Collecting Keys - Real Estate Investing Podcast

How to Find Off-Market Real Estate Deals: A Practical Guide

Off-market deals are properties bought directly from an owner before they hit the MLS. Investors find them by marketing straight to owners, then following up for months, because most sellers aren't ready on the first contact. Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch have run every one of these channels at scale, and this guide covers what each costs, what converts, and what they stopped doing.

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Why buy off-market at all?

The argument Mike and Dan make on EP 12 is simple: you can't reliably buy with equity off the MLS, only off-market and only in enough quantity to build a business. Sellers who go direct almost always have a reason — bankruptcy, divorce, a vacant property, a problem tenant, retirement with a house that needs work they don't want to fund.

That reason is the actual product. On EP 53, Mike says the biggest mistake new wholesalers make isn't bad marketing, it's running the conversation around the house instead of the seller's situation. Walking in and saying it's worth $300,000 but your problems mean we can pay $200,000 ended conversations. He and Dan got no deals doing this early on.

Market choice matters too. In Spokane they regularly got $20,000–$30,000 wholesale fees on roughly $300,000 houses; the same fee on a $150,000 property doesn't leave room. On EP 140 their rule for picking a virtual market is deliberately simple: choose a metro people clearly want to live in, then market in towns 45 minutes to an hour outside it, and avoid the hottest markets where cost per deal is highest.

From: EP 12 · EP 53 · EP 140

Which marketing channel should you start with?

On EP 162 Mike lays out a three-tier marketing pyramid. At the top is targeted marketing — direct mail, driving for dollars, courthouse lists. In the middle is speculative marketing — SMS and dialer cold calling to absentee, high-equity and inherited lists. At the base is mass marketing — billboards, TV, radio, PPC — which he treats as brand awareness, not lead gen. Roughly 78% of the several hundred deals his team did over a couple of years came from the top tier.

The numbers back that up. On EP 178, direct mail produced 1,504 leads and 58 signed or in-escrow contracts in 2023, while SMS produced 1,547 leads and only 18 contracts. On EP 72, cold calling leads cost about $60 but ran roughly $8,000 per deal, while mail leads cost $250–$300 and closed at about $3,100 per deal.

Their explanation is that a mail lead is warm by definition — the seller opened an envelope and chose to call. There's a counterargument from inside the show, though. On EP 465, guest Alex Braich says he dropped mail for cold calling because the reps are cheap: botching a cold call costs nothing, while burning a $300 mail lead is expensive. Mike and Dan make a version of that point themselves on EP 414.

From: EP 162 · EP 178 · EP 72 · EP 465

How does direct mail actually work, and what breaks it?

On EP 48 and EP 197 the process is: filter for distress signals — liens, bankruptcy, vacancy, absentee ownership — then build the list by motivation, pulling everyone who appears on the most lists first. They standardize around roughly $5,000 a month for a new market and run a six-month sequence of unique letters and postcards before looping back with refreshed data.

Their benchmarks: about a 1% to 1.5% response rate, roughly 50 to 75 calls per 5,000 mailers, and about 10% of those calls becoming deals. On EP 24 they note 60–70% of calls are no's — and scrubbing those names is a win, because you stop paying to mail someone who'll never sell.

Consistency is the recurring theme. On EP 7, most of their signed deals came from sellers who'd received six or seven mailers. On EP 428 Mike says they've mailed every month since January 2020. Cost per lead on a new list is highest in month one and typically bottoms around month four.

Mail also fails quietly. On EP 16 a batch of 4,000 letters produced six calls instead of the expected 40–60, and 19 of 19 spot-checked returns had the correct name and address. Without tracking return-to-sender counts, they'd have assumed mail doesn't work instead of spotting roughly $25,000 of wasted spend.

From: EP 48 · EP 197 · EP 24 · EP 16

Why is follow-up the step everyone skips?

On EP 12 Mike calls follow-up the step they were worst at. Average lead-to-contract was about 30 days, many took 90-plus, and one lead sat in the CRM 18 months. On EP 55 Dan describes two tracks: active follow-up by acquisitions staff — a couple of calls a day plus texts for about two weeks — and an automated cold bucket for leads that go quiet. Present the offer within 24 hours of walking the property, then follow up daily until contact.

The examples pile up. EP 29: a six-unit from a cold call that entered the system in May 2021 and closed around April 2022 after roughly 30 outreaches. EP 217: a lead that took seven weeks, 30-plus calls and 50-plus texts. EP 275: 32 connected calls, 16.5 hours of talk time and over 150 texts across four months.

On EP 65 Mike says it took about 17 touches to get a deal under contract. Greg Brooks on EP 166 says many clients touch a lead fewer than three times, while his top clients average 11–13. Old leads aren't dead leads either: EP 19 describes revisiting a seller once the market moved, and EP 101 covers calling sellers who signed with someone else on their expected closing date.

From: EP 55 · EP 217 · EP 19 · EP 166

Is it a marketing problem or a sales problem?

This is the hosts' most repeated diagnostic. On EP 131 and EP 247 they argue that if you have a few hundred leads and no deals, the problem is sales — and the next $2,000 should go to a salesperson's base pay, not more mail. Their first acquisition manager had no real estate background (she'd sold kettle corn and bartended) and closed seven deals in two weeks from leads already in the system.

On EP 165 Dan gives the tell: a low cost per lead paired with a high cost per deal points to weak follow-up or poor rapport. On EP 337 the hosts name cost per deal and contract close rate as the two most comparable KPIs across operators — roughly $4,000–$4,500 per deal for larger teams, $3,000–$4,000 for solo or small teams, and about a 70% close rate on signed contracts. They use those ranges as a BS detector for anyone reporting wildly different figures.

On EP 265 they put it bluntly: people overestimate the skill needed for marketing and underestimate the skill needed for sales. All the lists are public data. Greg Helbeck echoes this on EP 420 — the only list that works is the consistency list.

From: EP 131 · EP 165 · EP 337 · EP 265

What do you say to a seller?

On EP 37 Dan lists five prescreen criteria: do they actually want to sell, timeline, condition, why they called you instead of a realtor, and price expectation. Ask price last — about 90% of their closed deals started with an asking price far above the eventual contract. A lead only earns an appointment if it hits two of the five.

"Why did you call me instead of a realtor?" is the sideways way to surface motivation without asking a stranger to confess a problem. Mike uses a similar frame on EP 129: why not list it, what's your timeline, why did you reach out — saving the house for last.

Language matters. On EP 130, Eric Brewer explains sellers don't know what novation means, so he pitches it as an equity protection program. On EP 342 Cody Cressey says to drop industry vernacular entirely and build the offer using numbers the seller has already agreed to. Speed still wins too: on EP 15 they contracted a deal within 24 hours of a text off a mailer that two competitors already had but hadn't called.

From: EP 37 · EP 130 · EP 342 · EP 446

What about driving for dollars and referrals?

On EP 29 Mike and Dan argue driving for dollars is mostly inefficient for a new investor — gas, app subscriptions, skip tracing and mail costs can push cost per deal above simply sending mail. Their defensible use is stacking a visually distressed list against publicly recorded distress so you market harder to overlapping names.

Context changes that, though. Kyle and Emma Greenwood on EP 360 built roughly 80% of their list from driving for dollars in rural North Idaho towns, with a cost per deal around $1,200, because almost nobody else was marketing there.

Free and near-free channels come up repeatedly. On EP 381 David Niehaus built a 35-unit portfolio with no direct-to-seller marketing by paying double the going finder's fee. On EP 417 Dan describes deals that came purely from being visible — a $5,000 JV fee from a coffee conversation, a roughly $15,000 wholesale from an agent referral after speaking at a local event. For LLC-owned property, EP 89 points to the same workaround: look the entity up on Open Corporates and mail the owner at home instead of a registered agent.

From: EP 29 · EP 360 · EP 381 · EP 417

Frequently asked questions

How long before direct mail produces a deal?

Mike and Dan say expect roughly 90 days from your first drop before money comes in, since contact-to-contract averages about 40 days on top of the mail lag. Justin Dossey on EP 100 gives a similar two-to-three-month ramp.

How much does an off-market deal cost in marketing?

The hosts cite roughly $3,000–$4,000 cost per deal for solo and small teams and $4,000–$4,500 for larger teams. They also suggest budgeting around $30,000 in total spend before a first deal.

Direct mail or cold calling for a beginner?

It depends on your constraint. Mail produces warmer leads and converted about three times better in their 2023 numbers, but costs more per lead. Cold calling gives cheap reps, which is why Alex Braich on EP 465 recommends it for people who need sales practice more than good leads.

Do I need to walk every property myself?

No. On EP 446 the hosts say to ask for seller photos or pay someone around $200 to look at it. On EP 141 Mike describes offering $50–$100 in local investor Facebook groups for a walkthrough with a photo checklist.

All 170 episodes on finding off-market deals