Georgiana Mihaila 
With such a limited listings inventory at your disposal, having to find prospective home sellers in New York is quite a task. But here’s where PropertyShark can help, with three effective tips on how to find potential home sellers:
1. Get to the owner of a condo before he even decides to sell
A good way to bypass the competition in the real estate market is by getting to potential sellers before they publicly announce their intention to sell. Some apartment owners, who weren’t initially planning to sell, might have a change of heart once they find out how much similar units have gone for lately.
A simple, targeted and well-crafted message to a condo owner is sometimes all it takes to score a new deal.
To get started, simply enter the address of a particular building into the search bar on PropertyShark.com. Once the results of the search are in, open the property report and scroll down to the Ownership Section to find out who owns that property. If an LLC is listed as owner, that’s okay; we can help you see who is behind the LLC.
If you are not yet familiar with the practice, brush up your knowledge of cold-calling restrictions; then you can proceed to contact the owner — as phone numbers for the owner are often listed in our Ownership Section — and see how willing he is to sell.
However, if cold calling is not one of your regular practices of if you find it too time-consuming, please move on to our second method.
Expert tip: Anytime you see a property you like, make sure you add it to your Watchlist (from the upper side of the property report). By doing this, you will receive an email whenever the property goes into foreclosure or pre-foreclosure, or when a new title document is filed — a great way to stay ahead of the competition.
2. Generate leads using our Mailing/Data Lists
As the first method can be just as time-consuming as it is effective, why not shorten the process of finding prospective home sellers using our Mailing/Data Lists? This tool can help you get more leads by targeting specific property owners, either by carefully selecting your own criteria (see the image for a quick walk-through), or by using one of our predefined lists.
Let’s say you’re interested in condo owners in Soho that haven’t sold their apartments in the past 5 years. Simply go to our Mailing/Data Lists and follow the steps illustrated below to generate your list of condo owners. You can then download your list in a CSV, Excel or Avery mailing label format.
To make your job easier, we also have a number of Predefined lists you can turn to, like Potential condo sellers: owners who bought a condo 2-5 years ago, or Single-family homes & large condos purchased at least 2 years ago.
3. Target owners who have missed their mortgage payments
We know what you’re thinking; there aren’t that many foreclosures in certain areas of New York, like Manhattan. But there are plenty of condo owners dealing with pre-foreclosure. Having a condo in lis pendens is a vulnerable moment for the property owner, and he might start considering selling the condo to pay off the underlying liens.
To see condos currently facing pre-foreclosure, simply go to our dedicated Pre-Foreclosures tab and filter your results (by date, address, zip code etc.). Once you’ve found a unit that interests you, you can either add it to your Watchlist — and get notified whenever a new title document is filed — or you can use the property report to find contact details for the owner, and approach him with a deal.
So, whenever in search of new ideas on how to find potential home sellers, head straight to PropertyShark.com. A subscription (prices start at $39.95/month) will grant you access to a large database full of properties that might just be up for grabs, even if not yet listed for sale.
Note: A slightly different version of this article was first featured in BrickUnderground.
