Finding Lease Option Buyers

Let’s face it, the hard part of the housing equation right now is finding buyers. Yes, this summer showed some signs of improvement but most real estate economists are calling that a temporary bump now. Whether you are a real estate agent, a home seller or do lease option investing – you need to find buyers to get homes sold.

If you are a real estate agent have any of your listings said this to you, “Realtor, if you don’t sell my home soon I’m going to have to rent it!”? If you are a home seller are you thinking about having to rent your home out because it isn’t selling?

If so that home is a good candidate for a lease option. Trust me, while the pool of conventional buyers may be small right now there are a whole lot of potential lease option buyers.

So how do you find them?

Here are some of my favorite ways to find lease option buyers:

Craigslist – The ads are completely free and I get tons of responses from people who want to buy homes but can’t afford to right now
Rider – put a “Rent to Own” or “Lease with Option to Buy” rider on top of the for sale sign in the front yard
Bulletin boards – put a flyer on community bulletin boards, or laundry room bulletin boards around large apartment complexes
Mortgage brokers – Talk with some loan officers you know and give them some flyers to hand out to everyone that applies but can’t currently qualify for a mortgage right now

Those are just a few ideas, but if you take the little bit of effort to do them I can pretty much guarantee that you are going to start generating a lot of rent to own buyer leads.