- [Seth] Hey guys, what's goin' on?
This is Seth from REtipster, and I'm makin'
another video here, just to give ya another idea to chew on
when it comes to looking for great real estate deals
on a website like Craigslist or on Facebook.
And this kind of thing can actually work for a lot
of the smaller free ad posting directories out there,
but Craigslist and Facebook are by far,
gonna give you the biggest bang for your buck,
simply because there's so much traffic
going through these websites.
So, I'm gonna start here with Craigslist,
just to show you a little bit more
about what I'm talkin' about.
So, obviously, one way to look for real estate deals
on a website like Craigslist is to go right here
to the real estate for sale section and start filtering
your search options, maybe type in keywords in,
really just looking for the kinds of properties
that you wanna buy, however, there's another approach
you can take where you aren't necessarily
going out and looking yourself.
You're just posting an ad and asking people to contact you
if they wanna sell their property.
And I'm not gonna tell ya that this kind of thing
will just open up the floodgates and give you more deals
than you can handle 'cause that's probably not gonna happen.
However, this is free.
All it costs you is just a few minutes to put together
these ads and post them in a few markets.
So it's really not that hard to do it,
and it can result in some people occasionally reaching out
to you and asking if you want to buy their property.
And typically, these are going to be the motivated sellers
that contact you because the unmotivated sellers
aren't gonna go through the trouble
to do this in the first place.
So, if we go back here to the main Craigslist directory
for really, whatever area you're lookin' in.
I'm just lookin' in Chicago in this particular incidence.
All we'd have to do is go over here and create a posting.
And we're going to just pick whichever section
of this market we're gonna do it in.
I'll just pick the City of Chicago
for the sake of this example.
And we're gonna go and click on housing wanted.
In this example, I'm gonna click on wanted: real estate.
And really what we're doin' here is we're
just puttin' together a pretty straightforward ad
letting people know that we are looking for houses or land
or fill in the blank, whichever type of property
you're lookin' for, and that we're able to pay cash
because that's usually a huge motivating factor
and a reason why a motivated seller would be willing
to sell at a discount, because we can offer cash.
We don't have to sit around waiting for months
to get financing, we can just move right now.
Obviously, if you can't pay cash, then don't say that.
But, having access to this kind of liquidity,
it's not a prerequisite to find great deals,
but it helps a lot if you can do that.
So, that's what I'm gonna say in this example.
So just say, "We buy houses fast for cash."
And then we'll just say whichever
neighborhood we're lookin' in.
And then we'll put in whichever zip code we're lookin' for.
And I've actually got a few different templates saved here
that I can use again and again,
depending on whether I'm looking for houses
or land or multifamily or you name it.
So in this case, this is a template that I use
for buying houses, so I'll go ahead and put that in here.
By the way, if you wanna get this template and really,
all the templates that I have available,
you can get it on the main blog post
associated with this video, and you can click on that link
in the description below, and it'll take you right there.
There's a few things about this template
that I obviously want to customize here,
because this isn't really specifying any specific area
or anything like that, so I would want to just specify
the state, county or city right here.
And then if there's any other areas I'm lookin' at,
I can include that here as well.
I'm actually just gonna simplify this
and end it right there.
And then go down here and enter in a website.
So that's obviously where I would put my website URL,
and then my phone number right here.
And then I can scroll down here and click continue.
When it comes to the images, so obviously,
I'm not selling something here, I'm asking for people
to reach out and sell their stuff to me.
But, it is still important to include some images,
or even just one image simply because it can kinda help
for SEO purposes, and it's also one of the criteria
that people can search by where they can search
only by the listings that have images on them.
So if I don't include an image,
I'm not gonna show up in those searches.
So it's important to put something in here.
It's really easy to do this.
If you wanna get access to tons and tons and tons
of very high quality images, go check out unsplash.com.
I'll open that up right here.
And really, just pick out an image
that you think would look good.
So I'm gonna go ahead and find a house.
Probably find one that is on the uglier side of normal,
just because the people that are reaching out to me here,
are people who probably don't want their property anymore,
and I don't want to make it look beautiful in their eyes.
So, I'll try to find one that's not quite as pretty.
It looks like this one might work, right here.
Or maybe something like this.
This actually looks a little bit more,
not exactly like Chicago, but Chicago obviously,
is not a rural country area, so I'll use this one here.
I can just go ahead and drag that right there.
And then we're just gonna have one image here.
So we're all done with images, and then we can
go over here and click publish.
And then we're pretty much good to go.
So this usually is not gonna show up immediately.
It's gonna take a few minutes to actually display
in this area of Craigslist, but it's out there folks.
So, now if we wanted to do a similar thing on Facebook,
we could certainly do that, however,
Facebook's Marketplace works very, very differently
from Craigslist, and it's actually changing all the time.
So, at the time of this recording,
this is how Facebook Marketplace looks and how it works.
And all we'd have to do is go over here to home sales,
go over here to Sell Something.
We're gonna have a Item for Sale, and then select Category.
We're gonna say Home Sales right there.
And then when it comes to what we're sellin',
we're just gonna say pretty much the same thing
we said on Craigslist, "We buy houses fast for cash."
And then on the Price section, we're just gonna put $1,
just so that there's something in there.
We would put whatever market that we're workin' in.
And just a little pro tip here,
because the image is such an important attribute of every
listing on Facebook, I'm gonna go over to Canva here.
By the way, Canva is a free service and it's awesome.
It's a really easy way to create great-looking images
with text on them, so I'm basically gonna take
the image that I put there in Craigslist.
I uploaded it here to Canva, and this is
the Instagram-style post, it's just a perfect square.
And then you can go over here to Text
and put some actual text on there.
So, I'm just gonna pick this kind of thing,
kinda looks like it would fit well.
And then I'll ungroup this so I can mess around
with it a little bit, I'll say...
Get rid of this thing, and it's as simple as that.
Doesn't have to be too fancy,
go ahead and download this image now.
I'm gonna go back to Facebook
and upload this image right here, just like that.
And then we would put most of the same information here
in the description, just so people understand very clearly,
what it is we're doing and how they can get ahold of us
to actually submit their property information
so we can make an offer on it.
So I'm gonna use mostly the same idea that I used
on Craigslist and put that in here.
Make all those edits to this again.
And then that's pretty much it.
Gonna go ahead and do Next here.
And this is gonna go in the Marketplace by default,
but if we wanted to post it in any
of these local buy/sell groups, if you're connected
with any of those, you could do that too.
But just for this example,
I'm gonna put it in the Marketplace.
And then it's as simple as that.
You can go ahead and see our listing right here.
And that's what it looks like.
Obviously, they would have to click this
if they really wanted to see more details,
but hopefully, that image there and just that headline
is enough to at least entice them to check it out.
And one other thing worth noting,
I know it's totally feasible to really extend your reach
with these kinds of posts on these sorts of free
ad directory websites, and you can totally do that.
However, most of the notable websites like this,
part of the reason why they're successful
and people come to them is because they've devised ways
to eliminate spam and people who just post
the same thing all the time, all over the place.
So if you do wanna post these kinds of listings
in multiple markets, like on the same day,
I'd say try to limit it to just a few times a day.
And when you do it, make sure you're using
different photos each time you do it.
And then also, make sure the headlines and descriptions
are different as well, just so that it's not so obvious
that everything is canned and being copied and pasted
from one spot to another.
So just make some effort to try to make your ads unique
when you're posting them, and then should make it
much less likely that these kinds of things get flagged
and removed by the Gods of Craigslist and Facebook.
So, I know it's a little annoying to do that,
but still, it's worth it considering
how many more eyeballs you can get exposure to.
And again, this isn't the kind of thing
that is gonna overwhelm you with leads, I don't think.
But, it doesn't cost you anything to do it,
so why not do it, especially if you have more time available
than you have money and you're trying to search
for every possible opportunity.
This is one way just to put a message out there
to the world and see what happens.
Depending on when you're watching this,
Facebook will most likely change something
about how this whole process works.
But generally, these same concepts should apply
to all the free listing sites out there,
in terms of where to post it, what to say,
how to get a good picture, how to explain things well,
and really, just put your flag up and let people know
what you're doin' so that they can make their own decision
as to whether or not they want to contact you.
I hope you found that helpful, thanks for watchin'.