick filters over here and you go to cash buyers. So I think I might have passed it. Let me see. No, right here, cash buyers. So this is saying, dang, you got 35,000. This is good, but that's not all we're looking at. We're looking at on market. I want to know how many flips are currently on the market that a cash buyer bought and has relisted with a real estate agent after flipping it. And as you can see, guys, there's a lot going on here, right? There's a lot of opportunities. 1,897, you know, honestly, that sounds a little ridiculous, but that might— that's a lot. That's a lot, bro. That sounds a little crazy to me. I guess that's what the data is saying, bro.

Sometimes, and, you know, with, you know, it's just kind of the world we live in with algorithms and whatnot, it's not always perfect, but it's enough to where you can get a good enough idea. You know, again, if I'm looking in an area because some of those might pop up as flips, but it might just be because somebody bought the home and it's appreciated a significant amount.

I'm sorry, dude, I clicked on the wrong button. Look, I'm a straight noob, dude. 511. That's, that's way more. That's way more accurate. So you click on— that's when I clicked on market and you saw that. That's how many on market properties are for sale. But out of the on market in this area, 511 have been done by cash buyers. Okay, and you can go over here and you can see the flips and what they look like, and you can tell that obviously these are either nice or they've been flipped. But we're not going to go too in-depth on like the pictures. You can just see like over here, if we continue on this one, you can see that it's been rehabbed or some investor bought it and he's trying to resell it. Doesn't look like it's been rehabbed, but it might have been an investor that bought it, cleaned it up, and is trying to resell it. Okay, so that's one way to do it. So let's look at this. Like, if you're— a lot of people are like, well, what if I want to work in my backyard? Let's say you live in Eden. Okay, let's not do Eden. That sounds— you can already tell that's not, not going to get it done. So let's go Rock Springs. So you're in Rock Springs and you're like, you know, is there enough investor activity here for me to just work in my own backyard? So you market and you go to cash buyers and you go on market and you got 12 right now. Is that that much? Not really. I would say that's not going to be enough activity. You know, you could call on some of these and talk to some of the investors, but I would say no, that's not going to be enough. I would say you need at least 100, 100 cash buyers that you can work with in a market. Nathan, you want to say? Yeah.

And guys, to kind of further the point, there's a gentleman by the name of Dan Kennedy, and he's known as like the godfather of direct response marketing. And he was giving a presentation on stage one time, and he asked the crowd, if you could open up a hot dog stand and have any competitive advantage, what would it be? And people start yelling out answers. Oh, I'd want the best recipe for hot dogs. I'd want the nicest hot dog stand. I want the best location. He goes, you're all wrong. He said the only competitive advantage that you need and the only one that matters is having a starving crowd. So same thing. And again, guys, you don't need to be in the biggest, the hottest market, but the most important thing when choosing a market is you just want to make sure you're not in a bad one. And again, you know, 10, 12 buyers. Yeah, that's, that is a bad market. And guys, just to further point even more, you guys are watching us on YouTube or something like that, probably, right? So you've probably seen some other investors and whatnot. Guys, have you ever wondered why they're all in the same 4 or 5 markets? You guys know where they are.

Where are they?

They're in Phoenix, Arizona, Dallas, Texas, Florida, Atlanta, right? So and again, you don't need to be in one of those markets. But again, if you're going to scale a really big operation, you got to be in a market to where there is enough investor activity and there's enough investors to where there's enough demand for what you're going to be supplying and bring to the table. Again, guys, does not mean you need to be in the biggest and hottest markets, but it is crucial to make sure that you're not in a bad market.

That's it. And Nate, I'm actually a little surprised that there's a lot— seems like there's some quite a bit of flip— not quite a bit, but there's some flips going on in this area, which is Interesting, because I wouldn't— I wouldn't—

some of those might be, you know, to where it just— it's a home that somebody bought and maybe they lived in it for like a year or two and it just had really good appreciation.

This one looks like it got flipped though. This— it looks like they did some of— somewhat of a flip. But anyway, no, I understand. Sometimes it's going to collect properties that aren't technically flips just because they've been resold. But basically what this is saying is, hey, someone bought with cash and they're trying to relist it within— within a year's time. I think that's the the time frame. And if you're like, hey, look, I want to be more specific, you can go to all filters and you can filter it for ownership info and like cash buyers, like how long they owned it, how long did— you can get more in-depth. I just, I'm just showing you guys quickly. So let me show you now that we say, okay, let me see if there's investor activity. The next thing I want to do is if you're going to be doing off-market and targeting investors, you want to make— sorry, targeting sellers, you want to make sure that you are targeting a place that has enough lead info, right? Whether you're going to pull lists, I like to go pre-foreclosures. So according to this, let's see how many pre— okay, so there's no pre-foreclosure data that Batch has. Maybe there might be some, maybe, but that's not an— you're not going to be able to build a sustainable business off of pre-foreclosures off of tired landlords or absentee owners. I mean, that's 24. That's not going to get the work. So again, let's go back to Salt Lake. Let's see how many pre-foreclosures are in Salt Lake City so we can kind of see what we're looking at here. So I'll take my little nifty tool. You can also type in the area, but let's just go here. Boom. Let's see what we got in pre-foreclosures. 354. Okay, so that's enough for you monthly. Now, it's not 354 every month. It just depends on the month, but that's enough for you to target and call one by one. And that's what I say. Just get a hold of all of them. Okay, don't get too crazy. Don't throw 354 in an auto dialer and just auto dial them for like every hour on the hour, right? You got to be more like a sniper. You got to be like a detective and find out who owns those. Properties and talk to them. Now, there's, there's more than enough data on absentee owners, but I don't tell people that are new just to pull absentee owner lists and entire landlord lists. That's expensive, and you're going to pull a lot of leads in. You're going to have to just sift through a lot of stuff. I go for the highest level, like lower, lower amount of leads and the highest amount of motivation, right, according to the list. So we go here, there's enough, there's enough activity. If you go pretty much anywhere that doesn't have a high population, you're probably not going to have enough data for you, for it to make sense for you. So that's the two things I wanted to to show you guys when analyzing a real estate market investor activity and are there enough pre-foreclosure leads or enough tax liens, probates to keep you busy. And if not, then, uh, then you're getting in trouble because you're like, well, let me work 2 or 3 markets. Then you're dealing with issues of like, okay, you don't know the markets, you don't know, it could be completely different, the comps in one area versus another city. That's just how real estate markets are. So my advice to you, check, go to Batch Leads, check, see the investor activity, see how many pre-foreclosure, probate leads you're getting, tax liens, those higher motivated lists. If there's enough work for you to work, go, go to town. And if not, rethink about where you're working. Nate, you have anything you want to say to that?

Yeah, the one last thing I'll say is, guys, if you're in a market, so long as there's investor activity— again, that's the most important thing— when you're looking to pull lists, it's okay if it's not the biggest list. You know, you might see something somewhere and you're like, oh, but Nate, like, this person said that I need to have a minimum of like 5,000 records or 10,000 or what If you're just getting started and you're like, hey, I'm, I'm just trying to get to like my first deal done or one deal a month. You don't need these massive, massive lists. You can do so much with if you've got a small but a really, really good quality niche list, something again, something like a pre-foreclosure list. Do the unscalable thing, spend a disproportionate amount of time with the highest quality of leads. And that is your competitive advantage as somebody that's brand new. You can do things that these bigger companies can't do. So you can do things that they can't compete with. I can call a single seller twice in a row, leave a voicemail, send a text message from my iPhone, and then write a handwritten letter, put a minty piece of candy in it, right? So it's a piece of lumpy mail. Nice. With like a picture of me and my family. I can do that.

Oh, your address. Probably come and say hi, right?

There's so many ways you can get creative with it. But do the unscalable thing and focus on quality over quantity. Definitely work hard, don't get me wrong. This isn't an excuse to call like one lead a day, guys. But what I'm saying is focus on quality over quantity. And one, you'll be able to save yourself a lot of money. But two, you'll be able to be a lot more effective and you'll see you'll get a lot further when you focus on quality over quantity.

I love what you're saying. Do you— you're singing my— you're singing a song that rings true here. I feel it. So I love it. And last thing we'll say before we dip out, guys, look, If you feel overwhelmed and you're trying to figure out everything by yourself, or even if you've joined others, uh, maybe education programs, you're like, man, I still don't get this. Is I'm— maybe I'm not smart enough, maybe I'm not good at real estate, or I'm not a good entrepreneur. It's not your fault, guys. The system of learning out there has— I mean, Nathan have talked about it many times, we believe it's flawed. Just to get information like we're giving you right now doesn't mean you feel more confident about going and getting a list. Maybe some people does, but What we do at Painless Flipping is we help you through every step of the way. So go check it out if you're interested in getting your handheld and learning how to get into this. We got your back. But for those of you that don't want your handheld, just keep watching this stuff. We go live every week and we show you what to do. But if you want, again, your handheld, I'll hold it for you. I'll hold it. Nathan will hold it. Nathan, do you have anything you want to say before we wrap up?

No, man. I think that's about it. Yeah, guys, go to painlessflipping.com. You know, learn a little bit more about what we're doing. If you've got a lead and you're like, hey, I could use some help on knowing what to do next, book a call. We'll do a kind of a full lead breakdown for you. We'll tell you everything you need to do to take it from just a lead to a closed deal.

All right, well, if you got that— if you like that question that we answered and you have another one you want us to answer, just submit it in the comments. Like, hit the bell icon, subscribe. We'll look at these and, you know, maybe we'll answer your question on the next call. Later, everybody. All right, so here's your next step, everybody. Join my free Facebook group called Painless Flipping Wholesaling Real Estate Simplified. If you're ready to take action and close your deals faster, this is where you need to be. You're going to be getting live trainings, free resources, and support along your way. Link is below in the description, so just click it there. And don't stop there— watch the next video here to learn more about wholesaling strategies that will help you get your next deal faster. Click it now and let's keep the momentum going.