Submitting Offers Is Key to Residential Real Estate Success

Growing a successful residential real estate business requires inventory. And if you’re going to acquire inventory (houses), that means that you need to submit offers -- a lot of them.

If you’re not submitting offers daily, you’re not doing your job. At HIS Real Estate, we submit over 300 offers a day. Our offers are sent out in writing, and by fax and email all day long. Out of those 300 offers, we may only get one -- or even none -- accepted.

One of the ways we’re able to make so many offers is by utilizing a team of real estate agents who are constantly looking for inventory on our behalf. We have a huge network of agents throughout the areas we’re buying in, and we delegate that work to them. We provide them with proof of funds and give them the go-ahead to go out and submit offers for us.

Once that offer is in place and it’s accepted, I’m going to come by and buy the property. The agent gets his or her commission, and we offer an additional incentive to make sure that the agent continues to want to work with us. That way we extend our network and continue to get the inventory that matches our needs.

But there are two other ingredients necessary to ensure that system works: First, when our offers are accepted, we make sure we pull the trigger on the deal. The number-one thing you don’t want is to have the agent come back and say, “Hey, I’ve been working for you all this time. I get your offers accepted. I give them to you and you don’t execute.” You do not want to be that person.

All too many investors will give agents permission to submit offers on residential real estate on their behalf, but then when their offers are accepted they’ll hesitate because they aren’t the ones that are actually writing the check. They’ll say, “Okay, wait a minute. I have to go back to my investor, because the investor is the one that pulls the trigger, not me.”

When that happens, you actually lose a lot of time. And reaction time, in this market, is what’s going to save you a lot of money. Your reaction time, your ability to decide today that you want the property with the criteria you actually requested and your ability to pull the trigger, is going to get you the better properties versus someone else who has to go to a third party for approval. By the time that investor comes back, the deal is already done.

Secondly, you’re going to need a good infrastructure to keep the system intact; to keep everybody in check and not let those agents that are submitting offers, that are working for us, feel like we’re wasting their time. It’s much easier to build this infrastructure before your business gets too big.

But first and foremost, get out there and submit some offers on the residential real estate in your area. If you’re not making offers, you’re not getting deals. And if you’re not getting deals, you’re really not in business.