What is a Real Estate Bird Dog? Lesson 02

So what exactly is a “real estate bird dog“? Bird Dogs, at least when used in the Real Estate lingo, are also known as “property locators“, “property finders” or Jobbers. They are the eyes and the ears of real estate investors. They find properties for real estate investors to buy, properties they wouldn’t be likely to find on their own.

Bird Dogs go out and find undervalued properties for investors! Bird Dogs do not buy the properties themselves; however they search neighborhoods, communities, counties, cities, and so on, looking for properties for investors to buy. With a little experience, many Bird Dogs advance to becoming a Wholesaler, which is actually taking control of a property and then selling it to investors.

So how does a Bird Dog benefit from doing all the searching but not the buying? Investors pay Bird Dogs in cash when they locate a property the investor likes. These properties can be almost anything: single family houses, multiplexes, duplexes, apartment buildings, commercial buildings, or land.

Investors typically pay property finders what is called a “Referral Fee” depending on the amount of work that you actually do in finding properties for the investor. If you just find a property on a list (such as RealtyTrac or Foreclosure.com) or driving down the street and send it over to the investor, the fee is not going to be very large. However, if you go through all the work of checking the property out, estimating repairs, negotiating the deal and delivering it to an investor the fee will be much larger.

My personal opinion is that property locators should be paid a lot more than a mere $1000 if the deal they find makes an investor a lot of money. It should be more in the realm of 3% to 5% of the net profit the investor realizes. We will cover more on this later. So, if the investor makes $20,000 on a deal then you should get paid $600 to $1000 for your work.

If you advance to the Wholesaler stage of real estate investing your cash from a deal can much higher because you are doing a lot more work. Wholesalers actually gain control of the property by having some type of written agreement (contract) with the seller of the property.

Filed under: Become a Real Estate Bird Dog • Property locators • Real Estate Bird Dog Training • Real estate bird dogging • Real Estate Bird Dogs

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