Someone told me this week that distressed houses in a 2-mile radius of a major employer almost never sit vacant long enough to mail

Question

Been running my loops around the Riverside industrial corridor for about six weeks now. Logged 84 addresses in that stretch alone. Guy at a meetup Tuesday said I was wasting stamps because workers from the distribution center snap up anything habitable inside 90 days, distressed or not. His point was that the motivated sellers in that zone move faster than a three-touch mail sequence can catch them.

I don't know if he's right but I cannot stop thinking about it because I have 14 addresses in that exact corridor sitting in my third mail touch right now with zero response. Could be the list, could be the letters, could be that he's onto something real.

Has anyone actually tracked response rates by proximity to a major employer? I'm wondering if the corridor properties need a door knock on week one instead of a letter at all.

emmett_boyle · Answer

The guy at the meetup isn't wrong about the absorption, but he's conflating two different problems. Worker demand keeps those houses from sitting on the MLS long, sure, but motivated sellers in distress aren't listing anyway. The ones you want are the probate situation, the out-of-state heir, the landlord who's tired and behind on a roof. Those people don't get rescued by distribution center demand. They sit and deteriorate alongside the property while the market moves around them. I had a corridor like that outside a logistics hub near Fontana, 2019, and my third-touch letters on six addresses got zero response too. Four of those six ended up selling through an agent six to eighteen months later at prices I could've worked with if I'd gotten there earlier.

What actually got me into two of those deals was a door knock on week one, not because mail doesn't work but because the timeline on distressed sellers near high-employment corridors is compressed differently than rural or transitional neighborhoods. The heir in Fontana had already had two cash buyers knock before I mailed once. So now my rule is that anything within a mile of a major employer or distribution node gets a door knock attempt before the first letter drops, not instead of mail but ahead of it. If nobody answers I leave a handwritten note, not a printed letter, and I follow with mail. Your 14 addresses at touch three aren't dead, but I'd drive every one of them this week and knock. At least you'll know which ones have already changed hands quietly.

jromero_pm · Answer

Six weeks and 84 addresses is a real sample, not a hunch, so you're not wasting your time. But I'd split the question. The meetup guy might be right that tenants fill those houses fast, but tenanted distressed properties are still owned by stressed landlords who are not listing them, and a landlord dealing with a problem tenant two blocks from a distribution center is not getting calls from agents either.

What is the actual condition on those 14? Because if they're truly distressed, deferred maintenance, overgrown, tarped roof, a renter desperate for proximity to their job is not touching it without ownership doing work first, and that owner is exactly who you want. If they look rough but livable, yeah, maybe someone moved in and the motivation evaporated.

Someone told me this week that distressed houses in a 2-mile radius of a major employer almost never sit vacant long enough to mail

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