As you may or may not know, part of my real estate journey, during the last 18 years, took me to Tucson, Arizona, where I was part of the Homevestors franchise model (We Buy Ugly Houses). During that time, I was put in charge of knocking on doors of properties that were about to be foreclosed on. Through that process, I bought 120 houses in 18 months. I learned a great deal during this period, and some of the most valuable information I learned was how to get access to these properties.
Arizona, much like Texas, is a non-judicial foreclosure state, and all pre-foreclosure properties are public information and recorded at our local county recorder’s office. By pre-foreclosure, I mean the period before the property officially gets foreclosed on. Travis, Williamson, and every other county in Texas all have their upcoming foreclosures in their public records. Foreclosure sales in Texas only occur once a month. This is the first Tuesday of every month, and the info becomes public 3 weeks prior to the foreclosure sale date. Anyone can access this information at the public records office, and many real estate investors and real estate professionals do for marketing purposes.
As I mentioned earlier, during my time in Tucson, I worked a relentless schedule of Monday-Sunday with 10-12 hour days. I don’t recommend this to anyone, because I did not have much of a social life… yet, during this period, I was young and eager to learn the business of flipping properties. What intrigued me the most was how to find the best deals out there. In the first 3 months of door knocking, the results were not immediate. I spent the majority of my time teaching homeowners how to keep their homes. I learned a great deal about different types of repayment plans that mortgage companies offer. I was surprised to find that many homeowners didn’t have the motivation to call their mortgage companies. For some reason, they were frozen on the tracks and procrastinated until the last minute, so I spent a great deal of time motivating homeowners to just pick up their phone and call their mortgage companies to apply for a repayment plan. After the 3rd month of door knocking, my phone began to ring with those homeowners who had found out from their mortgage companies that they didn’t qualify for a repayment plan and were now motivated to sell their properties. I often heard from many of them that the reason they called me was because I was the only one trying to help them keep their home. It was because of this trust I gained that gave them the motivation to call me when it came time to selling. I spoke to almost 3,800 property owners during those 20 months, in order to purchase 120 of those properties. As you can imagine, one has to be willing to put in the work to get those kinds of results.
Many real estate investors actively do this in both Travis and Williamson County, and if you would like more info on the foreclosure process or advice on how to approach some of these property owners, please feel free to reach out to me via email or cell.
