How does an investor get an agent to send off-market deals instead of MLS alerts

Reading a T-12 is the easy part for most experienced buyers. Getting an actual agent relationship that produces off-market deals is the harder skill, and it shows up as a common complaint: call four agents in a target market, three set up portal alerts and go quiet, one calls back once. The alerts themselves tend to be close to useless to an experienced buyer, since everything in them is priced off a broker's pro forma that's often already been run from public data before it arrives. What an investor actually wants is the seller who's 78, self-manages six units, and hasn't raised rent since 2019, the kind of listing that shows up in assessor data after it sells rather than before. What gets an agent to take a new investor client seriously usually comes down to a track record of closing, proof of funds on hand, and being specific about the exact property profile wanted rather than a broad search. Persistence matters too, since the agents worth working with are often the busiest ones. The decision point for anyone in this spot is usually whether to keep working the relationships already started or start over with a different list of names, and sticking with a promising lead a bit longer is often the better bet before starting from scratch.

2 replies

karen_whitfieldPassivePRO

The 78 year old with six units isn't on the MLS and no agent is going to hand you that one on a first call. Those come from an agent's own list, and an agent gives their list to the buyer who already made them money.

So the sequence is backwards from what you want. Buy something ordinary from them first. Even a listed deal at a fair price where you close clean and don't renegotiate on day 14 over a $2,400 repair. That closing is the audition. After it, you're the name they think of when a seller calls them and says my knees are shot and I want out by spring.

Don't offer to pay up front. It reads as someone who doesn't understand how they get paid and most brokerages have no clean way to take it anyway. What you can offer that costs you nothing: tell them exactly what you'll pay for and what you won't, answer the phone, and give them a straight yes or no within a day. Agents complain constantly about investors who ask for twenty analyses and buy nothing.

On your four names, I'd keep the one who called back and add four more. One responsive agent is the whole relationship, the other three were never going to be it. And ask that one who else in town works with investors, because the good ones know each other.

karen_whitfieldPassivePRO

How does an investor get an agent to send off-market deals instead of MLS alerts

2 replies