LowBaller

The LowBaller playbook

Everything on finding motivated sellers, making below-market offers, and closing off-market deals. Built on our own measured data: real skip-trace hit rates, real ranking weights, real discount bands.

Finding motivated sellers: the complete playbook

Every motivated seller lead source compared: pre-foreclosures, tax liens, probate, vacancy and absentee owners, with signal weights and a hardest-first plan.

Making lowball offers that actually close

How to make lowball offers that close: the equity cap formula, model discount bands by seller situation, a worked deal and the certainty-first frame.

Wholesaling and investing with motivated-seller data

Wholesaling real estate with motivated-seller data: why 66% of distressed owners are entities, how to reach the rest, and where the assignment fee comes from.

Markets and data: how to read a metro before you work it

Motivated seller data by market: the 25 to 50 mile radius rule, hard vs broad distress, state foreclosure clocks and free data pages for 46 US metros.

Where to find below-market properties: every source, ranked

Every place to find houses that take lowball offers, ranked by discount, competition and owner contact: county records, auctions, REO, FSBO and lead tools.

Motivated seller outreach and follow-up: the contact strategy that closes

How to contact motivated sellers legally: the channel for each owner type, what 100 distressed properties yield in phones and emails, and a follow-up plan.

Straight answers

How do you find motivated sellers for free?

Every core signal is a free public record. Foreclosure filings sit with the county recorder, delinquent tax rolls with the county tax office, and owner mailing addresses with the assessor, where an address that differs from the property address identifies an absentee owner. The work, and the cost, is in joining those sources, valuing the property, checking equity and reaching the owner.

What should you offer a motivated seller?

Work backwards from resale value, not from what they owe. Take the estimated after-repair value, subtract repairs, subtract your margin, and check the result still clears their mortgage, because no owner can accept less than their payoff. In practice that lands 35 to 50% under value on a scheduled auction, 30 to 45% on a pre-foreclosure, 25 to 40% on tax delinquency, and 15 to 30% on a plain absentee owner.

What is a realistic skip-trace hit rate?

A phone or email comes back on roughly half to two thirds of records, and the rate falls as a property has been vacant longer, because the owner has had more chances to move. That is why paying per attempted trace rather than per successful one quietly wastes a large share of a budget.

Does direct mail or cold calling work better?

Calling converts at several times the rate of mail per contact, because you reach a person and can answer an objection. Mail scales further for less effort and reaches owners whose phone number never turns up. Most consistent operators call the top of a ranked list and mail the tail, rather than choosing one.

Is any of this actually legal?

Yes. Foreclosure filings, tax delinquency and property ownership are public records by statute, which is the whole basis of the industry. What is regulated is contact: calling rules, do-not-call lists and state texting law all apply, so numbers flagged do-not-call are dropped before they ever reach you.

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