What is a “real estate bird dog”?

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 that find properties for real estate investors to buy, properties they wouldn’t be likely to find on their own.

Real Estate 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 find 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 Bird Dogs what is called a “Referral Fee” of around $1000 or more.  My personal opinion is that Bird Dogs 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.

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.

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