Regardless of whether you are working with real estate short sales, pre-foreclosures or HUD homes newspaper ads can be incredibly useful for generating masses of buyer leads for flipping real estate.
While some investors and real estate investing companies have had great success with big name publications and nationwide papers like USA today and using display ads you will find that small classifieds offer the biggest bang for your buck. In fact you could easily find that you are able to pull in hundreds of calls per week with the right ad depending on where you are advertising.
Use your newspaper ads to hone in our your target market and attract your ideal customers. Readers are often much likelier to respond to specific ads than generic ones even if you offer a number of choices when they call. What is it that your ideal customers need and want and what will motivate them to pick up the phone and call you immediately? Some of the best producing newspaper ads for real estate investing are those that incorporate down payment or payment information. For example ‘only $500 down’ or ‘own this home for less than $800 a month’. Even if you do not have any homes in your real estate investing pipeline right now, don’t let that stop you from advertising. Once you have the buyers you can put out contracts on real estate short sales and foreclosures freely as you know that you already have them pre-sold. Think about the homes that are most appealing and desired when you create your ad and who is going to be reading the classified section of the paper you are advertising in. There is no sense in featuring a million dollar home when the readership base is mostly lower income families and vice versa. In general you will probably find that there is normally a bigger market for 3 bedroom homes in the low to mid price range than studios or big mansions.
Also make sure you shop around before launching your newspaper ad campaign for flipping real estate. Perhaps there are smaller local and community papers that are looking for more content and will even publish an article written buy you relating to real estate investing for free in addition to your ad at a discount price. You will also find that running your ads in the online versions of the paper are much more cost effective with some more rural areas even offering free online classified placement.
